Grimgal of Ashes and Illusion - Volume 19 - Chapter 5

110A660. History of the King

The chief of the Gogun clan, unifier of the orc clans, and king of the great orcish race, he who had become a king above kings, Great King Dif Gogun, was in agony.

Normally, the great king resided in Gashuoral (the father city), built next to Dohats Amo (the mother river) which flowed through Guado (the plains of mold) between the Nehi Desert and the Enno Zadd Mountains. However, Dif Gogun was now staying in Grozdendahl (the city of battle cries) over Lake Gandah, north of the Bordo Plains—the city which had once been known as Rodekia, capital of the human kingdom of Arabakia.

In this white stone city, Dif Gogun had gathered the orcish clans, the gray elves of the Broken Valley, and the undead who did not want to follow King Ishi—who was also called Ishidua Rohro—or the self-styled “Archduke” Deres Pain, and organized them into the Ogudon (Southern Expedition). He’d thought he might lead them personally but had ultimately entrusted the task to his right hand, Wago Groa.

Rodekia had been put to the torch by the Alliance of Kings and left in ruins for a time. Later, orcish and undead stonemasons and carpenters spent decades rebuilding, and the city was reborn as Grozdendahl. Then there was Wehagoran (swan palace), which was still as beautiful as it had been during the height of Rodekia’s glory days. Taking a liking to the castle, Dif Gogun had chosen it as the rear base of the Ogudon, where he would wait to hear word of their success.

Yesterday, an orc had rushed into Wehagoran.

This envoy had claimed to be carrying a message from Wago Groa, the commander-in-chief of the Ogudon, but refused to divulge it when he met with the castle keeper. He was under strict orders to deliver it directly to the great king and said he could tell no other. When Great King Dif Gogun heard about this from the castle keeper, he ordered that the envoy be brought to his royal quarters at once.

The envoy was of average height for an orc, but his lower half was overdeveloped. Apparently, he’d walked the more than fifty vec (roughly 150 kilometers) from the foothills of the Kurogane Mountain Range almost without rest. Distance aside, the route was full of dangerous places, like the sea of trees or the Bordo Plains, where the dead who cannot die roam, so it was an impressive feat. He was skilled in one task and tight-lipped. His hair was undyed, and even though he stood before the great king, he had not changed out of his traveling attire. Just the kind of orc Wago Groa was fond of.

The Groa clan had once been a minor faction, beneath anyone’s notice. However, once Wago became their leader, they grew explosively.

It was rare to see an orc as unimpressive as Wago. He wasn’t particularly small or scrawny, yet his appearance was awfully shabby. He had a slack jaw and a far-off look in his eyes. An orc who seemed to be that weak and stupid surely had to be powerless and devoid of worth. Anyone would make that assumption if they didn’t know what Wago was truly like.

The fact was, Wago Groa was incredibly sharp. Not just observant, but unexpectedly skilled too.

Dif Gogun had vivid memories of the day he’d first met Wago.

They were both chiefs of their clans, but back then, Dif had yet to be recognized as the king of his race. The famous Gogun clan, and the insignificant Groa clan. Though their clans were on completely different scales, they were technically considered equals. Most of the time in a situation like that, they would begin to compete out of a sense of vanity and pride. Wago was different. He maintained perfect decorum, going through all the formalities with a breathtaking degree of courtesy. Then, when they finally stood face-to-face, Wago knelt before Dif and deeply bowed his head. It was a gesture of vassalage.

“We both lead clans, do we not? I may be your senior, Sir Wago Groa, but not by many years. Please, raise your head.”

“No, Lord Dif Gogun. I believe that not only will you unify the orc clans, but one day you will be a truly great king, a sovereign over all the races. I have come in the hopes of working for you, even as the lowliest servant in your camp.”

