Several meters to the left of the clearing, hidden among the dense bushes, Aris lay flat on the ground, bow in hand and an arrow nocked. He had hung the body-forging book from a branch between his hiding spot and the clearing; now it swayed gently in the breeze as he fought to steady his breathing.
This was the ideal location for the lure. Even though the towering trees blocked most of the wind, enough slipped through to carry the poison powder into the orcs' faces once they reach the book.
He strained his ears, tracking the heavy, rhythmic thuds of approaching orc footsteps. His teeth clenched as he fought down a surge of nerves and the urge to bolt back to the safety of the cave.
With his gaze fixed on the book dangling just meters away, he rose into a low crouch and drew a deep breath. "THE BOOK IS HERE!" he shouted at the top of his lungs.
Instantly, he dropped back into the underbrush, holding his breath as he peered through a narrow gap in the leaves. His grip on the bow tightened as the orcs scrambled toward his position
They came to a skidding halt before the book. Five, then six, then nine. Aris counted them silently, one hand easing a bamboo container from his waist while the other kept the bow low and ready.
He waited, watching to see if more would join today's search. A full minute passed, and no additional orcs appeared. The nine before him began arguing loudly, the dangling book still untouched.
Each one shouted, daring another to make the first move, muscles tense and ready to lunge. The tension in the clearing grew taut as a bowstring.
Then one of the orcs stopped arguing. Aris watched as it glanced suspiciously around the tree line before turning back to its companions.
"Wait," it said and the others fell silent at once.
"Come to think of it—whose voice was that? And why didn't whoever found it just take—"
One of the orcs lunged for the book in that split second of distraction, but the rest instantly surged after him, forcing him to halt. He grunted in deep frustration, his face twisting with regret over the blown opportunity.
Aris's eyes bored into the orcs as they formed a loose, defensive arc before the book. He rose to his feet, unwilling to risk them realizing the trap if they lingered any longer. The faint rustle of his movement was enough to make them all spin toward him—only to be met by a dense cloud of poison powder drifting forward like fine dust.
They stared at it curiously as it settled over them. Some rubbed it between their fingers, and one licked it off his lip.
Immediately, their movements grew sluggish. Uncontrollable tears began streaming down their cheeks as thick mucus pooled over their lips, and those who tried to wipe away the mess only smeared the poison deeper into their faces.
Still, Aris dropped back into the underbrush, bow raised and a lethal arrow nocked in case one of them fought through the poison.
A full two minutes passed before he stood again. The sight of all nine orcs frozen in place before the book finally eased the tight knot of fear in his chest.
He approached slowly, ready to loose an arrow at any moment, but the orcs remained utterly frozen. He stopped before the hanging book, untied it from the vine, then walked to within half a meter of the vacant-eyed group, scanning each one in turn.
Fifty minutes before the poison wears off, he noted. More than enough time, and he still had enough powder at his waist.
He started with the orc on the far left, opening the book right before its unblinking gaze. This time, he didn't need to ease the orc into the hallucinations the way he had with Olod, this poison was far more potent than its previous paste version.
"Read," he commanded.
The orc struggled against the poison for a brief moment before its jaw slackened and its mouth began to move. "The body is a single vessel. Yet its capabilities are not born from a single quality."
Aris immediately had Prime record the words, cross-referencing them directly against the text. The orc continued, its voice hollow and mechanical.
"A complete body possesses four fundamental aspects. First, strength: the ability to produce force. Second, speed: the ability to produce and deliver that force without delay. Third, endurance: the ability to sustain exertion without decline. Fourth, reflex: the ability to perceive change and respond before conscious thought has completed its command."
He remained vigilant, his gaze darting between the back of the group and the shadowy tree line beyond, ears straining for any sound, ready to bolt at the slightest hint of movement. The persistent threat of an ambush kept every nerve in his body stretched taut.
"Though these aspects are different, they are not independent. Strength without speed is power that arrives too late. Speed without strength is motion without sufficient force. Endurance without either is merely the ability to persist in weakness. Reflexes without the physical ability to act are only awareness of one's own helplessness."
Aris frowned, his gaze darting toward the gaps between the trees once more. Time was slipping away, and this orc was reading at an agonizingly slow pace and not even saying anything useful so far.
Was it simply a poor reader or had the poison dulled its mind more than expected? Worse, using Prime continuously to scan, analyze, and record was beginning to exact a toll. A throbbing pressure was building in his head, threatening to become a blinding headache, or something worse.
"Faster," he snapped, glancing briefly at the other frozen orcs and weighing their potential reading speeds. Yet speed carried its own risk; rushed dictation could corrupt the data, and corrupted data was a mistake he couldn't afford.
The orc droned on.
"Therefore, the body must not be forged toward a single virtue. It must be forged as a whole. Yet the four aspects cannot be cultivated through equal training. Each must be subjected to a different stimulus according to the nature of the transformation sought."
Aris immediately pivoted to the next orc, commanding it to pick up right where the previous one had left off. This one proved slightly more articulate, reading three pages in as many minutes, though the gain did little to soothe his rising anxiety.
