Chapter 57

Kosa's mood was very pleasant. He was holding a roasted lamb leg, which sizzled with oil, and he was taking large bites. His excited subordinates were sharing the tender lamb around the bonfire, and in their elated state, some of the orcs even began to sing rough and rugged songs, drawing cheers from the crowd.

Plunder, effortless gain, slaughter, and bloodshed—these words were like stimulants to the orcs. They did not evoke any sense of guilt but instead fully unleashed the cruelty and brutality in their bones. At this moment, after thoroughly massacring the village of Keli, what the orcs most wanted to do was to gather around the bonfire, feast, and sing praises to their ancestors, proving that they had not disgraced their forefathers who had slaughtered humans.

"To your health! For Lord Salota!"

Shouting the slogan, the orcs raised their bone cups, but the wine they drank was plundered from Keli Village. For the orcs, "wine" was something they had never tasted. Although they found it hard to drink, everything humans used or consumed was always considered "high-end" in their eyes. So even if they disliked it, they still forced it down, thinking about how they would boast about this experience to other orcs when they returned to their tribe.

The poverty of their spirit and culture made their inner worlds so barren that even their "vanity" seemed laughable.

At this moment, the purpose of the raid was not to bring resources back to the tribe. In the end, their main goal for being here was slaughter and intimidation. They did not carry supplies; they would slaughter a village and then consume all its resources. Once they had the strength, they would move on to the next village, making humans tremble, shudder, and fear... As for any possible resistance from humans, they completely ignored it.

In Kosa's and the other orcs' eyes, unless a large army of lords surrounded them, the cowardly humans would always only tremble before them. Just like the scouts they encountered today, they were nothing but a bunch of worthless scum, not even worth mentioning.

"Kosa! Where are we going tomorrow?"

Among the orcs, only the shaman and the chief were addressed with respect; everyone else was called by their names. At the bonfire, a subordinate loudly asked Kosa, and the other wolf riders, with their mouths full of oil, looked at him with anticipation.

"Lord Salota wants us to establish a base here and then attack to the southeast. Rest well tonight, and tomorrow we'll head south. We'll slaughter every village we come across! Everything we can plunder will be ours!"

"Long live! For the Hammer of Rohar! Cheers!"

"Kill all humans! Cheers!"

Cheers echoed throughout the camp.

This scene continued for a long time. After gorging themselves for hours and finishing all the wine, the orcs staggered back to their tents. Kosa, with a great tolerance for alcohol, was still relatively sober. He returned to his tent with a slightly unsteady gait, and as he lifted the curtain, he still remembered to remind his subordinates to patrol:

"Go. Go and watch the war wolves. Don't feed them too much meat, and be on—on guard. Double the night patrol teams, understood?"

Although he had said he would kill those humans, Kosa still had a slight fear in his heart. The wound on his back, inflicted by a human sword, was almost healed, but the shadow it cast lingered, making him particularly concerned about the night patrols.

After emphasizing this several times and confirming that his subordinate understood, he waved and entered the tent, falling asleep.

The orc assigned the task yawned, drowsily woke up a few companions to take the night watch, and then, with a stagger, prepared to feed the war wolves. It was already completely dark, and with the light of the bonfire, he squinted to make out the scene in front of him, swaying as he walked to the edge of the camp.

At this moment, over forty war wolves were dozing at the edge of the camp, a characteristic of orc camps. Without a pen, the war wolves gathered outside the camp, as their social nature allowed them to sleep soundly and recover quickly only in such a situation.

These war wolves were enormous, and to outsiders, they seemed as fierce as tigers, but only the orcs knew the truth. The temperament of the war wolves was vastly different from what others imagined.

"Wolves" as a species are notoriously difficult to tame, often being cruel, cunning, and aggressive on the grasslands. However, war wolves were far from this. Due to the orcs' excessive weight, the small horses of the grasslands could not carry them, so over several centuries, the originally aggressive "war wolves" were crossbred to become what they are now: meat-eaters, but with a gentle and low-intelligence temperament. They had fangs but never hunted on their own. In battle, they charged bravely and even collided with enemies, but this was entirely because their brains were too dull to understand any commands other than those from their masters. The wolf riders suppressed their attack instincts from a young age, so by adulthood, these creatures, while eating meat, had personalities no different from cattle or sheep.

In the history of another timeline, these details were only gradually summarized by humans two years after the 592 war. Before that, no one would have thought that war wolves were not much different from sheep, not even as aggressive as fierce dogs.

