章節 51: Chapter 32.West

Angie's force had to march for a week with no proper leader before Angie could care about anything apart from her avatar. I understood her fixation, my own avatars had been a grand feat. One that I maintained pride in even now. She also took a much more active role in the creation of hers than anyone else, so she had more reason to be obsessed with it. Glrt was the only one that really seemed like she cared to make the avatar her own.

The activation itself was fairly unremarkable, at this point. The force had seen new avatars form every time they were about to split, so they'd become used to the glowing structure of complex circuitry that slowly filled with glowing material. The only true difference with this one was the will that filled it, and nobody cared apart from the will doing the filling. They all knew that Angie was rushing ahead of them as far as worship and circuitry were concerned. A new example was barely news.

To Angie, it was anything but unremarkable. She'd stared at the circuits of each avatar that I built for myself until her eyes hurt, but now they were within her own body. And she had the sensitivity in her will to feel each and every single one of them. To actually understand them. To know they were hers. To feel in her own will the culmination of her rabid development since she'd left Adrian. To feel in herself the validation of every choice she'd made since she met me. She didn't quite make the leap into pope-hood, but she was speeding up.

I'd been ready for the avatar to significantly alter her will, but it didn't happen that way. The avatar was merely filled with her will, so she merely got another body from which she could act. Her self remained intact despite sharing three forms.

As insignificant as her changes were to me, to her they were beyond significant. The least important to her was the processing ability provided by having an active class eight body. More than just being class eight, however, she'd devoted the entirety of the avatar to increasing her ability to create circuitry. Her self-awareness as a being of will was increased exponentially, on top of the increase to her sensitivity and agility. She was quickly approaching the level of creature that would allow her to contend with megaliths. The least of the megaliths, smaller even than the shard Sekhmet abandoned, but beyond the level any dragon or chicken had managed.

She lacked my wariness about using will as the core of a material circuit, using it as the core of her whole avatar. The benefits were apparent, as her avatar body now provided more concrete benefits than the will-core in my faith maelstrom. Mostly because it was class six while the avatar was class eight, but the benefits were amazing regardless. She also had circuits devoted to increasing her ability to interact with particular types of runes, like hounds and their fire except she had one for every type of rune I could learn. She had truly devoted herself to being a wizard, almost completely ignoring her original body despite it being a very competent class four physique.

It had taken two days after the filling of her avatar for Angie to do anything apart from caressing herself, muttering and giggling about how remarkable her avatar was. With her avatar body, at least. The cannibal body continued, overtaken entirely by the urge. It got to the point that I got the impression she'd developed another self for a moment, given how intense the disdain she felt for her cannibal body was. How separate the disdain was from the obsessive caressing.

That impression remained strong as her avatar finally went out among the rest of the force. Her cannibal body continued its string of praise and refused to separate, spreading my impression to anyone who observed the strange state. Angie was so far from caring about the opinions of her force that it didn't even occur to her that carrying her class four cannibal around would impact her image. As far as she was concerned, the only things anyone in her force ought to care about were how good she was at circuitry and how devoted she was to me. A perspective I could sympathize with. Most of her force agreed, or at least was beyond caring about Angie's image, but some were new additions.

The elves that had had limited exposure to Angie, and the rest of the force to a lesser extent, were extremely unnerved at the sight. It was understandable, the cannibal commander they'd been told was above Euri before she left, the commander of the whole army, was obsessively petting a glowing copy of herself with horns and wings. All while the avatar ignored her unless she was glaring at the fleshy body. A disdain that was specifically targeted at herself, as she was perfectly cordial with other cannibals. Even cannibals that were less competent with their physiques or circuitry in comparison to the original Angie.

Her state confused her own soldiers when they bothered to consider it, let alone the elves that hadn't watched her isolated training regimen. They did find her to be a more difficult trainer, on the rare occasions that Angie took part in the exercises of the day, but the oddity caused curiosity that made the training even harder to focus on. Angie carried on as if her state wasn't confusing at all, for anyone.

