ERode

Why Were We Reincarnated as Orcs?!

Strange stars with yet-undiscovered constellations.

But when was the last time she had been able to look up at them without her neck or back protesting from the effort?

Esfir sat at the entrance of her shelter, watching the sky darken, then brighten, as summer stars sparkled and the moon rose. When she felt her body slide back, when the fatigue and silence brought with it an alluring sleep, she let herself fall back into her shelter.

Sleep was not comfortable, but it was deep and it was dreamless.

---

The runt rose before daybreak, rubbing the crusts out of her eyes. The ground had left strange indentations and points of soreness on her back, but everything was as she had left it the night before. She sat there cross-legged for a moment, going over her inventory once more, thinking about the day ahead.

She wanted a proper pot, so she’d have to go up to the mountains to mine for Bowbh. She wanted proper water too, so she’d have to take a look at what was blocking the flow. There was training to be done, and there would be cooking to be done too. She wanted the meat of bigger beasts, and right now, the only way to do that would be to trade with the Adult Orcs. A better bag would be good too. And better clothes. There was the hunter, perhaps, who she could trade with there.

Her Jackalope Spear was still there, the lashings having not frayed. She had replacement points for them. The hatchet and the pickaxe were both going to be useful, and her bracers, while they itched against her forearms, could maybe withstand a Slash or two before breaking. As for the ore she currently had? Esfir dug a hole beneath her shelter and buried the Bufonite and Chalopyrite in it. The less she needed to carry, the better.

Was that all?

It was hardly a shelter. She wanted at least a bed by tonight too. Maybe a blanket, because she swore that her joints ached in the cold of night, even when her body couldn’t have been more than a month old. A chair with back support. A sharp knife to work wood with.

Esfir closed her eyes.

There were plenty of wants, weren’t there?

For now, though, there was only one need.

She crawled out of her shelter, checked that all her tools and weapons were in place, and beelined for the Training Circle.

Skills

• Ingestion - After consuming a required amount of biomass from a particular Creature, 1 of that Creature's Skills can be copied at its lowest Rank.
• Frost Arc - Rank I - An expanding spray of icy cold, over 10 feet in one direction and 5 feet wide at its furthest edge. The cold is more intense the closer the target is to the origin, reaching its lowest temperature within a span of about 2 feet. It constantly expends Magic Power the longer the cone is maintained.
• Murderous Intent - Rank II - Focus hatred and the desire to kill through the subtle senses. A creature that is weaker than you must exert its willpower or be Intimidated (Intimidated creatures suffer reduced speed). A creature that is already Intimidated, Shocked, or Unaware may instead become Fearful and be unable to act for 5 seconds. Creatures that are stronger than you can only be Intimidated by this Skill if they are already Shocked or Unaware, but their willpower threshold is higher. At Rank II, creatures weaker than you will be made Fearful instead of Intimidated. If they are already Intimidated, Shocked, or Unaware, the effect of Fearful will be extended to 10 seconds. Creatures that are equal to you will suffer Rank I effects.
• Empty Skill Slot

Equipment, Inventory, Shelter

Equipment

• Swaddling Pelts - Equip, Clothes - Old animal skins used to keep an Orc baby warm as they sleep. Once the Runt is old enough to start hunting, these are usually just enough to cover the parts that need the most covering.
• Antler Bracers - Equip, Armor - A type of bone armor used to protect the arms. Materials such as fangs, teeth, horn, antler, etc can be quite tough, but typically aren't as hard as metals. They are somewhat resistant to physical damage, though less so against Blunt impacts. Light Defense Boost!
• Sharp Rock - Equip, Weapon/Tool, Material Component - A rock with a slightly sharp edge. Useful as a primitive knife or chisel. Can be thrown.
• Flint Hatchet - Equip, Weapon/Tool - A sharper edge than a Stone Hatchet of equivalent size, but lighter and more brittle. Requires more strength and proper alignment to get a good chop, but most wood will be cut faster.
• Borrowed Antler Pickaxe - Equip, Weapon/Tool - A pickaxe made with a sturdy piece of wood and a sharpened antler. Can harvest softer stones and some ores! It can be used as a piercing weapon, even on hard shelled creatures, but it wasn't designed for that. High Quality. On Loan from Bowbh.
• Jackalope Spear - 2H Weapon - A decent, if primitive spear. Not suitable as a throwing weapon due to its weight, but made of tough, sturdy materials. Jackalope horn is surprisingly sharp, almost as much so as metal.
• Stomach-Bag - Small bag, improved from an Elwet's stomach.

