CI

Not caring to bother with secrecy, I form a massive, uncompressed fireball above my head; not enough to bore through stone or melt steel or anything so extraordinary - however, certainly enough to leave some nasty burns on unprotected flesh and light some canvas tents on fire.

The ball flies towards the orcs, and a series of cries ring out; then, as though it had never existed, the ball of flames is struck by an orb of water, leaving nothing behind but some steam and fully alert orcs.

I am filled with dismay at this sight; after all, had there been no mage capable of rivaling me at even this most basic of levels, I could have easily wiped the floor with these pathetic creat– oops, better not let that pride get away from me, eh?

Still, the fact is that this fight is going to be a lot more difficult than my most optimistic hopes, an unfortunate occurrence that seems to encompass the majority of my altercations. Oh well, I suppose.

I leap off my hill onto the ground, facing towards the camp. The orcs' attention is fully on me now, I had made my position painfully obvious through my prior attack.

[You know, this fight will be considerably easier if I can get that mage out here to duel me… furthermore, I could take this as a good opportunity to obtain a greater understanding of the orcs.]

Using a wind elemental particle manipulation technique that I had once learned from Lector and had little reason to practice sense, I call out to the orcs, my voice carried to them such that it would sound as though I am standing next to the encampment and talking loudly, hopefully allowing them all to hear.

"Hello there, good fellows. My apologies for my prior sneak attack, I'd assume that warriors such as yourselves know the advantages of an easy victory when it can be won, even if it is obtained at the cost of some means often considered 'honorable.' I have been sent here to see to your eradication, a task which I am willing to devote my efforts to such that it shall either occur or I shall die. That said, even if your force is superior in strength and prevails over me, it is certain that you shall be rendered so injured as to be unable to continue your mission. So, I make you an offer: send forth your greatest warrior. If I defeat him, you shall surrender to me, and I shall ensure your safety. If he defeats me, I am dead and your force and equipment have not been weakened, it is as though I have never appeared. So, what do you say?"

A moment passes, and then another, still no response emerges from the encampment. Then, finally, by the time which I have begun to question whether orcs understand the very language which I speak, a reply rises up, carried on the wind in a manner identical to that which my initial challenge was brought forth.

"Human. While your words reek of a trap, you are right to say that the damage to us would be too severe if you are truly a soldier anywhere near my caliber. While it is perhaps the case that you could be of a degree of might that could defeat me but would lose out to the whole of our force, if that is the case then you would do irreparable damage to our force before your defeat. If you are only overestimating your own strength, then no harm comes of crushing you on my own. Of course, this challenge gives you an advantage, but I am still willing to accept it. Prepare yourself; our duel begins with my attack."

[While a bit guttural, I detect no sign of unintelligence in that reply; in fact, it was downright reasoned, reeking of an attempt to both accept my challenge and explain to his subordinates his reason for doing so, otherwise, he would have no reason to explain himself to me.]

Deciding that it would be foolish to not accept his warning in good faith, I take a defensive stance with my regular blade, not wanting to limit myself to melee in a duel of mages. While a more foolish opponent could be forced to approach and fight me on my own terms, it would be rather prone to underestimation on my part, if I were to make the assumption that my opponent would be dumb enough to approach me under such circumstances where he would be forced to fight me melee without any magic on his part. Thus, the choice of sword.

Suddenly, an orb of water bursts forth from within the encampment, arcing in the form of a parabola as it crashes down towards me; before it can land, it takes on a short spike of ice before it, in an obvious attempt to win a victory in only one move.

This actually reveals quite a bit to me; first, most importantly, is that my opponent is no novice with magic, performing techniques of multicasting and spell shaping, alongside the usage of the higher element of ice. Secondly, my opponent is an elemental magic practitioner, just as I had thought. The last conclusion is far from certain, but it can be reasonably assumed that my opponent will stick to water and perhaps ice methods; unless he is trying to mislead me or is of a similar, and uncommon, mindset as Lector and I, it is likely that he primarily works with water path; one must remember, it is quite unusual and even decidedly abnormal to work heavily with multiple types of elements, most elementalists work exclusively with one, honing their skills with just that.

I form a wall of earth in front of me to absorb the brunt of the attack, while simultaneously utilizing wind elemental manipulation to propel myself backwards, out of the way of the attack.

