Chapter 33: Chapter 32

Chapter 32

True to his word the Crow Summoner had finally led us into a besieged hill area to which we’d entered into from the back side of the hill; which wasn’t as steep and had more lush greenery compared to the side we’d come from. As we came over the back side of the hill we found the front of it full of the weak and the weary trying to stay alive. The U shaped defense ring in front of us was full of desperate kids fighting the best they could around the part of the hill area with the steepest angles of approach and matching their formation. Some of them hollered swear words when tossing their rocks down for deadly effect at the monsters below as we marched forward into their defense line that followed the hill top exactly with precision. The steep angle here also slowed the impatient orcs trying to come up from below we noticed as we got closer.

Only minutes before it seemed the orcs had tried to rush the line in full force; we’d arrived in the nick of time to help renew their courage.

Overall the orcs weren’t able to approach the hill top easily or quickly. Due to the large number of defenders concentrated in one area and the steep hill side it was a perfect hold out position. The angry orcs had been driven back many times already with a pile of dead at the bottom. However it wasn’t only orc blood stains at the slopes and bottom of the hill, suggesting some students had died to purchase this position and to give those at the top time to get themselves into place when they’d originally gotten here.

This is a mess and a death trap.

Then I saw the bodies to confirm it.

The defending kids were able to put a lot of force behind their throws using the natural gravity of the place to help with offense; and they had an almost unlimited supply of rocks of all shapes and sizes around us, since this hill was full of them. They kept raining down sharp and craggy rocks larger than the size of Akira’s fists when possible whenever anything got close in their steady bombardment. Thankfully it was possible to throw them at a pace to pick off orcs faster than they could come at us.

This was the ideal spot to hold out a siege, since the hill had a steep angle and a good spot where we could have a ring of defense at the top. People were also able to use a few stray boulders here and there to hide behind for effectively a full cover position while trying to pick off orcs below. But the missile cover was also necessary, and the whole hill all the way down to the bottom was full of loose shale type rocks.

There was the problem of food and water though. I doubt anyone here had sufficient food supplies. But we’d have to address that later. That would influence people having combat fatigue.

Frankly, I’m surprised so many people are still alive!

The orcs are stronger and bigger than us! The only saving grace, we have is a few skills gifted to us from the exchange of being dumped into another world.

In effect, the many rocks all over the whole place had a down side in that the orcs at the bottom had access to rocks too, and were able to save their arrows for later. They made up for fighting against gravity with more arm strength to throw with too. They had their own people at the bottom trying to use slings to pick us off at the top, mostly unsuccessfully. Plus they were able to space out their arrow fire with slings and rocks and extend their ability to prolong the most effective usage of their supplies for the bombardment siege operation.

But that didn’t mean we could stand out there in the open. Anytime people moved around they tried to stay really low and close to the ground when moving in the open, for fear of being shot. There was also many more orcs than there were people here, so even though the orcs weren’t terribly skilled in range warfare they made up for it with their numbers trying to rocket missiles up to the top of the hill. They kept up a steady stream of missile fire up to the top, and after seeing it I was able to tell why so many students were bleeding and wounded, though they weren’t hit as often as those below wanted them to be. It was also plain to see that no matter how long we stayed here the missiles flying up at the hill top would continue all day into the night.

But I was also able to see a whole line of little orc sappers that were digging trenches at the bottom to dig in and provide cover spots for their brethren to use for fighting. I didn’t like the look of that. It meant they were prepared to be here long term and getting ready to conquer us by time, if not through immediate force. Their sappers kept digging trenches while carefully trying to use the pile of bodies nearby for makeshift cover.

A lot of them were getting shot.

“Wow. I don’t like this,” Yumi said. But she kept her mana shield ready while throwing rocks down. But I noticed the shield hadn’t repaired itself yet, seeing it out in front of us. She stood in front of Rina to protect her. For the most part, we were all lined up trying to figure out where to defend.

A few people who hadn’t discovered jobs yet, were looking at Yumi enviously I noticed. But nobody approached her to challenge her.

We’d come up fairly quickly through the back, and at first some of the kids looked afraid, but then saw it was people from their world. Some of them even cheered at us for coming to save them. But others were terrified of Akira, until we got close enough for them to recognize him.

“Eh? Akira has turned into a monster?!” Some of them said in shock.

“Who would have thought…it’s just like dad and grandpa saying this world’s gone to hell in a hand basket huh?”

And then after that…

“Are you crying Akira?” Yuriko asked after he was accused of being a monster.

“Ah, no, no it’s just my allergies. I’m not a monster!” he replied. I thought I heard him mutter something about not being a monster too, but it was really faint.

“Don’t listen to them. You’ll see, there will be all kinds of fun we can discover with these new jobs and forms. Your appearance is just a survival upgrade. They’ll be jealous, you’ll see,” she said patting him and rubbing his back sympathetically. Somehow Yuriko can handle him well. He’s even brightening up.