Inventory

• Gizzard Sparkstone
• Elwet Feathers
• Tungem Branch x3
• Jackalope Point x3]
• Tatzelwurm Fang x2
• Tatzelwurm Claws x3
• Tatzelwurm Coilbone x1
• Crushed Tatzelwurm Eye x2
• Harpy Tooth x1
• Harpy Talon x3
• Harpy Screech Valve x1

Shelter

• Primitive A-Frame Shelter
• Poisoned Bone Caltrops - Small Thrown Weapon/Trap - These bony, unevenly shaped shards have been coated with a poisonous mixture. If stepped on hard enough they'll likely break skin, delivering poison that causes a painful reaction in the nervous system as it spreads. If ingested or inhaled, can cause severe coughing or digestive distress.
• Raw Chalcopyrite Ore x3
• Bufonite x3

@Zeroth

Iris Ascendis

Giving y'all a heads up that Otis will 100% be going



now that everyone else that matters had arrived. As such, I'll post after Est + Psyker + Sifr have.

Reborn in a Fantasy World, This Time I Shall...!

𖦭

STR [2] | DEX [3] | MAG [1] | DEF [1] | RES [1] | AGI [3] | LCK [4]

《 Luck of the Devil 》
Fortune favours the foul. +3 LCK.

_{@Zeroth@TheMushroomLord@PKMNB0Y}

It had been a blink-or-miss-it moment, but his ears had caught the whistling wind, even if his instincts didn’t allow him to react in any way. One moment, the two were focused on the package, and the next, a dagger had stuck itself firmly into a rotten wooden board, while a line of blood traced itself upon Meira’s cheek.

Danger. Palpable, real danger. Sharper than just a crazy bastard shouting at ghosts in the subway. Sharper than a bunch of drunk teens mucking about by the gas station past midnight. Perhaps he should have ignored that sensation, let it pass over. He’d done that plenty of times before, where it’d make more sense to walk away and ignore strange things rather than risk getting stuck beneath months of legal bullshit and fees.

Now though?

He watched the earth-carving swings, the mud and refuse that trailed upwards in the wake of Meira’s strikes. He watched the cloaked man retreat immediately, springing further back down the path, to where C and the slime laid. This was a world of brute violence, wasn’t it? A world of brute violence and…

The High Elf picked up the package. It was heavier than expected, and the weight of the object was off despite its uniform shape. He grasped the handle of the thrown dagger as well, wiggling it out of the wood, examining the blade itself. It glistened in the daylight, a clear fluid clinging to the metallic surface. What was that substance? And, why wou-

This time, his ears caught the whistling wind and he responded properly, Cassius dropping head-first into dirt as a second set of blades flew past where his back had been a blink ago. It pieced itself together too easily now. One for a decoy, to pull the armed adventurer away. Perhaps the knife throw was meant to miss purposefully, knowing that if it had caused actual injury, Meira’s decision-making would have leaned towards rapid escape instead. Perhaps she was known well enough around those parts that they accounted for her berserker behavior.

It didn’t matter much though.

A second individual stepped out, their countenance covered by a mask as they drew a longer blade that glistened with the same poison.

Cassius scrambled to his feet, holding the package to his chest and feeling his heart hammer against it.

Would they leave if he gave up the package? Would they kill him either way, for having been the one to discover it? Should he run, and fundamentally end up running away from the one person who could protect him? Or should he try to fend this assailant off, with nothing more than a knife the length of his hand?

The blood rushing to his head was making him dizzy. The stress compounding, the possibilities twisting.

And just like that, the initiative was given to the masked assassin.

Why Were We Reincarnated as Orcs?!

So Zeroth, how does this whole temporal kinda thing work, now that I'm in the future? Are we just progressing normally, or is this more of just 'Esfir has the opportunity to interact with the other Runts before Auguz's training starts' kinda thing?

Reborn in a Fantasy World, This Time I Shall...!