My enemy bores through the wall as though it is not there, continuing on to where I had been a moment before. And thus my genius is unveiled; the wall had had the secondary effect of hiding me from view, after he bores through it he finds that I am no longer where I had been a moment before, leaving him to crash into the ground without resistance.

Of course, such an unfortunate happening is far from significant in its degree of impact upon a high level mage; he does not even grace the ground with his dazed presence for a moment before he is again on his feet, curious eyes locked upon me, as if analyzing a never-before-seen lifeform.

And he is not alone in this regard; this is the first orc I have seen in this world as well, I am sure to engrave his appearance into my mind such that I shall never have any issue with discerning an orc from its cousins, the goblin and the ogre.

He stands at six feet in height, with forest green skin and a heavily muscled, almost barrel shaped body. He has almost no neck, such that it would appear as though his head grew straight out of his shoulders without any stem in sight.

Said head is totally devoid of any hair, whether upon its face or crown; not even eyebrows or eyelashes. A large ear on each side of his head, a bulbous nose contrasted with the small, squinting eyes, bared teeth that display extended fangs. A truly monstrous appearance, one may reasonably say.

As soon as he has come to his feet, he assumes a defensive stance of his own; for a moment we eye each other, separated by ten paces, each in a defensive stance of our own fashion. Where I stand with two hands upon my sword, leaning slightly away while also reducing my accessible profile, he stands holding a massive sword of his own, feet planted squarely on the ground as he stares me down with his beady eyes, his sword held ready.

Without any verbal exchange, the next phase of our conflict soon begins. He leaps ten feet into the air before then chopping down towards me in a move that is both hulking and fluid, crushing and graceful. At the peak of his ark, he wreaths his blade in a sheath of water, so as to add another layer of destruction to this mighty attack.

Not wanting to shy away, I prepare myself to accept his blow. A long, fair duel between spellswords lies before us, a duel in which we shall each challenge each other with the full extent of our abilities on a battlefield devoid of trickery, not even tricky evasion, just a good, healthy trading of blows in a manner that the Follower of Molan would declare good…

Heh, what type of brute do you take me as? Such methods work for the Follower only because he possesses strength in such an excess that no opponent could hope to defeat him when conflict comes to a pure trading of blows. While the Follower's commentary on the cowardly power of love and friendship may perhaps be utilized to advance my position in the future, his manner of combat shall be left to his own possession. No, the Scholar would shoot down such a method as the epitome of foolishness if he were to see it, for who would not utilize all methods at their disposal when in combat?

So, I think that it goes without saying that I do not accept his blow. In fact, I do not even move to dodge; no, why would I take defensive action in any form when I could claim an easy victory here and now?

I would like to imagine that a devious light flashes through my eyes and that the goblin feels a sense of dreadful premonition as I pull out Reinhart's blade. I just have time to raise it defensively above my head when the orc's attack lands. His sword chips as he comes into contact with my blade, before he pushes off and lands a few feet away.

Before he can process this new information and perhaps adopt a new fighting style, I take a sweeping slash towards him. Instinctively, he raises his sword to block the attack, thus forfeiting his life when the blade and his body are cut through without any apparent resistance.

[You know, this blade is actually quite useful, thus far it has been a far greater asset to me than my magic since losing my skills and proficiencies. Even at a relatively low level of strength and speed, and, of course, a low level overall, this blade is still able to more than make up for the gao against relatively strong foes. Cutting through normal metal as if it is nothing, with this blade at my side, nothing short of the might of the truly powerful or the gear of the mighty can oppose me. Without it, I would have been in a much worse situation upon awakening in the woods.]

As for why I hadn't equipped the blade initially, the answer is simply that I didn't know what type of combat styles the orc would employ against me, if he was a long range sorcerer I would have had no way to block his attack other than by using my sword which would have given away its abilities. Well, I suppose that I could have quickly put it away to be able to use magic to dispel the attack, but that would have left too many clues to my opponent as to my sword's functionality.

However, once I saw that my opponent was fully committed to an augmented melee attack, why should I not reach out and grab a victory through sheer material advantage? It is doubtless that the orc was of a higher level than myself, I am hardly some prodigy capable of challenging opponents leagues above me in power output, how could I be enough of a fool to challenge him on terms that provided him benefit?

And now that he's dead, the mission is essentially done. No one else here can put up a struggle against me, I have already won.