It started last night when old Kulu taught me anti-magic in its entirety and told me I could do it he didn't know, it was after all a human learning orcish magic. A good novel although I was not the first, but no one had ever succeeded before, and I was the one who had the best chance of success.
I sat in my tent for half the night thinking about it, sometimes thinking that the old kuru and I had long since gone beyond conversations with a 7+ year old. The life expectancy of the average orc is usually less than 60 years, so orcs are very precocious, and the average orc child is 12 years old for his bar mitzvah, the human equivalent of 18. I don't know why Old Kulu always likes to say things to me that are always hard for me to understand. Doesn't he understand that according to human 7 year olds, they are only just getting over their teething, or are they still in a state of ignorant knowledge of the world?
Old Kulu always believed it was the guidance of the beast gods that brought us together, and I looked out of the tent at the sudden spring rain and felt a lot of emotion. In the corner of the tent was the old man who was sleeping peacefully with his body hunched over. The wrinkles on his face were like the gorges that crisscrossed the loess plateau, you could see that he was once tall and fit, but the passage of time in his old age had drained his body of flesh and blood, and he was so thin that his skin was wrapped in bone.
The skill of Anti-Magic is a continuous consuming magic skill, it is an elementary magic skill that is so simple that it does not even require any chanting to cast, but it is difficult for me because I do not know how to "stop time", nor do I have the ability to move the magic in my body along the meridians of my body at will, I have no control over this, no How could I inscribe a spell in my body when I was not even an apprentice magician?
According to old Kulu's theory, once an apprentice human magician has awakened, a pool of magic will initially form in his body, and once he learns to meditate, he can guide the magic power in his body to run along his body's meridians, eventually forming a preliminary cycle, and the magic power will grow and accumulate in the pool. But as soon as a human magician forms such a magic cycle, he will never have the chance to learn orc magic again, because all the orc magic created goes against this magic cycle, their way of magic is to gather magic power from the body's limbs and bones into the magic core, and then keep building up a breakthrough. Only a freak like me, whose body had not yet formed a pool of magic power, but already had fire elemental mana, seemed to have a slight chance of learning orc magic.
I think old Kulu rambled on for most of the night, probably not thinking that I would be able to understand all of his words, but in the end, Kulu recited the words of caution countless times, that before the awakening ceremony, my magical body was a piece of sweet cheese in the eyes of some evil magicians, and that hiding my natural bloodline and making myself more ordinary would be the best protection.
The first step I had to take was to learn how to channel the magic onto the tips of my fingers and draw magic formations with my hands. Based on what the old kuru had told me and the pattern drawn on the parchment, I concentrated hard and let the burning fire element in my body converge on my fingers, feeling a little relief from the burning sensation in my body and a sudden heat on the tips of my fingers, a faint orange light that glowed on and off and seemed extremely unstable. The orange spell painted in the air didn't even last a second before dissipating into the air.
I couldn't help it, the fire-attributed magic that was raging inside me at any moment would turn the mana I had already gathered into something extremely unstable, and I would now have a hard time even keeping the magic on my fingertips. As I watched the dawn come, the night rain had somehow stopped and a white band of light lit up on the eastern horizon, followed by the blazing sun that seemed to suddenly leap up and complete the earthly horizon.
I sighed; it seemed that I would only be able to continue studying this anti-magic again tomorrow night.
I took a football-sized piece of charcoal from the woven bag outside the tent and with my hand grabbed a nearby hammer and broke it into fist-sized pieces. I knelt down and threw the broken charcoal into the clay oven, which had almost burned out, with only faint sparks being fanned by my fan. The blackened iron kettle was filled with water and placed on the clay stove. This was the first thing I did every morning, and as I hadn't slept all night last night, I decided I didn't need to go back to sleep, so I lifted the curtain and stepped out of the tent to breathe in the fresh air after the rain.
Last night's rain had made the grass so wet that there were low puddles everywhere. A quick walk around the camp and the rain-soaked grass would soddenise his trousers, making it easier to put on his dry leather trousers.