The state wasn't much less confusing from the perspective of her will. Angie as a self understood that she was obsessed with her avatar, and that it was becoming an issue for her progress. In response, she'd channeled all of her obsessive feelings into her original body. It was still technically part of her self, but a purposefully separate entity within her self. It was a very effective move, as the entirety of the self that controlled the avatar was lacking in vanity and as such was able to put the full weight of her impressive, and growing, will against the challenge of higher class circuitry.

An endeavor that was showing obvious results. Despite her lack of specialization, Angie was growing more competent at a pace that left even Glrt behind. Her will reflected a very different person than the cannibal from Adrian, but the new person was a legitimate genius in terms of circuitry.

She was so lethal I was considering sending her south, but she was growing perfectly fine without needing combat to refine her abilities. Like my gods, she was an extremely valuable card to be pulled out in a moment of need. A card that was working on refining a class nine true circuit with the capability to actually cast it herself. One that had the potential of being lethal to eighth class colossi while affecting a large area.

If it worked as she thought it would, I would be amazed. She was building it based on principles that existed only in her own head. Sound principles, but I couldn't figure out how she'd come up with the idea. In her mind, it was simply following the effects of runes, adding them together while trying to generate as much destruction as possible. I understood the principle, it was what I used for most of my attack circuits, but she was doing it with spatial runes. I barely understood the principles behind spatial runes, far from enough to try mixing them into an attack.

Despite the gains, her method carried the threat of the obsessive part of her self breaking away from the rest. A level of damage that would undoubtedly cause her to stop in her research, at least for a while. Giving any single part of a self so exclusive a level of control over a portion of the body always carried that risk. It was the basic method of creating a new self, to quarantine a portion of will in a portion of body.

The core of the reason I would never create a second will-core, as my will was so virulent that any weakness would allow it to create a self. A self that would then be able to compete with me. It was far from coincidental that shards of my self had latched onto the radiant shards, an action that few others had the kind of will that would immediately consider that as an option. Perhaps I was alone, in that regard.

She was sure that her self-obsession couldn't fully break away since she could shift pieces of her self into the faith and body will-cores, but those divisions had been based on the percentage of the whole rather than cutting a specific part out of the whole. I could have explained the risk factors and why they were different, but I was also extremely curious about what would happen if the original body did break away.

She'd separated a piece of her self that I wasn't sure was beneficial to the whole. If she lost it, I could see her getting better. Her disdain at the sight of her own self-obsession concentrated into her old body suggested that she thought the same. Merely being able to see the effect on the rest of the near total loss of self worship would also be interesting. Not to mention the value of observing a new phenomenon, which was never worthless. Every new phenomenon hid causes I was yet to understand, and Angie being cooperative was perfectly valid as permission. She may not be conscious of it yet, but she secretly hoped that her original body would break away, taking her vapidity with it.

The time Angie spent consumed with herself was almost irrelevant to the force. Angie's avatar taking over the position of head also changed nothing. She wasn't devoted to improving or controlling the discipline of the force, she'd been a minimal presence in the force since the beginning. Extremely important when interested, but almost never interested. The sole exception being training. She'd seen the benefits to her own comprehension that she got when she tried to explain what she knew to others. She wasn't a good trainer, she had a lot of trouble distilling her comprehension to the point that those she was trying to teach actually understood, but she gained a lot by trying to be.

There was a clear line of command that had gone up to Euri, with Euri being the only one to really interact with Angie. There was no confusion in who was at the head precisely because of this strict sense of discipline. Without Euri acting as leader, Angie's lack of concern for the welfare of her force was proven to everyone. Nobody cared as they already had their system, they didn't need to care as her lack of concern wasn't a detriment to the force. Her taking an active role probably would have caused more problems than her continued ambivalence.