“I have to go scout now. If I don’t monitor the enemy troop movements then we will get surprised later on,” crow said and then flew off.

But we were finally noticed. Some of the rangers had approached us. Someone was in charge here after all we quickly found out.

“Oh well if it isn’t Akira? It looks like the change hasn’t been good for you,” Akimoto suddenly gloated, looking down on him with an odd look on his face. He looked a bit bloodied up like he’d been in a fist fight and had cuts all over one side of his face and right arm. But he was well armed. He had a couple of other students with him acting like aides. By the look of things all three of them were rangers, with the slings, javelins, and spears taken from orcs. They’d also beefed things up with some kind of long orc-ish flint knives that had also been taken from the enemies.

I didn’t trust orc weaponry though, since it could sometimes break under heavy blows. The only thing that did look good though was they could sometimes make a halfway decent spear that had all kinds of carvings and ornamentation. But it’s true it was also the best thing we could find for now.

But what surprised me so much was the change in the way the rangers acted and dressed now. It was like they’d embraced their environment completely. Instead of the school uniform clothes, somehow they had something totally different. Akimoto must have been serious about becoming like Sioux Indians and living a life of freedom as hunters in tipis, I realized.

Both he and his two aides were already in full leather shirts and leggings with loincloths, complete with stenciled designs in the leather, hanging leather fringe strips, and only lacking beads and bead work. They even had leather work designs on the shirts that looked like something a chief might have. To complement things both their hair and the shirts had feathers woven in and hanging out. In short, they looked like something right out of a book on Native Americans from the North America area two hundred years ago.

It wasn’t the right time to ask about their clothes yet…but it wasn’t only how they got the leather, I had been uncertain how they could have processed the raw materials into clothes this fast. Did they find something that could process leather quickly? Maybe they’d achieved it from a crafter job?

It seemed like the only explanation.

“What’s the situation here? How many dead and wounded?” Akira asked.

Akimoto frowned, as he figured out what to do with us. He obviously considered Akira a threat to his leadership by his posture and demeanor, “well I wish I could say we don’t need your help. But the truth is we do. Every extra person fighting is more people surviving. So I’ll put away our differences for now over who gets to be king until later.”

“Fair enough. We need to keep people alive as first priority. What’s this about that Yuta trash taking the soldier jobs and running off?” I asked, trying to get to business quickly.

One of Akimoto’s ranger aides responded for him, because the mere mention of his name had everyone on edge and angry. “It’s true! He took six rangers, though we had found four more right before then. That leaves us with only five left, because one of them was killed about a half hour ago. He also has all the surviving defender jobs, and a couple of paladin classes that was kept hidden. He even has a few more that we don’t know about and took a bunch of people secretly. Naturally he’s been hiding everything and keeping things hushed up. They pulled out before the horde of orcs got here and then they pushed us up the hill. Now we’re stuck here more and more orcs are arriving every minute.”

“Ah man, that guy is pure trash! Greedy Pig Yuta strikes again,” Akira grumbled.

I wanted to ask about the paladin class job. But it seemed other things were more pressing.

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Akimoto shrugged, “I honestly am so surprised how things changed so fast. He has like absolute power now over his group and they worship him, but at first it really sounded like he was going to help people. I don’t get it. So when he left, even though he only took about twenty people, he took all the people that really mattered too and flat out rejected some others. So we couldn’t oppose him. Then we were trying to keep people alive. He also killed one of the herbalist’s jobs so we have no way to treat the wounded, because the other one remaining ran out of supplies.”

“Ah man, that’s terrible,” Yuriko said.

“Wow, it couldn’t get any worse could it?” Akira nodded.

“So how many alive, and how many are dead?” I asked.

Akimoto’s aide gave us the bad news. “Well the orcs hit us hard not to long before you guys came up. Before we had Crow go look for you guys there were at least thirty other people killed or carried before we could even get people organized. The ogre got his share after that. We managed to use him to coordinate having people head towards the hill for their retreat and somehow we pulled off barely getting through a shoddy defense line. But then they had …” he stopped seemingly overcome with grief and also confusion. “Somehow…”

Akimoto interrupted looking really discouraged suddenly. “This sounds totally bizarre but …I think they have what look like ogres leading some of the battle platoons. We were just getting people together at the bottom of the hill when an ogre came over here leading a whole bunch of orcs. We fought him for awhile but he was beating us pretty badly, and killed like ten more of us just by himself. I think they only stopped so they could go take the bodies somewhere to store the meat. Then suddenly another runner came up to him, and changed his orders or something because he ran off.”

“So was that the same ogre as before that we fought?” Rina asked looking at me.