Uncle Fred wandered over from the dance camp, looking in good spirits, not many in the caravan could find a concubine in a dance troupe, and Uncle Fred had some skills, I had never seen what his concubine actually looked like, but I had heard Uncle Fred brag about a young and pink pussy, and a very prominent maid under one of the big names in the dance troupe.
"Well, good morning, Giga!"
"Good morning, Uncle Fred!" I tried to look as good as I could, because that's the best way for every child to protect themselves, and no one hates a good child, do they?
Fred hid his embarrassment, after all, being caught fooling around with the Dance Maiden was not allowed by the Master of the caravan or the Dance Maiden, which is why Fred had returned to the caravan camp quietly at dawn. As Fred brushed past me, he thought of something and suddenly leaned down on my shoulder and said, "Giga, the caravan will be resting at Lake Prosperity for a few days, so if there is nothing else to do during the day, would you like to come with me and try your luck in the pasture, maybe you will come across some magic antelope."
"You're taking me out hunting?" I said, a little excited.
Fred gave me a contemptuous look before grunting slowly, "What are you thinking, can you ride a horse or can you draw an ironwood bow? We're just going to show the adventuring group the pile, see the pile understand? Forget it, you wouldn't understand even if I told you kids, pack up early and bring the skinning knife I prepared for you, I'll go talk to the head of the adventuring group later."
"Yes! Uncle Fred, would you like to eat something first?" I agreed, adding some water to the pile of stew left in the iron pot and putting it on the clay stove, slicing the black bread into triangles neatly on the rim of the pot by hand and snapping on the heavy and burnt hole in the wooden lid.
Fred rubbed his stomach, glanced at the iron pot with a joyful grin, and asked me, "Leftovers from yesterday?"
"Nah!"
"I heard that you and the two Kurtz boys made some kind of Lakey's stew yesterday and it held up the merchants' calves so well that they could barely get up from their beds? What's that good stuff that smells so good? I haven't even got a piece of meat yet, but you've got the heart to leave some leftovers for me." Uncle Fred rubbed his hands together, his mouth full of imperial slang that made my head spin, and leaned over with a faint smell of vanilla, the sweet kind that I thought must belong to the woman.
Soon the water in the iron pot began to heat up, starting to melt the frosty white fat that had congealed on the stew in the pot, and the aroma slowly emanated. The vermicelli in the pot had already been picked over by Kurtz, except in this world there were no forks or chopsticks, everyone ate with spoons, and the smallest spoon was almost the size of an egg and heavy to hold. The rim of the pan was heating up and the neatly sliced black bread was slightly charred, and the faint smell of wheat from the fire lured Kurtz out of the tent, who was still drowsy, but his big cute nose was shrugging slightly, guiding the sleepwalking Kurtz in a somewhat ridiculous way.
The three of them sat around the clay oven, not afraid of the heat, with their browned black bread in one hand and a large spoon clutched in the other, as you ladled and I ladled the stew from the pot.
The pious orc shaman only drank a cup of hot water and ate two or three slices of cold, dry dried meat every morning, and old Kulu, who did not eat anything too fatty in the morning, naturally did not join me. He had been trying to hunt a magic antelope in the playground, but even if it was only a herbivorous antelope, it was still the lowest of the low, and when angry it could pierce the skin of a rhinoceros with its long, sharp horns.
Soon afterwards, with the angry sunrise, I followed Uncle Fred and some of the merchant's best leather makers in a couple of ox carts, following the adventuring group deep into the playground. The oxen had been borrowed from the Dance Maiden by the leaders of the two adventuring groups, and there were five ox carts in total behind more than 20 horses, and it was only then that I had the opportunity to sit in the ox carts and take a closer look at the mysterious adventurers.
