One day in orc world later | “You see, it seems the magic you perform is more on instinct.
And mind you, it is very impressive that you can do that—” Razgoren’s ramblings were abruptly cut off by Si-woo.
“You can be direct with me,” Si-woo said, raising a flat hand.
“You don’t know shit about magic.
If we were to research a way together, I would first need some years just to teach you everything I know already,” Razgoren did exactly as requested.
“I was the one who asked for it,” Si-woo whispered quietly to himself.
“No offense,” the high orc shaman added after a brief moment of silence, only to be met with a blank stare from the young human.
“None taken,” Si-woo lied smoothly.
“Well,” Si-woo scratched the back of his head, looking around the room.
“I guess you’ll just have to do the heavy research yourself.
Take this, it should help.” Si-woo reached into his inventory and handed the large orc a specific book he had found in there.
It contained the foundational knowledge of runes from the world of Mushoku Tensei.
It might be just enough to grant Razgoren some vital inspiration, acting like a missing piece to a puzzle to help him achieve his ultimate goal.
“Make a copy of it and give me back the original text.
I’ll leave right after that,” Si-woo said, his shoulders slumping slightly.
“About that…” Razgoren lifted a single finger with visible hesitation.
“I will only be able to safely send you back to your realm after the full seven days on your world have officially run their course.
I need the slowed time on my world to conduct this research in peace.” “So, I am supposed to stay here and what?
Get casually insulted by you all day?” Si-woo deadpanned, staring at the shaman.
“I guess the ‘none taken’ was a lie,” Razgoren whispered softly to himself before offering an alternative.
“You can always train while you are stuck here.” “No offense, but I saw you sparring with my clan members yesterday.
And while there is no doubt you defeated them easily, that display was far more raw brute force than…
actual skill,” the high orc whispered the last part carefully.
“So I don’t know shit about either magic or swordsmanship, right?
Well, fuck me I guess.
You got the dumbest human in the world for help.
Unlucky you,” Si-woo ranted highly dramatically.
Razgoren paused, looked around the stone chamber, and awkwardly scratched his cheek.
“No offense?” he offered again, truly not intending to insult the boy’s pride.
“Say that again,” Si-woo growled.
“What the fuck am I supposed to say?
Go train.
My species live for hundreds of years.
Members of my clan live even longer.
You have a rare opportunity to learn from warrior beings who have honed their craft for hundreds of years,” Razgoren suggested, spreading his arms wide in a gesture of helplessness.
Si-woo nodded slowly after a long moment of contemplation, his shoulders still visibly slumped as he walked out of the room.
“I’ll ask Commander Krukfays to train you personally,” Razgoren shouted after him with a wide, toothy smile.
Within fifteen minutes, Si-woo found himself standing in front of a massive, heavily buffed high orc.
The warrior was covered in deep battle scars across his entire torso, wore a menacing mask crafted from beast bone, and carried a giant meat cleaver as his weapon of choice.
Behind him stood five younger high orcs, all maintaining perfectly straight backs and alert, sharp expressions.
“Let’s see what you can do, boy,” the commander grunted before turning his harsh gaze toward the younger orcs behind him, who flinched under his stare.
“All five of you.
Fight him right now and don’t hold back a single blow.” It took less than a minute.
A smug Si-woo soon stood victorious in the middle of a tangled pile of five groaning, defeated high orcs.
“I saw that their swords did not cut you even when they made direct contact.
Are you wearing some kind of invisible armor?” Krukfays asked Si-woo, leaning his massive frame in menacingly close toward the boy’s face.
“No.
It’s a special magic technique called Touki,” Si-woo began to explain, but he was cut off when the massive orc in front of him let out a low, deep growl.
“No.
Commander,” the orc corrected him sharply.
“Yes, commander,” Si-woo addressed him with his proper title.
“Magical armor, you say?” Krukfays muttered, turning his head to spit aggressively to the side.
Si-woo opened his mouth to clarify the technique, but he was instantly interrupted by a deafening shout.
“Did I allow you to speak, boy!” Krukfays roared directly into his face.
‘Fuck you, Razgoren.
Why the hell am I stuck here with a fantasy Sergeant Hartman?’ Si-woo wanted to cry.
“Do you know who uses invisible shields!” Krukfays asked, though it was much more of an aggressive scream.
“No, sergeant.
I mean, commander,” Si-woo replied instantly, snapping to attention like a trained soldier.
“Bitches use them!
Are you a little bitch, tiny human!” the screaming continued unabated.