Wago Groa wasn’t all talk. That orc, with his terribly unimpressive appearance, would offer to do any sort of dirty work that needed to be done. And he wouldn’t leave it to his men. No, he’d carry out the task himself. When there was a job that, for whatever reason, Dif Gogun could not order himself, Wago would pick up on it and take matters into his own hands.

Wago was also a progressive sort, completely divorced from the orcs’ obsession with bloodlines, which could have been considered a disease on their society. At this point, the Groa clan could hardly be called a clan at all. Wago welcomed misfits from other clans to take on the Groa name. If they did something to distinguish themselves, then even gumows (mixed bloods) could gain his patronage. Under his guidance, the Groa clan had suddenly grown to become large and influential. The conservative orcs of the old order hated him, but none had the stones to openly criticize the terrifying Wago Groa now.

Dif Gogun had braced himself before hearing the Groa envoy’s message. He knew it would be bad news. Something must have gone seriously wrong.

The Ogudon’s results in battle had been stunning so far. They’d put the Shadow Forest—home of the haughty elves—to the torch, and then they had taken Alterna from the miserable humans. Next, they would destroy the dwarves’ Ironblood Kingdom and return in triumph to Grozdendahl, where the great king awaited them.

Had the dwarves bested them, then? That hideous race whose stocky bodies were built like steel drums with beards was not to be underestimated. Dif Gogun knew they were deadly foes. That said, if the Ogudon had been defeated, it might have been because Jumbo and Forgan had turned on them at a critical moment. Forgan was a double-edged sword. If they had betrayed him, he would have to kill the hostages, but that would force an all-out confrontation.

However, the envoy’s report was beyond anything Dif Gogun had imagined.

Whenever something surprised him too badly, Dif tended to fly into a rage. Ten years ago, would he even have been able to listen to the end? He had managed to restrain himself until then because he was the great king, but the next thing he knew, he was throwing a chair at the wall. He wished he’d driven the envoy from the room first, but he didn’t even remotely regret jumping on his bed until it broke, or smashing his dresser. When he got this mad, taking it out on nearby objects was the best thing to do.

From the moment of his birth, it had already been decided that Dif Gogun would be chief of his clan one day. Even if he had been a total dunce, so long as he lived until his father died, he would have been able to succeed him. His blood had sealed his fate.

The orcs loved swords as a symbol of martial prowess, but the children of the Gogun clan were given hand axes the moment they were old enough to hold things and were made to spar with their parents and siblings. It was also a Gogun clan tradition to train all but those with poor eyesight to use a bow. They valued patience, careful consideration, and, above all, decorum. The Gogun clan had the respect of all the other clans, and they had a reputation for being trustworthy.

But Dif, the heir, was prone to tantrums.

“To think that this is how my eldest son would turn out. I’ve shamed our ancestors. I can’t die with things like this.”

His father’s lamentations only fueled Dif’s anger. It wasn’t just his uncles, cousins, and siblings that Dif beat up. He had even struck his own father in the face, getting into fights where they wrestled with one another.

“The Gogun clan is finished. Our blood is so old it has grown stagnant, corrupted. And you are the result. I won’t claim it is any sin of yours. This is my own fault, producing such a terrible child as you.”

Then die.

Just bite the dust already.

No matter how many times Dif picked a fight with him, his father would just keep uttering lame complaints, never seeking to get back at his son. The Gogun clan saw that as a virtue, but Dif thought it was shit. The son’s hatred for his father grew, and the father endured his son’s violence. You might say his current temperament was a result of that.

As he grew up, Dif had learned how to vent his violent emotions. He’d also figured out that his excessive outbursts made others fear and shrink away from him. Early on, he’d noticed that his feelings messed with his thinking and were nothing but a hindrance to him. So he screamed. Cried. Thrashed around. Experience had taught him that doing these things would diffuse his irrepressible passions, cooling his head and letting him think clearly once more.

For the past two days, in addition to occasionally taking care of the various tasks that fell to him as great king, Dif had gone about smashing things in his room, cursing loudly, and roaming all around Wehagoran. He was thinking. He’d eaten twice, but not slept at all in that time. They said the No-Life King had shown himself. Who had time to sleep after hearing that?

