Chapter 849 (1/2)

As Obyrn had suspected, Alana appeared after the ogres had demolished the first wave of metal beasts that harried them. Although they were resistant to projectiles, the metal beasts ceased functioning after a single hit from an ogre warhammer. They were fragile, brittle things.

Unfortunately, about twenty ogres died during the struggle. And about ten times that, fully half the group, were bloody and injured in the aftermath. Rather than being designed to fight, the metals beasts were experts at maiming the opponent before they were finished.

As such, Obyrn was in a grim mood when Alana appeared, with another army of metal beasts, and challenged him to a duel. Obyrn turned her down and instead sent another of his Captains. This one was Level 66, one below Alana, and would likely give Obyrn a good show.

The Ogre Captain had been briefed on Alana’s fighting style and wore extremely heavy armor. Alana stabbed him anyway. Her spear glowed with a strange light and turned that heavy armor into paper.

Desperate, the Ogre Captain tried to use his large body to his advantage, yet Alana seemed to have predicted that. She tripped him up with some clever spearplay and moved in for a debilitating blow on his larger joints.

At this point, the Ogre Captain instead simply relied on the thickness of his flesh to protect his vitals and went on an all-out offensive. This worked, in so much as he was able to disarm Alana.

Then, the tiny human woman used her fists to pummel the larger ogre into submission. A bloody and beaten body of the ogre captain crashed to the ground, unconscious.

For several seconds, he didn’t react. Then a furious Obyrn stood and pointed a long finger at Alana. “Fine then. You wish to duel? I will duel you.”

Even though her face was even, Obyrn could sense the change in her aura. Agitation. She had spent quite of a bit of her strength in the prior duel and needed time to recover. Even at her height, fighting against Obyrn would be difficult. To strike her now was to do her a disservice. But Obyrn didn’t care about that.

He was about to walk forward when Duual grabbed his arm. The left head, which had been sleeping previously, snapped awake. “Care, Obyrn. Bad voodoo is heading this way. The hound who rides the ash of calamity has his eyes fixed upon you.”

Then the left head yawned and fell right back asleep. Obyrn looked in askance at the other two heads.

They both shook themselves. “Lefty’s prophecies are always his own. But he is rarely wrong. You must be careful-”

Into the tense atmosphere, a voice spoke.

“What’s going on here…?”

Before he saw the speaker, Obyrn saw Duual slowly stiffen. Both of his awake heads paled, and the sleeping one twitched and frowned, as though tormented by a nightmare. Obyrn smoothly turned and looked at the new arrival.

There were two of them, both human. One male, one female. The female’s gaze cut at Obyrn like a knife, sharp and jagged enough to draw blood. The male was much milder looking, but Obyrn couldn’t help but shiver as he looked at this human. Because there was a… thickness to the air around him that Obyrn recognized.

The day that Obyrn was named Ironfist of the West, he was required to report to the ancestral home of the Ogres: Nordawn. There, he witnessed the Bonehelm, leader of the world. Their eyes met just once when the Bonehelm touched his shoulder and named him an Ironfist in the service of him.

It was like sinking into a vat of honey. Sticky and heavier than expected, that gaze left a persistent residue on you. Such was the strength of this character that every aspect of them contained some fraction of their vicious power.

So it was with the Bonehelm, who left Obyrn shivering for days. So it was with this new arrival, the dark-haired man missing his left arm, on a smaller scale.

This was not an enemy to offend lightly.

Perhaps even worse was that the metal beasts parted and almost a hundred humans flowed forward to gather behind this new arrival. They looked at each other and whispered, awe in their eyes. The relief wafting off of Alana was palpable as she nodded toward the arrival. The spirit of the humans was soaring.

Meanwhile, his people continued to bleed and slowly tire. Obyrn ground his teeth and spoke. “You stand before I, Obyrn Myyr, Ironfist of the West. We have come to conquer this place and seize it for the ogre people-”

“You have ogres on your planet?” The woman with the sharp eyes interrupted, looking at Obyrn with interest.

The man shrugged, seemingly helpless. “Well, we do now.”