182 Encounter (1/2)

It was past midnight, and this time, there was no full moon to illuminate the woods with its aesthetic silvery sheen. There was but darkness, black like tar and just as thick, the stars themselves shy to shine tonight.

Li thought about the approaching force of orcs. He had made contact with them beforehand, actually, before he had even called the adventurers to battle.

Throughout the early morning, he was keeping tabs on them through a remotely controlled Shadowfly.

Using the fly, Li knew that they were traveling in a tightly organized group through another forest to the West that provided cover to them. Spread out to minimize detection and using a system of rotating scouts to find uninhabited pathways.

All things considered, that already was more than enough precaution, meaning they truly did value stealth, as if they were on some covert operation. They moved quickly, too, with the same discipline Li would have expected out of a trained covert ops group.

Until the Winterwoods were reached, signs of civilization between the Hinterlands and the greater duchy of Soleil were slim, with only a few frontier villages surrounded by the thick of the wild. It was easy for the orcs to avoid the few roads that existed, and this far out west, no knightly patrol would be able to respond to them properly.

There was no real need for them to be this secretive, so why the precautions?

And there were more questions, too.

When he scanned the orcs, he realized that they were in healthy condition. They were not at all weary from what would have been over weeks of intensive traveling, nor did they show any signs of hunger or battle damage from scuffling with any of the many monsters roaming the far western forests which tended to have higher level creatures.

Unlike Trolls, orcs did not possess regeneration and instead had special skin of some sort. Iceborn orcs had frost-resistant and chill inducing skin, Forestborn orcs had skin that numbed pain and provided immunity to toxins, and so on. In other words - any sign of battle damage would be evident on them.

They had, despite being obviously noticeable two and a half meter tall figures of solid-built muscle and bladed tusks, been able to navigate so much land unnoticed and unharmed. Furthermore, they were unarmed, traveling as light as they could, not a hint of supplies on them.

Li had requested Sindra to check with the Adventurer's Guild for the few reports that came from the frontier villages back to the Adventurer's Guild and found that supply carrying rocs had not noticed anything wrong with the villages.

The alternative was that without food and equipment, the orcs had traveled, presumably by foot, an unimaginable distance through vast swathes of hostile territory.

And all for what?

Li had wished to talk to them to answer these questions, and he had unstealthed his Shadowfly in front of what he recognized as the sole warchief of the band. Resonating his voice through the Shadowfly, Li had simply asked the warchief an initial question of why he was presumably heading to Riviera.

The warchief had merely smiled and responded with a not at all helpful, ”You will see, little forest spirit,” before destroying the Shadowfly.