The Knight King Who Returned With a God

Chapter 31: The Good Orc (2)

The orc chieftain’s head rolled back and as everyone stood there, mouths agape, unable to comprehend the situation, Yappy, who had been sitting on top of Ha-ri’s head, was the first to react.

[Hostile target recognized. Annihilation initiated.]

Yappy’s robotic arm stretched out steel wires and swung like a whip through a perfectly calculated trajectory.

“You killed the chieftain, bas──!”

The orcs didn’t even manage to show their anger because their heads were already cut.

The severed heads of the orcs feel like neatly cut cube steaks.

“Enemy! Kill!”

“Kill them!”

The orcs in the camp charged in unison as Leon shouted.

“Raise your shields! Form a circle and block their charge!”

Leon’s words awakened the Hunters, including Koo Dae-Sung, and they instinctively raised their shields to block the orcs’ charge.

“Boom!”

“Shit, what the hell is this…!”

“I don’t know!”

The orcs, who had their chieftain and kin’s decapitated, were enraged and tried to kill the Hunters.

“Raise your shields higher, shields don’t just protect you, protect the right shoulder of the comrade next to you!”

“Ugh…!”

“Stop!”

The Hunters protected each other with their shields. But it was only a matter of time.

“Damn, they’re too strong!”

“We’re only D-class Hunters! How are we supposed to win against orcs with similar numbers?”

Orcs, a natural fighting race where even the weakest orc was a match for a Class C Hunter.

With their large stature and bulging muscles, the hunters were not a match for them. Normally, it would be a miracle if they even survived the first charge.

“Huh?”

Koo Dae-Sung realized that they were blocking the orcs’ charge.

It was strange because the Hunters here are the lowest-rank Hunters who can’t go one-on-one against Orcs. But strangely, he wasn’t afraid. Just having Leon beside him was a relief, and he felt a surge of strength, like he could accomplish anything.

At that moment, several Hunters saw a system message floating in the corner of their vision.

[Aura of the Lion’s Heart]

◆Effect:

Grants Legion Hardened Assault Defense.

Grants Legion-Hardened Fortification.

Grants Legion Reinforcement Battalion Reinforcement.

Grants Legion Strengthened Valor.

Grants Legion Upgrade Light Armor.

Grants Legion Upgrade Tough Skin.

Grants Legion Upgrade Heavy Strike.

Grants Legion-Enhanced Archaic Empowerment.

Grants Legion Improved Ranged Resistance.

Grants Legion Upgrade Keen Gaze.

Grants Legion Improved Anti-Infantry Slaughter.

Grants Legion-Powered Pollution Resistance.

[Greatest Orc Butcher]

Effect:

-Grants 50% Critical Hit against Orcs.

-Orcs are struck with fear, confusion, and despair.

– Spreads a well-deserved hatred of orcs.

What is this?

[Living Demigod]

[Protector of the War Knights]

[Grail Guardian]

[Dragon Slayer’s Honor

[Terror of Demonic Species]

[Demon Lord Slayer]

[Greatest Demon Slayer]

[Strongest Charger]

──The level of the Legion members is too low. Many of the enhancement traits are not applicable.

‘Crazy…!’

What the hell. It’s a scam!

Sometimes the Hunter’s unique class, Commander, was similar to this.

Natural command, operational skills…and troop buffs could hardly affect a large battlefield in a Red Gate.

However, it was a class that required a rear-guard position due to its lack of combat capabilities, so how could a man with such powerful combat capabilities like Leon possess such power?

“Raise your shield! Push back! Plunge your sword into the gap!”

The voice of the knight-king thundered in their heads and the mere sound of it filled them with a surge of courage and made them shiver with a sense of omnipotence.

With him…we shall triumph.

The unfounded confidence grows and actually pushes the orcs’ momentum back. From wherever the unbelievable power came from, a stabbing blade pierced the orc’s tough hide.

“I, the Warrior God…!”

The orcs screamed their last words, calling out to their god. But the Lionhearted King would have none of it.

“How dare these vile beasts call upon their gods! Cut off their tongues, decapitate their heads, and insult their false gods!”

Leon could not remain still and summoned the divine beast Stallion.

The pure white colossus bathed in divine light and revealed green skin in its eyes.

-Kurrrrrrrr!

It roars as its gaze sears with rage and he leaps through the dust, carrying his ally with him.

“What the…!”

“What!”

The orcs panic, looking at Stallion who delivered a sharp back kick and the orc’s neck snapped and he fell limply to the ground.

“Let’s go, Stallion!”

Summoning his holy spear, Leon began to slaughter the orcs that surrounded the Hunters and it took less than ten minutes for the 130 orcs in the orc camp to be decimated.

“Well done, Stallion.”

-Poof!

Stallion disappeared, telling Leon to summon him again when he finds more orcs.

All around him were the bodies of the slain orcs and the unharmed Hunters.

“Let there be a shout of victory, an honorable victory!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa…….”

“Waaaah?”

The Hunters were dumbfounded as they couldn’t believe that they had won against over a hundred orcs and not a single one was injured.

“This is strange… Are orcs normally this weak?”

“No, it was completely different from normal, an unknown power surge.”

Even those who weren’t looking at the messages felt it instinctively that an unknown force had enveloped them.

“Is he….a Commander?”

“No, I heard from the Golden Lion Guild that he single-handedly destroyed the Yakt Spinner.”

“He’s a combat class, and he has buff skills like that? Is that possible?”

“……Lionheart King. I heard he’s the king of knights.”

