A flash of silver followed by the howling wind almost surprised Sigurd before his blade twisted, parrying the blow as the fierce hammer smashed the thick trunk behind him into pieces. Their razor-sharp shards of wood flew everywhere as Sigurd stepped to the side, placing his left hand against the orc's left arm.
"Buhi?"
The orc tilted its head. Sigurd saw it had already recovered from the attack and was preparing to follow through. It seemed to notice something as Sigurd smirked in its eyes.
"The little pig went buu buu buurast!" Sigurd said with a low, husky voice, his eyes narrowing, filled with darkness, pupils now golden orbs shining like fog lights.
Before any other orcs and the leader realised, a burst of unstable magic exploded from Sigurd's palm straight into the orc's flesh. The frigid cold immediately followed an intense, searing heat and explosive force as it permeated and overflowed within its body.
"Bu—"
Its pig-like mouth tried to speak before being blown away. Its left arm and shoulder exploded along with the surrounding forest's greenery and the beasts behind it—its head remained, but the left shoulder and arm splattered into bits of unrecognisable gore as its body collapsed on the floor, hissing and smoking with intense green flame. "Bu... HIIII!"
The orcs, now surprised, felt shocked to see their leader's arm explode. Confused, Sigurd twisted his black sword. Mammon sliced upwards in a semicircle and split its remaining arm in two, a wave of force blowing through the forest. He appeared like a demon to them. Never had they experienced danger before in this forest. However, the strange 'food' defeated their leader.
'Damn... that took nearly all of my mana, even in this form.' Sigurd thought, his right hand holding Mammon trembling after spraining his wrist to cut the orc's tough, fat, armour-like meat.
The remaining orcs who followed their leader prepared to attack. Sigurd felt his blood surge, but a burst of familiar magic flooded his senses.
'Eva!?'
Suddenly, in his heart, he felt a sense of fear as her light body lunged into the pack of four orcs, only for the rear orc's hand to grasp her spear. Or so would have been the case if he hadn't empowered her in his devil form. 'Two minutes... we have to beat them in two minutes,' He thought, stepping forward to taunt the other orcs.
He believed Eva could take one in this state.
"Oy, pigs, are you ignoring me?"
"!?"
"Buuhii, b-bui!" The orc leader screamed, trying to stand while glaring at Sigurd.
Sigurd didn't want to risk Eva at all. He wanted to waste these orcs' mana and focus on himself. 'Eva, kill that one slowly! I will destroy the rest in a few minutes!' He tried to tell her but couldn't because the orcs knew the language.
The church never explained, and he didn't know the witches enough yet. But all Agmar could understand was the speech of humans, elves, and beasts from the moment they transformed.
However, they could only understand if they were animals like wolves, rabbits, or beasts without the intellect to speak. In the early days, this truth caused thousands to die, as humans love to speak when they are ahead of themselves.
"Come!" Sigurd waved Mammon at them, intending to keep their attention while Eva dealt with her opponent.
"Man! Die!"
'These orcs are stupid,' he thought as he unleashed another Noctra burst—this time without the joke. His palm was a few inches from the leader's face, burning, melting, and exploding his face to smithereens.
"Shi..." Sigurd felt a pain in his abdomen, although the magic from the orc leader flooded his body—refilling his mana was like filling him with something that wasn't quite purified. It caused him pain to use this mana to control his magic without the refinement process, his veins searing like hellfire, eyes bloodshot as if awake for weeks, and his muscles screaming as if being ripped apart.
The remaining orcs looked at each other before charging at Sigurd. "One-minute limit," he muttered as his body shifted. His eyes focused on the closest orc, dashing towards him with a huge knife in its hand. "Seems refilling doesn't refresh the time... Haah!"
Unable to focus on casting Noctra, Sigurd let the mana flow directly into Mammon, slicing upwards to sever the orc's hand. He followed this with a side slash towards the orc's face before ducking and turning in one swift movement, sweeping across his body to slice the legs of the second orc.
"Ahh!"
The second orc didn't wait.
His mace pummelled Sigurd's chest, lifting him off the ground before he landed and tumbled into the forest's undergrowth. The magic he used to refill his mana did not improve his defence, and he forgot to keep practising the half-elf technique.
"Hu," Sigurd coughed and rolled to his side, lifting his right hand and grabbing his chest before a large branch smashed down on his stomach. The orc threw the mace back up like a baseball player. The mace arced through the air, about to smash down on Sigurd's head as his blade crashed against the orc's wrist.
Blood poured from the wound, causing him to stagger. Sigurd's eyes narrowed, the black sclera fearsome because the more damage he took, the more his golden pupils shone. "A mere pig dare wound me?"
With a flick of Mammon, the flames turned from green to black, resembling a strange viscous liquid like magma or molten tar, and the blade burned with the heat of a thousand suns. Sigurd sliced towards the orc's exposed side, cutting through its side as it grasped at the wound and screamed.
No matter how it tried to hold them together, blood, flesh and organs all melted into a foul-smelling mess.
'Oh shit, Eva, 40 seconds!' Sigurd thought.
The huge amount of magic from the slain Agmar flowed into his body, causing more pain to accumulate, his ears screaming and his brain boiling. Yet his mana recovered from killing the orc. "You die next," he said, not noticing his wounds or the slight sway of his movements as he approached the final orc.
The orc cried with bloodshot eyes, completely berserk, with an enormous axe over his head. '40 seconds passed already, 20 more seconds of pain... no... what should I do, Eva? Wait for me a bit more!' He thought as his vision swam, his muscles became heavy as lead.
Yet he dived, spinning to slice the orc's neck. 'Is... is my blade dull?' He thought. He only sliced a third of its thick neck. He attempted to attack again before an explosion of pain struck him in the chest, knocking him back.
His mana gathered and surged to his hand while the pain in his abdomen caused him to fly back, along with a slurry of blood, flesh, and mucus expelled from his mouth. The orc had punched him straight in the guts as he grabbed its neck.
His heart pounded with the pain of being crushed, the feeling of suffocation as his body felt cold and weak, but in his heart, Sigurd felt a warm sense of determination.
"Now I get it... Those who wish to take from me... will have to pay... with their lives." He spoke coldly, his voice low and dangerous as his mana ignited his left hand, burning the cloth, searing his flesh, but the orc screamed in pain, his skin blistering and bubbling as the muscles of his neck burst.
'Its toughness... I can't get any mana. There are only 5 seconds left! Die!' Sigurd thought.
The world swam as if drunk on wine and mead, but he planted his feet and twisted, thrusting Mammon's point at the orc's remaining eye, stabbing through the socket and piercing its skull before everything went black.
.
...
....
"Sigurd! Sigurd! Wake up!"
Eva's beautiful voice and her soft fingers were the first things he felt after falling unconscious, happy that it wasn't some disgusting orc...
"Sigurd! Help! There are more wolves! Over twenty of them. I fractured my hand!"
'No rest for the wicked... huh?'
Despite not using his devil form, he thought part of that attitude and desire remained. He realised it would remain a part of him all his life now.