The No-Life King was supposed to have died more than a century ago.

Obviously, Dif Gogun didn’t believe that sort of baseless gossip.

The No-Life King, who was supposedly undying, had had his soul shattered by an unknown poison. This was the story people told as if it were true, so the rumor had come to be the dominant theory of what happened, but it had almost certainly been concocted by one of his treasonous friends. In other words, one of the five princes to whom the No-Life King had granted bodies that never aged. Either King Ishi, who was also known as Ishidua Rohro, or perhaps Archduke Deres Pain. It had to be one of them.

The gray elves of the Broken Valley were the ones who had ended up taking the fall for murdering the No-Life King. It was hard to imagine them having any motive to kill him. What could they have had to gain from his death? But they were elves, same as those in the Shadow Forest. Elves were twisted, rotten creatures at heart. Those prideful, treacherous, blackhearted bastards were no strangers to stabbing people in the back. Nobody could say for certain that they were the ones who had done it, but neither would anyone put it past them. That was the general consensus among the undead and orcs at the time.

Ultimately, the gray elves had returned to the Broken Valley and cut off communication with the other races for decades. In their minds, they were paying their respects to the No-Life King with their silence and protesting the accusations against them, but the other races hadn’t taken it that way. See? It really was them. They wouldn’t slink off quietly like that otherwise.

The various races—orcs, gray elves, goblins, kobolds, and so on—had not joined hands in mutual understanding, bound by an enduring friendship. The mystical and extraordinary No-Life King had overwhelmed all of them, becoming an irresistible magnet that pulled them all together.

After becoming the great king, Dif Gogun had gathered knowledgeable orcs he called bauhazzos (story-tellers) and then put them to work deciphering the legends of their clans. They’d investigated ruins in various locations, even reading the records left behind by humans as they traced the story of their past. Dif sought to become the king of all races. In order to make that a reality, he needed to verify the great feat the No-Life King had achieved in forming the Alliance of Kings. He also had to learn each race’s origins and culture, digging into their natures and tendencies as well.

At one point in time, the elves had ruled the plains and forests of Grimgar. They never interacted with the dwarves, who were people of the mountains. The areas they lived in didn’t overlap with those of the gnomes, goblins, kobolds, or centaurs either. Then, suddenly, humans and orcs had appeared and rapidly filled the domain of the elves.

There were a number of stories that said humans and orcs had come from the Red Continent, crossing the seas or perhaps drifting here. According to the bauhazzos’ research, this could also be interpreted as them having come from another world.

Whatever the case, around the same time, two gods the humans referred to as the God of Light, Lumiaris, and the Dark God, Skullhell, appeared in Grimgar, and an age of struggle between them began.

These gods were absolute, supernatural beings that held sway over the land and even the very heavens. The various races hadn’t so much chosen to side with one of the two factions as they had been forced to serve them. Faced with actual gods, they’d had no other choice.

It was still unclear how the battle between Lumiaris and Skullhell had ended. But regardless, they’d both vanished. That much was certain. The gods weren’t dead, however. This was proven by the fact that humans who served one or the other could still draw upon a small fraction of their power.

The gods had left, and the time of humans came.

The humans were good at banding together and formed societies that were more advanced than those of any of the other races. Human nations like Arabakia, Nananka, Ishmar, and Kuzen competed with one another, sometimes coming into conflict but never fully severing ties as they ruled over the fertile central plains of Grimgar. The elves were driven deep into the forests, the dwarves into the mountains, the gnomes underground, the goblins and kobolds into untamed lands, the centaurs to the Quickwind Plains, and the orcs to the Nehi Desert, Tomorazzo (the plateau of falling ash), Guado, and other inhospitable lands.

What was the decisive factor that separated humans from the other races? Dif Gogun had had the bauhazzos debate and had also thought on the matter himself.

