Chapter 505: The Orc King's Mountain-Splitting Strike

Winter had arrived. Temperatures were unusually low that year. Not only did Lyon suffer widespread blizzards and storm damage, even the Emerald Dreamwood and the Court of the Silver Moon, two kingdoms that rarely saw snow at all, found themselves buried under heavy snowfall.

Still, in an age thoroughly steeped in magic, a mere snowstorm wasn't enough to cause serious harm on its own.

As long as a kingdom's leadership was willing to spare the manpower and resources for disaster relief, sending out enough mages and priests to cast spells across the affected regions was sufficient to handle nearly anything.

Clearing snow, rescuing the stranded, transporting food—none of it posed much of a challenge for any kingdom with enough spellcasters to spare.

Lyon had a well-earned reputation for looking after its people, so the moment the storm hit, its priests mobilized in force and the crisis was brought under control before it could truly take hold.

The druids and the elves had even less to worry about. Their ratio of spellcasters per capita actually exceeded Lyon's.

Only the dwarven kingdom declared a state of emergency. Having only recently migrated out of the desert, their food reserves were already stretched thin, though conveniently enough, due to the performances the Alchemists' Guild had staged on Ambrose's behalf, it had managed to squeeze a substantial windfall out of the druids in the process.

The druids, of course, had little gold to spare, so they settled the debt in food instead.

Once the Emerald Dreamwood's grain shipments arrived, the dwarven kingdom's winter crisis eased as well.

The dwarven king sang Ambrose's praises throughout his own palace, marveling that the lich truly seemed to plan for everything. He'd apparently even accounted for the dwarven kingdom's food shortage in advance, engineering a solution using the druids' own grain and leaving the dwarves grateful to him on top of it all.

Lyon, the elves, the dwarves, and the druids all made it through the winter without much trouble. But for the orcs, the situation was considerably more dire.

Under normal circumstances, the mountain range the orcs called home would remain relatively temperate for at least three or four more months compared to Lyon. But that year had proven strange beyond reason; the temperature had plunged across the entire continent at the same alarming rate. The orcish highlands were dragged into a brutal winter right along with everyone else, and the orcs suffered worse than any other kingdom in the process.

The orc kingdom had poured every ounce of its strength into a policy of relentless militarization, throwing everything it had into the border war. That left the elderly, the weak, women, and children back home with almost nothing to withstand a freeze this severe.

Countless elders and young children died from the cold and lack of food.

Across the entire orc kingdom, only the capital had enough stores of food and energy for its people to eat and stay warm. The endless lightning from the sky was converted into raw magical power, which was then funneled into heating the entire city. Food was somewhat scarce, but no matter how bad the shortage got, the capital's nobility would never be the ones to go hungry.

The orc king barely glanced at the disaster reports piling up on his desk. These days, he devoted himself to exactly one activity, day after day: swinging that two-handed axe known as Blood Wedding.

Lyon had purchased the legendary axe at enormous cost. What Lyon didn't know was that this artifact had not started off as a single weapon, but rather a matched pair.

The orc king could wield the massive two-handed axe in just one hand. He himself stood far taller than an ordinary orc, and possessed monstrous, unmatched physical strength.

Out in the raging blizzard, the orc king swung the great axe one-handed, striking at the mountain rising before him with everything he had.

The blow cut straight through the driving snow, never once touching the mountainside itself—and yet it struck as though it had connected with something solid. The axe froze mid-swing in the air as a deep crimson light gathering along its blade.

One swing. Two swings... The orc king swung his war axe again and again, striking nothing but empty air each time, yet putting his absolute maximum effort into every single blow.

He kept swinging until the crimson light on the blade grew bright enough to pierce straight through the raging snowstorm, bathing everything around him in a deep, bloody red.

Only then did the orc king move, vanishing in a blur, hurling himself straight at the mountain before him, and this time bringing the axe down with full force against the mountainside itself.

Blazing crimson light erupted the instant the blade connected. An immense shockwave detonated directly in front of him.

A deafening crack split the air, and a massive fissure tore open across a peak taller than any city wall. The mountain shuddered, teetered, and then collapsed in an instant.

Thousands of tons of rock came crashing down, sending a boom through the valley louder than thunder itself. Shockwaves rippled outward violently enough to bend the raging wind and snow off their course.

The orc king inspected the axe blade carefully, confirming that its edge remained utterly unmarked, and then let out a booming laugh.

"Just as I'd expect from an artifact blessed by Thanos himself! At last, a weapon that can actually withstand my full strength! I'll use this very axe to take that emperor's head clean off!"

Howling wind and driving snow raged around him, but nothing in this storm could hope to obscure the orc king's towering frame.

