South, you couldn't leave a girl in their green paws.

Orc are strong creatures, taller than humans and much more enduring. The life **** of one might be enough to sustain you for a while without the guilt you'd feel if you drained a human being.

The girl crying for help was a thing you couldn't ignore either. Far from a knight in shinning armor you still couldn't let her be beaten, or worse, by those savage beasts.

After the **** of their leaders and the evil spirits that possessed them most of the tribes had turned feral. They roamed the ash plains wearing little if anything and hunted whatever was unlucky enough to cross their path with wood and stone weapons.

Orcs are very loud, from what amount of noise they made there couldn't be more than half a dozen of them. If you could kill one by surprise you had a chance against 3 or 4 others, especially after the first one would have restored your mana and life ****.

While they hadn't touched you the rats didn't spare your boots, your feet hurt from walking in the rocky plains and the hole let the abrasive ashes inside.

You carefully approached the noises, you hadn't the gift your sister had for illusions but being a boy in a house with three women, (your mom, sister and an old cook, granny Sylvia.) had pushed you to learn a specific spell. With your room between your mom's and your sister's the sphere of silence you learned from an old tome of the family library had been a Godsend.

In a radius of two meters you could hear any outside sound but none would exit, as useful to stealthily master ate in your bed than to sneak in on Orcs apparently.

What night vision their race afforded them was negated by the large bonfire they were facing.

Four Orcs, no five! Four tall large males, naked with huge dangling disks between their legs like only ever saw on horses before. One female equally naked, she looked very different, her body was more humanshaped than the males. She had fine features on her face rather than snouts and fangs and the most beautiful pair of boobs you ever saw (they were truly beautiful even if they had little competition given the low amount you had as references.). She had to be a mixed breed, daughter of a poor human or elf girl **** by orcs. (the reverse was less likely as the list of humans ready to fucked a pure breed Orc woman was rather short.)

The girl that had screamed earlier was tied naked on the ground near the fire with a dirty leather bag on her head.

Lightning infused with this dark energy you had just acquired was the most effective way to deal with this but it wasn't very discreet. You would have only one shot and were bound to attract any orcs nearby.

You held the dark sword that brought you back to live in your right hand. You could cast spells from either hand but the little you knew about sword fighting would require your main hand. It was more as a threat or distraction than a real attempt to use it to fight, you never excelled in physical feats.

Still unnoticed by the beasts you gathered as strong of a dark lightning bolt in your left hand and let it go towards the biggest Orc.

His head roasted instantly as his body withered close to a skeleton with dry skin on it. From his falling body some sparks of colored light, yellow, green and red jumped like sacked inside the ring on your hand. It was an old family heirloom, silver with a small shard of Amber, the rare treasure dug from the deep entrails of some northern mountains by dwarfs was making it a powerful conduit to magic. The dark lore you got when waking up explained it clearly, it was your philactery. Like all lichen your soul and life **** resided not in your body but an artefact, destroying it the only way to truly kill you.

For a moment you felt like you were on fire but then the agony was replaced by the incredible feeling that for the first time in your life you were truly alive. You felt warmth returning in your cold body, the two stab wounds were still feeling strange, probably from the power in your veins trying to repair them.

Without thinking you had cast another spell, one you knew little about and would have sworn was costing too much power for you to cast even at your top a second before.

The leftmost Orc started convulsing. His flesh was rotting while he was still alive, he was scratching himself , taking out huge strips of his own skin.

You turned you head right to see that another Orc was just in front of you, the blade was stuck in his chest through his heart and you were feeling his life flowing into you. The Lichtenstein Knight didn't share only lore but also his reflexes.

The last male Orc was fumbling for his spear and the female had a long dagger of dark steel that looked like your sword.