Currently, their conclusion was that it was writing. The human race had already had a written language when they arrived in Grimgar. None of the other races had developed one before then. His own people, the orcs, as well as the elves and dwarves, had been using methods of representing numbers with knots in a rope or scars in their flesh, and they’d had drawings representing the sun or water for a long time before that, of course. However, humans were the ones who had invented a system of symbols to represent words or perhaps discovered an existing one and put it into use.

Elves and dwarves had mimicked the humans in adopting writing. The orcs, however, had believed the humans’ written characters to be nothing more than cursed symbols until the No-Life King had suggested they install a king who would rule their race.

In truth, the script used to write the orcish language still had many shortcomings and led to a lot of confusion. Dif Gogun had set himself the task of moving things forward on this front and bringing their writing up to the same level as human script. To that end, he had established the Amogodo (language academy) and selected a capable bauhazzo to serve as dorbo (headmaster) there. Though he would never say so openly, Dif was well aware that orcish culture was still developing.

The kingdoms of the human race had clearly been more advanced, and that was why they had stood above the rest. The elves, who couldn’t face that reality, doubled down on their treacherous nature, fighting among themselves and driving many of their own out of the forests. The dwarves drank their sorrows away, putting their blood and sweat into digging holes in the ground so they could forget their own stupidity. The gnomes concealed themselves in the belly of the earth. The goblins and kobolds were treated like barbarian tribes, and they roamed the land idly, unable to do anything. The centaurs ran around the fields, and as long as they were able to do that, their tiny egos remained unbruised.

The No-Life King had changed everything.

Dif Gogun had to learn what he could from the No-Life King’s example. He felt he knew far more about his predecessor than most. And yet, much about the man remained a mystery to him. Far too much.

The No-Life King had been around until a little over a century ago, so there were still people in the world who had known him personally. The five princes, first of all. Dif was acquainted with four of the five: King Ishi, AKA Ishidua Rohro, Archduke Deres Pain, Gyabigo the Dragon Hunter, and Architekra. Yet all four adamantly refused to speak about the No-Life King.

Some among the long-lived elves of the Broken Valley claimed to have had audiences with the No-Life King, so he’d had his bauhazzos interview them. But everything they’d said was inscrutable. The No-Life King was tall, and they claimed they hadn’t been able to make out his face even when they looked up at him. He was said to have engaged in friendly conversation with anyone, regardless of their race or social status, and yet, despite this, it proved hard to find stories that gave any clue as to his character.

The No-Life King had reportedly remained unfazed in the face of ten thousand arrows fired by a great army from the Kingdom of Ishmar. With a single swing of his staff, he had made the ground itself tremble, and he had broken the main force of the Kingdom of Nananka. In the invasion of the Kingdom of Arabakia, he had led an army of undead into battle, known as the Terrors—because they taught their enemies the true meaning of fear, while having none of their own. The No-Life King had won every single battle where he’d been the commander. Even if his allies were losing, the No-Life King would bring in reinforcements and quickly turn the tide.

There were no concrete records.

It was all hearsay.

The more he investigated, the more Dif became suspicious.

Did the No-Life King exist at all?

Well, he was certain there had been someone called the No-Life King, and that he had greatly changed the history of Grimgar. The man had left his mark. The evidence of it was everywhere. But was the No-Life King really the kind of figure that they’d all heard of and imagined him to be? Had their image of him been warped into something completely different from what he was really like? Perhaps because his achievements were so great, people had developed a glorified image of him. After all, they’d lacked the ability to keep proper written records a century ago. The foundation had not yet been laid for the precise transmission of facts. People probably hadn’t realized the importance of communicating things exactly as they had happened for the sake of later generations.

On the other hand, Dif had another thought.

The mystical and extraordinary No-Life King who had been so overwhelming might have been another of those absolute, supernatural beings of a different sort. He’d appeared in Grimgar, changed history, and then—while it was still unclear how or why—he’d disappeared. Wasn’t that just like those other stories? Could it not be said that the lingering traces of the No-Life King were similar to those left by the gods Lumiaris and Skullhell?