They suddenly realized who they were looking at.

King Lionheart, a knight of unparalleled strength and a commander who had won countless battles that even before he became the king, he was a renowned War Knight, a border guard who slaughtered countless orcs.

“I… Your Majesty.”

Ha-ri approached Leon with a bloody face, her sword stained with orc blood.

“What is it, Ha-ri?”

“Uh, why did you…do this?”

At that, Leon looked genuinely puzzled.

“Would this king need a reason to kill orcs?”

“Huh? But the quest is…….”

“Helping orcs to complete a quest? That’s insane. I’d rather throw myself into a fire than help those green beasts.”

Leon’s anger at the orcs was unending.

“They are beasts unworthy of respect. Their very existence is a blight, and they don’t deserve to live.

Honor? Warriors? There is no honor in their warfare. They may be brave, but how can the ferocity of a beast be compared to the valor of a knight?

“Do not treat them as men. They are disgusting beasts that do not deserve to live.”

‘He’s an orc racist.’

Ha-ri vowed never to tell Leon that there were orc survivors on Earth since she could clearly see what would happen if Leon found out about them.

“Uh, why does your majesty hates them so much?”

“They can’t build a civilization and are a bunch of dregs that spend their lives fighting. What kind of culture is going to blossom from a people who depend on plunder? They’ll never be able to blend in with other races.”

“Hmm…….”

He had a point since over the course of thirty years, quite a few orcs had crossed over to Earth, but they had all became fiends.

The proliferation of the Orc Harlem in the United States is still a plague on American society, and Orcs are involved in the drug trade, massacres in South America, and more.

Murder and violence were the hallmarks of the race, and they could never be integrated into civilized society.

However, their ability to reproduce was superior to that of humans, and their voting rights and cultural differences plagued the world.

So much so that a new phrase was coined: orcophobia.

“So…how do you propose to close the gate?”

“Kill all the orcs at this gate! Every last one!”

Ha-ri’s shoulders jolted at the declaration as Yappy landed on her head.

“Lord Spinner, anything to report?”

[Scouting report. Field area measured. Two and a half million square kilometers. Fifty-six orc camps found. Orc numbers approximately 4,650.]

“Four thousand…”

Even though they had to take a side to win, the scale of the battle was staggering and Leon chose the option of killing all the orcs, so the difficulty level of the gate was no longer yellow, but scarlet.

“Hmm… For a bunch of beasts, there are quite a few of them.”

“A few?”

“Yes. In the Kingdom of Beasts, a single orc tribe had a standard number of 100,000.”

Considering the nature of the gate, this was a staggering number.

“Your Majesty… do you really intend to kill them all? That… would take too much time, to say the least.”

“Hmm… I’m sure this king can manage, but it’s not right to take up too much of my time with these beasts.”

But Leon has not given up, and he intends to kill every last orc in this gate, no matter how long it takes.

[Your Majesty. Suggestion.]

It was then that Yappy made a suggestion in his mechanical voice.

“What is it, Lord Spinner?”

Yappy showed a hologram through his camera eye. It was a map of the field, created shortly after the battle, when he launched his mapping scope into the sky.

He captured the headwaters of the river as it cut through the orc villages.

* * * *

Midnight, in the dead of night, while the orcs slept, three figures appeared upriver.

[This place.]

Yappy from above Ha-ri’s head points upstream with his sharp legs.

“Hmm. I’ll leave it to you.”

Yakt Spinner dipped into the flowing river and activated its energy.

[Initiating core overload. Power at 99.9%.]

Yakt Spinner began to activate his core at full power and the cooling system shuts down as the energy kicks in, and a plume of smoke rises.

[Core overloaded. Cooling system failing. Fuel rods rapidly age. Core meltdown. Eject fuel rods.]

The Yakt Spinner opened its carapace and ejected the fuel rods inside as with a bang, something that resembled poop appeared.

“Mmm, looks like shit…….”

“Don’t speak dirty words in my presence.”

Well, she wasn’t wrong.

Yakt Spinner is powered by a small nuclear reactor and the high-power electricity generated by the reactor creates a perpetual motion machine. But because it’s a reactor, it has fuel rods, and in the event of an emergency, a self-destruct sequence that overloads the reactor and causes nuclear fusion happens.

Yakt spinner was only halfway through the self-destruct sequence as it overloaded the reactor to the point of core meltdown and ejected the fuel rods when the critical level was reached.

The extremely dangerous radioactive material inside the fuel rods, including cesium-137, iodine-131, stannium-90, and plutonium-238, is exposed along with the fuel rods and contaminates the river.

The river that all the orcs in the field use for drinking water is pickled in radioactivity.

“I…Your Majesty, we are safe under your protection, but… is this okay?”

“What do you mean?”

“…According to chivalry, this is cowardly.”

Leon smirked at Ha-ri’s question. He didn’t seem to feel the slightest bit remorseful for carrying out a plot that he himself would consider cowardly.

“What kind of chivalry is that against beasts? If I can kill one more, I’ll use a ranged weapon.”

“Eek…….”

“Ha-ri, Lord Spinner, this is not a war or a duel against green beasts.”

Leon said in a voice that held endless hatred and contempt.

“It’s about exterminating the beasts. What hunter has honor when he hunts?”

“Umm…there can be good orcs, too.”

“Ha…!”

As if he had heard something funny, Leon let out a sneer and spoke the unchangeable truth as if to enlighten these foolish and clueless people.

“The only good orc is a dead orc.”