Asa ran out of the camp right behind Captain Sanders. Sanders, despite being covered in steel armor, actually moved faster than he did in his light armor. The other soldiers who were awakened by the whistling also hurriedly grabbed their weapons and ran after them.

  Everything was clearly visible under the bright moonlight. Several figures of varying heights stood silently at the intersection outside the camp, and the soft moonlight did nothing to temper the ominous aura emanating from the weapons in their hands.

  One of the taller ones was an ogre. Even among his own kind, the figure was enormous, twice the height of an average man and five times as thick. From head to toe he was wrapped in specially crafted iron armor, and in each hand he carried a large and a small wolf-tooth hammer that matched his body. The moonlight reflected off his armor and weapons into a sharp, cold light.

  Next to him were two werewolves. Wearing only a set of hard leather armor that protected their vitals so as not to hinder their high level of agility and speed, the meteor hammers they held in their hands weren't as huge and terrifying as the weapons in the ogre's hands, but they were still powerful enough to shatter any armor. There were also three lizardmen who had the same armor as the werewolves, and their hands were holding large swords that were as long as a man. The two Orcs on the side were each carrying an oversized machine crossbow in their hands.

  In the middle of this group of murderous orcs was a very thin and small figure in comparison, with neither armor nor weapons, just a cloak that hid his race and face.

  Sanders' face was whiter than white paper in the moonlight. He had not expected the situation to be this dire at all.

  More than a month ago, he had received an order from the head of the Paladin Order to secretly lead a group of soldiers to the western wasteland to scout for unusual movements of the orc clans. For more than a decade, the western forces had been constantly wiping out orcs of all races, and almost all the orc clans in the western wasteland had been driven to extinction. So although the higher-ups had specifically told him to be careful, he had only expected to encounter some sporadic attacks.

  The orcs did not know how to smelt and forge. Whether it was production tools or weapons, most of them were simple stone tools. So even if their physical ability and combat strength were far superior to that of humans, they would be unbeatable in front of a well-equipped army.

  The various orc races never interacted with each other. These primitive and ignorant sub-humans even refused to come into contact with any other civilization at all, and simply adhered to their own unique way of life and beliefs that had been passed down from generation to generation. Tribe by tribe, quietly waiting to be razed to the ground by the iron hooves of the human army.

  Now this common sense has been shattered by the facts before us, and it will be a shattering with a strong smell of blood. The mixed force of well-armed orcs before them would never come just to show them up.

  This was the head of a barren mountain surrounded by cliffs, and Sanders had chosen to station himself here because the view was so good that it was easy to defend. Even if the orcs came to sneak in at night if they wanted to, they could still defend themselves well, there was only a single intersection here, and holding it well would prevent any orcs from coming up.

  Of course, as long as this intersection, there is no one who can escape.

  The cloaked figure in the middle of the orcs suddenly moved, and seemed to nod, giving a soft enunciation.

  It was a very standard human pronunciation, relaxed and casual, like a note of approval made while sipping tea in the sun and listening to a friend's idle chatter.

  The ogre next to him, however, as if a certain valve in his body had been opened by this soft voice, and like a beast that had been chained by its head and neck, and now that that restraint had suddenly been loosened by a light touch, immediately let out a shocking roar and rushed towards the crowd. With its huge body and heavy armor, each step caused the ground to tremble slightly, and it would crush all the lives in front of it, all the soldiers revealed a look of fear.

  As soon as he saw those orcs just now, Asa thought about how to escape. He was well aware of the situation, since these orcs were able to be calm enough to quietly feel their way up the mountain to guard the intersection, they definitely had the certainty to slaughter the hundred or so of them. Moreover, he knew clearly what an ogre with a full body of heavy armor and wielding that kind of heavy weapon meant. Normally just one ordinary ogre would be enough for twenty or so fully armed soldiers to deal with.

  The cliffs were high, even with the Dorno River below them, and that kind of height was enough to send someone crashing into a meatloaf on the rocks under the water. But Asa knew there was a tree in the middle of the cliff behind him, and he'd tried to piss on the branches above it when he peed. The location on the tree's cliff and the thickness of the branches he knew well enough to slow the downward impulse to a point of safety.

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  Seeing the ogre charging this way, he was about to turn around and run when he realized that a figure suddenly flashed out beside him. It was Sanders charging headlong towards the ogre by himself with his sword and shield.

  The army was already frustrated, he had to use his own strength to deal with the ogre in order to revitalize his morale.