Setting aside the issue of whether he was a god himself, the No-Life King might have been a god-like being.

In the same way that Lumiaris and Skullhell’s power still affected Grimgar after their departure, the No-Life King still cast his shadow over the world of the living through an abominable curse that caused darkness to imbue the dead with souls that were barely worth the name. Centuries from now, people might speak of the No-Life King as another god. Maybe there had been stories around Lumiaris and Skullhell like there were about the No-Life King.

The No-Life King, like the undying gods, was not dead at all. He’d simply left Grimgar, like the God of Light and the Dark God before him. Dif Gogun had been thinking of the No-Life King as a historical figure, but that had been a mistake. He was from prehistoric times. A mythical being, you might say.

The No-Life King would return one day. Everyone had heard someone say something to that effect at some point. Dif Gogun had heard it so often as a child that he’d grown sick of it, but did people honestly believe that? The No-Life King had given rise to the undead and had made the orcs the most powerful faction in the world. The humans had crawled away to the southern frontier, the elves to their dark forests, and the dwarves to their stinking holes, all of them unable to do anything but bide their time. The Alliance of Kings had essentially fallen apart, but Grimgar was practically a paradise compared to a century ago. There was room for development and improvement still, but no need for the No-Life King to show himself.

This is our time.

After a full day spent racking his brain without consulting anyone else, even the bauhazzos, Dif Gogun ordered a zauba (page) to clean up the furniture he had destroyed in his room, then called his magoh (concubine) to help make him presentable. Dif had three magohs in addition to his wife and had brought one of them, Pakyani, with him to Wehagoran. Pakyani of the Odoha clan had glossy hair dyed green and yellow, and was rather tall. She had square shoulders, a long neck, large breasts, and wide hips. She was just the kind of woman that Dif liked.

Dif stood before the mirror as Pakyani briskly stripped him out of his clothes and began combing his hair. By Gogun clan custom, Dif’s hair was dyed in the colors red and blue. Watching the fluid motions of Pakyani’s nimble hands as she trimmed his eyebrows and beard excited Dif’s passions. However, now was not the time for sexual release.

Pakyani helped Dif into an orange robe, a black kagata (long jacket), and a red, white, and blue mugassadoi (three-colored overcoat). The lustrous belt of his robe held his sword on the right and the traditional hand ax of the Gogun clan on the left. Pakyani was tall, so she could place the golden crown of the great king on his head without him having to bend over for her. The rings on all ten of his fingers and the bracelets on his arms served as both weapons—making his punches more damaging, if necessary—and armor.

Once Dif left his room and Pakyani behind, he ordered a zauba to summon the bauhazzos at once. By the time Dif reached the royal conference room that they called the tonak (curtain room), the seven bauhazzos who had accompanied him to Wehagoran were all seated on gyavs (silk cushions) with their legs crossed.

“We’ve received a report from Wago Groa,” Dif started saying after he had laid his sword on the floor and stacked up two gyavs to sit on. “The Ogudon successfully invaded the Ironblood Kingdom, and Forgan slew the Iron King and her entourage as they fled... However, a human woman calling herself the No-Life King appeared and used an unknown technique that drew strange black monsters to her, forcing a temporary retreat.”

The seven bauhazzos, ranging in age from young to old, all gulped, none of them venturing to speak.

Dif gave them all of the information the envoy had provided.

Forgan had encountered the woman calling herself the No-Life King before. It seemed she was a volunteer soldier from Alterna. But she had spoken the name of the founding king of Arabakia, Enad George, and bizarrely claimed that she was Enad, and Enad was her.

Additionally, the human woman who called herself the No-Life King had revived two humans, a man and a woman presumed to be volunteer soldiers, whom Forgan had killed.

