Oolga wrapped her fingers tightly around the hilt of her war axe. There was no need to linger on the feelings she felt while looking at the large-scale battle put before her; she only had to express them. Her eyes were wide open so as not to miss a thing, and her mouth had spread into a bloodthirsty grin. Her limbs did not stop moving no matter how many bodies piled up behind her. It was for this that she endured the humdrum day-to-day with a smile.

Oolga’s body was close to that of a fire spirit, so it was a bit painful when other elements were pressed directly against her skin. It stung where the rain hit, her feet ached on the muddy ground, and she felt a bit dizzy whenever a strong wind rushed by. Because of that, the amplified hunger curse may have been a blessing for her, since it muted out all the other pains. Likewise, the bliss of from filling her lust for destruction overwhelmed the discomfort from the environment.

The rain couldn’t extinguish her flames completely. In the first place, the fire spirits inside resisted the water spirits that tried to invade. Oolga’s fire was the purest fire that would struggle to live for an instant even if she was submerged underwater. This weather made it considerably weaker than usual, true, but she imbued skills into her flames to cover for that. Of course she did. She was wielding fire and an axe during a rainstorm against enemies that resisted bladed weapons. If she didn’t supplement her attacks somehow, she would be overwhelmed.

So she used a technique that Vyra had once considered using, only to forget to actually do so. Oolga had had the same idea long before she did, and now she had found the most efficient way to implement it.

First, the Mayhem Orc spread flames over the surface of her axe. Next, she imbued those flames with the skill. Simultaneously, this protected her fire from the rain, strengthened her attack, and bypassed the Fomors’ natural resistance to bladed attacks. , a skill, was merged with formless flames, creating something that ignored the Fomors’ resistance the same way magic did, while also creating the same result as if they had been cut by her burning axe. It was obvious that it was more damaging to slash through an opponent than to hit them with a blunt force (when doing so was possible), so the Fomors fell left and right.

Oolga carved out a path of fire and blood while wearing the most joyful and insane smile that she’d ever shown. She had obeyed the advice of her , and so she was able to be here now. What a wonderful life she led.

But it was impossible to slaughter weaklings forever; the strong ones would never allow it. Before long, two of the enemy leaders had come to cut her off. They were both large and imposing. One held a greatsword made of bones, with sharp metal plating around the edges. The other held a huge bone hammer with metal slabs welded on the head and reinforcing the shaft. There were no words shared between them, and the fighting simply started like that.

The man with the greatsword charged first with a thrust while the man with the hammer waited to swing at her when she dodged. Oolga recognized that, and so she didn’t avoid it. She held up her small war axe and fixed her stance to block the strike. The swordsman grinned and pressed forth with all his strength, but he couldn’t push the red Orc back, let alone break her guard. When it seemed like her strength wasn’t enough, flames sprung up out of her body, and she became stronger for a brief time. She brought out that strength without hesitation, even though it seemed to him that the raindrops made unpleasant sounds when they hit her boiling skin.

It certainly did hurt Oolga to bring out more of the strength of fire in this rain, but her attention was solely focused on the fun things happening in front of her and the screams of pain that seemed to fill her stomach as much as her ears. Her smile only became wider when the swordsman had to bring his weapon back. He was horrified to see that the tip had become dull--it had melted!

He forced his expression to calm down. “Good trick, but how long can you keep it up in this weather?”

The hammer user chuckled behind him, but both of their smiles washed away when the red Orc showed off her four tusks in the most deranged, borderline sensual smile that only a pervert could make.

“I’m going to break you~.”

“M-meeeh?!” The swordsman let out a startled bleat and raised his weapon in a defensive posture. Oolga charged straight forward so as not to fail his expectations…

And within a minute, both chiefs were dead on the ground, blood and mud seeping into their coarse grey fur. Oolga smiled brightly at their corpses for a moment, then looked around for her next prey. There didn’t seem to be any strong people who weren’t already occupied, so her gaze drifted to the peons. Her smile threatened to split her lips, and an inferno danced behind her yellow eyes.

“Yes, that’s fun too.” Oolga went to plow down the weaklings, and the power balance between their forces immediately shifted.

***

It was the natural order for the strong to fight the strong. This was a principle that nearly every person in the world believed and which all matters of war were planned around. The only reason weaker people were brought out to fight in the first place was to set the stakes. Two equal sides would take on substantial risks when fighting each other. If they weren’t allowed some free magic power after somehow coming out victorious, they would avoid fighting directly in the first place. When a direct fight was unavoidable, it was just courtesy to bring the reward to the field, instead of making the winners march all the way into enemy territory to receive it. Varoon cared little for the weaklings that died within seconds of each other, whether they were Fomors or Orcs. If his allies died to the enemy, he just had to kill that enemy, and then their power would live on in him.

