Once his health had stabilised, Merlin took a deep breath before slowly sitting up. He didn't want to move around too much, as he was currently suffering from overexertion. While not having anything else to do for the moment, he checked his stream chat, only to find there were several gift notifications that he had completely ignored in the heat of battle.
「"jeebjanson" has gifted...」
「"PatriarchFireWall" has gifted...」
「"Hannibal1996" has gifted...」
"Thank you everyone for your support." He thanked his audience.
He remained still for several minutes while taking deep breaths, and his body had finally started to calm down.
"Death by overexertion would have been embarrassing," he mumbled to himself.
It seemed that Callisto had recovered from her case of overexertion, and she immediately came over to check on Merlin's condition.
"Are you alright?" She asked with a concerned voice.
"I'm good, just a little tired." Merlin groaned. "We should go help out with the rest of the orcs now."
"Are you in any state to continue fighting?" She asked.
Merlin staggered to his feet. "See? Perfectly fine. And I'll recover my stamina in no time."
Callisto dropped the topic and glanced over at the orc warlord's corpse. Merlin followed her line of sight and stared at the warlord too, he quickly noticed that the black blood under the orc warlord's skin had started wriggling.
"What on earth..." Callisto mumbled.
She moved closer to the orc's body and pulled an arrow out of her quiver. Before Merlin could tell her to stop, she used the arrow to slightly cut one of the orc's veins open, causing a strange black liquid to spray out of the wound like a geyser.
Callisto leapt backwards, stumbling into Merlin who barely managed to catch her and remain upright.
Merlin heard the princess unleash a stream of expletives as she witnessed the black liquid suddenly catch fire upon making contact with sunlight.
The liquid seemed to be swaying around like a creature that was in pain, and an eerie screeching could be heard, which caused Merlin and even Callisto to suddenly feel sick to their stomachs.
「You have solved an issue caused by a strange phenomenon.」
Eventually, the screeching ended, and all of the black liquid had been drained from the orc's body and burnt up.
"What was that?" Callisto asked in a panicked tone, she seemed terrified about the thing that she had just witnessed, "That was unholy."
"Yeah, it was," Merlin muttered while knowing for a fact that it was indeed unholy, demonic even.
Several rangers and knights had stepped into the camp, they all began approaching once they noticed the orc warlord had been slain.
A couple of the knights were injured, it seemed as though they had been forced into combat with the orcs at some point, and there were fewer knights present now, which raised the question of how many knights had died or were just critically injured in the forest.
The knights who arrived had explained that the orcs suddenly stopped attacking for a moment and either kept chasing them down, which led to several injuries, immediately scattered without looking back, or picked fights with other orcs.
That last detail was interesting, as orcs in an area didn't often fight other orcs unless it was for gaining authority. Which led Merlin to assume that the warlord had actually collected orcs of various tribes and ruled them under one banner.
Such a thing was usually only ever seen through territory battles, but they still retained their allegiance to the tribe when the warlord was killed. Whereas this was more like they were forced into subservience through the use of a fiend's power, a power granted through corruption.
The group began searching the area, looking for the remaining knights. They found a couple of corpses, which was unfortunate, but there were several others who were just wounded and were quickly healed by Merlin.
The group began making their way towards the town, culling any orcs roaming the forest that they encountered.
As they stepped out of the treeline, they saw a field of orc corpses surrounding the town walls. And there were several more injured knights having their wounds mended by medics and clerics.
The group continued into the town, and while they were getting close to the barracks, she turned to the group and gave them an order.
"Alright, everyone make your way back to the military barracks after resupplying," Callisto ordered the rangers who were following her, "We'll be setting off in half an hour, so don't be late."
After that message, Merlin broke away from the group and slipped down a side street that seemed to be empty. He turned to the floating transparent eyeball and began talking to his stream.
"I'll be ending this stream for today, it'll just be a long trip back," Merlin said to his stream. "The next stream will be on Saturday next week. I hope to see you all there."
With that, he waved goodbye to his stream before uttering the command to end it, causing the eyeball and chat box to disappear.
Merlin quickly made his way over to that construction site he saw at the start, and although it seemed as though the streets were starting to fill up again, the pale man couldn't be seen anywhere.
He walked around that area for a while, but eventually, he had to leave. He couldn't find a single trace of the man.
'I guess I'll find him next time I come here,' Merlin thought to himself, 'But that snake will no longer be a threat by then, I hope...'
Then a thought ran through his mind.
'What would happen if I killed it here?' He wondered. 'Would that entire event just not happen? How would that change future events after that?'
Merlin was experiencing a strange feeling of worry and excitement. His actions now could potentially ruin an event several years in the future, but that may give birth to an entirely new story, at the expense of his advantage.
He decided that ruining his advantage for the chance of a new story would be stupid. His goal was to uncover the opportunity that had been robbed from him, and for that, he needed the advantage.
'Becoming a loremaster would take too long if I didn't have all this knowledge already.' He realised, 'And if I did that, I'd lose my place on the rankings, making the Quetzalcoatl quest impossible.'
With this realisation in mind, he stopped thinking about changing the future any more than he had to. This meant that the snake had to live, for now.
He quickly made his way back to the military barracks and waited around until it was time to get on the wagons and leave.
They had a long uneventful journey back to Parrhasia, where they let the horses rest for a while, before making their way back to Megalopolis. Somewhere along the ride back to the city, Merlin received the regular alert box telling him it was time to leave.
And as the wagons drove through the gate, Merlin received a notification telling him his quest had been complete.
「You have completed the quest, "The Orcs Attack", rewards have been delivered.」
'That should have put my ranger soul's experience bar a little over halfway,' He thought to himself, 'Maybe I should level it up and merge it, it'd be nice having some kind of range bonus.'
After hopping off the wagon and saying goodbye to Callisto, the other rangers and Tuli who was manning the desk, he made his way to the ruins, hoping to see the old man once more. But unfortunately, the old man wasn't there, and he received another notification telling him to logout.
Merlin chanted the command to logout, then accepted the confirmation prompt, which caused his surroundings to quickly fade to black, dropping him back into the dark void once more.
Once the usual process of leaving the capsule had been completed, Arthur made his way towards the briefing room. This time the developers were doing other things besides sitting in front of the monitor watching his stream. This was most likely due to him ending the stream much earlier, giving them time to finish their conversations before going back to compiling data.
After a brief conversation, and a shower of praise due to his sudden explosive growth in combat prowess being put on display for the world to see, the rest of the group had entered the room and the briefing had begun.
It was rather quick as usual, with the longest part being the leaderboard reading at the end, but everyone already knew what the top three were going to be. And it seemed as though the fourth slot had cemented his position for the time being as well, so everyone realised that only the fifth spot was actually being contested.
The briefing came to an end and everyone made their way outside of the facility on their way home.. Arthur overheard the word school mentioned in several groups he passed by, and then he remembered that it was the first day of school tomorrow, his final year.