Luckily for both Angie and the rest of the force, the system was a very robust one. Many other forces could survive without their leaders, but none would retain their prestigious ranking among my forces. Euri had developed a system that didn't need any alteration to continue functioning perfectly. One so robust that the elves were effortlessly incorporated into the ranks, a task that other forces struggled to accomplish at all let alone complete in a matter of days. All of the systems that ran the army worked just as well with Angie alone in her tent as they did with her floating over the army practicing circuitry while ignoring the clinging cannibal or ineffectively training some unfortunate unit.

Even the trees had folded into the workings of the army as if it was designed for them. The force had been so unnerved at the atmosphere created by the forest when they approached the ocean. So much so that it was a strange feeling for many to realize they would now be unnerved by clear air. They'd become accustomed to using circuits to investigate the surroundings, almost ignoring the input from their senses. The constant creak of wood and the crisp sounds had become their normal. Even those that had been adults when they left Adrian, never having even seen a living tree, had become used to the trees that surrounded them.

I'd converted many trees. They were quite useful, for many reasons. Stilling rampant mana wasn't only good for populations with flaws in their circuitry, but also for populations constantly using circuitry. Every failure had been a possible cause for every nearby circuit breaking down, leading to a chain reaction that often devastated entire swathes of the force. The trees solved that problem easily, and it required almost nothing of them. The level of suppression produced by the passive circuitry of class eight trees was enough that a class six circuit erupting caused no disruption even a pes away.

I'd advanced a hundred trees to their maximum at class eight, becoming enormous entities over two stades tall but otherwise remaining essentially the same. The rivers running off of the leaves and immediately turning to mist cloaked the army in a mist as dense as immediately before the ocean, but they'd become used to the suppression. The force may be mistaken for an ocean when they left the forest, but that wouldn't really matter.

The flood of water also came from the tips of the roots after class six. Water that wasn't immediately shredded by suppression such that pools could form. As the roots dug deep holes into the earth with every step the tree took, it left them full of water. Given the massive level of suppression the trees bore at that level, each pool was almost ten pedes deep and twice as wide. Each step left over a dozen of the pools, each full of water. I wasn't sure if it was due to the water or some inherent property of trees, but the earth was slow to reclaim the puddles. It didn't stop, as with colossus metal, but it was much slower than normal.

It turned out that the elves indeed had a way to overcome their breeding problem outside of an ocean. They merely needed to feed a tree until it became able to maintain a mulch pit under each foot. At class eight, the trees could create pools large enough to host a sizeable mulch pit with each step. If they focused their roots into a spike, they could make a massive mulch pit with each step. Or spear a creature and fill its insides with water until it exploded.

There was even a hidden functionality that they curled the inner roots in on themselves to create a pool within the foot itself, allowing mobile mulch pits to be created. I didn't need them, as mulch-based brood constructs were better, but there was always the option. Maybe if I wanted a forest where no force was active, then the mulch pits would prove valuable. The cavities would be perfectly capable of hosing a brood construct as well. The water would just be more likely to spill over, revealing the existence of the mulch.

Trees and their accompaniment of elves were another addition to my forces that I wasn't sure worked very well with the rest. Elves functioned much better as infiltration agents than soldiers, their battlefield usage being limited while their lethality was unquestionable. Their higher class forms merely intensified this impression, widening the gap between them and soldiers even more. They lacked the defensive properties combat required while being so aggressive in their attacking methods that allies would find themselves caught in the middle. Every breath they took spread toxins so dense the air actually changed color for a moment before an impact struck the cloud and dispersed it over two stades in every direction.

Trees weren't much better, though for different reasons. They, like the octopi that enjoyed their branches, were more the type of creature to create a dangerous home than an offensive weapon. A lair type of creature, as the Conclave records would describe them. Lair type was the rarest of creatures in human territory, as roving plague type were very well adapted for the plains. That could have been different in elves were able to consciously maintain trees.

