In truth, as Morgoth's principal servants, Half-orcs did not hate fire the way they feared sunlight.
Yet the Half-orcs fighting Allen that day had come to feel differently. The strange smell of roasting flesh in the air and the agonized cries of their kin assaulted their nerves without pause.
The relatively clever Half-orcs pieced together what had happened from the humans' strange actions earlier and the way the flames were spreading.
Some of the Half-orcs drenched in oil, in particular, began shoving their fellows aside like madmen and running toward the cavern entrance to avoid their burning kin.
They had only one goal: to get away from the flames chasing them and escape being burned alive.
This frantic flight spread like a plague, infecting countless Half-orcs in an instant.
Seized by the same terror, they surged forward after the fleeing Half-orcs. When they noticed that the human soldiers had even cleared the cavern entrance for them, they ran faster still.
The passage, which retained a trace of darkness amid the firelight, seemed to have become their only escape route. Desperate to survive, they had no time to consider why the humans had stepped aside.
Most of the Half-orcs no longer cared about the human soldiers. The piercing screams of their kin behind them were like death-dealing Nazgûl, driving them out of the cavern.
The passage was nearly five meters wide, allowing the Half-orcs who had not caught fire to escape the hellish main entrance in very little time.
Inside the cavern, aside from the humans and horses, only dozens of burning corpses and over a hundred screaming, suffering torches remained.
Allen raised his weapon and casually cut down a few Half-orcs. Watching the others flee so quickly, he froze for a moment and thought, *I have to hand it to