𖦭

STR [2] | DEX [3] | MAG [1] | DEF [1] | RES [1] | AGI [3] | LCK [4]

《 Luck of the Devil 》
Fortune favours the foul. +3 LCK.

_{@Zeroth@TheMushroomLord@PKMNB0Y}

Grim topics indeed, but it served well enough to get a grasp on Meira’s character. Cassius followed her from behind as their conversation dwindled down, his gaze briefly caught by the swishing and swaying of her tail before being redirected back to his surroundings. She considered herself one step above mercenaries, so she disdained the idea of monetizing her violence for a private group’s interest. She thought little of treasure hunters too, so she wasn’t someone entirely driven by profit at the risk of her own life. Her work pertained towards slaying monsters that would prove a problem for the local populace, or in patrolling such wretched places like these in order to provide some form of protection for the living and dignity to the dead.

Fundamentally, a decent sort. He supposed if she wasn’t, he’d have been lead to an alleyway and gutted by now. Or just knocked unconscious and shipped off to a slave merchant.

That was enough to send a message then.

“Status.”

The translucent window emerged once more, and he glided through the messages from C and Slime that he had missed. Nothing of importance, and nothing that he would be able to change now. Oh well.

The Adventurer’s Guild exists, and Meira, the woman I left with, is part of them. Slimes are categorized as monsters, but are thought of as useful for cleaning up corpses. The city’s name is Neir, the country’s name is Cethaim. King Selm is the top of the hierarchy, and nobles manage territories beneath him. There are no ongoing wars of note. A convenient excuse for our appearance here is a ‘teleportation’ spell. You can make money as a treasure hunter in ‘dungeons’ here or pick up odd jobs as an adventurer, but if both of you finished school, you would likely be able to get a job inside the city.

Also, my name is Cassius.

To: C, Slime

He pressed 'send', and in that moment, as the High Elf wiped away the screen, something stuck out to him. It wasn't something in the air, nor something that he could hear, and certainly not something that stuck out to him as something he could see, but rather...an anomaly. The presence of something misplaced, even here amongst the destitute and decrepit. Nothing more, perhaps, than just a bad feeling, except a weighty enough impression that his golden eyes turned towards a lump of nondescript garbage piled up in the space between two half-collapsed shacks.

"Meira."

He kicked the pile, and the mess spread out further. The carcasses of cooked vermin, scraps of decayed vegetables, rags too soiled and damaged to be worth even cleaning. A litany of trash designed to be too disgusting to interact with, but organic enough that the vermin would take care of it so that you didn't need to.

And within the pile laid a package of something, wrapped up in a leather of unknown origin and bound with a thick cordage that seemed to suck up the orange light of the afternoon.

"Does this count?"

Iris Ascendis

_@Nanaya@Sifr

Monstrous.

It was a creature designed with murder in mind, a great wolf formed from shadow and mist, cleaving through the air with a bladed tail while shards shot out in rapid succession, so powerful that they sunk in the dirt entirely.

And it spoke too, a thoughtful rasp that didn’t match its savage attacks.

“Adapa,” Otis spoke, springing up from the dive-roll he executed to avoid the arrows, “record.”

The Door remained present, a perpetual escape route that would be a death sentence for any enemies to enter, and his Personal Barrier would ensure that he’d be able to absorb at least a few hits if he had to. Information, then, was what he wanted. The arcane tome opened up beside him, burning with that heatless flame, as Hildegunde’s own bullet cracked through the air.

“Only if we leave,” the Strigidae replied, chambering his firearm with ensorcelled bullets. “Watch your eyes.”

The trigger was pulled, and essence-imbued steel flew through the air, the heat generated by air friction triggering a particular reaction mid-flight as it exploded in a blinding flash of light. It was only a distraction, a pause that’d allow him to break up the flow of combat as he aimed his gun skywards next, sending a second bullet upwards past the canopy. That one exploded too, a burst of brilliance to serve as a signal.

“Best to surrender now!” he called out to the shadow-wolf. “Wouldn’t take much longer for Alto to arrive. And amongst the student population, there’s at least ten who have Ethos specialized in hunting and tracking, so it’s a waste of effort to try escaping.”

Lies, all of them.

