Chapter 2133: Heading to the Mysterious Forest

This was something to consider. Before she leaves this region, she’d have to start planning about this. For now, the priority was looking for her husband as well as that mysterious Urkfrut.

At least she knew that he had arrived on her side of the wall.

Meanwhile, Althea decided to introduce everyone to him, so that if he arrived while she wasn’t there, they would treat him as a guest rather than an enemy.

"If you see my husband, please welcome him," she said, casually taking out her phone and showing a picture of her husband. He was in uniform, looking very handsome.

Bable, the orc always closer to her, wanted to grab it. Althea only had this one phone with so many Terran memories, so she never lent it out. She did have a backup of the files, but she still wouldn’t risk damaging it.

A phone was very fragile in the Orcs’ hands. They might crack it with a touch.

Bable and the others saw that it was something they couldn’t touch and didn’t push for it. They just looked at the man on the phone with a serious expression.

"This is your husband?"

"Hmm."

"He’s so small."

"..."

She cleared her throat, belatedly realizing that they probably didn’t have the concept of photos at all. They might’ve just thought Garan was inside the phone or something.

"Oh no, that’s not him," she said, giggling.

"But you just said so!"

Now Bable was very, very confused!

"I mean..., it’s like a drawing," Althea explained as patiently as she could, taking a stick and drawing Bable’s chibi on the soil. "Like this, except realistic."

"WOW!"

"Is it something from your hometown again?"

"Well, yes, but this is also very rare there," she said. Mobile phones from scratch were still something for the far future.

Seeing as it was another magical thing only she had, the orcs once again looked at her with even more reverence.

Many of them continued to stare, and Althea kindly showed them other pictures. For example, of her children, her friends, and several family pictures.

It made the curious orcs quite itchy. "What was your tribe like?"

"Where is it?"

"Is it in the Wall?"

"Are you from the Hollow forest?"

The orcs barraged her with questions, some related, and some increasingly random.

To the orcs, the wall and the Hollow Forest must’ve been very mystical locations. So when they encountered the ’mystical’ her, they quickly made the association.

She once again felt a bit curious about what caused the original large tribe(s) to go to the other side at all. Were they pushed there by circumstance, or were they guided there?

She couldn’t help but think of the root cause of the orc’s villainous image on the other side. It felt a lot like something pushing a certain wave forward.

And those pseudo elves she had heard from...what were they after? Would they have anything to do with these?

She smiled. "Neither."

Thinking for a moment, she showed them pictures of Alterra instead. She had a lot of photos, documenting Alterra each step of the way.

In order not to shock the orcs too much, she showed pictures of when Alterra was still a village, albeit a level 3 one.

Even this made the orcs feel like they were looking at another world.

"Wow..."

"What...why are those rocks so pretty?"

"They look sturdy."

"They’re called buildings. They’re made by hand," she said. "My tribe...as you saw, we are not very physically strong, but we’re quite flexible."

"Can we make them too?"

"It would depend on the situation on this side," she said. "We have to find a place that would be able to handle all those monsters outside.

The orcs did not have the Lord System, so everything had to be handled manually. They were not like humans either, and their way of thinking was always surface-level. She couldn’t expect engineering assistance from them.

At the same time, she didn’t fully want to take them away from this place. As dangerous as it was, the resources here were quite rich. The fight for resources on the other side, if they were to go there, could get intense considering their appetites.

High level beasts were also more important to orcs since their meat could heal their injuries, even if they were powerhouses. There were not enough high-level monsters on the other side to sustain everyone.

A few orcs can go, but definitely not everyone.

Most importantly, even with Alterra and Warrior City slowly changing the way people looked at Orcs, the hostility was there and they were rather deep.

Otherwise, why would territories so far West treat orcs as slaves without questioning anything? In just several hundred years since they appeared in front of humans, their reputation was so horrible worldwide, and this was already considering the slowness of information travel.

Althea leaned more to keeping them here, but improving their lifestyle and safety while she could, at least while she waited for her husband.

"Another way to ensure you are not forced to move around is to farm. That is to say, make your own food in one place," she said, pointing at their own little farm at the side. "Even if you are not wood orcs like I am, these plants can grow on their own—they just need guardians."

"Are you willing to be guardians?"

...

Orcs never learned to farm because there was no need to. IT was such a rich place with resources that recovered easily. If they ran out, it was easier to just find another base in this large land than try to nurture plants.

Essentially, this place was a treasure trove as long as one could handle the monsters it came with.

Althea, while contacting her husband every ten or fifteen minutes, would teach the orcs the basics of planting. It varied per plant, so she taught them more about the fruits and vegetables she had brought and showed them, as well as common vegetables outside.

She also taught them the various ways to process and eat the Bouti plant, which was the most common fruit here. It was like a shrub and had decent output, and it also had a decent taste, unlike others. It had long been grown and processed in Alterra, so they knew how to handle it.

For example, she taught them how to turn them into dried fruits, into juices, into delicious paste, and so on. They could paste them on meat not just to improve taste, but also to improve its absorption. They had already studied many combinations before, so it should still be valid here.

Maybe the effect was even better, but this was still subject to tests. "For those who’d eat meat with bouti fruit jam, can you kindly test if your recovery has improved?"

The orcs nodded, following her though they had no idea what it was for. They were slowly giving her their blind trust.

Rather, orcs had this tendency because they just didn’t like to overthink. They were lucky it was her; otherwise they’d have been scammed to their teeth.

...

A few more hours passed like this, and there was no response from her husband. She wasn’t in a hurry before because it would be more difficult—and dangerous—to find each other in their current situation. But it had been so long, and Althea really couldn’t wait anymore.

She had to go out this time. After a few days of absorption, meditation, and training, she could now see much farther with her [Earth Vibration] Skill and found quite a few tunnels heading outwards. However, it would take a while to explore, so she didn’t bother.

She’d really have to venture out this time. Fortunately, the wind seemed to have picked up, and the mob situation outside had turned to relative normal.

Well, if one ignored the mob still there. It certainly dispersed quite a bit now, but it was in no way a small number of monsters.

"Are you really going?"

"I’ll come with you."

"No," she said. "I need you all to guard each other; guard your home. I have a lot of skills, but they’re usable only to me. Bringing you would only slow me down."

However, they were stubborn. Many orcs stood up, presenting themselves to help out.

Apis stepped forward. "It might be inconvenient for you to take us the whole way, but," he paused, looking at the others. "At least let us clear the way for you."

...

Several powerful orcs emerged from the hiding place first. The wind had already arrived and dissipated some of the scent, but there were still a number of monsters there, especially those just outside the cave.

The orcs immediately rushed forward and fought with these monsters, keeping them on one side. Those a little farther away were attracted by the scent, blood, and noise, but they were also greeted by dozens of orcs from the inside.

Anyway, they had been trapped inside that stuffy cave for days. The hot-blooded orcs needed a place to vent.

Althea smiled and did not waste their efforts.

[Woodland Camouflage]

She silently thanked them in her heart and rushed forward without looking back, knowing full well that their help was only maximized if she did so.

She climbed up a tree to get good views as soon as she placed a distance between her and the mob. Because many monsters here were on the large side, there were not many arboreal types.

She saw a large ’path’ at a distance. It was really wide, like about as wide as a modern avenue.

And it was heading straight to the Hollow Forest.