Chapter 2103: Wreaking Havoc in Quo Town

SMASH!

BANG!

"AHHH!"

"Ahh! Help!!"

Because the enemy forces—especially the proud elementalist orcs—were so focused on hitting the couple, the half-orcs ended up going berserk or throwing attacks with reckless abandon after missing so many times.

This was even more so with the warfreak orcs who could kick and punch recklessly without much grace (except for some innately graceful types), but with a lot of power.

Once they got hit with dopamine from a successful hit, some of the more aggressive ones would continue attacking the nearest ’enemy’. But what if the enemy kept escaping, at least right before their attacks connected? It was very much like whack-a-mole, except they often hit their own allies by accident.

As such, except for a few hits that were dissipated by equipment, the Althea trio had avoided most major attacks from then on.

Where else would those attacks land? Everywhere else, of course.

BANG!

BOOM!

SLAM!

More and more of the locals and the properties were hit by the barrage of attacks. The buildings were not spared either.

Most of the system’s residential buildings were those from the territory’s time as a village. That was to say, the buildings were low-level, so they could easily be damaged compared to the usual buildings found in more established towns.

Like this, the battleground where the couple was very quickly looked like ruins.

Garan kept most of the enemies at bay while Althea handled the rest. Garan had the level 30 human to handle. Similar to Virion, he was also surrounded by weaker enemies, aiming to weaken his defenses while the powerhouse dealt more critical shots.

Althea was fine with minimal assistance from her husband. Most of the remaining enemies attacking were below level 15, though a lot of them were orcs and half-orcs, so their strength equivalent would be level 16 to 18 humans or so.

Because she was alone, she could just weave through the crowd and get them to attack each other. Althea’s disguise skills worked wonders in this situation.

It helped that orcs were aggressive and not particularly observant. Otherwise, if it were human powerhouses around, she might have been detected since she was so close by.

As she ran through the crowd, using her vines or her earth skates to move agilely around, she would even send feints—that is to say, pretending to be in one spot to gather aggro, when in reality she wasn’t there anymore (maybe never was).

"AHHH!"

"Why did you hit ME!?"

"She was there I swear! Why didn’t you see her!?"

Althea found this method of hurting the enemies without consuming much of her own quite fun. This was probably the only advantage of being so outnumbered.

She even took advantage of some ponds from leaked water tanks, pools of blood, and so on to do her now-favorite water-reflecting techniques.

Though her grasp of her water element wasn’t to the point of creating tsunamis (yet), manipulating several small ponds here and there was no problem as long as they were not too far from her.

When the enemies got close to her, she quickly found herself a blind spot and buried herself underground. If she could find a crack—even if it was small—and she could see an enemy, she could even gather the water ponds she could sense and wrap them around someone’s head.

As such, water balls appeared and tried to drown some enemies.

Enemies: !!!

At this time, her earthwalls were still up, creating obstacles here and there, and some people were still tied up in her vines, and movements slowed down.

The enemies gaped. Just how many elements does this woman have?!

The orcs were a bit lucky, and their physique could make up for the level gap and not be tortured with a few attacks, but the human slaves were not so lucky.

To escape the drowning water, the orcs had to be faster than Althea, so she could not keep its shape and keep it in place. It was much like holding up a drink in front of someone walking, asking them to drink it.

The humans several levels below her were helpless and lost consciousness before they could actually run away. It was the orcs that were troublesome to follow. They could even go up and down trees to make her lose focus.

This was the same with the half-orcs, especially the elementalist ones. Awakening an element did not mean the half-orcs would lose their racial talent.

Though their physiques were inferior to orcs’, they were definitely more troublesome. They had the advantage of physique and had enough ingenuity from their human side.

Look at the orcs now. They might be fast and strong, but they comprised 80% of the units that had most often been hit or hit their allies by accident.

In a sense, half of the success of Althea’s ’let them hit themselves’ plan was thanks to the Orcs. If it were all humans or all half-orcs here, it wouldn’t have worked as well.

