CH 44.1

Orc Hero Story

Chapter 44. The first apprentice

The heavy downpour continued. Bash and the Ogre siblings took shelter in a nearby cave, not wanting to stand outside talking in the rain. The three of them now faced each other around a campfire.

“I want to thank you again. I am Ludo, son of the great warrior Lula Lula. This is my sister Luka.”

Ludo, son of Lula Lula, the Ogre Great Warrior. Luka, daughter of Lula Lula, the Ogre Great Warrior. This was how the twins introduced themselves.

“I’m Bash.”

The moment he said that, the younger sister, who had been looking at Bash with curiosity, looked up with a start.

“Bash!? You don’t mean that Sir Bash who became the Orc Hero after the war, do you!?”

“Yes.”

“Your prowess has been passed on to the Ogres as well! It’s an honor to meet you!”

Noticing her attitude, Ludo turned to look at her.

“Eh, so he’s someone famous?”

“My brother has yet more to learn. If we’re talking about Sir Bash, the Orc Hero, he’s a great hero on par with our mother! Without Sir Bash, we would have lost many battles!”

Luka’s eyes sparkled as she looked at Bash. She was like a child looking at a hero from a fairy tale. From Bash’s point of view, it was a familiar look.

“Are you sure you’re the real one?”

“Yes.”

“Can you swear by the Orc King that you are the real one?”

“I swear it by Nemesis, the Orc King.”

“He is the real one!”

Normally, swearing by the Orc King Nemesis was not something that could be done so easily. But for a child it was okay. It was normal for Orcs to lie to children. Of course, it was not a lie that Bash was Bash, nor that he was a warrior who could swear by the Orc King Nemesis.

“But you are the son and daughter of Miss Lula Lula?”

“Yes!”

“How is she now?”

Lula Lula, the Great Warrior. She had many titles, but the most famous was “Frozen Eyes”. Lula Lula of the Frozen Eyes. She was a famous warrior.

She was a three-eyed ogre. Three-eyed ogres were not that rare. However, her three eyes were born with a blue glow, and from them came ice spears that impaled all of her enemies. Of course, that wasn’t her only strength, for she was a warrior known as a Great Warrior. Bash had also seen her on the battlefield several times, holding a metal club in each hand and lunging forward. He remembered seeing her turn several human soldiers into pieces of flesh with a single blow, using her tremendous physical strength and ogre-like agility.

During the war, she was said to be one of the candidates to become the next Chief. And even if she did not become the Chief, they were sure that she would be one of the leading figures of the ogre race.

Besides, her appearance was more than beautiful. She was a favorite. If she had not died or gotten married, Bash might have attacked.

However, the ogre race held a higher rank in the Alliance than the orcs. It was considered the greatest humiliation for an ogre woman to be impregnated by someone of a lower rank. No matter how much of an Orc Hero Bash was, he would never be taken seriously.

Of course, Bash had no intention of making a move on the younger sister. In another 10 years, or at least 5, she would grow up to be a beautiful ogre woman, but right now she was not to Bash’s liking. The orcs did not consider a woman who was not old enough to bear children to be a woman.

“She is dead.”

It was Ludo who answered.

“I see. Was it an illness?”

“She fell in battle.”

“A warrior of that caliber…” Bash grunted. In his memory, she had been a particularly strong warrior. Very strong indeed. “That’s the thing. By the end of the war, anyone could have died.”

However, Bash knew several warriors who were better than that. For example, Thunder Sonia, the Great Elven Archmage, or Leto, the Hero, would have been able to defeat even Lula Lula. Or even if not, they were outnumbered at the end of the war. Even if their troops were not as strong as Lula Lula in a one-on-one fight, they would be able to defeat her if they gathered a thousand or ten thousand men.

“No, sir. My mother was killed after the war.”

“In a duel?”

Ogres, like Orcs, were a warlike race. They were stoic and strong-willed, unlike the orcs, who were drunkards and womanizers. When they weren’t drinking or mating, they trained, and duels were fought to test the results of their training.

“No, she was killed by foul means at the hands of a despicable person.”

“What? How could they have killed her?”

“Well, we don’t know how they actually fought… but I don’t think my mother, who was so strong, would have lost in a hand-to-hand fight. And her body was left there. Of course, with dirty methods. That’s why we went on this journey to avenge her death.”

Today, the world as a whole strives to remain peaceful. In this peaceful world, “revenge” was not encouraged. War was a thing of the past. Even though there were some hard feelings, the leaders of each country had decided to put the past behind them for the time being.

However, not everyone was in favor of this development, as some orcs became wanderers as they could not agree with the Orc King’s decision.

Some traveled across the continent to avenge their parents killed in the war.

But Bash didn’t know that.

“Is this about the woman from before?”

“Yes.”

Bash remembered her. A swordswoman with the best body, her face marked with the honor of a warrior. He couldn’t even ask her name… At the very least, she must have been a fierce fighter who eventually made a name for herself. Even without having fought, he could tell with a single glance that she was an impressive warrior.