Or at least, it had been until three Orcs broke down the crude wooden walls surrounding the village and made their way inside.

“R-run, it’s Orcs!”

“Hyiiih!”

The villagers ran for their lives. Orcs, a familiar enemy for adventurers, were great threats for poor villagers who were former refugees.

If it was only one Orc, perhaps the hunters and village’s young men would be able to surround it and somehow chase it away, but with three of them together, there was nothing to be done.

If all of the men in the village attacked them together, it might be possible for them to send them back, but including the farmlands, the village was quite large. It was impossible to swiftly gather all of the men from all over the village, arm them with farming tools for weapons and have them attack these Orcs who had appeared without warning.

The Orcs casually lumbered through the village, looking around at the fleeing villagers as if evaluating them.

“Kyah!”

Right in front of them, a young girl fell down. It seemed that it would take her another year or two to reach adulthood, but she was plenty old enough to satisfy the Orcs’ twisted lust.

“Bufufuh.”

The three Orcs all scrambled towards her.

“Beth! I’m coming!” A Beast-person boy of the same age as the girl, with the ears and tail of a wolf, ran towards her with a hoe in his hands.

“Morris! It’s too late, you can’t help me! You have to run!” the girl shouted.

“No way! I’m not going to hand you over to those Orcs, Beth!”
The boy had broken free of the grip of the male wolf Beast-person who appeared to be his father in order to run to his childhood friend, who was probably the girl that he loved.

“Morris, you can’t come here!” Beth was also trying to stop him.

She knew that he wouldn’t be able to defeat Orcs. Of course, Morris knew this as well.

If a child like him could defeat Orcs with a hoe, adventurers wouldn’t have trouble against them. He would certainly be beaten to death by the Orcs’ clubs, only delaying Beth’s violation by a few seconds.

But even so, Morris couldn’t stop himself from taking these actions. “You guys, your opponent is me!”

Seeing a boy raising a hoe to face them, the Orcs welcomed him with a derisive laugh. Right next to the female was a young male who looked like he had tender meat.

“Buhohoh!”

An Orcs raised its club, looking to quickly kill the boy and turn him into meat.

“UOOOH!”

Morris’s hoe was repelled by the surface of the Orc’s body, failing to pierce its thick fat and the muscle beneath it.

Despair appeared on Morris’s face.
Suddenly, blood sprayed through the air.

Thinking that this was Morris’s blood, Beth shut her eyes. Morris himself thought that he had died.

“That’s one. Next, Heavy Fist.”

But the villagers saw what had happened. A white child had descended from the sky at an incredible speed and burst the Orc’s head with a single attack.

“Bugiiih?!”

An Unarmed Fighting Technique martial skill that was easy to avoid, yet had the power to make up for this weakness, struck the second Orc’s head and killed it.

“Bugoh?!”

The third Orc regained its senses and raised its club, but in the eyes of Vandalieu, who had completed training with Braga and the other Black Goblins, this movement was far too slow.

Vandalieu’s claws pierced the Orc cleanly, administering more than a lethal dose of neurotoxin.
The Orc convulsed several times before collapsing as its knees gave out.

“H… huh?”

And then Vandalieu turned around to speak to the boy who was staring at him blankly. “That was questionably reckless, but people can be taken over by their emotions, so I can understand your actions. I have memories of doing such things, too. What I’m trying to say is, I’m glad I could save you.”

“Y-yeah, thanks.” Morris instinctively thanked the blood-soaked, smoothly-speaking boy floating in the air with his arm bent at an odd angle.