It was unclear what the black monsters were, but they were believed to have been summoned by the human woman calling herself the No-Life King, and they had started coming from all directions without end.

While there was no confirmation, it seemed likely that the human woman who called herself the No-Life King had gone back to the Ironblood Kingdom, because wherever the black monsters were coming from, they were gathering there.

“She revived humans...” The eldest bauhazzo finally spoke after some time. “If that really is true, it is no less than the act of a god—no, even Lumiaris cannot return the dead to life. But if she truly is him...”

Before Dif could get angry and start shouting, one of the other bauhazzos yelled, “Stop beating around the bush!”

A fierce debate commenced. Dif remained silent and listened.

“For starters, there has been no shortage of people predicting his second coming...”

“The undead, in particular, claim he will return any time now...”

“Those prophecies are nonsense. But there are signs...”

“For several years, King Ishi hasn’t set foot outside of his stronghold, Undead DC.”

“Some say his remains lie in the royal chambers of Castle Everest...”

“Damn King Ishi. He’s never allowed envoys of the great king to even enter Everest.”

“Isn’t the birth of the undead a mystery to begin with? The very idea that he created them may be false...”

“Their numbers have grown, not shrunk, since he disappeared, after all.”

“We’ve tried to probe them in every way we can, and we’re still unable to figure out what’s going on inside the undead capital...”

“Some of the undead are starting to distrust their leaders too.”

“There are those who choose to side with His Majesty as a result, so it is something of a mixed blessing for our side, but still...”

“The undead are not a monolith. I hear that King Ishi and the Archduke refuse to even meet one another...”

“Even so, while we can set Gyabigo aside, since he’s just wasting time hunting ice dragons up north, it’s worrying that we have no idea what Architekra is doing...”

“They say that Ainrand Leslie is protecting his soul.”

“Then...”

“He cannot have been killed. There is no way to destroy an undying soul...”

“But the soul was carried off by someone, and they’re protecting it...”

“Ainrand Leslie...”

“They say that after dying once, the five princes were reborn through a miracle he performed and became his loyal vassals...”

“King Ishi...”

“Apparently, Ishidua Rohro is a descendant of Ishidua Zaemoon, who tried to assassinate Enad George, the founding king of Arabakia, to seize power.”

“He was originally human...”

“Originally, yes. He was reborn through his power, turned into a loyal servant.”

“Wait, the woman who claims his name...”

“She said she is Enad, and Enad is her...”

“If she speaks the truth, then his identity is...”

“The founding king of Arabakia.”

“Enad George...”

“A human...”

“The human king gained supernatural powers somehow, and then reemerged as him...”

“Then he united the races, including us orcs, and proceeded to destroy all the human kingdoms, starting with Arabakia.”

“If that’s true...”

“Revenge...”

“A single human gained great power, and used it to take revenge on his own kind who had betrayed him...”

“We were used—is that what you’re saying, then?”

“But if not for his great deeds, we orcs wouldn’t be where we are now.”

“No, we’re no less intelligent than the humans are, on average. And it goes without saying that our bodies are stronger and tougher than theirs. Eventually, we orcs would have emerged from Guado, Tomorazzo, and the Nehi Desert to seize land from the humans.”

“You can only say that because you don’t know what kind of lives we lived there.”

“Our people struggled to even keep themselves fed. Even our current preoccupation with blood ties is something we developed to get us through those harsh times...”

“Had he not traveled across Tomorazzo, Guado, and the Nehi Desert all alone, calling out to us, taking our hands, and inviting us to rise up with him, we orcs would still be there...”

“Without him, we orcs wouldn’t be where we are today...”

“Even if he was a human...”

