If my life was a webnovel, it would have the title 'Reborn As An Orc, Time To Waagh!' or something in that order. Life as an orc was certainly a novel experience for my human self.
Let start with my infancy. I was breastfed for only two months by my body builder of a mother before she decided to wean me off of meat! I was shocked by the transition, I thought babies were weaned off milk with soft food like porridge or something like that, going from milk to meat was certainly not healthy!
But, I was proven wrong rather quickly because I inhaled the meat like I was a starving ghost! To make things even more interesting, my gums were strong enough to rip through the meat with unsettling ease. It was then that I realized my body had evolved to be a war-machine. My father, just a normal warrior in the clan was towering over three meters and yet he was not the tallest or the strongest. That would be the chief, a real mountain of muscles. He towered over all of them, 4.8m tall, a real hulking behemoth.
At one years old, all my teeth had grown and testing them, I could chew through stones with relative ease, like chewing through rubber! I was already 1.3m tall and muscles were already forming. I was proud of this, given that I was a very skinny kid growing up and now I could probably lift as much as I could as an adult human back then!
Life as an orc was difficult too. My clan were nomads, we never stayed at one place for a long time. Orcs were, for lack of better terms, the Dothraki of this universe. They raided and pillaged everything they fancied with zero self preservation. If the Chief decides a certain settlement would be their target, all warriors, male of female, with throw themselves to the war, giving their all. They took no prisoners, no slaves to sell or put to work in the camp. Every living thing in there was meat and everything else was just property!
It was certainly shocking to know that some of the meat I had once eaten belonged to humans or dwarves. The realization didn't hit me all at once—it crept in like a slow poison. At first, I dismissed the unsettling taste of the roasted leg that had been plopped onto my plate during a feast. It was tougher than anything I was used to, the flavor richer but slightly off. I had assumed it was some exotic animal native to this world, maybe a creature too dangerous to hunt on my own. After all, this was a savage, untamed land where beasts roamed free.
But then I started noticing things: the way the meat was presented in ways that conveniently masked its origin, the way my orc brethren laughed and cheered as they tore into it with primal glee, the way nobody ever talked about what kind of creature it came from. My suspicions festered until the day I overheard a warrior boasting about a raid.
"They begged like dogs," he had said, a grin splitting his scarred face. "And their flesh? Tender as a calf's. The dwarves might be small, but their meat feeds the mighty!"
I froze. The words turned my stomach inside out, and a chill ran down my spine. I wanted to believe he was exaggerating, spinning a tale to earn respect around the fire. But deep down, I knew. I knew.
The next time a slab of meat was placed before me, I couldn't eat. I stared at it, my stomach twisting in knots, my mind replaying the warrior's words over and over. Was this a person? A dwarf? Was it someone's child, sibling, parent? The thought churned in my gut like bile.
Yet, as I sat there, I realized something else: no one cared. The other orcs tore into their meals with zeal, their hands slick with grease, their tusks dripping with juices. To them, it was just another meal. Another victory. Another way to grow strong.
This moment became a turning point for me, a line in the sand that forced me to confront my place in this brutal world. Could I truly call myself one of them if I rejected their way of life? And if I didn't, if I forced myself to embrace their savagery, what did that make me?
I thought about Earth, about the world I had left behind. Was it any better? History was full of people devouring one another in different ways—colonialism, war, exploitation. Perhaps this world wasn't so different after all.
Still, the idea of eating someone who could have spoken, laughed, or fought for their life filled me with a disgust I couldn't shake.
For now, I resolved to play along. I would smile when they smiled, laugh when they laughed, and eat what they ate—at least enough to avoid suspicion. But in my heart, I began to plot. If I wanted to survive and thrive in this world, I would have to build my own path. A path that balanced the strength of the orcs with the humanity I couldn't quite leave behind.
It was then that I decided I needed to be a different kind of orc.
The power I had been given—Cypher's ability to understand and copy powers—wasn't something I could just ignore. I had meditated on it for two years straight, every day thinking about how it worked, what it meant, and how I could use it to my advantage. At three years old, already standing at 1.84 meters tall, I had come to a conclusion that changed everything: somehow, I had the ability to copy powers from fictional characters. Powers from worlds I had only read about, from heroes and villains that existed only in stories.
The knowledge was overwhelming at first. It felt like I was holding the keys to a new kind of power—a power that transcended this brutal, savage world I had been born into. What was the point of being just another mindless warrior when I could be so much more? Cypher's power, to understand and replicate any ability, had become the foundation of my new reality. It wasn't just a gift; it was a weapon.
I wasn't sure how this power worked, whether it was a one-time thing or something I could keep unlocking. But the potential was limitless. I could mimic the abilities of the most powerful beings I had known in my old life. And maybe, just maybe, that could make me more than an orc. I could become something else—something greater.
In a world where strength ruled all, where my own kind believed in nothing but the raw power of the fist, I had to be smart. I had to find a way to use my mind and my new ability to climb higher, to rise above the mindless bloodshed and petty squabbles that defined orc society.
I wasn't going to let this power go to waste. It was time for me to become more than a monster. I was going to be a reckoning, a being so powerful even the strong fear me.