Chapter 2110: Orc Seduction

The Elyssian Stone had always been a magical existence deeply related to aether. She knew this, her husband knew this, and many others do as well.

That was basically all people knew. After all, the stone had been considered a legend before, with no one certain it actually existed. Most hadn’t even heard of it at all.

By now, they knew some of its uses, but definitely not everything. Still, even the known uses were marvelous, so Althea would never regret planting it in Alterra.

For one, the farm output was confirmed to be richer and healthier. Another, sensitive people realized that their meditation sessions felt much smoother. Of course, other than Althea, others didn’t really associate this with the Elyssian stone, which was a secret and only known by higher-ups.

At best, people would just think they were ’in the zone’ more often. With this, even if their base level remained, their control over their elements slowly improved over time, provided that they truly had the habit of meditating for long hours.

But, as they now know, there were also some troubles.

For the first time in months, they had several injuries in a small beast mob. One had to know that outside of wars, unless the fighter was mobbed outside the territory, Alterra had not seen any serious mob-related injuries for a while now.

They really had too much preparation—whether it was the dense sentries, the stores reselling consumables near the walls, the various clinics and the Sanctuary, affordable equipment everywhere, and so on—certainly protected a lot of lives.

Seeing several in one morning was definitely alarming.

Not to mention, reports from allied territories had also shown some unlucky ones in the path of strong monsters.

Fortunately, Alterra had never stopped hiring from the Center. More often than not, they would usually ’rent’ the new hires out to other villages to spike up their overall force.

It so happened that an unlucky associate Juno Village encountered a level 20 monster.

Normally, a village encountering this level of beast could only face decimation. In those cases, the Lord would desperately hide himself. The citizens would as well, and then they’d wait for the beast to leave.

If there was another attractive territory of a higher level, they might indeed leave after a while, but that would still take time. By the time the monster left, the damage would’ve been done, and a portion of the population would be in its stomach.

Juno Village had learned its lesson after being tortured by aborigines and invested in a strong military force. In exchange, they would send some resources specific to their area to Alterra as extra tribute.

Juno was just the first of many, and there would be more.

Althea frowned, thinking of how to handle this.

ROAAAARR!

It was around this time that she heard some sort of disturbance at the side. She headed there and saw...in-fighting among the locals.

It was like there were suddenly two factions, both sides with a mish-mash of races. The ratio was different, but they were attacking each other.

BANG!

BOOM!

The only positive was that the attacks weren’t too vindictive. Sure, they hurt each other, but it didn’t seem like they were aiming for the others’ lives.

By this time, after all the battles that went on even before, at least half of the Town had been damaged. It was no different from when it actually went through the war.

Althea saw Garan standing over one of the roofs, and she used an earth platform to bolster herself up, landing gracefully next to him.

He seemed to have long noticed her presence and turned around just as she landed, arms extended to catch her. She naturally used his chest as a cushion.

"What happened?" she asked, her voice a little muffled as her face was partially against his strong chest.

"The experiments had been revealed, and some people recognized relatives among the victims."

This would be followed by horror and indignation, then pain and anger. This was natural.

The problem was when people started blaming each other, even if they did not have anything to do with the experiments at all.

However, one thing was for certain: Since both experiments involved human scientists, the humans were universally targeted this time, even if they were just passing visitors.

At the same time, the humans also thought it was unfair. Weren’t human elementalists also experimented on? Who got the advantage? Wasn’t it a handful of half-orcs?

Anyway, to summarize, it eventually morphed into a battle royal situation, damaging more and more things unnecessarily. They were lucky there were a lot of orcs outside the territory handling the mobs; otherwise, they’d have been helpless if a strong monster appeared when everyone was tired and injured.

"AH!"

"STOP IT!"

It was chaos.

Virion finally took a step forward, carrying the injured Saimbi along with him.

People naturally recognized their Lord who had not shown himself in public for months.

Though his appearance didn’t stop the fight, those fighting nearby slowed down, eventually halting. In turn, the other nearby fights also slowed down, and so on.

Now that the Lord was awake, someone could decide to kick people out manually. Naturally, many of them had to behave. Even the fearless orcs did.

Even if orcs could live outside the territory—some even preferring it—they didn’t want to get blacklisted. They could get and sell a lot of things within the wall, after all.

Althea kindly lent him the sound amplifier so Saimbi, in his current weak state, didn’t have to exert himself too much.

"Thank you..." he said, looking weak.

He was forlorn and sad, probably not in the mood to deal with this at all, which was understandable. Althea heard that the man’s wife and adopted son were in critical condition as well.

They had been taken as hostages by the experimenters to make sure Saimbi cooperated, but now they were half-dead, with his wife scarred all over.

His wife was a pure orc, though relatively petite for her race. When the enemies tortured her, she could not fight back at all. When they found her, she was in a daze and barely reacting to anything. At best, when Saimbi talked to her, her eyes would flicker a little. That was already a happy occasion.

His adopted child, not even five years of age, on the other hand, lost a leg. Their conception was extremely low, almost impossible, so they decided to adopt, and he truly loved the child like he was his own biological son.

How could people do this to innocents? It was even led by Plai, someone they trusted.

Saimbi couldn’t help but recall how nice his wife and son were to Plai, treating him like family. What did they get in return?

Even after Virion threw a beat-up Plai in front of him to kill, he did not regain his calm. Even after Plai was killed, Saimbi still slowly descended into depression and insanity.

He only gained some of his sanity when Virion told him that the limb regenerating potion had increased production and they could try to get access to it. Alterra also had doctors that specialize in the mind.

Saimbi looked at the thousands of people out on the streets with various degrees of injury when they weren’t even having an official war.

They were now looking at him, though their gazes were more on inquiry than reliance. "Thank you...everyone, for protecting our home," he paused, looking at the acres of area destroyed by all the fighting.

"We had gone through heavy tribulations and it would take us a long time to recover but...it was not impossible," he said. "We will get through this. This is my promise to you."

...

Repair work and recovery programs began immediately after that. The Lord, despite his horrid conditions, participated with jest, saying if he wasn’t doing anything, then he’d be more in pain.

It was already late, so Althea and Garan decided to defer their departure to after dawn of the next day. The Lord also insisted they stay the night for a meal to express their gratitude.

Lord Saimbi had done his utmost to be a good host despite all the shortcomings and the fact that much of his wealth had already been embezzled. For now, he simply wanted to express his gratitude to the three of them for freeing not only their family, but the entire town.

He gave all the treasures he had inside his space. It was not much, especially in the eyes of the rich, but it was all he had, including several bottles of consumables, two pieces of D-Class equipment, and a C-Class equipment.

Another was that he hoped to build good relationships with them, especially Alterra. After all, his family would head there soon, with his wife getting help from their mind doctor and his son getting help from Grandmaster Hoffen.

Saimbi’s hope lit up like this. He didn’t mind being left alone in this town, but his family must head to Alterra!