The last challenger stood a head taller than the others and its body is so much leaner that it lacks the bloated belly that every other orcs had. Even then, its massive frame was still somehow bulkier than every other orc around. It's a beast of a monster.

  Covering that hulking body are old battle scars. Bite marks can be seen on the side of its belly and claw marks could be found here and there. Most notable of all is on its right arm. Covering almost the entirety of its arm length is a slash mark that goes straight down to its wrist from its shoulder.

  On its head is some sort of canine skull with feral eyes peeking from the eye sockets. The tusks protruding from its mouth are longer and thicker than those of other orcs, oozing pure intimidation.

  On its hand is no crude weapon made out of chipped stone. While slightly rusted and aged, it was unmistakably forged of steel. The orc’s massive hand covered almost all of the grip, but its length should have been something held by both an average man’s hands with still some length to spare. Past that, the cross guard spreads outward in a downward curve. And the blade—straight and worn, as tall as Gale is—maybe even more. A claymore.

  The monster raised its large sword towards a guard stance and readied for the fight before it. Even though it could support and make good use of the massive sword with one hand, it placed another hand on the sword’s grip.

  The hilt was lowered until in front of the orc’s core. Lifting the tip higher, with one foot forward, it took a middle guard stance, one that’s commonly used by soldiers. It's as if the hulking monster has been trained in the art of the blade.

  In response, the boy crouched low to the ground and placed both his hands on the ground, ready to kick off the fight with an earth spike. With both sides ready, the air grew tense—yet it still blew gently to cause Gale’s hair to flutter about. A somewhat calming breeze.

  The moment the air went still and the boy’s hair all fell flat on his head, the orc made its move. One step forward–two steps—three, and then it stopped. It noticed the ground protruding suddenly even in the darkness of night and when the spike inevitably came mere moments later, the orc was ready.

  It kicked the rising spike with all its might before the spike could rise to full size and the rubbles flew forward towards Gale. Though too far away to hit him, the larger rubbles partly obstructs the boy’s view of the orc.

  Leveraging the obstruction, the orc immediately pressed its back foot to the ground and launched itself forward in a wild charge. A couple seconds and the orc would already be in its striking distance.

  Before it could get anywhere close, the boy formed a series of obstacles. Spikes rapidly shoot out from the ground and the orc nimbly made its way around each and every one of them, lightly stepping on the ground as it did so.

  Then, a couple steps before the orc could reach the boy with its weapon, Gale stood up and took a step back, loudly stomping the ground behind him. The stomp was conveyed by his connection to the earth spirit and the ground shifted under his will.

  There, underneath the orc’s foot planted into the ground as the other is striding to move forward, the ground collapsed, causing it to lose its balance for a moment.

  In that instant, Gale quickly reached down to plant his hands on the ground again and called upon another spike. The ground rose with rapid speed, quickly approaching the orc’s face, but it twisted its massive body to the ground and was only left with a scratch on its cheek.

  Grabbing the now still spike, the orc took a moment to regain its balance while Gale started to make a run for it to create more distance between him and the orc. Unfortunately, his short legs meant that he wasn’t able to gain much distance before the orc was able to completely regain its footing.

  Beneath his feet, Gale could feel the ground begin to shake again as the orc restarted its stride. Quickly turning around, the boy then lowered his body and swiped up from the ground to throw up a cloud of dust.

  The not so significant distance between them meant that the kicked up dirt was still dense enough to completely blind the orc as the finer dusts slip past its eyelids and cling to its eyes. Now the orc had to restore its vision before anything else.

  While rubbing its eyes, it thought of how one of its kin was pierced by an earth spike while blinded. Learning from how the axe wielding orc went down, it threw its body to the side and rolled before stopping to continue cleaning out just one of its eyes.

  When its sight returned, sure enough, an earth spike had taken the place where the orc was before it rolled away. A moment delay and it would have pierced clean through the monster’s torso. The blind dodge saved it and it can now restart its stride to chase down the boy once more.

  By now, the boy was already running out of tricks. Gale tried to once again step back and make a dent on the ground to tip the orc off balance, but now that it knew what was coming, the trick couldn’t quite work so well.

  The orc put less weight into each step and slowed its charge. When the ground sank under its feet, it was stunned, but only for an instant. The monster recovered so fast that before Gale could follow up with another attack, he was already in the orc’s range.

  The orc raised both its hand to its head while the sword tip downwards. As it stepped into striking distance, it flicked its wrist to bring the tip above its head, and swung both hands downward for a wide slash.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  As the sword started coming down on him, Gale threw his body backwards to dodge the oncoming steel, and just as he did so, the wind started to pick up.

  The steel would have gone through the boy’s shoulder all the way to the other side of his torso to split his body in half, but the wind blew past the orc’s body to snatch the boy away, and the steel parted from Gale’s flesh around halfway down his chest, leaving a much shallower wound than the orc had expected to cause.

  Though saved from immediate death by steel, his small body was blown all the way to the orc’s encirclement where he bounced on an orc’s belly before plopping down on the ground.

  Gale immediately tried to get back on his feet, when suddenly, a large hand grabbed his head. The earth spirit was smushed to the boy’s head and his eyes were covered by the monster’s large fingers, but despite being able to crush the boy’s head there and then, it gently lifted him to his feet before letting go.

