The Strange Adventure of a Broke Mercenary C359 Operation Pompeii

Under the influence of the command leash, the Fire Orcs stormed through the portals and into the capital city of the Gob Gob Kingdom. While they expected little resistance due to the constant curfew the city was under, the streets were completely empty. Not even a guard was around to entertain them.

The Fire Orcs leaders were initially at a loss but they maintained their composure and proceeded to split up to hit their real targets. The Ministry Offices and the Gob Gob Castle. While slightly unreliable, the groups were dispatched depending on the placement of artefacts. Some of the portals were even placed in the sewers, abandoned houses, alleys while others were in the open squares of the capital or even roofs of certain buildings. There were some unforeseen incidents due to the placement of the artefacts but most of the Fire Orcs were able to arrive safely to the capital.

A part of the Fire Orcs was assigned cleaning up duty. They would enter the civilians' houses one by one, room to room and slaughter any goblins they saw. However, the more they searched the capital, they more uneasy the orcs began to feel. Before the war there had been some orcs who had been to the goblin's capital for either business, as part of a military guard or merely because of personal reasons, so there was no doubt that they had teleported correctly to the city. However, the places were so void of life that it did not resemble the signs of the busy capital they had experienced. Even in a time of war, it was eerily quiet and unnatural.

In the meantime, the humanoid slave researchers who had unexpectedly got mixed in and entered the portal under the influence of the command leash spell slowly realised what they had done. Confused, they looked at each other and quickly copied the Orcs by pretending to look around for goblins. For now, all they hoped was to find a place to hide from both sides and waited for everything to blow over. They believed the goblins would assume them as the invaders and retaliate against them, but the Orcs would not tolerate their cowardice, not caring for their lack of combat training.

After one of the Orc groups raided a tavern to find only music been played in the background without any goblins in sight, not even the bartender, they could only confirm that something was up. A ghost town was currently the most appropriate term to describe the entire scene. The Fire Orc Squad Leaders relayed their findings back to their higher ups, who eventually forwarded it to Colonel Ayse.

Without the humanoid researchers, she was the only one to pick up their messages and Colonel Ayse promptly took the opportunity to inform Orc King Hamu that a massive battle had ensued in the capital. The goblins were naturally taken by surprise and the orcs were progressing well. Sitting on his throne, King Hamu restlessly shook his legs due to a mixture of both boredom and anxiety. He understood that he would need to accumulate his powers to follow the operation plans but he was itching for battle the longer he sat on his throne.

According to their plans, when the Fire Orc leaders secured a portion of the capital, a unit would be responsible for setting up the same lost tech portal artefact that had teleported them to the capital. The only difference was that the portal size would be ten times larger than the regular ones so that Wind Orcs' Airships would be able to go through. They were confident that with the size of the portals that they saw initially (courtesy of Colonel Ayse's portal enhancer), the Wind Orc Air Force which had just arrived, would be able to enter quickly to reinforce and decimate whatever resistance that was left in the place.

"Proceed with Phase Three as soon as possible. Crush them with our burning might." King Hamu ordered Colonel Ayse to relay that order to the Fire Orc Leaders in the field. At that moment, Right Hand Oku wished to stop the King from being too rash. His instincts were telling him that something was not right, but he realised it was too late. He knew that Hamu would not listen without any definitive proof, but even then his expression said it all.

"As you command, Your Majesty." Ayse bowed once and sent down the details for the Fire Orc leaders to commence with Phase Three of the Red Moon Operation. The leaders naturally were confused and demanded verification. Without their Commander Green Fire around and this strange situation they were hesitant, yet Colonel Ayse simply noted that it was the interim commander's orders so they unwillingly obeyed. The portal was set up in no time.

At the same time, some of the Fire Orcs had been ordered to find the entrance of the fort walls surrounding the capital to verify the situation. They knew that just beyond the walls, there were supposed to be some outlying towns and perhaps the goblins had gotten wind of the portals and evacuated the area. However, the warriors were unable to find a stairway or an opening that could enter the fort walls. They instead asked for assistance from the Fire Orc mages.

The Fire Orc mages cast 'Levitation' and 'High Jump' on the orc warriors in order for them to overlook the walls. Similar to the capital that they were in, the towns were still there and some of the buildings had their lights on. Yet in a glance, they could see that it was just as empty as the capital. The warriors slowly levitated down to give their report. What they did not know was that the sight was an illusion created by Kraft and they would have known the truth if they attempt to exit out of the fort walls.