The dense mist along with the suppression made the forest a deadly place to investigate, especially with the elves and octopi slipping through the suppression and setting up their traps. A forest with several class seven trees with a charybdis or two would be a nightmare to invade, a deadly place even for chickens. The larger the plague type monsters groupings became, the more they'd nourish the forest.

The more the high class trees moved, however, the weaker they were. Their mist eventually dissipated, and moving drew them close to the border. Traps and subterfuge as a defensive method were good, but not when the traps were left behind and there was nothing ahead of them that allowed for the creation of more traps. Demons were also hard to control, leaving them to wander as you left them behind was a way to devastate an already conquered territory but not a great means to conquer anything. They didn't easily work together nor follow orders. Charybdi had long singe found the best means of using them; summoning a horde and letting them sow chaos as they willed.

The mist did provide cover for the exact numbers of the force, though. I wasn't worried about making my forces appear bigger or smaller than they were, but if I was then a tree could be useful for that purpose. Having trees multiple stades tall was already such a massive threat that I didn't see the point of hiding an army in their mist, but there could be situations I hadn't thought of. The best use I could think of for trees at the moment would be positions for armies to fall back to if they were losing. The cost of moving the entire forest around the ocean to the southern battlefront crossed my mind, but the need would have to be massive to justify the astonishing cost.

As that crossed my mind, a pyramid teleported among the massive trees. The cost having been reduced by so much made the slightest need a reason to act. My will spread out into the forest, converting and teleporting trees into a ring around the spawn territory. This forest alone was far from enough, but I had many forces moving through forests. I kept a hundred trees in each of those forces, but teleported the rest of the forest to ring in the Sun. Not only would the huge trees cast a shadow on any spawn forces that approached from the north, they'd also have to dig through all the demons left by the charybdi I advanced among the trees.

It took six months, but I'd eventually teleported the entirety of the forests I had access to. Even with all of the forests that stretched thousands of leagues in every direction packed full of trees that my forces were moving through, my encirclement of spawn territory was extremely thin. A single ring with almost a league between each tree. Luckily, as the trees advanced they became their own mobile mulch pits. The forests had been entirely cleaned of grass to feed the mulch pits, but each tree in the ring had at least one active mulch pit. With how quickly they bred, elves and trees would probably be the most numerous of my worshippers soon.

The sudden vanishing of the forest revealed all the creatures within that had refused to become worshippers. There was the occasional member of a pack of hounds or goblin camp, but those were quickly dispatched by the former members of their group. Only one race avoided the fate of joining my forces; orcs. Not a single orc had acquiesced to the faith-based worship rune, though none had resisted due to paranoia that stopped them from spilling blood on an unknown rune. That was the most common reason a creature avoided my worship now, apart from spawn. Coercion could have allowed them to join, but I could never have too many mana true circuits.

While the orcs hadn't been paranoid when they saw the runes, the forest that surrounded them vanishing in a moment changed that. Beyond paranoia, the vanishing forest sparked panic. Panic that felt more like they'd been caught with their pants around their ankles than the panic of being caught in a trap. Panic that resulted in embarrassment followed by excitement and bloodlust instead of fear, but at least the core of their reaction made sense.

They rolled to the ground almost simultaneously with roars of challenge. When they regained their feet they were all wearing stone armor and holding stone weapons. The design of the weapons and armor were dependent on the orc, making them as far from uniform as was possible in design and purpose. Apart from the homogeneity of brown tinted gray armor on green tinted gray flesh, anyway. The orcs seemed to compensate for their remarkable similarity by increasing the variety of their armor. The designs of their armor ranged from smooth and flat as wasp drones to the fanciful and ornate sets that had been abandoned in the holes left by leaving pyramids. Spikes, ridges, and serrations were common, but not universal. For every ten sets of spikes there was a leaf or soothing ripples. Even the coverage was seemingly random.