“If the No-Life King was human,” Dif Gogun said in a grave tone, silencing all the bauhazzos, “that would be no mark against the greatness of his deeds. Now, we have a human woman who claims to be the No-Life King, and if she can demonstrate supernatural powers, some may submit to her. Their numbers will not be small. The undead would serve her unconditionally. What of the gray elves? They were accused of a crime they didn’t commit and ran away to grumble about their misfortune. But originally, they returned to the Broken Valley out of sorrow for the No-Life King. They were mourning him in their own way. They never reveal their true intentions. They are born traitors. And yet, they likely had a degree of loyalty to the No-Life King.”

Dif had welcomed the gray elves with open arms. He had met with the king of the Broken Valley, Zwarzfeld, a number of times, and let the king’s childhood friend, Melderheid, join the Ogudon as one of its lieutenant generals. Still, that didn’t mean the gray elves had submitted to him. At best, you could say they were allies who, for the time being, shared a common interest.

Obviously, Melderheid would also be aware that the No-Life King had returned. He’d no doubt report that back to King Zwarzfeld in secret. How would the Broken Valley react? If it came to a point where he had to choose between Great King Dif Gogun and the No-Life King, who would the gray elf king side with? Would he think it was better to stick with the great king of the orcs?

“What of our own race? Between me, Dif Gogun, and the No-Life King, who will the orcs see as more important?”

The seven bauhazzos were speechless. Some of them awkwardly lowered their eyes, blinking repeatedly, while others were outright clutching their heads. Had Dif not spent a whole day thinking about this, he’d probably have lost it and gone on a rampage at this point.

As the cursed child of the Gogun clan who’d still had to lead them as their chief, as one who detested the traditions of the clan system for how illogical they were, as one who worried for the future of his race, as a man of ambition, and as an idealist, Dif needed to look at this situation with a calculating eye and come to a rational decision.

“With all due respect...” The eldest bauhazzo focused his dull eyes on the great king, speaking in a tone that was a little hard to hear. “We could never think of betraying you, sire, but I cannot help but suspect that some would turn their hearts toward him—the No-Life King. So, while I hesitate to say it...I cannot deny there would be those who might feign loyalty to you while betraying you in secret... This is, of course, not because of any fault of yours, sire, no, certainly not, but because—”

“Enough!” Dif let out a sigh. The blood had rushed to his head for an instant, but he’d managed to restrain himself just in time.

“I will divide the Ogudon into two groups, the main force and a detachment. The main force, led by Wago Groa, will remain in the foothills of the Kurogane Mountain Range, monitoring the No-Life King and looking for an opportunity to make contact. Forgan and Zan Dogran will remain with Wago. Forgan are a valuable asset so long as they don’t betray us. As for Zan Dogran, I want to see how loyal he really is. The detachment will be led by Lieutenant General Maga Odoha, and they will return to Grozdendahl with Melderheid. If Wago Groa makes a request for reinforcements, I will consider it.”

The bauhazzos slapped their thighs with both hands, signaling they had no objection.

Dif gave a satisfied nod, but internally he could feel waves starting to form on the sea of his emotions. “There’s a number of clans we’re going to have to watch closely, as well as the gray elves.”

Assuming the No-Life King was a god-like being, Dif Gogun had meant to take advantage of the legends surrounding him. The orc might not have been able to take the No-Life King’s place, but the great king could follow in his footsteps, emulating him where it made sense to and changing things where it didn’t. The Alliance of Kings that the No-Life King had championed would be useful.

Obviously, what Dif was really aiming for was the hegemony of the orcs, by the orcs, and for the orcs. However, the concept of what constituted an orc could be expanded. At his most extreme, he had even considered that it might be possible to do away with the boundaries of race. People could be divided so that those who agreed with him and shared his ideals were orcs and everyone else wasn’t. It would be incredibly difficult to make that a reality, but if he could push things that far, the name Dif Gogun would stand alongside that of the No-Life King in the history of Grimgar, or perhaps even surpass it.

But the No-Life King did not live merely in myths and legends. If they lived in the same era, then the two of them would have to face one another eventually.

Would Dif Gogun kneel before the No-Life King when that time came? Or would it be the other way around? He couldn’t tell just yet.