Chapter 59: Awakening part 1

I didn’t expect to receive another surprise in this battle. Moreover, it was a positive surprise. I had possessed Urt many times and knew he didn’t have such a skill. The fact that he used it now could only mean that he just recently acquired it.

Acquiring new skills wasn’t that strange of a thing either. Its just that, they are incredibly rare. The only time a monster like us could gain new abilities was when we were evolving. Aside from that, only in flight or fight situations, some new skills would manifest.

“That’s a fancy skill you got there, Urt!” I wasn’t frugal with praises on where it’s due. Besides, Urt’s ability was indeed strong to the point of making one speechless. With a single puncture, he killed at least four to five, well-equipped humans. None of the humans came here to hunt us were weaker than Leah. Some even were stronger, from what I could see. The group Urt disposed of had two of such warriors who looked stronger than Leah to me.

His skill made my hairs stand on end. Although, I didn’t have any hairs to stand.

“Yes, lord. I just got this.” Urt confessed and continued to explain his skill to me. “I call this ability, Puncture. It allows my spear to pierce through many targets at once.”

“That’s a great ability you have there.” I praised generously. One shouldn’t skimp on praising their subordinates. The more one appreciates them, the more they would strive to make you happy. I learned this while working in corporate for years. The right way to keep your subordinates motivated, my ex-team lead did it best.

“Thank you, my lord. I will work hard to be of more use to you.” With that said, Urt raised his spear and threw himself into the battlefield with a renewed vigor. He wanted to prove himself so that he could earn more praise.

That’s what I meant when I said one shouldn’t skimp on praising their subordinates.

As the war continued, it slowly tilted on our favor due to the presence of Fallen Logier and Urt with his Puncture. Allowing Logier to rampage around was the correct decision indeed. It saved us a lot of trouble. A single Fallen did what a bunch of orcs might not have been able to. I could now see why they were called ‘Fallen’ and feared.

The army of human warriors who came to attack us was an ill-disciplined bunch. Unsuited to be drafted as soldiers for the war. As soon as the casualty in the back increased, they dispersed and ran away, leaving those in front to be our next targets. However, to my surprise, Urt didn’t follow up to target the ones in the front lines. He ordered to retreat instead.

I made a confused face as I couldn’t understand his intentions well. I thought he would go with the flow, and attack the sitting ducks in the front. When he retreated back into the cover of the forest, I asked in doubt, “Why did you come back? You could have kept attacking, right?”

But Urt, who was always a ‘yes sir’ to me, shook his head and denied me for the first time since I made him my subordinate. However, I didn’t feel the need to shut him up as I wanted to listen to what he wanted to say.

“That’s not right, lord. I fear if we continued on, the humans would have attacked from our back like what we are doing.” Urt explained calmly and unhurriedly. His big and flat face didn’t have a shred of emotion displayed. “It’s better to let the Fallen deal with them. It's not going down anytime soon. In the meantime, we should find and kill those humans who entered the forest.” He proposed.

“Hmm! Forest!” A proverbial light bulb went off in my head the moment I heard forest. I thought, ‘why not let the new inhabitants to deal with these humans? That would save the lives and energy of my forces. Didn’t that orc elder also said it?’ As soon as I remembered this idea, I immediately implemented it. Turning to Sepi who stood close to me, I ordered, “Sepi, take a few orcs and goblins with you and make sure those humans enter the territory of the new goblins.”

“Ah! That’s right. We could have used them as well!” Urt slapped his thighs in realization while screaming loudly. Then he loudly ordered a few goblins to follow Sepi. In the meantime, I asked Urt about the death toll on our side.

His answer shocked me.

“We only have gravely injured ones. No one died aside from the first few, yet.”

‘What?’ I was left gobsmacked by his reply. I thought some of ours had died since I recalled seeing a few getting fatally wounded. But, to think no one has died after we changed our strategy due to Fallen Logier! It was really wondrous. In fact, it was a miracle in itself that none died until now when their enemy was humans. When I asked about the details, I figured out that all the credit goes to my amateur strategy, rotation. It was because they switched with another whenever someone got heavily wounded, that none had died.

I never knew a strategy that I created to fight against dumb goblins would come in handy against humans too. Maybe it was because the human side lacked a proper commander that could lead them to a victory. Or perhaps even if someone tried to command, these mercenaries were just too proud to obey. The reason may be anything, but it was undeniable that we had an edge in this war.

‘I should go and fight someone.’ I thought after seeing everyone busy fighting at least one opponent save for me, who was just standing on a tree branch. As I scanned the battlefield, I quickly found a unique sight. It’s a middle-aged, pudgy man dressed in expensive-looking gold-plated(perhaps) armors. He was covered from head to toe, leaving only his eyes exposed. From the looks of the things, the attire and mannerism of this guy screamed of nobility. Around him, I saw no less than 40 armored knights standing in a neat line and vigilant of their surroundings.

I heard that blond knight talking about some prince coming to observe the battle. If I am not wrong, this middleaged man should be that prince. It was a good thing I denied them, or else if that blond knight attacked this prince, these 40 plus knights would have joined in the battle instead of just standing and observing.

That time the question on my head was thus; now that the humans had fallen into a precarious situation, would they join? And if they did join, could we win? This question gnawed on my mind, making me feel restless. I decided to do something about it. Letting them stand there was no different from having a gun’s muzzle pointed towards us.

I wondered if I should scare them away with a few of my illusions. From my previous encounter, I knew fooling the knights would be very difficult, if not impossible. Carefully walking in the shadows, I tried to get close to them. The place they stood on was pretty far from where I was, which was also out of my range at which my skills worked.

‘Infrared Vision!’ I whispered, activating one of the most versatile skills in my arsenal. The world transformed into a dark and red hue surrounded by translucent blue mist. The ‘dark’ represents everything that didn’t have a source of heat of their own. The ‘red’ was just the opposite of it and represents heat-emitting bodies. The blue mist should be the residue of magic left behind by the used skills of so many human warriors and monsters.

At that time, I don’t know what came into mind after seeing the blue mist. While standing close to a dense and long bush, I did something impossible. I used the ‘toothpick’ from my newly improved Cast Illusions and tried to synchronize it with the mist.

To my immense surprise, it also worked and produced a devastating result.

It happened like this;

The moment the magic tendril of Cast Illusions touched the mist, my sense, which was controlling the tendril suddenly extended and covered the entire battlefield. I gained a bird’s eye view of the entire place.

That’s not the only thing that happened, though. Together with the view, came a weird sense of potentness. I felt something empowering my very being and giving me the illusion that I could do anything and everything in this place.

I wondered whether this feeling is what they call, Omnipotence.