Several didn't have any armor at all on their upper half, apart from gauntlets or a helmet, revealing the nearly grotesque level of muscularity of their bodies, and they seemed to have the respect of the rest of the orcs. One wore only gauntlets, boots, and a basic strap around its groin. The few that clothed themselves in armor so thick and cohesive that their flesh was entirely hidden seemed to garner disdain. The vast majority, however, were somewhere in the middle. All but the least clothed wore helmets. Helmets that were the core of the design of their armor, being every type from fanciful to functional to hideous.

Orcs were a strange species. The records of orcs showed that they were having trouble surviving in this world. The further back the records went, the more prevalent orcs were. There was a time when orcs were as common as goblins, but that time was long gone. This clan may be the only clan of orcs remaining in the entirety of cannibal territory, if not the entire world. It was certainly the first encounter I'd had with orcs despite my forces spreading like a plague of exploration.

Unwilling to let a new species evade my grasp, my avatar slammed to earth before the clan. The ground rippled, but didn't break. I was getting better at controlling my avatars every day. Samantha wasn't the only one providing continuous experience, not anymore. "Why did you refuse my offer?" orcs were far from communicating via intent. Extremely far. "I was being generous. Extremely generous."

"Shlatha obeys no beggar!" the largest orc roared in response. It was the one that wore only gauntlets, boots, and a basic strap around its groin. The lack of armor was probably showing off, something it could actually pull off. It had the benefit of extremely even musculature, even if that musculature was almost grotesque in how exaggerated it was in comparison to the average cannibal. Some of those hidden in armor had legs thinner than their arms, a problem Shlatha definitely didn't share. "Shlatha wants Shiny kneel!" The massive axe in its hand slammed to earth, shattering as it reformed where the haft touched the ground. A creature that had long outgrown its weaponry, another justification for the lacking armor. Its flesh was probably harder than the earthen armor the others hid within.

"I wasn't begging. I was giving you and your species a chance to survive. Perhaps your last chance, though I'm not sure if you know the difference between extinction and the annihilation of your own clan." Shlatha probably didn't care, but I wasn't willing to allow orcs to become extinct. My avatar waved a hand and the suppression from the sky turned in a different direction, hurling every orc between my avatar and Shlatha to either side to give a clear path. The wasps had provided me with many new runes, that being one I found particularly fun. When the suppression returned to its natural state, the orcs were slammed to the ground. None of them seemed deterred, however. There was no sense of stoicism either, they weren't resisting the pain. They enjoyed it. Well…apparently I had to convince a species that typified Glrt's method to kneel. Torture being counterproductive was a new experience. One I could have done without. Perhaps my entrance should have been more impressive. "I'd like to see you try to make me kneel."

Shlatha took the challenge with relish, despite my show of power being far beyond anything it would be capable of. A visceral bellow was echoed by every orc in the clan, however. The prospect of their leader being utterly defeated seemed like a good thing, unless they were merely incapable of thinking their leader could be beaten.

Ignoring what the rest of the orcs thought, Shlatha didn't seem to consider any sort of threat in the confrontation. Shlatha's will was so excited I could almost expect a bolt of power to strike my avatar. "Shiny be beg'n soon! Shlatha gonn'joy Shiny kneel'n!"

The earth was far from enough to be a threat to my avatar. A casual backhand shattered the axe while the other gripped Shlatha by the throat. Shlatha wasn't deterred, however. It seemed to just get more excited as it started using fists and feet to pummel my avatar. An extremely deadly reaction, if it was fighting a creature of its own class. Each impact from the orc's limbs carried enough force to rip holes in fourth class ogres.

It being strong wasn't a surprise, though. Orcs had a very basic hierarchy, if Shlatha was weak that would reflect poorly on the whole clan. Using both feet really wasn't wise, though. I dropped Shlatha, and it caught itself with its tail, rolling backwards as it claimed another axe from the ground. "You're clearly outmatched. Yield. I've seen your best and found it wanting."

