Chapter 714: Ogres

My decision to go to San Antonio first to find the magic mirror I needed to level up was no impulsive decision.

As various powerful individuals from other dimensions came to the mortal plane, Legend rank would become as common as dogs, and even SemiGods would become commonplace. There were already several Undead Emperors and Main Gods here in the mortal plane.

I would definitely not be lucky enough to constantly avoid meeting them. Only by leveling up as quickly as possible would I be able to survive the longest.

But at this moment, I met with a small obstacle.

“I’m going with you.”

Leona was quite insistent, but I really didn’t want her to follow me anymore.

San Antonio was now a war district with battles going on every day. It would definitely be dangerous there.

What? You’re asking me if Bardi would be the same? Things really wouldn’t be the same in Bardi. In Bardi, the main factions were the Bardi Empire itself, the undead army, the Mage Country, and the wood spirits. Apart from the undead, they were all openly my allies, while I had a secret alliance with Undead Emperor Sandro as well. There would be no problem in Bardi as long as I didn’t meet with any of the other Undead Emperors.

As for San Antonio… there were the demons, ogres, Holy Church, San Antonio Empire, and angel squadrons. It seemed that just about every faction here would want to kill me.

No matter what, I had the confidence that I would be able to at least escape even if I met with a battle that I couldn’t win. But if I was burdened with Leona…

“You could just wait for me in Bardi.”

But, no matter what I tried to tell her, she absolutely refused to separate from me. It seemed that she was afraid that I was trying to scam her.

I felt a bit of a headache from this. Right now, Leona was still easy to take care of because it was early in her pregnancy, but in five or six months, was I supposed to keep traveling with her when she had a big belly? If someone tried to attack me at such a time…

Wasn’t this a classical movie opening? A middle-aged man or young knight would try to escape together with a pregnant woman, but assassins hunted them down. The older man would single-handedly fight off the assassins and die in the process. The older man would typically be the unborn child’s father/uncle/grandfather or something of the sort. The pregnant woman would successfully give birth and then die afterwards as well…

The following storyline would involve the child growing up and learning the truth, and then becoming determined to get revenge for his mother and father/uncle/grandfather. He would then start walking the path of the harem protagonist. However, I felt that my character in such a plot was rather pitiful. My current role was that of someone who was destined to die in the prologue. Also, weren’t harem protagonists horrible jinxers for everyone close to them? Harem protagonists would usually jinx their entire families to death without having even been born yet!

“It really feels like Leona’s unborn child’s background and identity match what a harem protagonist would have so well…”

I kept sighing about how many tropes there were here while making up my mind to absolutely avoid becoming a pitiful stepping stone for the sake of the “main character”… Ahem, I meant that I made my decision for the sake of Leona and her unborn child’s safety!

*Clang!*

During my daily swordsmanship practice with Leona, I used slightly more strength instead of holding back as I usually did, and knocked Leona unconscious.

Although her swordsmanship was indeed pretty good, my swordsmanship was still better, and my Strength stat far exceeded hers.

“Swift Dragon Delivery Service. You’re mailing her to the Cloud Tower’s Truth Symposium. Make sure that she gets there within 15 days. You’ll compensate me for three times the value if you lose her, yes?”

A blue dragon knight descended in front of me with thunder, but she didn’t know what expression she should have. She probably didn’t know me very well, as she didn’t know how to respond to my little joke.

“Smile, you just have to smile.”

The blue dragon knight did her best to smile in order to avoid a diplomatic incident, although it seemed more like she wanted to cry. I started furrowing my eyebrows since she couldn’t understand my jokes at all.

“What’s your name?”

“Luna Halent.”

Her blue dragon draconic might was rather familiar. It seemed that she was another princess who was related to Bardi Emperor Halent.

Of course, she wasn’t working for some delivery service. She was actually a high-level dragon knight in Bardi’s dragon knight corps. She had received a request from me to deliver Leona to the Mage Country, which was why Luna had swiftly come to see me, and as I requested, the other dragon knights under Luna’s command were all female as well.

