Encountering Orcs Again

Western Britain.

Anno had ridden his horse through the night until the beast was nearly dead, yet he finally arrived at dawn the next day.

The orcs had already begun their invasion. From afar, he could see a knight order putting up a resistance, but it was clear that, outnumbered and physically outmatched, the knights were in a dire situation.

Moreover, only a small fraction of the orcs were engaging the knights; the main horde remained further back, a dense, swarming mass eyeing Britain with predatory intent.

Anno leaped directly from his horse, as if taking flight.

Anno had sensed something wrong with his physical capabilities while fighting Vortigern. He could easily lift and hurl boulders and building debris larger than a man, not to mention the explosive speed he had displayed while dodging Vortigern's breath, or the way he had driven an iron spear through dragon hide that even King Uther struggled to cut.

Now, he had vaulted nearly ten meters into the air.

His body seemed to have become absurdly powerful during his battle with Vortigern—or rather, it had been strong all along, but Anno had never realized it until the sense of crisis during that fight forced him to acknowledge the sheer magnitude of his own strength and speed.

This was certainly not a level attainable by an ordinary human, but Anno did not dwell on it.

Landing on the ground, Anno was still about a kilometer away from where the knights and orcs were clashing, yet no one had noticed his arrival.

Drawing his sword, Anno reached the front lines in just over two minutes.

After a month's absence, Anno once again faced the creatures known as orcs.

As his blade swept through, before anyone could react, Anno had already slaughtered nearly ten orcs with the force of a thunderbolt.

Anno had been in contact with these creatures for half a year, killing at least a few every single day. On his most intense day, he had encountered an orc settlement by a river and spared no one—not the old, the weak, the women, or the children. He had wiped out nearly three hundred orcs, leaving his wrists numb from the slaughter.

Orcs were creatures with immense reproductive capabilities and a taste for human flesh. Having witnessed the fate of those preyed upon by them, Anno had long ago placed the species on his permanent blacklist: see one, kill one.

It was precisely because of these past six months that Anno knew their movement patterns and weaknesses with absolute clarity.

The most skilled orc butcher—that was what one could call Anno.

A sharp-eyed knight spotted Anno, who had abruptly cut into the flank, and shouted with excitement: "Everyone, reinforcements have arrived!"

Hearing that reinforcements had arrived, the knights' plummeting morale instantly surged.

Only the lord of the knight order thought with confusion: I don't recall any reinforcements being sent.

The orcs also noticed Anno slaughtering their kin. A commotion broke out, but they could not withstand the onslaught of a single man.

Anno kicked the back of an orc's knee, and as the creature stooped, he leaped up and delivered a fierce strike to the back of its neck, sending its head tumbling to the ground.

With Anno's assistance, the knights erupted with considerable combat prowess, driving back the hundreds of orcs that had been probing their lines.

In the end, with the main orc army in the rear holding back, the knight order suffered casualties amounting to nearly half their number, while Anno remained completely unscathed, having killed the majority of the hundreds of orcs and driven the rest back.