Simultaneously, the Ministry Office appeared deserted after they kicked the doors into the main hall, but the Fire Orc leaders took no chance and decided to search through the building thoroughly. "If they evacuated, they must have left in a hurry. Look at everything and see if there is any evidence left about their whereabouts. Their plans or whatsoever!" One of the Fire Orc leaders ordered as he called for more troops to search the place. Again, the result was disappointing.

After a while, they found one place that did seem to be inhabited. Guarded by a heavy duty magical barrier was the Gob Gob Castle. The Fire Orc leader who reached there immediately reported it via their secured magical channel and they deduced someone managed to leak the Red Moon operations plans to the goblins who conducted a mass evacuation. A huge smile appeared on their faces, relieved that the rats seemed to have simply hidden in their giant rathole. This would make things easy for them.

"Tell all our troops to gather there to assist the teams at the castle and ministry office. Get those orc mages to cast siege breaker spells. Use the Tin Cans if needed. A number of them are equipped with laser projectiles that should significantly harm the barriers." Ayse commanded in a hurried tone as a show for King Hamu to overhear.

The news did put a smile on him as he watched the colossal portal appearing in front of the Wind Orc Air Force as the situation in the capital developed. King Hamu stood up and released a silhouette of Diabolos to perform the very same ritual he had done to the Fire Orc army. Once that was done, he oversaw the Wind Orc Air Force frenziedly entered the portal.

When the Wind Orc Air Force entered the skies above the Gob Gob Capital, they noticed something unusual. Their altitude meter readings were abnormal. It was a drastic change from the readings they had before they were teleported. Most of the Orc navigators assumed it was due to the portal spell since such an occurrence happened before during their test runs. A number of their sensitive equipment went haywired from the portal jumps and even though they tried to insulate and improve them, the sensitive equipment was bound to have a few mishaps. Nevertheless, this was the time for action and not speculations.

The airship carriers immediately proceeded towards the Gob Gob Castle. From afar they saw the goblins' magic barrier flashing as a result of the onslaught of their comrades' attack. As there was no retaliation fire, the Orcs took their time to prepare the necessary siege weapons to fire all at once…until they saw a little masked humanoid girl coming out of the castle roof and standing on the edge of a parapet.

"The Air force has arrived. Shall we start our dance or should we wait for the big boss?" Peppers asked while she walked and tried to maintain her balance along the parapet.

"Yea, let's start the show. Ayse already gave some juicy commentary on how the Orcs were valiantly killed. If the Orc King enters the portal and finds out he was being lied to, he might become suspicious. Let's not disappoint his expectations." Kraft answered her question as Jin smirked while he finished gearing himself up in the Dungeon Maker. Peppers acknowledged the command and pointed her staff upwards.

It glowed momentarily before shooting out a firework out of the sky with the Full Red Moon in the background. (A rather beautiful side if one ignored what came next.) The orcs were momentarily distracted by the large firework and assumed it was a desperate signal for help.

But to Jin's monsters and companions, this was the sign for the commencement of Operation Pompeii.

Foul rotten hands forcefully popped up from the ground all around the capital and subsequently their heads and bodies. The various zombies under the command of Half Ghoul Lord Derek had laid the perfect trap by inserting themselves right under the ground before the portals had appeared. They utilised the element of surprise fully when Peppers distracted most of the Orcs with the firework.

The rotten hands grabbed onto the orc's legs and some of the zombies did not hesitate to bite them. The zombies infected the surprised orcs with poison with their bites or discharged elemental damage by some of the more powerful zombies that were enchanted by the enhancement card, Elementary Element Roulette, manned by Jin via the Tact Tweaker.

The Orcs panicked and tried to kill the zombies, but for every zombie killed, three more arose from the ground to replace their comrade. In the same time, a loud and deafening explosion was heard from the Ministry Office. Some of the orcs could even feel the shockwave from afar, stunning them further and giving the zombies more opportunity to kill their enemies.

"Building Demolished." Hou Fei grinned when he overlooked the intensified explosion that happened at the Ministry Office. The building was not just burning, it had already fallen to pieces due to its weak infrastructure. This was because the building was only a cheap prefab model of the real Ministry Office. And since it was a prefab, Hou Fei had already sneaked in a number of C4 explosives within the fake walls, making it extremely satisfying to see his work up in flames.

