Chapter 55: Fort Redstone

It was hard to sleep. Everyone tossed and turned on their beds, and that was not just because the beds were minimal and uncomfortable. No matter how they look at it, they were in a fort full of green-skinned creatures, and even if they took shifts for night watch, none of them could feel safe

Herrera took this chance playing a damsel in distress trying to be close to Tristan. Not that he can't appreciate a beautiful girl being all over him but currently he has something bothering him.

He found it rather odd that the Mayor would send troops to help them. It's not like they are someone important, they are in fact just a group of adventurers behind enemy lines.

Even though the mayor has an interest in his 'outlander' information, Tristan still finds it weird that the mayor would go to such lengths just for this information. Are the outlander weapons really that valuable?

When the sun started to peek out from the edge of the sky, Tristan woke up from his slumber and decided to check the orcs' defenses and fighting forces.

Fort Redstone was a decently-sized structure, around as wide as a baseball field. The gentle sound of the running river could be heard on the northern side, leading into a moat covering the west sides of the fort.

In the middle stood the structure where the warchief resides, a 10-meter high stone keep. Some of the walls had cracks in them.

As for the wall going all around the fort, it was also made of stone and about three meters tall. The wall was reinforced with shrapnel and other kinds of odd knick knacks.

Round towers about 6 meters high stood, one on each, of the three sides of the fort. While the front gate facing the east was packed with a gatehouse, complete with its own wooden drawbridge.

It was a classic medieval fort. The similarities made Tristan wonder if there was any connection between this world and earth; within each world's history.

Tristan looked around the fort, looking for what structures they could use to better defend the place and which things he had to look out for. As well as things that could be improvised to attack their enemies. From his initial check, he realized that although the fort looked impressive from afar, it was actually in very poor condition.

There were cracks and rubbles all over the place, which made him wonder about the age of the fort.

As he walked towards the eastern wall, he was shocked to see a huge hole three meters wide in one part of the wall.

What the fuck?! Why is this part left open?"

Unfortunately, that was not the only problem he found about the fort.

The eastern roundtower was unusable, it had been turned into a storage room full of rubble and junk. The well which is supposed to be the vital part of the fort in case of siege was empty and finally, the worst of all, the drawbridge and the main gate were broken and unusable. They were not even able to close the gate.

"…"

Tristan was stunned into silence.

Right then, Tristan realized that this place was just an abandoned fort. The place was merely used as a settlement rather than a defensive structure, and thus, the parts that could aid them in defense were never maintained.

The more Tristan took a look at his current situation, the more he lost his initial confidence to defend the place.

He decided to try finding Ghral the warchief to talk more about the weakness of the fort. He spent several minutes asking around, but apparently, he was currently away hunting.

"…"

Tristan sighed. "Great, at a time like this, even the leader goes away for hunting. How bad could this situation get?"

Well, at least there was one bright side – the fort was filled with hundreds of strong fighters. Although when he tried to ask around, none of the orcs knew how many orcs were here in the fort.

Karra was helpful enough to accompany him to look around and show the orc warriors to him.

With this Tristan got Barry to help by counting the green skinned people he saw, while he went around using his scanner to get a rough estimate of their strength and numbers.

Today he just learned that there are two orc categories. One was called gretchin, which refers to a 'regular' orc, while the warrior orc was called the grunts.

The Gretchin are orcs that are young and those who have more bestial physical appearance and lesser strength. They were treated as lower-class orcs and forced to do manual labor to contribute to the horde's well-being.

From the note Barry read before, it seems that the gretchin were suspected to be more crafty than the grunts

As for the champion, it is the veteran who manages to evolve their physique to the next level.

In the end, Tristan found a total of 311 orcs gathered at the fort

[Gretchin: 68]

[Grunt: 238]

[Champion: 3]

Other than their physical looks, Tristan could see from his scanner that the gretchin's battle power range is around 20. The grunts are around the 40 battle power. While the champions ranged from 60 to 80 battle power.

Adding Ghral the Warchief, High Orc Karra, and the young high orcs, those are the forces that will defend the fort.

Considering the condition of the fort and the number of orcs, Tristan can only hope that the opponent will come in a lesser number.

When he was just thinking about the opponent, suddenly a loud sound could be heard from outside the fort.

THHOOOTTTHHHHH

The echo of a loud horn rang from the east. From where he stood, Tristan was able to see hundreds of figures gathering atop the hill, All heavily armed.

There are at least twice the number of the orcs at the fort. Tristan honestly thought that he would have some time to prepare or rest. But time was not so kind for him and the battle to defend Fort Redstone was about to start.