Orc Skill Card

Abel had no idea this was an Orc Skill Card, but the card held a strange attraction for him. He took it in his hand and examined it carefully. The card seemed to contain some kind of power.

An idea struck Abel, and he tried extending his mental power into the card. He closed his eyes and focused on sensing it.

The instant Abel's mental power entered the card, he sensed a surge of crude energy. This energy was somewhat similar to his mental power, yet its nature was completely different.

Just then, that crude energy suddenly surged toward Abel's mental power. Abel tried to withdraw his power, but it was already too late. The energy and Abel's mental power became connected.

The scene before Abel's eyes changed, and he became a young werewolf. However, Abel couldn't control this body. It was like watching a movie, only countless times more real.

The young werewolf walked up to a dire wolf, reached out, and placed a hand on its head. He began reciting strange words, but Abel actually understood them at that moment. He even felt as if he had truly mastered the language.

The werewolf's language contained a great many words praising the Beast God, along with some strange, unknown tones that sounded somewhat like a spell. As the words and tones connected and flowed from the werewolf's mouth, the dire wolf's mind slowly seemed to link with the werewolf's. The werewolf could sense the dire wolf's thoughts and command it mentally.

Next, the werewolf mounted the dire wolf and raced away. After the run ended, the werewolf used his battle aura to massage the dire wolf's entire body.

When the entire scene ended, the void before him suddenly began to crack and collapse. Abel felt himself return to his own body, and his mental power was pulled back from the card.

The star at the bottom of the card in Abel's hand slowly dimmed until it finally disappeared. Then the card began to crack apart. Afraid it would explode—the greatsword did that every time—Abel threw the card away. In midair, it completely shattered without exploding, merely fading away slowly as if it had never existed.

However, an additional fragment of memory had appeared in Abel's mind. It contained two things: the orc language and the Mount Strengthening Technique.

The orc language was a common language used by orcs. The Orc Skill Card normally did not include this function, but Abel had directly connected to it with his mental power. The contents of the Orc Skill Card had been created using the orc common language and converted into energy by the Beast God Priest. When Abel connected to the card with his mental power and absorbed that energy, it was equivalent to coming into contact with the orc common language on a spiritual level and directly absorbing it as his own language.

The Mount Strengthening Technique was a skill recorded in the Orc Skill Card. Orcs possessed unparalleled talent in the in-depth study of mounts. Although the name Mount Strengthening Technique sounded ordinary, it was absolutely one of the most fundamental and powerful skills in the Orc Empire. This skill could establish a soul-level connection between the user and their mount and enhance the mount's abilities through battle aura.

At the same time, Abel also learned what that card was: an Orc Skill Card from the Orc Empire. Orcs activated such cards with their blood to learn the contents within. They did not connect directly with their mental power as Abel had. If the Beast God Priest who created this Orc Skill Card had been of a higher rank, Abel's actions might have caused unknown and terrifying consequences.

Now that Abel had mastered the orc language, he picked up the parchment again and discovered that it recorded the time and place when the orc squad would meet up with all the other squads. This discovery excited Abel greatly. Once he knew the time and location of the rendezvous, he only needed to organize an army to wipe out all the orcs who had entered the human world.

Actually, such a parchment should not have been in the hands of an ordinary orc. However, Simon had planned to leave the squad and hide while waiting for the dire wolf to give birth, so he had copied this map before leaving the squad.

Abel suddenly remembered the werewolf camp. After checking the sky, he saw that it was already very late. His inferior horses were still at the werewolf camp, and there was also a dire wolf to consider. Following the path he had taken before, Abel slowly made his way back to where he had tied up the horses.

All the beasts in the area had been hunted by the werewolves, so the two inferior horses had remained tied there for so long without anything happening to them. They were leisurely eating the wild grass on the ground.

Abel looked toward the werewolf camp in the distance. The dire wolf seemed to sense that its master's prolonged absence meant danger, and anxiously tried to stand up.

Looking at the dire wolf in the camp, Abel secretly felt regretful. An adult dire wolf that had already recognized a master could not recognize another one. Its master had died, so the dire wolf was worthless now.

Abel slowly approached the dire wolf, drawing the Ice Magic Sword from his back as he did so. He crept forward carefully. When the dire wolf saw Abel, its master had not returned, but the enemy had. Its eyes were filled with sorrow.

The dire wolf let out a whimper. A trace of pleading showed in its sorrowful eyes. Abel found it strange. The sky had already darkened somewhat, but in the light cast by the last rays of the setting sun, Abel saw a tiny figure beneath the dire wolf. It was struggling desperately, only half out of the dire wolf's body.

The dire wolf was giving birth. Abel stopped walking, never expecting it to give birth here. He had heard of such creatures—the fastest mounts in legend, and the most loyal mounts. The Orc Empire controlled them extremely strictly. No pregnant dire wolf would ever appear on a battlefield, much less in the human world. Yet this dire wolf was actually giving birth in the human world.

Abel couldn't help thinking of the Mount Strengthening Technique he had just learned. Possessing a perfect mount was the highest ideal of any knight. His heart burned with excitement at the sight of a cub belonging to a mount so strictly controlled by the Orc Empire.

According to rumor, a dire wolf could only recognize as its master the first creature it saw after birth. This was why it was rare to hear of humans in the human world owning such mounts. To the people of this world, a good mount was almost the same concept as a supercar on Earth. Just think of the obsession people on Earth had with supercars, and one could understand how obsessed the people of this world were with fine mounts.

Seeing that Abel had stopped approaching, the dire wolf focused once more on the cub being born. It was clearly in great pain, yet it made no sound, as if afraid of disturbing the child struggling desperately for life.

Under Abel's gaze, a new life emerged from the dire wolf. The birth had taken too much strength from the tiny creature. It closed its eyes, seemingly recovering its energy.

The dire wolf glanced at Abel, then turned around and extended its tongue to carefully lick the tiny cub's head and body. It slowly cleaned the cub's fur from head to toe with great care, its eyes filled with reluctance to part.

Suddenly, the dire wolf sprang up from the ground and charged toward a large tree several meters away. The tree had grown for many years and was fifty centimeters in diameter. When Abel saw the dire wolf stand, he thought it was going to attack him and prepared himself, but he never expected it to head toward the tree instead.

"Bang!" The sound of the dire wolf's head striking the tree was followed immediately by the crack of its skull. The dire wolf fell to the ground, its head covered in blood.

Abel had never seen such a fierce and loyal creature. It possessed a mother's instincts, yet its feelings for its former master surpassed everything else, allowing it to abandon its newborn child and end its life in such a tragic manner.

Abel took out the Ice Magic Greatsword and began digging into the ground. Before long, he had dug a large pit. He placed the dire wolf's body inside and filled the pit back in. A life like this deserved his respect, and Abel did not want other beasts to harm its corpse.

By then, the little dire wolf had slowly recovered. It let out a soft, infantile cry, as if calling for its mother.

Abel crouched down and lifted the little dire wolf from the ground. Its body was covered in wet black fur. It was soft all over and incredibly light. Abel held it carefully, afraid to apply any force lest he hurt it. Looking at the tiny life in his arms, Abel unexpectedly felt as if he had become a father.