Cuz and I were squeezed into the middle of the bullock carts, the adults worried that we would be thrown off by the bumpy bullock carts, extraordinarily reserved for the thin-bodied. Everyone's jubilant, this was one of the few opportunities to earn extra money on the trip. The hunters from the adventuring group would hunt the valuable beasts from the grasslands and then the skilled thin-skinned masters in the ox carts would dismember them quickly and all the valuable items would be well taken care of. The beasts in the grasslands are not the only ones in this group, there are just more of them. In fact there are other more aggressive beasts such as steppe wolves, fire lizards and flying squirrels to name a few.
The two adventuring groups were not really equal in numbers, one was a small group of six men, led by a demon-hunting archer, wearing soft leather armour with a fine magical pattern, except that it was wrapped in a tattered linen cloak, making it difficult to see the armour in its entirety. A huge, one-man high longbow was wrapped in strips of white cloth like a mummy, and only the hard leather gilded jug at his waist looked unusually fine, the feathers of each arrow exposed and neatly flaming red. Kurtz told me they were the tail feathers of a fiery eagle, precious and would give the arrows some additional flame damage. Seeing the drooling look in Kurtz's eyes, I don't think the laird would like to know that a hairless orc boy has been thinking about his pot of feathered arrows!
The only ranger in the group and I knew each other very well. Seven months ago, when our caravan was passing through the New Cascades, the group had found an Earth Bear deep in the mountains that had almost killed Cuz, and Cuz had stolen a jar of honey from me right under the bear's nose, and that was how the group had found the bear, which had just advanced to 2nd level. I didn't hear them talk about the hunt, but according to the old kuru, almost everyone was wounded, the worst being the ranger in the group, Tia, a young man who had his leg broken by the bear's claws. Tia's leg was so badly injured that not only was his thigh bone broken, but many of his tendons were torn and ruptured, but to old Kulu, who was an expert in herbalism, it was no big deal. At the time, I was so frightened that I didn't know how to cry. In fact, I didn't really want to cry at the time, but I just couldn't hold myself back, and the thought of living in this barbaric world, where I would inevitably be injured myself in the future, scared me to death. Tia was the only one in the squad who was good at scouting and concealment, and was kind to children. I often talked to him, so I knew a little bit about the team. The remaining four members of the group were warrior Qiang Bach, swordsman Dorenle, water magician Gogo and warrior Yue Lun.
At this point, it is important to talk about the ranks of the adventuring group professions in this world. The professions are initially divided into magical and warrior classes, which are subdivided into shield fighters, swordsmen, archers, assassins, rangers and many more. The first warriors to enter the war school and learn the archery system are called apprentice archers, and when they meet the requirements of the archer's guild, they can apply to the union for an archer's certificate after passing an examination. Each war profession has a very strict ranking system, and for each rank of archer there are hard targets. Each rank of archer has very clear criteria in terms of attack distance, arrow speed and accuracy, and the exams are very harsh, and only warriors who can get the certificate are qualified to form an adventuring group squad.
Tia came at a distance on a sturdy gubbo horse and raised his shortbow in his hand to me, and I nodded to him. He rode briskly, trying to overtake our wagon like a whirlwind, and caught up with the leader of the adventuring group at the front of the group, who must have looked like he had good news. Sure enough, a quarter of an hour later, the group was ordered to stop, while a good half of the men of both adventuring groups ran out of the group in the direction from which Thea had come, leaving only four members of the adventuring group to guard the group in place.
I didn't know what was going on, and Uncle Fred said to me and Kurtz with great experience, "We're in luck, we just walked out and ran into big guys, to have two adventuring groups out in force, I'm afraid the prey won't be too small, huh, later on you two, Giga and Kurtz, will give me a hand."
"What's so hard about skinning one?" Kurtz said in a jarring voice.
"Hey, kid, all you usually come into contact with are beasts, how can ordinary beasts compare to magical beasts, even the most elementary ones, it's a lot of work to cut through their leather, there's a lot to learn here." Fred laughed, unimpressed by what Kurtz said. Then he said quietly to the two of us, "The beasts are naturally strong and can cut through tough leather even if their knives are not fast. I agreed to do so. Who in the caravan doesn't owe Old Kulu a favour? But how much you can understand depends on whether you two boys put your minds to it."