“Your Highness Roland, I will safely bring this lady to the Cloud Tower. Please rest assured.”

Two female dragon knights whose arms were even thicker than my legs tied Leona to a cargo rack on a blue dragon’s back. I hoped that Leona would enjoy her little aerial trip when she woke up.

Now then, it was time for…

“The ogres? They really are so ancient. There’s not enough information on them.”

The ogres’ history was far too old. Their civilization could compare to the Elven Empire’s. The ogres had once been a mega powerful species that ruled the entire world.

Just like how humans currently were, back when ogres were at their strongest, they also had multiple Main Gods and countless countries. The entire world was their hunting grounds.

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Yes, hunting grounds. Unlike humans who mainly obtained their food through agriculture, the ogre civilization was more primitive and focused on hunting and gathering. What this meant was that the ogres were destined to become the mortal enemies of all other species, because they would hunt other species for meat. To the ogres, humans were nothing more than livestock with excellent reproduction abilities.

The ogres were a tribal society, and would choose a king to rule the entire tribe. The ogres believed in slavery. They would eat other intelligent species. The ogres also worshiped the primitive shamanic sects of nature. Those were all ogre traits.

In fact, the ogres even believed that eating powerful members of their own kind would help them to obtain the devoured individual’s strength. Although this was quite primitive and barbaric, it indeed worked for them. The ogres had natural talents and voodoo magic that indeed allowed them to obtain power from what they ate.

Many people would view ogres as all being the same. This was actually a big misunderstanding. As ogres were one of the former ruling species of the world, there were actually countless ogre subspecies.

Just as how the elves had four major Superior Elf species and countless subspecies, and how the beastmen had powerful and weak tribes according to combat strength, or how humans would have many half-human species, there were too many ogre subspecies to even count.

Forest ogres, plains ogres, ice ogres, fire ogres, and so on. They would all have tremendous physical differences and different natural talents.

The most obvious common trait between all ogres would be that they would always have powerful physical bodies and fangs that protruded from their mouths, and when compared to other species, ogres’ regenerative capabilities and durability would be incredibly strong.

Ogres weren’t actually blood-related to demons or devils. It was just that ogres were lumped together with demons and devils after finally being defeated.

Ogre blood had no demonic traits about it. In fact, it was the opposite. Ogres possessed the power of the elements. Many ogres would have natural talents that allowed them to transform into elemental creatures, or absorb or release elemental power. This was obvious evidence that they were intimately connected to elemental creatures and the Elemental Planes.

Ogres had innate elemental bloodlines. They had a long history of voodoo magic and witchcraft. Ogres had a rather high proportion of mages. Since they also had powerful physical bodies and the special ability to gain the power of whatever they devoured, the ogres were indeed powerful to the point where they could easily suppress other species back in ancient times.

I had researched the ogres’ history before. The humans, elves, dwarves, and beastmen had all allied together in order to overthrow the Ogre Empire’s rule. It could be said that it took the alliance of the three major species of Order together with the beastmen, which would be about half of the combat strength of the entire mortal plane, in combination with a bloody war of attrition before finally being able to defeat the Ogre Empire which trended more towards the side of Chaos.

I should also mention that the current beastmen were also descendants of the former Ogre Empire. Their bloodlines were related. The beastmen had stolen much of the ogres’ inheritance. That was how they had managed to establish the major Beastmen Empire afterwards.

“Human undead mages and black knights, beastmen warlocks and berserkers, elven magic warriors and mages, dwarf mountain kings and griffin knights. Back then, all of these job classes had actually fought together on the same side. How inconceivable…”

The ogres hated humans because the latter had been the main leading force in resisting them, even though the humans were supposed to only be livestock. The human undead mages were the natural counter to ogre shamans and warlocks.

The ogres hated elves because the sly elves had done much behind the scenes to organize all the other species to band together. The elves were the slyest manipulators behind the scenes.