"6/10. It's too controlled but the timing was great, so I shall elevate it to a 6.5 ." Peppers commented in their very own secured channel via the System as she came down from the parapet and walked towards the middle of the roof garden. Everything was ready as Peppers placed her staff at the centre of the ritual circle and began to pump transmit magical powers via the circle into the volcano, priming it to erupt.

"Heh, you better give us a spectacular one. All of us will be rating the eruption." Hou Fei retorted as he grabbed his tablet. The System already noted the buildings Hou Fei had rigged in the capital while giving him a live update of the number of orcs still left within the buildings. As soon as enough Orcs were inside the blast area, he would proceed to blow them up.

At the same time, Zeru, Milk and Lynn were already on the move against the three newly arrived airship carriers. As bellators carrying the title of a One Man Army, Zeru and Milk in her Monk outfit entered individual airship carriers to clean the ship crew up by themselves. To motivate themselves they had made a friendly bet and were also competing on how many they could clear within a minute.

"66, 67… time is almost up. 73…74," Zeru said as his wooden sword sliced down most of the Orcs with style. Many had their necks fractured, ribs broken or skull smashed too. The Wind Orcs were unprepared for the sudden ambush right within their own cabins. His high speed manoeuvres gave him the illusion of air steps as he used the tight corridors to perform jumps, skips and even speed running via the ceiling to past through the bulky orcs he killed along with the cabins. If there were any door that was blocking his way, all he had to do was to cut it up with his technique.

"56, 59…NOT FAIR! You went in by the control hub first!" Milk complained as she threw a kick that did not just knock the heavy metal door down but also proceeded to kill an unlucky orc. Her fist blows were as lethal as Zeru's wooden sword. Sufficient enough to crack the Orc's skull or ribs. Yet unlike Zeru, Milk entered the engine room through the backdoor according to the blueprint provided by Ayse herself a few days back. Both of the warriors had studied them carefully before inserting themselves into the airship carriers. They needed the carriers to be struck down as quickly as possible since Jin did not really have any flying monsters that could rival these flying metal machines. (He did make a mental note to search for good flying monsters if possible in the Farming World when it was his turn to invade.) Jin was afraid that if the airship carriers had sufficient time to prepare after teleportation, they would have been manning multiple lethal turrets covering both air and land defence simultaneously which could potentially disrupt the flow of success for Jin and his monsters.

Therefore, Milk aimed for the engine room first as she 'God Punch'-ed the engine before she dashed to the other rooms crushing any resistance she encountered. The engine malfunctioned from Milk's attack and it was sufficient overload the other generators along with the main engine. So despite the lack of kills on her side, Milk was technically the first to bring down an airship carrier.

Unlike the two bellators, Lynn was accompanied by her ninja penguins who skillfully entered through ventilators and air ducts while she similar to Zeru, started her killing spree via the control hub. "Kill the ones who are the brains of the ship and the entire 'eco system' can be brought down in a jiffy." Lynn thought to herself as she cut down the few orc navigators and their ship crew before she faced off against the airship's captain.

The three ninja penguins that accompanied her via the control hub took the initiative to attack the Wind Orc Captain but he was no pushover. (Unfortunately for Zeru, the moment he performed one of his technique, his Wind Orc Captain was cut into pieces before he could even touch Zeru.) The Wind Orc Captain took out a lost tech laser pistol and started to shoot at Lynn who had the instinct to move away immediately.

But because the Wind Orc Captain ignored the penguins, thinking they were less of a threat, he was chained up by the three penguins immediately after shooting Lynn. The ninja penguins had their daggers attached to a chain, so they impaled him before wrapping the chains around him. Their knives were further coated with a numbing concoction which caused the Wind Orc Captain to lose his strength momentarily. That gave Lynn the opportunity to strike the killing blow at his nape. "Good job Peggies." Lynn gave a high five to each of the penguins and proceeded to find the engine room which was designated as the meeting points for the other penguins too.

With the destruction of Wind Orc Air Force at hand, Colonel Ayse twisted the Orc Leaders' word on the frontlines to King Hamu, finally allowing him to carry out Phase 4 of the Orc's Red Moon Operation.

The Arrival of Orc King Hamu into the battlefield.

Chapter end