Of course, nobody wanted to be seen as a sacrificial offering, so all the pawns that had come to fight were there to desperately grow stronger. Those that survived would someday join the strong, and then they wouldn’t be sent out to die so easily.

Varoon, who could proudly acknowledge that he was one of the strong, was out in the field, massacring minions and restraining powerful enemies. He was out in the field. Just from this fact alone, he was decidedly aware that he was inferior to Vyra, who was being saved in the sky as a final weapon.

No one could blame him for feeling inferior as long as he actually was inferior. So, in a grander sense, he was also throwing himself into this battlefield to become stronger.

And smoothly, like that, the materials to develop his skills came forward. First, it was just one enemy chief, but two more came when he had nearly won against him. Then a fourth arrived when that still wasn’t enough. Varoon had been boxed in on all sides by Fomor chiefs: one woman and three men. Two wielded swords--a pair of short swords and a broadsword, respectively; one wielded a mace; the last carried a halberd. It was fine to be polite and say that Monks excelled in unarmed combat, or one could be rude and say that he couldn’t wield a weapon even if he wanted to. Either way, there was a natural disadvantage in regards to reach that was hard enough to overcome against a single opponent, forget four of them.

But Varoon paid no mind to that. He refused to lose the psychological war before even fighting. Rather, he would drive his enemies’ confidence into the mud by turning over that disadvantage!

The halberd wielder was almost defeated from the start, so Varoon focused on dodging most of the other attacks while acting offensively only toward him. The reason he could evade so easily as if he could see the attacks from behind him was thanks to the skill he had put his blood sweat and tears into training, even to the extent of ignoring his original three: , , and !

[[ allows the user to simultaneously collect information from all angles centered on the sensory organs and enhances that data. It is listed as a rare skill: active state.]]

It was not an omnipotent perception since it was centered around the relative organs. Varoon couldn’t actually see what was happening behind him since he couldn’t look through his skull. He could see behind his eyes if he wanted to, though it was dark there. No, the real value of this skill was in his sense of touch and sense of hearing. Thanks to the skill's effect of enhancing the information received, he could tell what direction vibrations in the air were coming from, and what physical objects and motions they represented.

was an active skill, and it was a particularly difficult one to utilize. Varoon knew that he still had a long way to go in order to master it. But it had to be that amazing: it was the skill he had chosen to help him surpass his sister, after all. What other method could he use to compete against someone who could fly in the air and control the ground beneath his feet?

And since it was a skill he had learned in order to compete with the Lord of his species…

The halberd wielder’s head split open with a wet crunch, spraying red blood and sticky grey flesh all over Varoon’s well-placed fist and body. Behind him, the weapons of the enemies had become tangled together thanks to his baiting movements.

… There was no way it would fail to overpower some lousy goats!

Varoon let out a breath and prepared to face the next three adversaries. His eyes were briefly drawn behind them, and he saw bright orange flames flashing left and right. Oolga was there, wildly swinging her flame-coated axe while freely severing limbs and eviscerating everything with fur. With his enhanced vision, he could make out the berserk glee on her face and felt disgust. It was nauseating, but he thought he knew why her evolution had required fire magic. Varoon used the second and last skill he had dabbled in since his evolution, , to see through her technique.

The nauseating thing was that a skill with the ability of “separating and severing” was imbued into something as immaterial as fire. In other words, unless special measures were taken, it was a technique that couldn’t be blocked; it was a technique wholly devoted to unhindered slaughter. Varoon believed in survival and the competition of life, so his mother just looked like a demon to him, no matter how impressive her strength was.

Oh, and it shouldn’t be necessary to ask, but was, of course, another technique to counter Vyra. No matter how many skills she had in her infinite skill slots, he would at least know which ones she was using.

He had one more skill slot that he could fill, but he hadn’t decided on a skill for it yet. Magic was out of the question: he was a Monster and Magic Beast hybrid; his magic power was split up between being dispersed throughout his body and congealed into a magic core. With a bizarre Magic Power flow, of course hybrids couldn’t cast spells.

The pessimistic thoughts didn’t last as long as usual. Varoon knew that if Oolga was allowed to run free through the mobs, then the enemy had exhausted their powerful fighting forces. All he had to do was focus on keeping these three here, and kill them whenever a chance popped up. His Magic Beast ancestry may have robbed him of any chance to learn magic, ironically, but it also gave him confidence in his physical stamina, which was raised beyond normal Monster standards by the Magic Power flowing through it. Forget just holding them here, they would get tired and make a mistake soon enough, and then they would die.

Varoon smirked and began leading his opponents to a region where the mud was particularly soppy. He would have no problems with his footing thanks to , but it would become a muddy hell for his adversaries. Varoon actively shortened the time he would have to stall for.