Chapter 77: The War Chessboard!

But thinking it over carefully, this was only natural—if a Fireball Spell were weaker than an arrow, there would be no reason for it to exist at all!

The terror of a mage was laid bare; with Leo’s desperate cover, Dannis became a mobile artillery piece, conjuring a fireball every five seconds on average. Each one, when hurled, would wound a direwolf and set it ablaze.

Within just a minute, the ground around Leo and Dannis was cleared; the direwolves scattered, choosing instead to cross the river to attack the berserker Buffett or to sink their teeth into Harkins, sheathed in his metal armor, rather than risk provoking Dannis.

Old Pete, meanwhile, hid behind Leo and Dannis, playing a game of tag with the direwolves, occasionally directing Dannis and calling out warnings to the others.

Three more direwolf corpses were left behind. Suddenly, a horn sounded in the distance, and all the direwolves abandoned their targets, fleeing toward the source of the horn.

Of the eleven direwolves, six lay dead, five escaped.

One was felled by Ranger Lynch’s pinpoint shot, another by Fisher’s stealthy ambush; the remaining four were beheaded by Barrett.

Direwolves were incredibly resilient. Dannis’s fireballs, Fisher’s daggers and hand crossbow, Harkins’s shield bash and sword, and Lynch’s rain of arrows could only inflict severe wounds—crippling their combat strength and hampering their movement, but not killing them outright.

Fisher’s ambush succeeded for the first time—two foot-long daggers plunged deep into a direwolf’s neck. Even mortally wounded, the beast battled the adventurers for several minutes before collapsing from blood loss.

Only Barrett’s executioner’s greataxe, which severed a direwolf’s head with a single blow, could bring a swift end to their assault.

As the direwolves retreated, Old Pete held his frying pan—having managed not to spill a drop of soup—and clicked his tongue in satisfaction. “Luckily, my sharp command and deft coordination drove off the direwolves. Truly, I am an experienced adventurer.”

Leo, rubbing his sore arms and standing over his shattered round shield, glanced at the self-satisfied Old Pete. For a moment, he couldn’t tell if the man was hiding his true strength or simply blessed with uncanny luck.

After all, an adventurer past fifty is either a master—or a living talisman!

But Harkins and Barrett stared grimly in the direction the direwolves had fled.

Dannis stepped forward and said, “That horn just now was clearly the orcish wolfmaster’s call. Could it be that this pack of direwolves was secretly raised here by the orcs?”

“It’s possible they were brought down from the northern tundra,” Barrett mused. “The direwolves of Wolfdriven Plain have been wild for centuries; they shouldn’t be so well-trained.”

“There are tales that after the Chieftain’s Seal was broken, the beastfolk ruled here for a hundred years, leaving behind many ruins. Some places are still war-fortresses—perhaps the orcs wish to reclaim this land and seize the initiative.”

Listening to their conversation, Leo couldn’t help interjecting, “Shouldn’t we report this to the military?”

Harkins smiled faintly. “Child, the north is now ruled by the legendary Grand Lord, High Knight, and Duke of the Northlands—Mitchell Odarov, known as the Sword Saint of Humanity. He is the greatest and mightiest lord since the first Duke of the North. In his presence, a handful of orcs is hardly worth mentioning.”

“These orcs are little more than bandits, driven south from the far north because they cannot survive there.”

“We need only mind our own affairs. If orcish clans really have arrived, then our journey ahead will be much more dangerous.”

Leo fell silent. Harkins’s view was the prevailing attitude among southern nobles—few believed an orc invasion was a real threat.

Leo had even heard Knight Romon and Uriyan say that many southerners didn’t believe the invasion was real at all. If it were, why hadn’t the orcs invaded two hundred years ago? Or a hundred? Why come now, just as the Empire’s three realms are in turmoil and the lords vie for supremacy? Clearly, it’s just an excuse to demand military funds from the Western and Southern realms!

The garrison at Windgod Fortress, which once answered to the imperial regular army and was under the direct command of the royal family, now had not a single southerner among its soldiers or generals.

It was filled entirely with northern barbarians.

The Empire could no longer control this so-called “imperial army,” which in truth was the private force of the Grand Duke of the North. Yet every year, it still had to pay their enormous wages.

Of course, if you suggested that southerners simply refused to garrison the harsh, frigid banks of the Northern Ice River, they would never admit it.

Thus, the Empire kept cutting the regular army, leaving gaps in the defenses along the Northern Ice River. That stray beastfolk clans might slip through was only to be expected.

Dannis, ever perceptive, noticed Leo’s silence. She offered gentle reassurance: “Don’t worry. Marching across Wolfdriven Plain is difficult—even if the orcs invade, it would only be small clans, able to harass a few villages at most. They could never change the course of the war…”

As a student of the Imperial Academy, Dannis was far better informed than most. The students and professors loved to debate, strategize, and offer their insights on the theater of war.

Compared to the power struggle among the Empire’s three realms, the orc invasion was a minor topic.

Even Dannis knew the common wisdom: as long as Windgod Fortress upstream of the Northern Ice River, and Orlenik at the Storm Fjord downstream, remained unconquered, the orc invasion was nothing more than a nuisance.

But her reassurance was meant for Leo—not the noble youths who could retreat to the south at any time.

Leo responded, exasperated, “Is it the fate of the war that worries me? I’m worried about those ‘small villages’ you speak of!”

Dannis was speechless, and after a long pause could only mutter, “I’m sorry…”

On the chessboard of noble heirs, even a town like Issenpol was a mere pawn; the fate of small villages in the Riverbend fief was beneath notice.

A night of troubled conscience passed for Dannis, while Leo returned to his old self.

He went back to his familiar ways—playfully praising Old Pete, seeking advice from Harkins and Barrett about extraordinary individuals, as if nothing had happened.

It was only then he learned that extraordinary beings were themselves divided into ranks.

Those who had just awakened were called Initiates, or entry-level extraordinaries.

All the members of the adventurer party held this rank. If the classification was divided into three tiers and nine ranks, Barrett was a senior entry-level warrior, the others were mid-level, and Dannis was a newly awakened entry-level initiate.

Grand Duke Mitchell Odarov was said to be a senior of the high tier—a ninth-rank powerhouse, one of the few among humanity, second only to the Saintly tier.

Leo counted on his fingers: “Entry-level, mid-tier, high-tier, Saint, Demigod, True God—six tiers in all? Eighteen ranks altogether? And not until mid-tier senior can you awaken innate combat techniques? So, in short, you get the big skills at rank six?”