"With this artifact in hand, Your Majesty is certain to cut down the emperor of Lyon. This time, the orcs will build an unmatched legacy for the ages!"

Standing off to the side, the octopus-headed mindflayer applauded enthusiastically as well, even though the frigid weather was an almost unbearable torment for his kind.

The orc king gently wiped down the axe blade, not even bothering to look up as he asked, "Any news lately?"

"Your Majesty, the Seven Peaks in the southwest have sent another plea for food assistance. Half their cable lines have gone down under the heavy snow..."

Urbano Pacheco was still in the middle of his report when the orc king cut him off, bluntly. "That's not what I asked about. I asked about word from the lich. People freeze to death every single winter. You think I need to be told that?!"

Urbano Pacheco had no choice but to swallow his frustration. The orc king had never had much patience for reason, and Urbano's own position was precarious enough that being cast aside would mean certain death. So Urbano Pacheco had made himself the orc king's most devoted loyalist. Tyrant or fool though his king might be, Urbano would stand firmly by his side regardless, even if it meant playing the role of a fawning, sycophantic advisor.

"Our lich ally has sent good news. The wedding proceedings have been finalized, and he's guaranteed Your Majesty the opportunity to formally challenge the emperor of Lyon to a duel. That said, he's sent another word of caution as well. The power of the Draconic Armaments is more terrifying than anyone could imagine, and he hopes Your Majesty will prepare accordingly. Should it become necessary, I'm afraid..."

Urbano Pacheco hesitated. The orc king demanded impatiently, "Afraid what?"

"He fears it may be necessary to join forces with others to bring down the emperor of Lyon together. He hopes Your Majesty will be willing to cooperate with champions from the other kingdoms."

The instant Urbano Pacheco finished that sentence, the orc king let out a furious roar. "I, join forces with others? Against that pathetic excuse for an emperor of Lyon, the same fool who got humiliated and sent running by a bunch of githarks?!"

Urbano Pacheco sighed silently to himself. The orc king really was an idiot, capable of nothing beyond swinging a big fist.

But there was no helping it. Among the orcs, a big fist was what mattered.

The current orc king's fist was enormous, so much so that not a single weapon in the entire kingdom could be found that actually suited his hand.

The orc king's legendary boon allowed him to stack the force of every single swing he made in the air, unleashing the entire accumulated force in one devastating burst the moment he finally connected with a target. In theory, so long as the weapon itself could withstand the strain, the orc king could stack an unlimited number of swings and even cut down a god with a single blow.

In the past, even the sturdiest weapons the orc kingdom possessed couldn't survive more than five stacked swings. Even a mace forged from pure steel would shatter under the strain. And since the orc kingdom had never been particularly skilled at forging magical weapons, the orc king had spent all these years unable to unleash his full strength at all.

The orc king had always believed the only reason he couldn't defeat the Silvermoon Knight was that he'd never found a weapon worthy of his strength. Otherwise, he wouldn't have feared that decrepit old man in the slightest. Now that he finally had this axe artifact in hand, he genuinely regretted that the Silvermoon Knight had died so early. If the man were still alive, the orc king would gladly have taken his head on the battlefield himself.

As for the emperor of Lyon, a man who'd already humiliated himself on the battlefield once before, the orc king held him in absolutely no regard whatsoever.

But Urbano Pacheco understood something the orc king didn't: the emperor of Lyon could not be ordinary, if even this cunning lich was making such preparations against him. The orc king's overconfidence was a disaster waiting to happen.

Urbano Pacheco couldn't openly contradict his volatile king, though, so he chose his words carefully. "Your Majesty, your martial prowess is unmatched under heaven. But should the Lyon forces fight dishonorably and bring their legendary paladins into the fray alongside their emperor, it may prove difficult for you to cut down every paladin present before the emperor manages to flee. Allies are a necessity. We can hardly stand by and simply watch the emperor of Lyon escape."

The orc king mulled this over for a moment and conceded that the logic held up. "Fine. Go tell the lich that if the emperor of Lyon is too much of a coward to face me in single combat, I won't mind working with others. Just make sure to remind those useless allies to stay out of my way."

"Of course, Your Majesty. I'll be sure to remind him."

Urbano Pacheco let out a quiet sigh of relief, though what actually occupied his thoughts was a very different question. If the orc king were to fall in battle, should he surrender to Lyon? Or perhaps he should start preparing an escape route to disappear into quiet obscurity ahead of time...

Caution never hurt. The mindflayer empire itself had fallen once already; preparing for the absolute worst-case scenario in advance was practically a founding principle of his entire race.

Urbano Pacheco looked up into the endless, swirling storm above and couldn't help but think to himself, "Master Megaman, I sincerely hope you've truly prepared for every possibility. If you fail here, far too many of us are going to pay the price alongside you."

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