‘Roo Roo, what do you think of him?’
As the butcher was taking the last drag out of his smoke, Altashia patted the baby crow sitting on her shoulder and asked. Roo was the name of the baby crow that watched the battle unfold in front of it with keen and intelligent eyes.
‘Hm? Do you also think he is weird? Hehehe. Weird how though?’
The baby crow narrowed its eyes while alternating looking at him with both its pupils at a time before croaking in a low-pitched manner. Yet somehow, Altashia was able to understand what that croak entailed.
‘Hehehe! What do you mean he feels just like me? Are you calling me weird too? You can be so silly and childish at times, Roo. Hehehe.
You are just beginning to learn human language and etiquette after all. Maybe I shouldn’t ask you about these things.’
Altashia patted the baby bird’s head and concluded the matter. The young raven on the other hand croaked some more before keeping quiet. Eren vanished from his position to participate in the battle between Sid and the golem-making Orc Leader.
Sid was going to get crushed under the weight of a giant mace that was going to fall on him soon. That was the attack initiated by a new golem who had come to make trouble for the berserker while he was busy tackling three opponents.
“Damn it. You fucking beast, show your worth.”
Sid forced the contract beast to manifest itself once again. This act was surely going to put the beast’s soul under a strain. Something that could potentially damage it and make the beast tattoo disappear. But Sid didn’t care anymore.
Meeeeerh!
The lightning bull was manifested once again. It let out an angry growl that was mixed with some pain and agony. It snorted its nose towards its master before focusing its gaze on the two golems nearest to him.
He scratched the earth with his hooves before charging toward his two enemies with reckless abandon. Meanwhile, Sid was beginning to feel some load getting off his shoulders because he had two fewer enemies to deal with.
But this is where he got blindsided.
“Creeeeee!”
A golem-looking opponent that was battling with him for a while suddenly stopped his rigid movements and burst into action he hadn’t performed yet. He summoned two large axes on either hand and got into a striking range from Sid.
Woooosh!
The golem swung one of his axes horizontally, which the berserker easily avoided. But this was the decoy the golem-looking opponent had used to get him into a vulnerable position. The berserker had ducked from the horizontal attack by tilting back exaggeratedly. But now that he saw the other axe coming for his heart from above him in a vertical swing, he had nowhere to dodge.
Ba-dump!
The earth-mana imbued weapon tore through the armour. It lodged itself deep inside Sid’s left shoulder as he fell flat on his back because of the unbearable force he experienced.
“Aaaaaaaaaargh!”
Sid cried in pain. Yet the attack’s noise had suppressed his scream. The magnitude of the force was so overwhelming that it had created a crater in which the berserker and the golem-looking opponent had found themselves.
At the last moment, Sid had shifted his torso a bit and changed the point of impact for the weapon from his heart to his shoulder. The berserker armour he was wearing also negated a substantial amount of damage. Otherwise, the surprise attack would have killed him on the spot.
But it was not like he was in better shape now. The sword of death was still hanging over his head due to his fragile condition right now. His first-response lightning spell couldn’t do anything to deter the Orc Leader from attacking him any further.
When the attack landed on Sid’s armour, a dense pulse of mana was released. The tremors ran through the weapon before it reached its wielder. Those tremors made the earthen armour skin crumble, revealing the real opponent hiding within.
This was none other than the Orc Leader himself. He had mixed himself within one of his golem creations from the very moment he had started casting the golem creation spell. Mana pulses were going off everywhere in the vicinity. Additionally, the nocturnal darkness, as well as the dust storm triggered by the battle, had made it difficult for everyone to see.
The Orc Leader took advantage of this situation and doubled himself as one of his golem creations. In addition, he conjured a special golem that looked and felt just like him to take his place holding the shield.
Sid had realized that he had been tricked. He only considered the Orc Leader to be a defensive specialist. He would have never imagined that the monster could pull off something of this calibre.
Kahkahkahkahkah!
The Orc Leader laughed weirdly as he literally and metaphorically looked down upon his opponent. His decoy plan had been a huge success. But that was not all he did. He used his other hand and launched another vertical axe slash at the berserker– aiming to split his brain open into two. One had to say that, unlike a certain berserker, the monster didn’t indulge in mid-battle vainglory for long and attacked one final time when the time was most ripe.
Swoosh!
The axe was swung and its blade was just about to land right in the middle of Sid’s face. But something tugged at the orc’s arm and the attack landed right above the target’s head. Neither the orc nor the berserker was aware of what happened at first. They took some time to realize that someone had intervened at the last moment.
Altashia saw Eren appearing right in the middle of two participants and pulling the Orc Leader’s arm at him at the last second. This caused him to miss the target that was Sid’s face by only a slight margin.
The attack still damaged his hair and gave him a weird haircut though.