“From the sound of things, this guy was probably asked to go support the other one already engaged to us,” Sensei reasoned.

“That would match what crow said. He’d mentioned he saw another ogre nearby, but it didn’t make sense that the one we mangled would be this close to us so fast. I think Asakura Sensei is right and that there are several ogres and someone is coordinating them with the orcs under them. They would use them as rallying points to punch through the resistance,” I added.

“That would explain also why he would run off when he was winning. The ogre units would be more valuable too, so whoever is leading them would easily reason having one of them going to back up another would be a better strategy than letting them die,” Akimoto suggested.

“But having units that powerful would really be terrible to fight against,” Akira said in anguish.

But then Akimoto noticed Yumi and seemed really pleased, “so I see you are a defender. I’m glad to have you. I’ll have you be my bodyguard,” he flashed his best smile and went to shake her hand. He was already trying to put smooth moves and play politics. Both Akira and I were really annoyed by that, but didn’t say anything.

She stared at him coldly. “Sorry. I’m Rina’s guard actually. She’s staying with Shun…so I can’t. I’m in Shun’s team. Thanks though.”

Thank goodness we didn’t have our defensive position poached!

“I’m not feeling good. I’m going to go lie down,” Rina said quickly with droopy eye lids. Sensei left with her, and helping her with Yumi staying by my side; she probably wanted to get rid of Akimoto when I was around. They went for a spot with good cover in the middle.

“Shun’s team? Not Akira’s team?” Akimoto was glaring at me wondering what that might mean. He expected an answer but instead I shifted things back to the defense discussion. I didn’t like his response earlier. He’d acted innocent enough earlier, like he didn’t know she was in a team already, but his wording suggested he really thought he was taking someone from Akira’s team.

It looked like Akimoto would start an argument but then suddenly we heard war horns in the distance, echoing from way down in the valley below. They sounded long and loud, and seemed to be made from animal horns like sheep or goats, with several of them echoing together.

“Uh oh,” one of the aides said shaking his head.

“It’s just like crow said,” the other aide, a girl with rich looking light brown hair said.

We all ran to the hill edge to go check out what was happening blow. But Rina, Sensei, and Yumi didn’t get as close as we did and in fact were lying down under some rock out cropping for cover to get some rest. Any minute they knew they’d have to get back up and help with the defense though.

“Fuck! They have a whole freaking army down there,” Akimoto said as we gathered and looked over the front most point.

“Shun, that’s a lot of orcs. That’s not just a few skirmish parties,” Akira said.

“Guess we’ll stay busy at least,” I said.

“The worst part is Yuta took most the weapons, and way more than his group needed. There should have been enough for everyone. But about a third of the kids here don’t even have anything to fight with besides rocks,” Akimoto said dejectedly.

“Damn Yuta,” the girl aide with light brown hair looked really hurt and like she might cry. Somehow Yuta had caused her despair. I knew it was better not to ask how right now.

Akira and I looked at each other but didn’t even know how to respond.

Below us the orcs had formed a traditional medieval Europe style block formation with rows and columns of soldiers arrayed. The violent orcs were getting antsy below and shouting out war cries to answer their side’s horn signals. Their war cry was in unison and on a pulse with all of them crying out at once every ten seconds with their weapons held high. They had at least one block that was leaving the forest’s edge and looked to be pointing our way. It wasn’t far enough to run away from but at least a good thousand meters away. They’d be here shortly once the block started to march forward.

On either side of the main orc formation block’s flanks the orcs were still forming two more of the huge block formation structures to march against us but not quite ready for us yet. It looked like the other two blocks wouldn’t be ready for awhile but that didn’t make me feel any better.

“Looks like each block is about a hundred orcs,” Akimoto said, after counting the rows and columns.

“When I find Yuta next time, I’m going to strangle him with his own intestines for leaving us,” Akira finally said, choking on his own sadness. He was looking at all the students around us that looked like they were already defeated. A lot of them had dirty faces and clothes with bruises everywhere and were looking at us for help, but I didn’t see a lot of hopeful looks on their faces. It was more like the look of people that knew a lot of them were going to die.

Akimoto jumped a bit, hearing what Akira had just said. He regarded him a bit fearfully now, and was learning to respect satyr power it seemed.

Just then I felt a tug on my sleeve, I turned to face whoever had come up behind me.

Sensei had her hand on my back to get my attention. “Shun, uh, Rina isn’t looking very good right now. I think you need to come quick. I think she needs her treatment.”

“Eh?” I said. I hadn’t yet figured out how I’d be able to pull that off while being surrounded by students. Once they’d see I could heal people I’d be mobbed by requests, and almost everyone except our group was hurt.

“Hurry back Shun, we need to figure out a way to beat the ogre bosses really fast,” Akira said as I moved out.

Why are our problems only increasing and not decreasing?

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