Unlimited Power 03: The Sinful Ruler

In the end, Jake did exactly that. He equipped a crossbow in each hand and then began to kill Kobolds at a fearsome speed. While that damaged his pride since he only wanted to use his sword, it was better than failing at that mission or fighting monsters for several hours straight.

Congratulations! The skill Concentration has leveled up.

Congratulations! The skill Accuracy has leveled up.

Somehow, each crossbow could carry up until thirty bolts, so when Jake was about to run out of ammo, he looked for another one on the battlefield. While it was hard to find some fully loaded, it was unavoidable since things got really intense. The smell of blood was so deep that Jake sometimes felt that his nose was covered in iron…

"Advance! Keep your formation and kill them all!" Louise shouted.

Until now, the orcs only stayed in a defensive formation, and while they defeated many enemies and lost only a few, it was time to change tactics. There were several reasons for that. The first was the fact that the orcs had some people that didn't have weapons, so by advancing on the battlefield, those guys would obtain some weapons, and the other was Jake himself, who was moving further away from the village.

Even though the whole formation was improvised, the orcs were so eager to fight that they were making everything go the exact way Louise was imagining. However, she had a bad feeling about the whole battle…

When Jake began to run out of enemies armed with crossbows to hunt, he noticed that the orcs were advancing while following Louise's commands. They were advancing so fast that the kobolds were getting clustered and losing the momentum of their charge. Not to mention, Jake couldn't see any more dust clouds in the distance, so it was clear that they didn't have any more soldiers to spare.

"Well then… now what?" Jake asked himself.

While Jake didn't know much about wars, he knew that taking the enemy commander was essential to make sure that the battles would end as fast as possible. After all, the army would lose someone to follow without the commander. Even if an army has a chain of command, losing the commander still was terrible. After all, anyone below him was their subordinate and thus less experienced.

That being said, Jake didn't find any commander or even captain in the kobolds ranks. He had imagined that just like his group received that quest, another group also received that and would be their main enemies. However, it didn't make sense… if a party was leading the kobolds, it would make sense why they were winning the war, but if that were the case, they wouldn't have two options when accepting the mission.

Just like Jake thought that he had understood everything correctly, he noticed a small sand cloud rising in the distance. Someone was approaching… and Jake had a feeling that the real enemies were coming.

"Hurry up and finish them off!" Jake shouted.

Louise and Lana didn't understand at first why Jake shouted that, but they eventually found that sign in the distance. Louise gave the order for the orcs to march forward the enemies even more intensely. While they were exhausted and there were some holes in the formation, they still followed their orders fervently… just like the kobolds were attacking without caring for their well-being.

Thanks to Louise's strategy, two thousand kobolds died in the next hour, while around one thousand were hurt in some way or the other. Around the same amount managed to retreat unscathed. While the group won against the odds again, they had to pay the price. Jake noticed that more than half of the lancers died, and the reserve forces took their places, but while they were fresh, they weren't strong enough. So, from around four hundred orcs that Louise managed to lead, three hundred died, and the rest were wounded or completely exhausted. It was just a game, but… things were so realistic that Louise couldn't help but open her eyes widely in surprise. Even if they use magic or superpowers, a war still was something negatively intense. Despite that, something inside Lana and Louise prevented them from dwelling too much on that. Perhaps it was the fact that they did their very best.

Meanwhile, Jake kept watching the enemies retreating and then stopping a few kilometers ahead. They finally found the group that was approaching. In the end, they turned around as if nothing had happened. Jake looked behind, and he saw that only the orc mages were physically fine, but they didn't recover all their mana. Lana and Louise had potions with them, still… facing an army equivalent of fifteen hundred fresh monsters with ten or so allies didn't seem like the best of ideas.

"Any chances of people of other villages coming to help us?" Jake asked.

"If they survived, they must have their hands full right now…" Grommok replied.

Despite the incredible odds, Jake smiled. Ten against fifteen hundred… that sounded like fun. While fighting for so long, Jake managed to level up several skills, and that granted him twenty status points. In the end, he decided to put all of them in strength because he was a bit mad.

After a couple of minutes, Jake and his party saw a party of humans leading the kobolds. As expected… that mission put players against players. That raised the bar a little bit, but Jake only looked more excited than before. The enemy party had six members; it had two guys wearing heavy armor, two archers, a girl and a guy, a guy who was a priest, and a girl who looked like a wizard. It seemed a pretty balanced party… their status was also pretty balanced, the armored ones had a lot of health, and the ranged ones had stamina or mana. Instead of just giving the order for the kobolds to attack, one of the armored guys suddenly stepped forward and then took out his helmet.

"Louise, is that you?" A tall and handsome, dark-haired man asked.