Back in the real world where Valkar and his kin had fought, something magical was happening.
In the spot where Valkar's body should have been—a vortex of gold and black energies twisted into existence.
Lightning, crackling with the scent of rain and scorched earth, coiled around the void. From it, a form took shape. First the silhouette, then the substance. Green skin, black hair, tusks.
Valkar re-materialized.
His body was whole. Not just repaired, but… perfected. He grew taller, the muscles denser, the skin tougher—like old leather boiled in iron vinegar. The stump of his severed arm no longer ended in ugly scar tissue; a thick, corded limb of slightly darker green had regrown, veins pulsing visibly beneath the surface as though the flesh itself remembered rage. His remaining tusk gleamed sharper, deadlier.
He stood slowly, his knees popping like dry wood. The world felt different. Sharper. He could see the grain in the cracked stone ten paces away. He could hear the frantic heartbeat of a beetle scurrying under a rock. He could smell the faint, coppery tang of dried blood, and the sickly sweet rot of the bat-goddess's corpse.
"Haaa~..." He exhaled. The simple pleasure of a full lung of air was almost overwhelming.
"I'm truly back," he whispered to himself. His new mind cataloged the sensation. He bent down and picked a handful of dirt, letting the grit run through his fingers, feeling the texture, the temperature. The sheer… reality of it.
He looked at the battlefield. The bodies of the fallen beasts—and from their condition, Valkar guessed that at least five or six days had passed since the fight.
For him, it was like an hour or two inside Ishtar's weird place, but for the world, it was almost a week.
Grosh and the other orcs were nowhere to be found. They were gone.
However, Valkar caught sight of two graves not so far from the pillars. They were crudely dug, marked with their fallen comrades' axes.
"Brothers..." he whispered, a pang of something unfamiliar and unwelcome tightening in his chest. His new mind labeled it: grief. He didn't like it.
He slammed his chest with a fist.
"You have earned a warrior's death, brothers."
His gaze then fell to the remains of the bat-creature, or what was left of her. The body was withered and desiccated, like a husk left out in the sun for a season. The head was a mangled ruin; Valkar's tusks had done their work well. A faint, sickly pink aura still clung to the corpse, a dying ember of the goddess's power.
"I need to get rid of this," he grumbled, already taking a mental note to burn the corpse later to prevent any foul magic from festering.
Or worse, the bat-creature returns from the dead.
He turned his attention to his body, studying it for a moment.
It was whole. Stronger. But the curse was still there, a low, simmering ember in his loins. A constant, nagging presence.
For now, it was manageable, but Ishtar had urged him to find a woman in the next few days. A few more days after that... Well, she said he would explode.
As if the system had read his thoughts, a new notification flashed before his eyes.
Ding!
...
[New quest]
[Reach level 10]
[Time limit: 7 days]
[Reward: Full system access, personal domain]
[Failure: Death]
...
"What?" The quest's sudden appearance startled him. However, before he could even read the first line, another notification appeared.
Ding!
...
[Urgent quest]
[You're suffering from 'Succubus's curse'. Your lust is rapidly increasing. Find a mate within the next 48 hours to satiate it.]
[Time limit: 48 hours]
[Reward: Survival, New skill]
[Failure: Testicles will explode]
[Reminder: Only releasing inside a female's womb will temporarily quell the curse]
...
"Me balls will go BOOM?!" The words hit Valkar like a physical blow. He instinctively crossed his legs, a gesture so undignified and alien to an orc that it sent a wave of fresh heat to his face. His new mind supplied the biological consequences with horrifying clarity. The pressure. The rupture. The agony. The end of the Valkar bloodline before it even had a chance to truly conquer.
"Failure of the first quest is death... and failure of the second quest is also death." He looked from the notification to the desiccated husk of the succubus avatar, a burning hatred coiling in his gut. Valkar wished he could kill her all over again, slower this time. Much, much slower.
"How am I going to find a woman in 48 hours?" he grumbled, his hands clenching into fists. His first thought was to run back to the village and ask his mother for help.
But he quickly dismissed it. Even if he made it in 48 hours, which was impossible—it would take at least a week—he can't just show up like that without finishing the great hunt.
He would be a failure, a disgrace. Zura'thrax would never look at him the same way again.
"So I need to find someone else." He scanned the battlefield once more. His new mind quickly recalled something that he had seen before.
He saw goblins, and from his knowledge, he knew that the goblin race had only males. To survive, they would steal females from other races and breed with them.
"Goblins." A cruel, predatory grin spread across Valkar's face. "Goblins have females."
It wasn't a solution born of hope, but of pure, ruthless pragmatism. Since he saw goblins among the bat-creature's... sex thing, he knew they must have a camp nearby.
He would find it.
He would take one of their stolen females... no, all of them. Ishtar said that he must mate with many women to keep his curse in check; he might as well start now.
This thought sent a surge of pure, primal satisfaction through him. It wasn't just about survival anymore. It was about conquest. His gaze swept across the desiccated husk of the bat-creature, and for the first time, a sliver of gratitude twisted in his gut. The curse, intended as a final, pathetic act of spite, had instead become a catalyst. A divine directive.
Sharp mind or not, Valkar is still an orc. And orcs care about two things.
Fighting and mating.
With a goal set, Valkar began to search his surroundings. He first found his old leather loincloth, now stiff with dried blood, but it did a decent job of securing his new MASSIVE bang! stick, which he was very proud of. He then found his shield. It was shattered, a ruin of splintered wood and cracked iron. Useless. He tossed it aside.
The bone knife his sister gave him was still in good condition, and after a quick search, Valkar found a bone axe that likely belonged to one of the orcs who died.
"A good weapon," he grumbled, testing its weight. The heft was familiar, comforting.
Armed and clothed, Valkar began using his knowledge to study the tracks.
Despite being less intelligent than other races, orcs had a great understanding of hunting. Tracking is one of, if not the most important, skills an orc can learn.
It was called the Great Hunt for a reason, and Zura made sure to beat the crap out of him if he ever failed a lesson.
But now Valkar didn't just understand it; he was a master of it in a matter of seconds. His new mind, blessed by the goddess, processed the information with terrifying speed.
He saw not just tracks, but stories. The deep, heavy gouges of the trolls, the frantic, clawed scrabbling of the goblins. He saw where they had gathered, where they had fought, where they had fled. The goblin tracks were the most numerous, and they all led in one direction.
He grinned. He had their scent.
"Hmm?" Valkar raised his head and gazed at the sky. The day was fresh—that meant spending a few hours tracking wouldn't be a problem, but at night?
Night was a hunter's bane. Cold, dark, and full of things with more teeth than sense. He needed shelter, and now, with his new enhanced intelligence, Valkar was able to recall and piece together the information that his mother gave him about her cave.
Surprisingly, the cave was just a two-hour walk away. A safe place to rest. It was just that the route Zura taught him was long, complicated, and confusing, designed to keep out intruders. But Valkar's new mind saw it not as a path but a puzzle, and the solution came to him in a flash.
A shortcut that would eliminate 75% of the journey.
However, before committing to the journey, he still needed to do one more thing.
...
The day was a precious resource, but Valkar spent an hour collecting wood and burning the bat-creature's corpse. He watched as the flames consumed the last of her unholy presence. He even used his own mana on the fire to speed up the process.
He buried all the bones except the skull, which he decided to keep as a trophy.
"Now, time to find some females."