If one thought about it carefully, the signs were always there. If war wolves could bark at the slightest disturbance like dogs or wolves, the orcs, who were almost blind at night, would not need so many people to keep watch. They would have slept soundly.

Thus, the "asymmetry" of information could significantly influence a war. Sometimes, a seemingly overwhelming situation could be completely rewritten by such a minor detail.

It was around eleven o'clock at night, and the orc camp was gradually quieting down. The orc who had woken up his companions to take the night watch was walking along the edge of the camp, swaying and humming a tune out of tune. He held a curved sword in one hand and an indistinct object in the other.

If one looked closely, they would see that he was holding half a human corpse.

Because war wolves ate meat, the cost of maintaining the "wolf rider" unit was much higher than that of light cavalry. Feeding these war wolves every day was a significant expense, and it was clear that this orc was about to feed the wolves with human corpses.

It sounded cruel, but to the orcs, it was perfectly normal.

He walked to the forty or so war wolves, not even looking up as he began to dismember the corpse with his curved sword, then threw the pieces into the pile of war wolves. The dull war wolves began to fight over the food, but due to their training, they did not approach the orc feeding them. Those who couldn't get any just waited eagerly.

This was something he did every day, and the orc felt he could do it with his eyes closed. However, just as he yawned and thought about going back to sleep, he suddenly heard unhidden footsteps.

"Hey, need some help?"

The standard Sabine language question immediately dispelled his initial doubts—clearly, he never expected humans to appear in such a place.

Turning his head, he couldn't see the figure clearly in the darkness, but he naturally assumed it was one of his companions and casually replied, "No, no, Kosa told me to feed the wolves. I—I have to do it myself."

He burped, opened his mouth, and seemed to want to greet and ask who the other person was, but instead heard a slightly cold response:

"Feeding the wolves? Oh, you definitely need to feed the wolves."

"Whoosh—"

The sound of the blade slicing through the air was barely audible. As the head flew into the sky, blood splattered on the grass, and the headless body collapsed—yet the war wolves, busy fighting over the food, didn't even look up.

Rodi raised his head, his gaze lingering on the half-human corpse for a moment, his eyes narrowing. Clenching the curved sword, he bent down, took a deep breath, and seemed to want to touch the corpse but ultimately stopped. He turned, dragging the headless orc body step by step away from the camp.

His steps were calm, as if the forty or so war wolves were just a group of pigs fighting over feed, and the body he was dragging was just a bag of rice.

Every ten meters or so, he stopped, cut off a part of the orc's body—either an arm or a leg—and threw it behind him, leading the war wolves, who were only interested in the meat, to follow him, gradually moving away from the snoring orc camp...

"Little dirty, oh so dirty, the dirty king is him, everyone calls him little dirty..."

A song different from the orc's earlier tune echoed on the grassland, eerie and desolate in the dark night.

After walking nearly a hundred meters, the orc body he was dragging was reduced to an unrecognizable lump of flesh.

Disgusting? Yes, it was disgusting.

Before this, Rodi had never thought he could do such a thing in reality. To say he wasn't disgusted would be a lie... But when he thought of the half-corpse the orcs used to feed the wolves, his anger overpowered his disgust.

Rodi was very angry.

There's a saying that "anger" is essentially frustration with one's own powerlessness—and Rodi had to admit that this was exactly how he felt.

The tragedy of Keli Village, at its root, was his fault. He had considered this possibility, but due to some侥幸心理 (侥幸心理 means侥幸 psychology, which can be translated as "侥幸 mentality" or "侥幸 thinking"), he never expected it to actually happen. To outsiders, this might seem unrelated to Rodi, but the regret and self-blame he felt were something that Ruge, Carter, and others could not understand.

Anger led to rage, and rage led to the need for an outlet. But as the curved sword repeatedly cut through the orc's body, Rodi clearly understood that even if he killed all the orcs, the dead villagers could not be brought back to life.

"After all, this is no longer a game."

A sigh in the darkness carried a sense of inexplicable oppression.

The corpse in the orc's hand was that of a child, no more than seven or eight years old. At that age, the world should be beautiful, and everything one sees should be full of hope, with ideals and aspirations.

But for that child, whose lower half was missing, all of this had become an empty talk.

Disgusted, Rodi threw away the last piece of the corpse. When he stopped, the war wolves were already over a hundred meters from the camp. In the distance, a few patrolling figures were turning around the side of the camp.

"Now, there are thirty-two left."