20,000 orcs died before the Orc Lord finally made his move. That was actually pretty fast, but I couldn't blame him for it.
While the Orc Lord's Starved skill could nullify the orcs' fear, it clearly wasn't foolproof. After Ranga's Deathstorm, he just kinda sat there in front of Gabil's army, and nobody got anywhere near them, even though it'd clearly proved to take too much out of him to be repeatable.
As for the kijin, they were inspiring just as much terror.
Benimaru had unleashed this terrifyingly powerful Art-Skill combination attack that he called Hellzone a grand total of four times. Basically, he froze a giant area with a Ranged Barrier that he'd inherited from me, which I'd gotten from Ifrit, then he used a combination of Control Flame and Dark Flame to instantly cook everything inside. It made me think of Risa's sword, that level of sheer heat generated inside one of those domes, and he'd used it four times. That was nuts. Basically a half-level below a nuclear nuclear bomb, and all perfectly confined to a chosen space.
Shion was running rampant, too. She was copying Risa's signature attack closely, unleashing shockwave-like slashes of aura-infused light with her sword that just shredded through everything, with a range of over twenty feet. Basically, she was forcing all the orcs near her to run away or die, with overwhelming power.
Meanwhile, Soei, Hakuro and Risa had the fun jobs. Dealing with the commander-class enemies. Risa's job was to create a fuss, using properly aimed, overwhelming and flashy beams of fiery death to instantly destroy two or three random, commander-class orcs from above every minute or so. It took almost zero effort from her part, with her Control Elements and Dominate Flame extra skills combined with Flame Transform (the unevolved version of Dark Flame), but seeing these A-ranked orcs just picked off like flies, unable to fight back or retaliate, from above, must've been horrifying.
But I was still concerned about her magicule usage, so I made sure to have Hakuro and Soei deal with some of the commander-class orcs, to give her some leeway to show off. Basically, I'd send Hakuro to an orc, and he'd instantly dice it up and use Modelwill to incinerate the body before moving on like a ghost. Soei would simply have one of his Replicants appear in front of the orc, raise a finger, and the poor thing would be instantly diced into a fine red mist with his new Thread Arts.
So, basically these poor orcs had lost all cohesion in the face of all of these terrifyingly overpowered attackers. At this point, not even Starved could keep some of them from running for their lives. That's what happens when the orc beside you simply evaporates before your eyes, I suppose, but still, it made sense that the Orc Lord couldn't let it continue.
…
So there was this giant pig-creature that redefined ugliness standing in front of all of my aces, an Orc General flanking him on either side. Benimaru, Shion, Soei, Hakuro, Ranga, and even Kaya was there, while Risa and I descended to the ground.
'I'm not really feeling any danger here.' I noted to myself. I couldn't let my guard down, but this guy felt like he was maybe stronger than Benimaru in terms of pure magicules, and even that was clearly beginning to take its toll on his soul, affecting his sense of self.
Either way, I couldn't let the guy evolve, so I took my mask out of my pocket and landed between Benimaru and Shion.
But just as Risa and I landed, there was a strange noise. Like an ear-piercing screech. Then, someone landed between our group and the Orc Lord, having flown here at an impressively high speed.
It was a man. He was dressed in a really gaudy way, with an overcoat that made me think 'Steampunk.' At first glance, I figured that he was minion level, but he was pretty strong. Stronger than the Orc Lord, maybe. And every single component of his outfit was a Unique-Grade magical artifact of some kind, interestingly.
"Who dares disrupt the Great Gelmud's plans!?" He screamed at us, rage clear on his face.
'Report-'
'This is the bad guy, right? Here because we were his plan to set the Orc Lord on the general populace?' I cut the Sage off. It felt nice to get to an answer without totally relying on it for once.
'98% likelihood, yes.' Yeah, that was pretty obvious. And judging by the way he revealed who he was without anyone asking, he must've been a huge idiot. Not the true mastermind, but this was definitely his little 'project.'
"L-Lord Gelmud! I'd never have expected you to come to my aid at a time like this!" Huh. Gabil knew this guy?
And clearly, this guy knew Gabil. And thought that he was trash. In fact, he looked at everyone here like they were trash, including the orc armies around him. "You worthless garbage! If you'd just eaten all these stupid lizards and all this other fodder and evolved into a Demon Lord, then I wouldn't need to be here right now, cleaning up your mess!"
Huh. That actually cleared up just about everything that I'd been wondering. The Sage filled in the gaps for me, but here's the jist.
First off, Gelmud here started naming people from all over the forest. He'd probably been doing this for years, naming representatives from each race. I remembered that he'd named Rigur's older brother, probably Gabil, too, and Benimaru had once mentioned something about a majin trying to name him, too, but he'd figured the dude was shady, so he'd declined. Maybe named a few others, too, trying to see if they developed any strange powers.
Then, he probably named the Orc Lord, too, triggering an unnatural evolution like I tended to do. Once the Orc Lord was born, his Starved skill basically turned the entire Orc race into a pack like Ranga's, all the power from everything they killed going directly into the Lord and then shuffling back. Naturally, if you destroyed a human kingdom or two with that, the Lord would eventually turn into a Demon Lord that owed you a great debt for naming them. Plus, the Orc Lord would be able to eat all of the monsters that you previously named, gaining their powers on top of his own.
Still, it was a plan that turned my stomach. I was just lucky that I'd gotten here before it finished.