Camera Legion

Rain hammered against the shack's wooden roof. Wood did little to block sound, and the pattering easily carried inside.

The man cursed the miserable weather irritably, but his hands never stopped. With a sweep and a pass, the card before him was switched. He was certainly fast, but unfortunately, there was a flaw—when he swapped the cards, a corner showed between his fingers.

If two of his fingers had not already been chopped off, how could his work have become this crude?

A little boy stood beneath the eaves outside the door, staring inside with longing. His mouth hung slightly open, his throat bobbing as though he wanted to say something, but in the end, he chose silence.

The man noticed him, pulled off a toe-exposing shoe, and hurled it at him. "What are you looking at? Get lost! If you don't bring back food today, do you want another beating tonight?"

The boy ran through the rain and back onto the muddy street.

Just then, the door to the inner room opened. Three people who could barely be said to afford complete outfits emerged, wiping sweat from their brows. When they reached the doorway and saw him still practicing card switches, they snickered and tossed down several copper coins.

The man hurriedly dropped to his knees and carefully picked them up.

The leader mocked, "Still practicing? Keep it up, and you won't be able to keep those remaining fingers either."

After he spoke, the other two burst into the perfunctory laughter required whenever a superior finished telling a boring joke. They held an umbrella over their leader and vanished into the rain together.

The man remained on his knees. His fingerless hand could not grasp several coins at once, so he could only pick up one, put it into his pocket, then painstakingly pry up the next.

In a mosquito-like voice, he repeated, "I'll turn it around someday. Someday I'll turn it around and win every last thing from you..."

Suddenly, the room, already dim from the overcast sky, seemed to grow even darker.

The man looked toward the door. An orc blocked the light. He was so massive that he had to turn sideways to enter.

"Y-you are?" Seeing that the orc said nothing, the man guessed he might have come by reputation and hurriedly called into the room, "Come out and greet the guest."

A disheveled woman emerged, her eyes vacant and numb, her back hunched. Just as she was about to bow, she noticed that the visitor was an orc and hurriedly waved her hands. "Orcs won't do, no... no..."

Slap!

The man struck the woman across the face. "What do you mean, won't do? There's no such thing!"

The orc did not answer. Instead, he pulled out a portrait from his waist pouch and compared it with them.

Unable to tell what the other party wanted, the man probed again. "Oh, so you were sent here to buy a child. Look at my eyesight—I have another girl here. I guarantee she's as pretty as the last one."

The orc put away the portrait.

The man continued, "Don't want a girl? I understand. You're doing work for the Church, then that's easy enough. I have boys too."

At that, the woman suddenly went mad. "You can't touch him! He's the sacrifice chosen by Lord Mammon! He must be offered to Lord Mammon!"

The orc paid no attention to their quarrel. He put the portrait back into his waist pouch and drew the hunting knife every orc carried from his belt.

It was merely a "small knife" by orc standards, yet its blade was thirty centimeters long, gleaming coldly.

The man realized the visitor meant trouble and immediately grabbed the scissors from the table. He gripped them with both hands and lunged at the orc's chest, trying to strike first.

There was only a flash of steel, and the man never had to worry about losing his remaining fingers again.

Like a skilled butcher carving up pork, every cut and movement was smooth. The entire process took less than two seconds, and a pair of "pig trotters" was cleanly removed intact.

Before he could even feel the pain, the orc's huge hand clamped around the man's neck and lifted him up.

After chanting a harsh-sounding orcish phrase, the struggling man quickly fell still. His eyes rolled back, foam spilling from his mouth. It was impossible to say whether he was dead or alive.

The orc tossed him aside like garbage.

The orc looked at the crazed woman. "Orcs do not strike enemies incapable of resistance. You may choose to surrender, or seek your final honor."

A moment later, the wooden shack was ablaze, and the rain could not extinguish the dancing flames.

This was the power of magic.

"May nature cleanse the wicked thoughts of the guilty." The orc priest offered a brief prayer.

"Priest, Battleaxe has gathered all the children."

"Not all of them!" In Drogo's underground dragon lair, Mila's small body was taut. She stubbornly remained standing, only repeating over and over, "Not all of them. My little brother is still missing. Not all of them. My little brother..."

Drogo looked at Battleaxe, who shook his head.

He left the task of comforting the child to Flynn for now. He had a more urgent target.

"Have you confirmed the identity of that purple-robed person?" Drogo asked the priest.

"They never showed their face. That robe is the uniform of an organization. There should be quite a few members, but they only wear it during operations. To find them, we will likely have to keep watch and wait until their next operation."

Keeping watch was no hardship for orcs. They were all experienced hunters, skilled at tracking prey.

But the problem was that Drogo did not have enough manpower.

Twin Towers City was, after all, a city-state dominated by humans. Other races lived there as well, but in relatively small numbers. To avoid drawing too much attention, whether orcs, goblins, or drow, only elite squads had been brought into Twin Towers City. Their total numbers were limited, making citywide surveillance impossible.

The undead and fishmen could not appear in the city at all. Was he supposed to plant cameras all over the streets?

Wait, that actually might work.

Drogo suddenly remembered that Yuno had recently been researching with the goblins how to make undead cameras multifunctional and portable, with real-time image monitoring. He did not know how far their work had progressed.

But why goblins? How had Yuno, a highly educated professional from a proper research institute, ended up working with goblins?

"Bring Yuno here."

Very soon, Yuno and Ren 82 arrived at Drogo's side with several undead cameras.

Ren 82 looked extremely excited, while Yuno looked as though his SAN had been emptied and he had been thoroughly played to ruin.

The goblins hadn't done something to him, had they?

"Uh, Yuno, how is your camera improvement project progressing?"

"Not bad, not bad. But Mr. Ren 82 deserves most of the credit. He proposed the modifications and completed the more difficult parts. I only did some minor supporting work."

"If I wanted to implement camera surveillance across all of Twin Towers City right now, could it be done?"

"Theoretically, yes."

Drogo looked at the undead cameras. They did not seem any different from before.

Then Ren 82 began tearing one of the cameras apart with great force, separating it into many pieces and introducing them one by one.

"This is the head camera. It has... a levitation spell added. It can... film from the sky."

Drogo understood. A drone.

"This is... the hand camera. It can climb walls... and ceilings."

"This is the lung camera. Underwater... it controls air output and depth..."

"This is the small intestine camera. It can enter... narrow places..."

"Enough, enough. No need to introduce them all." Drogo was starting to feel sick himself. The fact that Yuno could still endure it only showed his astonishing mental fortitude.

"In short, these things can be deployed throughout the city, right?"

"Yes. Add invisibility."

Hopefully the invisibility spell would not fail, Drogo thought. He was not afraid of anything happening to the cameras. He was just worried that someone might see one of these things, suffer a heart attack, and drop dead on the spot.

Three days later, in Twin Towers City's temporary surveillance room.

The drow on duty activated a sound-transmission rune. "Target in purple robes spotted. Repeat, target spotted!"