His brief satisfaction withered as he recalled that the book consisted of forty-nine pages, and even with the faster reading speed, the average throughput hovered around one page per minute.
Several tense minutes later, he turned to the third orc, ordering it to resume from the ninth page.
"For strength, the practitioner begins with a weight that can be moved with correct form but cannot be carried indefinitely."
The third orc plodded through the text even more slowly than the first, driving Aris to jump ahead to the fourth, then the fifth, before finding a breakthrough. Only the sixth orc read at a remarkably efficient pace. For a fraction of a second, he considered testing the remaining orcs, but jumping between them wasted valuable seconds.
He committed to the sixth, ordering it to read continuously while Prime compiled the translated text into a dedicated new folder for the body-Forging art. The data began assembling itself seamlessly in it, though the dull ache in his skull intensified by the second.
"Speed belongs to the body. Reflex belongs to the moment before movement. A practitioner may possess great speed and still be struck because he recognized the attack too late. Therefore, reflexes must be forged through repetition until the body responds before thought has finished forming."
The orc continued, listing several training methods for reflexes; shadow sparring, blindfolded drills, and the breaking of flinch responses, just as it had for the previous aspects.
Aris's eyes remained fixed on the surrounding trees, his ears still straining to catch any sound beyond the rustle of the forest while he flipped the pages at intervals. He checked Prime's internal timer: eleven minutes until the poison wore off.There was no way the remaining pages could be read at the current rate.
"Faster," he rasped.
The orc accelerated, though its cadence quickly turned into an unintelligible mumble.
"Just read normally," Aris muttered, pressing his hands hard against his forehead. The side effects from overusing Prime had worsened from uncomfortable headaches into outright agony.
He had long since passed the thirty-minute safety threshold for continuous use, and now every function of Prime had to be forced through sheer will. Resting felt like a fatal gamble, yet continuing was becoming impossible—hot iron spikes seemed to be driving into his brain with every second.
Five minutes later, his eyes were bloodshot and swollen, and a thin line of blood trickled from his lower lip where he had bitten through the skin to keep himself clearheaded. The relentless agony made the veins on his forehead bulge like twisted roots.
He could poison the orcs again to reset the timer, but he couldn't guarantee another orc wouldn't stumble onto the clearing in the meantime. I should have concocted that vitality-nourishing brew, he thought bitterly. But he wasn't one to wallow in mistakes.
Two more minutes bled past, and the orc's voice sounded as if it were echoing from the bottom of a well. Suddenly, his blurred peripheral vision caught one of the orcs twitching, or perhaps he was merely hallucinating from sheer exhaustion. Worse, the poison might already be wearing off.
Without hesitation, he lurched back, ripped the second bamboo container from his waist, and sprayed a thick cloud of powder in two sweeping arcs, repeating the motion with the third. For a moment, the nine orcs seemed to quadruple in his vision as the headache exploded behind his eyes.
He stumbled backward into the brush and collapsed into the leaf litter of his hiding spot. With fumbling hands, he grabbed branches and handfuls of leaves, covering himself as best he could. The double dose made it unlikely the orcs would regain clarity, but wandering orcs remained a threat. Still, the likelihood of one passing through was low, and the likelihood of one spotting his concealed position was lower still.
Wake me in thirty minutes, he ordered Prime mentally as darkness dragged him under. The poison would last well over an hour, perhaps longer, but consciousness abandoned him entirely before he could calculate the margin.
[Ding. Thirty minutes elapsed.]
Aris woke to Prime's chime echoing in his mind. His hand swiped unconsciously through the air, as if swatting away a disturbance to a much-needed sleep. The next second, he jolted upright, his head whipping around in a panic as his hand scrambled for his bow and arrow. Only after his fingers locked around the familiar grip did a measure of safety return.
He rose to his feet, eyes immediately snapping to the orcs. All nine still stood completely unmoving, jaws slack and drooling, glazed eyes staring ahead while the poison powder coated their skin in chalky white. He rubbed his temples; the splitting headache had subsided into a dull, manageable throbbing.
Stepping before the sixth orc, he scanned the group one by one. The double dose of poison had thoroughly over-saturated their systems.
[Estimated remaining time: four hours.]
One of them looked as though its mind had permanently cracked under the strain, but that hardly mattered now, their only remaining purpose required no intellect.
One minute later, the sixth orc droned through the final lines of the body-forging art. Aris closed the book and gathered his three empty bamboo containers. Then he issued the command.
"Follow me."
He addressed the sixth orc first, then worked his way through the rest one by one. They fell into a stumbling, mechanical march behind him as he led them slowly through the trees. He remained constantly alert, wary that their heavy, dragging footsteps might betray their position.
Fifteen minutes later, Aris stood before the pool. The nine orcs were arrayed in a silent line behind him, halted at his command. He scanned their bodies once more out of habit, then turned his gaze deep into the water, fixing his eyes on the twenty-ton boulder resting ten meters below, barely visible through the murky depths.
He turned slowly back to face them.