  Looking back, he found an orc looking down on him. The orc brought both its fists together in front of its chest and growled deeply in a gesture telling Gale to fight with his best. It seems that orcs are more noble creatures than one would assume.

  They adhere strongly to the pack hierarchy because they put much respect into strength, in line with that, or maybe because of that, they ended up respecting a good duel a lot.

  But despite all that, they wouldn’t stand around to wait while their opponent was distracted in a fight. When Gale turned back to look at the orc he’s fighting, he found it already much too close for comfort.

  It had both hands on one side of its hip, holding the sword with its tip downwards in a back guard stance, ready for a swing as soon as it got within striking distance.

  Before the massive orc could reach him, a much smaller and swifter wind fairy first reached Gale and positioned themselves in front of Gale’s face. All throughout the fight, they had flown about the field after calling out to Gale with a gentle breeze, silently lending its power to the boy, despite the fact he hadn’t called for its help—until just now.

  Now ready to work alongside the earth fairy that came before them, the fairy flew around the boy to reach his nape where they grabbed on, latching themself there.

  When the orc once again came to a couple steps away from striking distance, the fairy blew another strong wind to move Gale’s small body. A breeze that’s not too strong and only served as a small boost to the boy’s movement.

  The orc brought its sword upwards in a swing and Gale narrowly dodged the blade, ducking underneath the monster’s feet with the wind on his back.

  Now back to back with the orc, Gale whipped his head around and found the orc already swinging its steel widely while turning around to face him.

  The horizontal swing was much slower and he quickly responded by reaching to the ground, ducking beneath the blade. When his palm touched the dirt, he swiped up some dirt towards the orc to kick up another cloud of dust, blinding his adversary.

  Gale acted on the momentary stunt by pressing both his hands onto the ground to call upon an earth spike, but the dust hadn’t stunned the orc long enough for the spike to do anything.

  The monster threw its body quickly to the side and was able to dodge the rising spike, sacrificing only a bit of flesh on its arm and it immediately shifted the tip of its sword towards the boy before quickly thrusting in a straight line.

  The wind fairy tried to move Gale away from the orc again, but it wasn’t fast enough to move away from the sword’s range. With a single step forward, there was no doubt that the sword’s thrust would pierce clean through the boy’s torso.

  The steel gleamed underneath the moonlight and pierced through the wind straight towards Gale’s torso, before it swayed to the side as the orc tipped sideways and fell to the ground, as if a drunkard who had a glass too many to drink.

  Following the loud boom that resounded when the orc’s massive body hit the ground, a series of whistles can be heard piercing through the air. One by one, the orcs encircling on one side face first to the ground. And as the wall of orcs crumbled, Gale could see a row of torches flickering in the darkness of night.

  Though slower to pick up on the development, the orcs still standing also noticed the torches in the distance. Once they picked up on it, they quickly registered them as new threats and quickly raised their arms and roared before charging forward.

  “Sir William!” Called out one of the newcomers under the blaze of torches. Despite missing one of his arms, he still skillfully raced his horse forward past the ones in front of him to reach his commanding officer.

  “Archers to the back!” William instructed as he himself slowed down to let himself be overtaken by his men. “Don’t you die out there, Robert.” He said to the man who had called out to him.

  “Sir!” Robert replied.

  “Nor any one of you! Show these beasts the might of Duraint!”

  As they shouted their warcries, the men that overtook the archers took out their sabers and raced towards the orc. Robert did so too after bundling his mount’s reins and stuffing it into his mouth to steer.

  Soon enough, the two groups collided. A large number of orcs were taken out before they could fight, so the pack were largely outnumbered and each orcs had to fight a few enemies on horseback moving nimbly around them.

  While the orcs’ raw strength was nothing to scoff at, they had little techniques to their move. Techniques that the soldier who had undergone training had confidence in. Not to mention how the orc is now vastly outnumbered after having their numbers trimmed down by a volley of arrows.

  But the fight still isn’t exactly overwhelmingly in favor of the soldiers. The orcs still put up some form of a fight. Swinging their arms wildly, they were able to knock down some riders off their mount.

  Though it wasn’t enough to threaten their victory, the soldiers wanted to minimize casualties and needed to regain their advantage in the brawl. Unfortunately, in this brawl of a fight, archers that make up a good number of their numbers weren’t able to provide too good of a support—or at least, the common archers weren’t able to.

  After nocking an arrow and drawing the string, William calmed his breath for a steady shot. A hundred kilos of tension rested on the bow’s limbs while he took his aim. Then, when he let out a sigh, a breath of wind gathered on the tip of his arrow—forming a vortex before he loosened his arrow.

  It flew in a very slight arch at incredible speed, past the gaps between soldiers riding in a circle around their opponent, wheezing about as if a bug treading through the chaos before it eventually found its home inside an orc’s head.

  Over and over, the man did the same things a few times over, dropping an orc every time he loosened an arrow, and soon enough, only one orc remained.

  The last orc was surrounded by a handful of men on horseback, desperately swinging all around in hopes of hitting any of the soldiers. Though all its effort would be for naught once it too caught an arrow with its face. And with that shot, the last of the orcs fell.