“No, Commander Fuckface.” “It’s Krukfays, you idiot!” Si-woo had deliberately spoken the insult in English, so the orc simply assumed the human had mispronounced his name.
“Today is officially the worst day of my life because I now have to train a human like you.
So, from this moment on, you are an orc!
And orcs are not bitches who run around with invisible shields!” the orc commander somehow screamed even louder than before.
‘Razgoren has more magical shields layered on his body than I could possibly count, why don’t you go say that to your chief, you fucker?’ Si-woo desperately wanted to say, but all that escaped his mouth was, “I’m an orc.” “Say it again!” “I’m an orc!” “Now remove that shield of yours and run around the perimeter of the entire city until I tell you otherwise!
Also, keep repeating that phrase the whole time!” the high orc ordered fiercely.
Si-woo nodded and prepared to sprint away, but he was suddenly stopped by the commander as if the veteran had just struck upon a brilliant, cruel idea.
“Go mark him with the training marks…
all of them,” the commander ordered one of his downed students, adding the final instruction with a massive, toothy grin.
It took the younger orcs about fifteen minutes to complete the process.
By the end of it, Si-woo was entirely covered from head to toe in intricate, glowing tribal markings.
“Now, do that shield thing of yours again,” the commander commanded.
Si-woo nodded and tried to activate his Touki, but the magic was instantly sucked directly into the tribal markings, and his own internal magic began actively weakening his physical body.
Si-woo knew that if he truly wanted to, he could easily remove these marks with a simple wave of his hand if he were ever in real danger, so he just relaxed and let the process happen.
“Now, run, boy!
And don’t you dare stop feeding those markings your magic!” Krukfays wore a grin so massive and malicious that it even visibly scared the other high orcs standing around the training grounds.
By this point, Si-woo had fully accepted that he was going to experience a living hell on this planet, so he did exactly as he was told.
For a whole day, the ordinary orcs of the city watched the bizarre sight of an alien running endlessly around their streets, shouting “I’m an orc!” at the top of his lungs.
Even after the entire day of continuous running, Si-woo did not get a single moment to rest.
He was forced to immediately transition into his sword training.
This, naturally, resulted in deep cuts appearing all over his body, because now that his own magic was actively working to weaken him, the trained orc warriors actually stood a real chance of bypassing his defenses.
After the brutal sessions, a book of herbs was thrown directly into the boy’s face, and he was expected to prepare the medical herbs himself to properly cover his wounds.
During the few hours Si-woo was actually supposed to be asleep and recovering, he stubbornly took to learning the art of talisman crafting from the orc shaman students who studied under Razgoren.
The chief shaman himself was spending every single waking hour learning the complex runes given to him by Si-woo, desperately trying to come up with a permanent solution.
“You should really rest, Si-woo.
And when I told Krukfays to train you, I honestly didn’t think he would go this far,” Razgoren visited him in his quarters one night, speaking with genuine remorse.
“He’s not so bad.
He is always secretly looking at me for my reactions when he is training me.
And he tones thing down when I get hurt.” Si-woo shrugged his shoulders casually.
His primary attention remained fixed on a small piece of beast bone, carefully carving complex symbols into its surface with a small tool.
“Why are you learning the art of talisman making anyway?
I don’t think it would provide you with much of an improvement as you can perform all types of magic already.” the orc chief asked, raising an eyebrow in curiosity.
“Well, it’s a good pastime, and they can help others down the line,” Si-woo answered briefly without looking up.
Razgoren nodded slowly and turned around to leave the room.
“Rest.
Everyone needs to slow down at some point in their lives,” he said as he exited.
Si-woo simply continued what he was doing, and the days passed steadily in that rhythm.
Days quickly turned into months, during which Si-woo was rapidly improving his sword techniques and learning every scrap of knowledge available.
Consequently, there were very few places left on his upper body that remained scarless.
It was the fourth month since he had first passed through the gate when Razgoren finally asked him for some magical assistance.
He simply had to channel his vast reserves of magic into massive magic circles that the orc chief drew out on the stone floors.
Early failures inevitably resulted in loud explosions and minor destruction.
But there were major successes as well.
Some circles formed a complete anti-magic zone, some formed a localized shield, and others reflected magic attacks directly back to the original caster.
He received a bone-crushing bear hug from the orc chief when Si-woo suggested layering the interconnected magic circles together, a technique some called compound circles.
He had remembered the idea from Mushoku Tensei novel, but he did not mind the praise, accepting it with a smug smile.