Shlatha ignored me. Laughing, the excitement in it only growing, it rushed me again. I didn't even both blocking the axe this time, letting it impact my head with a force that would kill a class four boar. My skin didn't even deform, let alone my head shift. The following punch to my face and knee to my gut were equally useless, while being almost as deadly. I slammed my forehead into Shlatha's grinning face, hitting so hard the orc was thrown four pedes before it slammed into the ground. It was only getting more excited. "Shiny gonna be beg'n soon!" there was a spike of impatience in its will, but excitement was still very dominant. "Shiny gonna beg so good!"

The same thing was happening in the army. They were ridiculously enthusiastic as they watched Shlatha get beaten back repeatedly, but they were starting to get impatient as well. Did they want me to kill their leader? Was Shlatha excited by the prospect of dying? Impatient to get it over with? "Why won't you yield?" the question was as aimed within as at the orc. I didn't expect Shlatha to actually explain what was happening. Any real answer would have to come from me. An impression that was strengthened by Shlatha's wordless roar and subsequent charge.

The Conclave records were useless in addressing this. They stated orcs as merely incapable of working alongside any other species. Not only because they absolutely refused to submit to any level or torture, coercion, or threats. I considered other forms of cooperation as Shlatha's fist impacted my head. I grabbed its jaw and hurled it into the ground before kicking it away. Diplomatic results were even worse, as orcs saw discussion as an admission of weakness and immediately attacked whoever was trying to befriend them. In all the records of the Conclave, there was never a single instance of cannibals and orcs being able to cooperate. At least, never with the cannibals retaining their civilization.

I kicked Shlatha's knee, breaking it and dropping Shlatha to the ground. I lifted it by the throat as I considered another option. Tossing Shlatha to the side, it indeed had merit. Some clans of orcs took captives. Captives that were little more than fuck toys for the orcs, but captives nonetheless. Perhaps that was the key to answering the problem, though. Swatting Shlatha aside before the axe impacted me this time, I spun and drove a heel into its back as it stumbled. While Shlatha flew through the air, I tried to develop a useful means of cooperation.

I felt that the specifics of how captives could exist in orc clans could be the answer to my question. It was just a matter of connecting the failures of diplomacy and the success of cannibal servitude. Taking a submissive tactic wasn't my style, so I had to find another connection. Shlatha's axe shattered against my knee. A straight kick to its chest sent it flying back into the other clan members. Orcs took great pleasure in raping anyone they defeated, so much so that cannibals that became willing were converted from murder targets to sex toys. The records were very clear about that. Was I supposed to rape Shlatha into a sex toy? Did negotiations always fail because orcs only understood dominance and cooperation in reference to sexual prowess? Was that the reason for the excitement? That would require Shlatha to want to lose…which seemed to be exactly what was happening. A backhand dropped Shlatha before it could launch any attack at me and a kick returned it to a distance as I snarled to myself about how little will I had to spare while battles were happening in the south.

Armed with a new hypothesis…I wasn't sure how to proceed. Short of raping Shlatha and watching the reaction, how could I verify anything? Another stone axe was shattered against my knee as I grabbed the wide horn on the crown of Shlatha's head that led into a strip of horns that ended on the tip of its tail. I slammed the orc's face into the ground, verifying once again that pain registered as pleasure for the odd creature. "If you can't hurt me at all, I don't see the point of this exercise. You're too weak to be worth fighting." That should reveal a bit more of what was going on in Shlatha's will.

Shlatha responded with a flood of desperation. "Shlatha never kneel! Shlatha gonna kill Shiny! Kill Shiny!" the desperation had replaced the spikes of impatience entirely as it redoubled its efforts. It clearly hadn't been fighting at full strength before. Each blow became so strong that class five boars wouldn't be able to take them head on. The stone axe was unchanged, but it became used as a distraction instead of treated as if it would actually damage me.

A reaction entirely consistent with my new hypothesis. Desperation in the face of being rejected by a potential sexual partner fit with what I was looking at in Shlatha's will. I was still participating in the fight, thus the excitement. Surprisingly, the rest of the clan shared in the desperation, as they had in the excitement. That was a slight problem for my hypothesis, unless Shlatha not being forced to submit had caused some problems in the clan.

