Lone tightly held the grip of his swordspear and said, "Keep them safe."

"What about keeping you safe?" Sophie asked.

Lone smirked through his rage-filled expression. "I'm not the one who'll need saving between me and him."

Sophie wore a worried look on her face but nodded nonetheless. "Very well. Do not let your anger at the hero disturb you, however. The time to deal with him will come."

"I know... Trust me, I know." And with that, Lone kicked his feet off the ground and lunged towards the Blue Orc Chieftain that was no more than a few dozen feet away from them.

The monster saw Lone as no threat. It only saw in Lone, Sophie and the two slaves, a way to avenge his fallen kin. Lifting his 6-foot-long axe, the chieftain made a casual swipe at Lone, though despite how normal the motion looked, he was, in fact, putting every ounce of his strength into it.

These people had invaded his land, set fire to his homes, butchered his people, mercilessly killed his men, his lovers, and his children. Just like them, he would afford no mercy to such cruel people.

Lone raised his swordspear to block the attack but he was too late to realise his crucial mistake.

The steel axehead that was easily the same size as Lone's entire torso met the blade of Lone's swordspear with more than enough force to topple a single-story building.

Lone's muscles bulged and his face morphed in pain as he tried to keep his footing, but less than a second later, the top half of his swordspear shattered.

He quickly and instinctually created his bone armour around the area the axe was mere inches away from hitting. The weapon smashed into his guarded right arm and instantly shattered every bone in the limb and almost cut the arm clean off before the force drove the crushed and nearly-severed arm and the weapon into Lone's side, breaking his ribs and crushing his organs.

He was lifted off of his feet and flew like a rocket into a burning hovel.

"Ha!" the Blue Orc Chieftain laughed disdainfully. "Puny. Weak. Unsatisfying. Dead already." Its bloodshot eyes then focused on the fully armoured Sophie who was standing in front of the two motionless slaves with her swords drawn.

'We will die if we are hit with that much force... I hope Lone's okay... The man electrocutes or nearly cremates himself almost every day. We doubt he is dead. We did not see his head nor his heart get destroyed, so do not worry until it is necessary, Soph... S-Sorry.' The girl in charge right now clearly had an incredible amount of faith in Lone's ability to persist like a cockroach.

Regardless, she still frowned as she saw the chieftain begin walking towards her slowly as if he was stalking his helpless prey. 'We doubt we can injure his skin with these flimsy swords. They would sooner shatter than draw blood. Can we teleport onto his head and cut his eyeballs out? Unlikely. He will most-likely feel our feet on his head and the wind caused by our blades heading for his eyes. That speed at which he swung his axe... That is unnatural. This system with its stats. What a nuisance...'

"Who the fuck do you think you're looking at, you ugly cunt?!" Lone yelled as he burst through the hovel's wall fully clad in his white boneplate armour. As a result, the burning building collapsed in on itself.

His arm was fully healed and every crushed organ and shattered bone had been repaired. Of course, at no small cost to Lone's MP.

The Blue Orc Chieftain looked over at Lone in confusion. "Not dead? How? No matter. These females. They matter to you? Me kills them then. Revenge." A vicious snarl escaped the monsters tusked mouth before he raised his axe once more.

"Like fuckin' hell you will!" Lone shouted then began running towards the chieftain. He raised his palm and cast his tried and true spell, "Lightning Bolt!"

With a powerful-sounding crack, a thick beam of blue arched energy snaked out of Lone's hand and hit the Blue Orc Chieftain's right arm, resulting in its muscles tensing up and a few blood vessels bursting.

Annoyance surfaced on the orc's face. "Fine. You want die first? You die first then!" He yelled and used his uninjured arm to throw his massive axe right at Lone.

'He fucking threw it?!' Of course, that had shocked Lone immensely. He barely avoided the weapon by putting every fibre of his being into focusing his eyes to follow the spinning of the damned thing.

Being hit by its shaft could knock him out while being hit by its blade would undoubtedly cut him clean in half. He was already moving too fast to realistically move to the side and dodge the axe, so his only option was to time the weapon's movements and rely on his Evasion Mastery and his Agility to either powerfully jump over the thing or slide under it.

'Fuck! It's so hard to track... Slide!' He had made his choice.

The axe's blade came within millimeters of his nose as his entire body scraped along the dirt underneath him. It was as if time had come to a crawl when Lone heard the sound of the metal cutting through the air and felt the wind pressure blasting onto his face as a result of the axe tearing the space where he once was.

Before long, for Lone, time returned to its normal pace as sweat immediately flooded his body. his muscles and tails contracted and tensed up and he used them to push himself back up onto his feet and resume his running.

All of this had happened in a little over 3-seconds.

"You swift, Fox. You swift, but you swift enough to dodge this?" the chieftain asked mockingly as he clenched his fingers together and seemingly made to punch Lone's entire chest with his hulking fist.

"Lightning B-"

"Dodge!" Sophie yelled.

"Huh?" Lone had no idea what Sophie was going on about. Why had she suddenly yelled at him to dodge? Why had she distracted him and stopped him from casting his spell? Now, he was almost certainly going to be hit by this behemoth's attack.