Half a month after that breakthrough, Razgoren had successfully formed a summoning circle that connected to different dimensions altogether.
Although they had panicked when a massive, three-headed hydra suddenly materialized from the summoning circle.
The tribe’s gratitude toward Si-woo increased when he and Razgoren fought the beast together, killing it after a battle that lasted for half a day.
Additionally, half a day in this slowed world was about two hours longer than a standard half day back on Earth.
Si-woo was given the hydra’s carcass as a show of gratitude, and Razgoren himself took an entire day out of his schedule to help Si-woo craft some talismans using the beast’s magical bones.
They successfully formed three talismans that granted the wearer a regeneration ability on par with the hydra itself, alongside a powerful lightning, fire, and light attack each.
Si-woo only had a single month left remaining in the orc world, and he spent most of it training his physical body and learning magic just as he had been doing.
The final two days were spent helping Razgoren finalize the magic circles, as the orc chief had now successfully formed a working prototype that would grant the high orcs a way to safely migrate their entire civilization to a completely different dimension, in hopes that they would never have to suffer the presence of the gates again.
Hours before he was scheduled to officially leave, Si-woo and Razgoren sat together on the stone roof of the palace with some large bottles of alcohol and two glasses.
“I still have about three months left.
I have noticed the pattern of the bridges appearing, and they always take a gap of at least three months to manifest again,” Razgoren started the conversation with a sigh.
He had successfully found a reliable way to traverse dimensions, but they had not yet located a specific dimension that was stable or hospitable enough for the entire tribe to safely move into.
“Well, the hardest part of the process is over, so three months should be more than enough time,” Si-woo encouraged his friend, taking a large gulp of his drink.
“Thank you, Si-woo.
You are a blessing to the people around you,” the orc chief said warmly before reaching into his pocket space and taking out a beautifully carved wooden box.
“Krukfays had these specifically designed and crafted for you.
In our culture, it is customary that a master gives an apprentice a special gift of clothes when the apprentice surpasses the master in skill,” Razgoren said with a light chuckle.
“I’ll go thank him before I leave,” Si-woo smiled.
“Don’t do that.
He will just pick a fight with you out of embarrassment.” Si-woo let out a hearty laugh at those words as he opened the wooden box, finding some long white coats adorned with furs.
‘Heh, I guess this will complete the look.’ he thought to himself with an internal laugh.
Both of them had already formed a secure magical method to maintain long-distance contact across the dimensions, and Si-woo prepared to leave without much further fanfare.
The orc chief had also made sure that a dungeon break would not trigger the moment Si-woo exited the gate and the seven days are over.
| On Earth | The seven long days that Si-woo had been gone felt like a physical blow to Si-woo’s family.
Do-yoon took the sudden disappearance especially hard.
The old man had not moved more than a hundred meters past the perimeter of the gate since the moment he had found out Si-woo was there.
Meanwhile, Jin-ah would spend hours waiting at the site as well, arriving the moment her school classes were over for the day.
Jin-woo took the situation stoically.
He had started going on raids constantly and on the second day of Si-woo’s disappearance the double dungeon incident had occurred.
He now possessed twice the motivation to make himself stronger; first was finding a way to cure his mother through the system, and second was finding a way to rescue Si-woo.
Hae-in had been completely devastated by the event as well.
She had stopped taking breaks between her scheduled raids, and she would even go out of her way to clear as many low-rank gates as she could possibly find if there were no high A-rank gates available to clear on that particular day.
On the seventh day, however, all of them were present and waiting at the base of the gate.
They all knew that today would bring either Si-woo returning to them, or the monsters that had killed him on the other side of the portal.
Everyone instantly snapped to a state of alert when a single figure slowly stepped out of the shimmering gate.
He wore a long, flowing white coat, long white hair moved wildly behind his shoulders, and his eyes carried an intensity far greater than anything they had ever seen before.
“Si-woo!” Jin-ah’s scream broke the silence as she ran forward to give him a hug.
Though, as an unawakened human, she was slower than Do-yoon, who approached him first, wrapping his arms around the boy and hugging him with full physical force.
Hae-in stood just beside the two of them, tears threatening to spill from her eyes as she gazed intently at Si-woo’s changed form.
After the boy finally broke his emotional hug with his grandfather, he reached out and pulled both her and Jin-ah into a tight, shared embrace together.
Both of them buried their faces deep into his chest, hugging his torso as if they wanted to completely merge with his body.