Shlatha was also being more open about showing the excitement, incorporating more twists in how it moved, despite slightly hampering the effort to deal real damage. It was also revealing its teeth in a grim parody of a smile. The grin on its face and excitement suffusing its will said my hypothesis was right, if it was grinning and not bearing its teeth in threat as hounds did. Combined with the needless twisting, maybe it was trying to be seductive. Was being ineffective a dance of submission, in the perspective of an orc? One they couldn't admit verbally, lest they be seen as admitting defeat and showing an extreme level of weakness at the same time?

It may not be a form of coercion I used personally, but many goblins found rape to be the most effective means of coercion available to them. Perhaps orcs were similar. Perhaps they built their entire civilization around it. It would explain why cannibals had never managed to tame orcs.

It did beg the question of why the orcs were all nearly identical, merely their size, specific musculature, and scars differentiating them. A culture of rape should result in increased levels of hybridization, where the orcs seemed to have the opposite problem. The Conclave didn't mention how orcs reproduced, though it was unclear if it was unknown or something that nobody thought needed to be written down.

The records of orcs were very fragmented, as without any form of interaction it was difficult to come to any conclusions. Orcs also grew in strength too quickly on top of refusing to submit, making them very poor substitutes for goblins despite tasting significantly better. Shlatha's next charge ended with both its hands gripped in one of mine. As it was restrained the excitement reached a new apex, the color of lust bleeding through the gaps left by the ebbing of desperation. Shlatha felt like being restrained was the end, and it was right.

Samantha may have been an excellent example for me to learn to fuck, but it was quite a different experience having the partner fighting back the whole time. Shlatha was a very experienced grappler, wriggling out of my hold as soon as it was sure I was following the expected result of victory. It may have been a playful level of fighting for the orc, but each punch would have ripped Adrian CMXXVIII in half, though Samantha had since progressed in class enough that she could equal the orc's ferocity. Orc claws may not have been the talons of a quail, but they were far larger than cannibals had. Shlatha's mouth was definitely more lethal, her face being long enough that her maw wrapped completely around my neck as she bit with enough force to decapitate the average class five cannibal. Her tongue was less controlled, caressing my throat softly as her jaws struggled to do any sort of damage.

If Shlatha's reaction wasn't enough to convince me that I was dominating her the correct way, the cheering from the surrounding orcs would have been. Those that still watched, at least. Most of them had ditched their armor as they wrestled with a nearby orc, showing how vicious and bloody it usually was for them. And it was both. Shlatha's claws and teeth may have found targets immune to them in my avatar, but that was unique. Those that were too enthusiastic in their attempted "rape" of another orc and failed to beat it into submission first tended to get the tables turned on them. Often because the other orc got a grip on their throat, forcing the aggressor to become the victim as blood flooded the new aggressor's mouth.

For the brutality of the orgy, there was no pain reflected in any wills. They were also much more aware of their surroundings than those devoted to the brood constructs, pausing to snarl as a team at any orc that drew too close before returning to whatever grapple they'd been in before. I was ready for the entirety of the orgy to save any orc that seemed like it was about to die, but they seemed to know exactly where that point was and flirt right outside of it.

As the rest of the orcs joined the brutal orgy, it became clear that it was far from accidental. I'd thought them extremely shallow in their thoughts, but they proved that for what mattered to them they were very deep thinkers. They knew orc biology better than even the best of cannibal physicians knew cannibal biology prior to my influence.

It took two days for Shlatha to lose the energy to fight, finally dropping to the ground in exhaustion. Her will was almost purely amazement and satisfaction. "Now will you yield?" I activated a faith-based worship rune above the orc. Shlatha sniggered as she bit her own tongue and spat blood on the rune. The runes I spread among the rest of the orcs completed their own contracts effortlessly. Not a single orc had held back. Many had will-cores, but pain only excited them further. Even will-based pain was warped into pleasure, the excruciating agony of will-based pain turning to orgasmic bliss for the orcs with will-cores.