If conflict could be won with empty threats though, that would be for the best.

Reborn in a Fantasy World, This Time I Shall...!

𖦭

STR [2] | DEX [3] | MAG [1] | DEF [1] | RES [1] | AGI [3] | LCK [4]

《 Luck of the Devil 》
Fortune favours the foul. +3 LCK.

_{@Zeroth@TheMushroomLord@PKMNB0Y}

He was beginning to see what it was then. The Guild existed as a job board, perhaps similar to Upwork or Craigslist, while adventurers were fundamentally freelancers whose trade generally involved violence or travel. Adventurers leveraged the reputation of the Guild in order to get work, while the Guild got a cut of the profits in return. No doubt, there was some sort of vetting service at play, and perhaps more famous adventurers would find themselves working directly for specific employers, but that’d be the gist of it. In the meanwhile, those who eschewed from working with the Guild were still considered adventurers, but spent their time more as treasure hunters, digging through ruins for the gold of dead kings or the like. He had heard of treasure hunters breaking into pyramids; greed and sacrilege were commonalities of humanity, after all.

And, of course, with treasure hunting came sudden deaths. Flammable gas, decaying structures, and perhaps monsters too. Or maybe you just run out of money, after coming across such worthless things as just rusted armor and dry bones, and you end up starving to death instead.

“But people who’d do such things are optimists. There’s only fortune to be had.”

And those who weren’t optimists were snakes, in their own way. Those with a clearer view, indeed, ended up as…

“I was in finance,” Cassius replied. He paused a moment afterwards, trying to figure out how to explain that to someone who didn’t live in a world of global trade and public companies, where the profit of a single company could be worth more than the GDP of a nation. “There are people who give money to businesses, in exchange for the future possibility of getting that money back at a greater or lesser amount depending on how that business develops. My work is in finding out which business is most worth giving money to, before others notice it too. Or do the reverse, and know when to take the money back before the business crashes and burns.”

They shared in the bitterness, perhaps. It was only here that Cassius let out a laugh, like a crack emerging in a frozen lake.

“Fundamentally, I help make more money for people with too much money, so they can spend it on vanity projects. Does that make sense?”

Reborn in a Fantasy World, This Time I Shall...!

𖦭

STR [2] | DEX [3] | MAG [1] | DEF [1] | RES [1] | AGI [3] | LCK [4]

《 Luck of the Devil 》
Fortune favours the foul. +3 LCK.

_{@Zeroth@TheMushroomLord@PKMNB0Y}

The country, Cethaim. The city, Neir. A feudal ruling system, with a King Selm and the nobles that likely managed the cities or provinces. School had stopped teaching medieval history after the eighth grade, but media had kept the knowledge alive regardless. No war though, so it must be a time of peace.

And regarding the cat-eared girl’s response to his own story…

“Too many possibilities,” he echoed.

That was an apt way of describing the difference between where he came from and where he now was. Amoeba the size of basketballs, possessing human intellect. Heads-up displays invisible to all others, yet capable of assigning numerals to vague values. And, of course, mercenaries that hunted monsters while taking the form of lanky youths. It was fictional, and perhaps it was made even more fictional by how ‘C’ had predicted all this through his own consumption of media.

“I’ve no problem with testing. As for the other one, I’ll help him out afterwards, if he wants work.” The elf retracted his hand. Her grip was solid. He felt the calluses, formed by the hilt of that two-handed sword. “And mine…Cassius.”

He blinked, eyes flickering upwards briefly as he reconsidered his thoughts, his words.

Ah, no. It made enough sense. In this feudal, miserable age, where there were no cars, no internet, no central heating, no plumbing, no good food, no entertainment, there was nothing to distract from the mind-numbing nature of ‘work’.

If he died and returned to a world with more possibilities but less quality of life, and if there was no guarantee that his modern education would mean much to aristocrats and those who had wealth, why should he be so eager to delve back into an office job?

Why indeed?

“If you’ve got nothing else to do but patrol, would you mind telling me about your life as an adventurer?”

Revue of Annihilation

It’s finals week for me, so yah, I’ll update on Sunday or something, probs.

Iris Ascendis

Well, we were going fairly fast at the start, and for a fairly long while too. Covered a lotta ground then.