Whether through his own or through Sophie's Luck or by pure chance, his body moved on its own and ever so slightly inclined itself to the left. The next moment, his right arm, leg, and three of his tails were severed as the chieftain's axe soared through the air until it returned to the orc's hand.

"You like magic, Fox, yes? Then you like my axe, yes?" the monster taunted. "You die soon. Me leave you to die slow. Watch me kill your females."

Lone tried to push himself up but he couldn't muster any strength at all. Blood was gushing out of the entire right side of his body and he didn't have even close to enough MP to forcefully seal his wounds after having already healed his previous injuries.

Coughing up even more of the sticky red liquid that was vital to his survival, Lone fought through the paid and said, "Like hell you will, you overgrown fuck! Mental Destruction!"

The Blue Orc Chieftain's raised arm stopped mid-swing towards Sophie who was preparing to teleport out of the way. Blood leaked from his eyes, his ears, his nostrils and his mouth before his massive frame toppled to the ground.

"Sophie..." Lone called.

After quickly confirming that the monster was dead, the girl sheathed her swords and rushed to Lone's side. "Are you okay? Can you heal before you bleed to death?"

Worry and fear painted the girl's usually stoic expression.

Lone chuckled. "Maybe. I really didn't expect the axe to fuckin' fly... Didn't you- Keh! Didn't you sense the magic in it?"

Sophie shook her head. "Everything has magic in it, the question is just the quantity. We have never encountered a magic weapon before, so we had no idea... We... We are sorry."

Lone smiled weakly. "It's fine. What's done is done. Keh!" Another mouthful of blood escaped his lips. "Now, what I need you to do may sound stupid, but I will probably be fine, so just do it, 'kay?"

"We shall do whatever you require," Sophie answered immediately and without hesitation as she cradled Lone's head in her arms.

"I remember that you can overcharge things with MP, right?" Lone asked. He could already feel his consciousness slipping away, and if he allowed it to, he wasn't certain if his Basic Regeneration would keep him alive or not. This was his first experience of losing this much blood so quickly, after all.

"Of course. It was how Soph maintained your illusion around the fort for over 2-weeks when you were almost burnt to death by that Goblin Mage's Crude Fireball." Sophie had just realised Lone's plan. "You cannot be serious, can you? That is not a technique that we have a skill for nor have we practised it. We could make your entire body explode. We believe your chances are far greater if you simply sit still. We will find something to clot your bleedi-"

"As if anything can clot the entirety of the right side of my body. Hell, for a start, would you- Keh! Would you teleport us out of here? Those two'll die if they inhale much more of this smoke," Lone said with a smile on his face.

Sophie felt her eyes tearing up out of frustration. "Why are you worrying about some useless slaves when you are mere moments away from death yourself?!"

Lone closed his eyes and chuckled through his coughing. "They're only kids."

Sophie wanted to punch him in his face for being so compassionate despite his own situation, but the very next moment, Lone, Sophie and the two slaves began floating in the air.

Sophie could feel that they had started to float due to a magical spell, so her head spun around to look at its caster.

Lone's eyes followed the movements of her head and he saw Guildmaster Gilbert looking down at the burning orc fortress with a down-right furious scowl on his face as he stood in the air above them.

He silently used his magic to move the four of them a few hundred feet away from the fort then he walked right up to Lone's body.

Sophie was aware of how powerful the White Dragonkin was, so perhaps he had come with some miracle medicine or healing agent in the case of an emergency? She did not know, but to save the man that she... that she had grown close to, she would forgo her dignity and her pride willingly.

"Please, save him. Whatever the cost, we shall repay you fifty-fold. If you can just stop his bleeding, that will be enough," Sophie begged.

Gilbert didn't respond and simply used one of his hands to rip off the breastplate section of Lone's Bone Armour before he placed a palm on his chest. "Root of Life."

Tree roots suddenly sprung up out of the ground and encapsulated Lone. They glowed with a bright green hue as magical energy of the likes which Sophie had never seen before blinded her sight.

A few moments passed before the roots escaped back into the grass beneath them and Lone's body was revealed. All of his injuries had been healed. He was half-naked, of course, but his three missing tails, his severed arm and leg, they had all returned to normal.

Lone slowly sat up and cancelled the rest of his Bone Armour before he suspiciously touched his newly regrown limbs. "How...?"

The frown never escaped Gilbert's lips as he held his hands behind his back and stared at the raging fires that threatened to raze the entire surrounding grasslands and nearby forest to ashes. "I am a master of both gravity magic and nature magic. What I just used on you is a spell called 'Root of Life'. So long as you are not dead, I can use the energy of the land, Altros, and have it stimulate your natural healing powers. It can only be used once every 6-months and it should have taken you over 2-weeks to completely heal from such grave injuries."

"... I see..." Lone said.

Gilbert sighed as he raised his hand and pointed his open palm towards the ever-burning fortress. "Gravital Compression."

The entire orc stronghold as well as everything within 50-feet of it began violently shaking. Not a second later, it all slowly pulled together into a single spot no larger than a single foot wide. The earth, the wood, the bodies, the fire, everything. It all just... compressed into a little cube.

Gilbert nodded then brought his hand down to his side.

With a thunderous boom, the cube plummeted right through the soft ground beneath it and disappeared. "Now, we have some talking to do, you and I, Lone. Specifically, about a certain 'hero'."