Their circuitry definitely didn't disappoint. Shlatha was almost class six, despite the heavily degraded nature of her circuits. Orcs were the most strongly regenerative species I'd come across so far, powering a level of vitality that left everything else in the dust. I'd considered healing some in the bloody orgy, but they hadn't needed it despite inflicting wounds that would have been fatal for cannibals. Not just cannibals, many of the wounds that they inflicted on each other would have been fatal for any species apart from another orc.

They also had a single circuit that was class ten, though advancing them past class eight would destabilize their physique. It was located on their false dicks, most of the circuitry there being purely reinforcement of their regenerative capabilities, the life rune being the core of that system. It was interesting that orcs had no real purpose for their dicks, apart from the pleasure of using them, but if they were removed the orc would be permanently and grievously debilitated. It may be difficult to ensure the dick didn't grow back, but if it was managed it would be a massive detriment to the orc.

Despite their useless dicks, orcs were entirely self-sufficient in their reproduction. The only real purpose their dicks had was allowing a second means of obtaining the pleasure that they used as a reason to produce another orc. It wasn't a conscious choice, but a bodily reaction to pleasure. One definitive benefit for their species was that every dead orc could be torn open to find an egg with a new orc inside. With an increased level of focus and experience, orcs could probably reproduce constantly without needing to rape or be raped, but that would require a desire to accomplish such a feat. Orcs may be breeding themselves to extinction, but they were doing it with a smile.

As the orgy ended, the vast majority of the orcs held a massive egg in their hands containing a new orc. Orc eggs were half the size of the orc's head, almost ten times the size of chicken eggs. Given the lack of similar eggs elsewhere as well as young, the orcs had bred themselves so near extinction. At least, this clan was well on the way to breeding themselves into extinction.

Looking through their memories, it was because Shlatha had advanced to class five. Any challenge would be in turn challenged until it reached up to the chief, who had to be able to be defeated to allow an orgy to happen. Since Shlatha was unbeatable, none could challenge anyone else for fear of it being seen as a challenge to her rule. That meant no offspring. Shlatha also couldn't challenge any of her orcs, as they were all so much weaker that they knew they'd lose. Challenging a weakling was only admitting your own weakness, not a proof of your strength. They'd also been stuck in the forest, where every other type of creature hid from them, meaning no defeated foes to rape, a compounding factor but Shlatha was the true reason there were no baby orcs in her clan. That very problem was why every single orc had been euphoric at the chance of Shlatha being defeated, especially by a non-orc. If she survived, she'd remain the top orc but she wouldn't have grounds to see any challenge in the tribe as a challenge to her. If she died, it would start a war to see who would become the new chief. A win-win all around.

There was a question of how the other orc tribes died, but that was fairly easy to understand. Undefeatable chieftains weren't only a problem in the forest. They'd require a worthy enemy to reproduce, meaning a battle. Most creatures had bigger groups than orcs, despite orcs being ridiculously threatening for their level. There were also a lot of situations that wouldn't allow for the digging out of the orcs produced as their parents experienced the pleasure of death. Any foe that the chieftain saw as worthy would have a group of their own that presented a deadly threat for the whole clan. If they didn't produce more orcs than fell in the battle it was inevitable that the clan would perish. Assuming the orcs won the confrontation.

Or they could come across a foe that wasn't one they wanted to rape, quail being the obvious example. Quail would be devastating enemies for orcs, their tactics being very destructive while their defeat would provide no increase to the population. Their talons were also long enough that they could destroy the eggs of dead orcs, despite not knowing that they were doing. A powerful orc leader would also be able to survive any quail attack, meaning there wouldn't come a boom of population as the orcs fought for dominance over a newly leaderless clan. Honestly, it was a miracle there were any orcs left at all.