They couldn’t even use their racial talents to the maximum, unlike half-orcs, who caused trouble here and there with their racial talents.

Fortunately, half-orcs were rare in numbers, and their innate abilities were inherently weaker/less effective than orcs’; otherwise, even Virion and Garan would’ve been in more trouble if mobbed by so many of them.

"DAMN IT! DAMN IT ALL!" Plai cursed at the side, all while trying to land hits on Althea or Garan, though without much damage. Thinking for a moment, he suddenly visually disappeared.

Plai’s racial talent was stealth. He had an innate low sense of presence, and his ability ended up being the upgraded version of it.

Since he was born, he has been just a background character, an assistant, and a foil.

He was fortunate that he was born in Quo Town, where the status of half-orcs was actually quite high, often higher than that of orcs.

Half-orc status could go either way, after all. If the territory’s relationship with humans was decent, then half-orcs—with better intelligence and the positive qualities of being part-human—were actually revered.

Only if humans were enemies, only then would the half-orcs’ positions be awkward. For example, in territories in the Southeast part, south of where the orcs had dominated.

The extremist views were strongest in these parts, so the battle between humans and orcs was the harshest and bloodiest—where the hate ran deepest. This was where Hoskle, Baku and Gochi’s old home was.

In contrast, the half-orcs of the northern half of the Western Orc Region were much more confident and powerful, and they enjoyed higher status than their ’simple-minded’ pure orcs. They were smarter and could outmaneuver them easily with their brains, regardless of the differences in physique.

Because of his ability, Plai grew up obsessed with power and attention. Until some years ago, he lived with this bitterness until he was approached by some people from a City, offering him a deal in exchange for allowing their organization to move and mobilize within the territory.

The foolish Lord was too focused on his wars, food, and things outside the territory, trusting him with the administration within the walls.

At this time, the laboratories were hidden deep within the central areas, dug inside tunnels, and the laboratories were quite big. They probably had no idea so many things had happened.

"Stop!"

Plai yelled at the civilians and even the orcs there. While the enemy was being mobbed now, it wasn’t enough. He believed that if everyone went to work, how could the enemies not be overwhelmed?!

The strongest was only around level 30! How could an entire town not take them down instantly? Them lasting so long was already humiliating enough!

Aren’t the rest of the orcs supposed to be eager to fight?!

Normally, orcs would indeed jump into a fight, but there were two types of warfreak orcs.

One would be the orcs who thrived in beating people up. The current situation wasn’t particularly attractive to them because they could barely see the targets. Because every orc was a close-range combatant, this meant that they’d have to go through their own people, possibly through violence, to reach the enemies.

Another kind was those that thrived on challenge. Mobbing one to so many wasn’t exactly fun for them. These were the reasons why the orcs didn’t automatically jump into the fray.

Now that the leaders had spoken, everyone nearby followed with varying degrees of motivation. Soon, they started to push Althea and the two back, simply through their numbers.

Althea soon found herself standing behind her husband, who had just dealt with the level 30 opponent and was now dealing with the mob.

As the orcs rushed over to grab them, Althea suddenly remembered some words of the orcs outside, as well as some things she had observed herself.

First of all, from her observations, it seemed like only half-orcs could be planted with the elementalist core. This made sense. From the genetic point of view, only humans could be elementalists, so half-orcs theoretically had this chance.

But orcs wouldn’t.

So what was the issue of missing orcs?

It was here that Althea had an idea. She looked at the crowd around them, even taking out the sound amplifier from her space.

"Don’t you want to know the truth? THEY’RE EXPERIMENTING ON ORCS, TOO! They want your strength!"

As soon as she said this, someone from behind the crowd cursed at her. "SHUT YOUR MOUTH!!"

Her eyebrows rose. She was actually guessing, but Plai’s reaction confirmed it.

They really were experimenting on Orcs, too!