Deus Necros-Chapter 710: The Source of Discomfort

"That’s more than what you said..." Ludwig looked at Akro.

Akro’s throat worked as if he were trying to swallow his own words from earlier. His eyes flicked rapidly, counting, failing, counting again.

"I don’t understand, they were barely in the hundred, even if you account for every orc tribe in these planes... There shouldn’t be nearly enough to match this number..."

"There are a thousand and a few hundred Red Orcs here, Ludwig..." Gale said.

"I can see that," Ludwig replied as he locked his eyes with the army of orcs that were going up the mountain.

The number was obscene. It wasn’t just "bigger tribe." It was a force that could grind through the entire plains if it chose to. Ludwig felt the Tower’s scenario tighten around his neck again. Become king. Rule. With what? Against that?

On the mountainside, there was a large cave entrance in the middle where a group of Orcs was standing. They were preparing for combat. Preparing to fight the red orcs.

"That’s the Yellow Mountain Tribe," Akro said.

The Yellow Mountain orcs looked smaller by comparison, not weak, but outnumbered in a way that made bravery look like suicide. They were clustered near the cave mouth, weapons raised, bodies braced, as if the cave behind them was their last line of safety. Ludwig could almost feel the desperation in their posture even from here.

The two of them clashed, no, clash is an overstating of the facts. The Red Tusk tribes simply collapsed onto the Yellow Mountain troops.

It wasn’t a battle. It was a tidal wave hitting a rotting wooden fence. The Red Tusks didn’t test the line. They drowned it. Bodies slammed forward in layers, and the defenders disappeared beneath them the way stones disappeared under floodwater.

They decimated them, tore them apart, burnt their bodies, and carved their skulls in. It took mere minutes for the whole tribe to simply cease to exist.

From this distance, Ludwig couldn’t see every cut, but he could see the result: defenders vanishing, the cave mouth becoming a slaughter point, smoke rising as if someone had thrown oil into the fight. He could hear it too when the wind shifted, the thin, sharp screams that meant someone was being killed slowly rather than cleanly.

From their location, they couldn’t be spotted, but the lizardmen, Ludwig and Gale, all felt it, no, they heard it, the screams of agony and defeat.

Surrender? That was not an option; even Orcs that knelt down were culled and killed.

That was what made Ludwig’s stomach go colder than the river ever could. Orcs always respected surrender in their own crude way. Killing kneeling warriors wasn’t war. It was extermination.

"Look at their backline," Akro muttered.

Ludwig’s gaze fell from the middle of the mountain to the rear of the Red Tusk army; there was a palanquin there. Held by eight Orcs, seating a chieftain.

The palanquin moved like a moving throne, carried with effort that looked ritualistic rather than practical. Eight orcs strained under its weight, and the thing they carried wasn’t just heavy wood and bone.

The Chieftain was the size of a house at least. Needing that much force to simply carry him gave one the needed information to understand what they were dealing with.

Even from afar, Ludwig could see it in proportions that didn’t belong to any normal body: shoulders like boulders, arms thick as tree trunks, a torso that looked like a siege wall. The palanquin wasn’t for comfort. It was because the ground itself might not hold up if he walked too long. A creature that large didn’t lead by speeches. It led by existing.

An Orc that had a crown.

Not a crown of gold and metal, but that of bones.

"A self-proclaimed king," Ludwig muttered.

"With that much influence... he might be a king that only needs recognition," Gale said.

"Who needs recognition when you can crush the will to bend to you," Ludwig added.

"Tyrant."

"Yes," Ludwig finalized. "But, it bothers me, how did they get that number-" Ludwig didn’t finish his words.

Because the answer arrived in front of them like a lesson carved into flesh.

After all, they immediately understood how. As it happened in front of them.

The hearts of the Orcs were pulled out.

It wasn’t symbolic. It wasn’t a trophy taken by one warrior. It was a procedure. Red Tusks moved through the fallen, hands plunging into chests, ripping out hearts with brutal efficiency. Ludwig didn’t see it the last time in the settlement of the Black Boar tribe. Since all the bodies were mangled and burnt. But now, watching clean enough, he understood what the Red Tusks had been doing all along.

They ripped the hearts out and presented them to their king.

Their Orc King then said something, and a small creature not taller than a man’s leg walked up.

"That’s the Goblin King..." Akro said.

"It is? It has no crown?" Ludwig said.

"It must have been removed... it feels like they were subjugated."

"I see..." Ludwig thought, the Red Tusk chieftain is doing the same thing Ludwig is doing, subjugating other tribes.

Except that Ludwig had used contracts and incentives. This one used humiliation and force so absolute that it didn’t require persuasion.

Once it finished, what looked like a magic spell, a few Orcs carried what looked like large metal boxes. They threw them, and they broke apart.

The boxes hit the ground and split, spilling contents Ludwig couldn’t identify until the said content ’moved.’

The content was actually goblins. Captured goblins in cages...

The goblin king’s posture twitched with visible anger, but it didn’t step away. It didn’t refuse. Subjugation had turned it into a tool.

Words were uttered from afar, and the goblins were forced to feed on the hearts of the orcs.

Two to three goblins shared a heart.

And soon, the goblins began morphing; you could even hear it as the day was turning to night.

It was a sound Ludwig didn’t like. Wet rearrangement. Bone shifting under skin. The kind of transformation that didn’t feel like magic blessing but like forced evolution. Goblin bodies twisted, thickened, stretched. Limbs bulged. Spines arched. Their silhouettes grew, turning squat forms into broad ones. The screams were muffled quickly by clenched jaws and forced obedience, but the sound of the change itself carried, cracks and pops like a body being rebuilt by violence.

The Goblins transformed into Orcs. Red Orcs...

"Shit."