Then, the ogres hated the beastmen more than any other species because traitors would always be hated the most.

The ogres didn’t actually hate the dwarves that much. The ancient dwarves were almost as powerful individually as ogres were. In ogre culture, it was a type of glory to die to a powerful warrior. However…

The dwarves absolutely hated the ogres!

The elves were sly enough to manipulate things from behind the scenes. The beastmen weren’t afraid of losses because of their strong reproductive abilities. The humans were also quite sly and had strong reproductive abilities as well. It was the dwarves who had lost the most in the vicious battle to overthrow the Ogre Empire’s rule.

Many powerful ancient dwarven species went extinct in the war against the ogres. The ogres started many bloody slaughters that caused severe losses to the dwarves, especially when entire dwarven species and inheritances were lost.

During the difficult war of attrition, since dwarves always had the personality trait of not ever backing down, they suffered the most losses. The fact that the Superior Dwarves went almost completely extinct also directly led to the dwarven civil wars afterwards.

The large loss of dwarven population and loss of many dwarven inheritances caused the dwarves to gradually become a second-rate species, especially since their reproductive abilities weren’t that strong.

I even heard that there was a volunteer dwarf army fighting against the ogres on San Antonio’s frontlines right now.

The ogres hated most of the major species of the mortal plane, but of the major species of the mortal plane, only the dwarves still held on to their longstanding grudge against the ogres. The other short-lived species had long since forgotten about the ogres.

Back then, the four major species that successfully “rebelled” against the ogres would never have given the ogres any chance to recover. For quite a long while after, ogre heads were worth a lot of money. In such a cruel environment, the great majority of ogre tribes either disappeared or moved deep into the mountains and forests, completely regressing to bestial lows.

In fact, the prevailing scholarly theory of today was that the intelligent ogres had already become extinct. However, when this Holy War began, not only did the ogre tribes reappear in front of everyone, even Main God level individuals had reappeared.

There was only one explanation for this. The ogres had left a path of retreat for themselves. They had to have realized already that their species would no longer be the ruling species. Since it was destined that they would lose the war against them, they left what they could behind to await a new opportunity to gain power. And now, this was probably their best and final “chance”.

“It really is so difficult to deal with…”

At the beginning of the Holy War, the ogres who returned to Eich seemed to change their past cruel ways. They were abnormally friendly to the humans in San Antonio. However, the ogres then revealed that this was all for the sake of having their demon allies come to the mortal plane, ripping off that fake mask of friendliness.

The sight of ogres in the Chaos Abyss had long since been recorded in the history books. Judging from this, large numbers of ogres had probably escaped to the Chaos Abyss back in the day. It could be said that they had a solid alliance with the demons.

And since the ogres still had Main God level powerful individuals among them, this meant that their culture and inheritance had never been broken. Naturally, their ancient grudges would still be with them, even if the ruling human kingdoms had long since forgotten about the ogres’ existence. Only the undead from the Tark Republic would still remember the ogres.

In the Holy War, it would be rare for there to be anything right or wrong about any war between species. The only rule was the law of the jungle, where the victor would survive, and the loser would die.

I absolutely hated this whole system. However, since I was a human, I was also someone who benefited from this system as humans were now the ruling species. So, when thinking about this in more detail, I would always feel rather contradictory. But at the very least, I wouldn’t be foolish enough to say that human ancestors had been in the wrong, and that peace was the best thing in the world. That would mean that humans would be relegated to being a second-rate species again, and become livestock and slaves for other species.

Yet, there really still were traitors to all of humanity working for the ogres currently. Such people truly were so foolish and evil that I didn’t even know how to comment on it.

The ogres’ original friendly behavior had long since been abandoned with the arrival of the demons and ogres’ powerful individuals. Right now, the eastern battlefront in San Antonio was becoming ever more of a meat grinder.

Unfortunately, as I analyzed the map, I became more and more certain that the ancient ruin with the magic mirror I was looking for was located right in the middle of the ogres’ current territory.