  Shadows crisscrossed, and it seemed like the mountain itself was making loud noises and shaking vibrations, the ogre's hammer blow that could have smashed ten cows to pieces only hit the ground. The contact between Sanders and the ogre was so fast that the soldiers couldn't see what was happening. After a sound of metal clashing, the ogre fell on its back with a loud bang, Sanders flew backward and did a beautiful backflip in the air, and landed back in front of the formation with a wave of the longsword in his hand, and chanted an incantation under his mouth, and the longsword slowly emitted a burst of bluish-white luminescent light, so mighty that it looked like a samurai who had jumped out of an epic myth. Hundreds of soldiers snapped out of their panic and let out a deafening shout of excitement in unison.

  Asa didn't scream, he was the only one who could see clearly that the ogre had fallen on his own.

  The moment the two men crossed paths, Saunders avoided the hammer blow with a surprisingly agile maneuver, jumped onto the ogre's shoulder, and brought his sword up to plunge it into the gap between the eyes in the center of the helmet. At the same time, the ogre fell on his back in a smooth motion, and swung up with the small hammer in his other hand. Sanders blocked the hammer blow with his left hand steel shield and used the force to fly backwards, but the tip of the sword stayed just a little short of piercing into the ogre's eyes.

  With a 'clang', Sanders dropped the small steel shield in his left hand. The steel-built, one-inch-thick shield was completely deformed, and even the curved shield designed to resist heavy weapons like hammers and axes was useless under that kind of force and that kind of weapon.

  By the light of the moon, Asa could see that the fingers of Sanders' left hand, which had been holding the shield a moment ago, were so completely deformed that it was impossible to tell that they had ever been fingers at all.

  Sanders plunged his sword into the ground, and with his right hand, he took hold of the twisted fingers and wrenched them back into shape, one by one, with the glow of restoration magic emanating from his hand. Crackling sound came out from between his fingers, bean-sized cold sweat dipped out from the corner of his forehead, his expression didn't fluctuate in the slightest, and his gaze like a torch kept staring coldly at the ogre who climbed up in front of him.

  Looking at Sanders' face that was as calm as a statue, a hot fighting spirit spread rapidly from somewhere in his body, and Asa gripped the knife in his hand tightly. He suddenly didn't want to run away.

  Sanders removed the steel armor from his body. There was no point in defense anymore, only agility and speed was the only way to win. Both hands gripped the longsword that had been infused with the spirit blade, as long as he found the right opportunity, he didn't have to pick the armor's weak spot he had the confidence that he could penetrate it, and shouted back, "Give me a blessing." The two priests in the sandwiched group began to chant an incantation, and a blinding white light resonated from them and Sanders as they surfaced.

  The two Orcs suddenly jumped onto the shoulders of the nearby werewolves and snapped the crossbows in their hands at the two clearly targeted priests.

  A priest's head immediately burst open like an egg, blood and brain matter splattering all around. The soldier behind him fell on his back without even a grunt, blood springing out of the fist-sized hole in his chest.

  An experienced warrior next to the other priest raised his wooden shield at the right time to block for the priest, only to have his shattered hand and the wooden shield shards embedded in the priest's face along with the spike-covered iron ball. The warrior let out a wail and fell down with the priest on his arm in a strange position.

  Saunders made a steep charge at the ogre, knowing he had to take out the lethal behemoth fast, at least until the two Orcs had reloaded those two machine crossbows.

  The figure under the cloak spoke a few words, and all but two of the Orcs immediately rushed towards the group. One of the werewolves met Sanders who was charging towards the ogre.

  A distance of several dozen meters seemed to be just out of reach under the lizardmen's amazing explosive power. Almost as soon as the soldiers started to realize the movements of the orcs, the three lizardmen had already rushed in front of them.

  The soldiers in front of them were as fragile as straw under the lizardmen's long knives, and four or five of them fell in just one slash. The lizardmen's prostrate attack posture was cutting right on the abdomen, and with a single swing of the one-man-long blade, several people's blood gushed out along with their internal organs. Then the wolves that followed sent at least two soldiers flying with each attack, bloodied by the huge meteor hammers.

  Asa took the attack from one of the lizardmen alone. He charged up against the blade, the killing range of such a long weapon was too great, and dodging was better than attacking. Lizardmen were only marginally stronger than humans.

  When a weapon was long, it weighed heavily, and the swinging trajectory would be obvious. Asa's first blade was set up near the hilt of his opponent's hard-to-power blade, sparks flying. The second blade forced the lizardman to return the blade to resist at the risk of losing both sides, and by the fourth blade the lizardman was forced to drop the large sword and draw the small axe at his waist to parry, while jumping backward sharply.

  Asa returned to his sword, fighting spirit and bravado rising, and shouted, "Come with two. Can win."

  All that responded to him was the sound of scrambling screams.