Orc Hunter In Another World: A Slice of Life Harem LitRPG, page 1
Marc Robert
Orc Hunter In Another World
A Slice Of Life Harem LitRPG
First published by Other Earth Press 2021
Copyright © 2021 by Marc Robert
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Second edition
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Contents
What Is Other Earth?
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Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Preview
LitRPG Group
About the Author
What Is Other Earth?
All my books take place in the same universe.
In this shared universe, Earth and a dark magical realm called Ourobor are linked together by a series of magic portals.
The scientists from our world who opened the first portal to Ourobor called this new world that they found Other Earth. Orcs, elves, dwarves, beast-kin, mimics, and even dragons: these creatures are all real.
Some want to live in peace.
While others want to make war.
But either way, now that the portals are open, Earth and Other Earth will never be the same again.
You can check out more Other Earth books here:
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Chapter One
The bull moose stood in the falling snow grazing lichens.
Its antlers were huge. And its body too. Bridger estimated that the animal weighed somewhere around fifteen-hundred pounds or thereabouts.
Truly magnificent.
The moose lifted its massive, brownish-black head and sniffed at the air, then continued on grazing.
It was so big, yet so dang peaceful. Like something straight out of a picture book, the former Army Ranger thought. Which was strangely calming.
He enjoyed watching the bull moose munch on the bitter, frosty lichens. It reminded him of his childhood and how his mother always used to read books about animals to him just before going to bed each night. Maybe his deep love for the outdoors started there, maybe.
Watching the moose eat also reminded Bridger of something an old Inuit woman had introduced him to a few years back. Pickled lichens. The thought of them made his mouth water.
The prospect of scarfing down the very same lichens that this bull moose was eating right now sometime in the not-so-distant future was pretty dang enticing. After being partially digested in the moose’s stomach, the lichens wouldn’t be too frosty nor too bitter for a human to enjoy. In fact, they’d be pretty damn-near perfect. Pickled lichens were the closest thing that Bridger could get to a fresh salad up here in the wilds of Alaska and so they were a rare treat.
That is, unless he wanted to drive all the way into Grange and plunk down money he didn’t have to eat at some fancy diner or café. Or, worse yet, buy one of those grossly-overpriced imported heads of lettuce that they had at the All-Mart in the center of town.
To hell with that.
Bridger preferred living off the land as much as possible. And this bull moose here would easily yield five hundred pounds of good meat, maybe more. Add to that all the animal’s vital organs, and all the fat that he could harvest from its body, and the marrow from its bones, and of course the pickled contents of its rumen, and he would have enough food to last him four or five months at least.
The thought of that cheered him quite a bit.
Making ends meet at the edge of the world was not for the faint of heart. Although Bridger had been in far worse situations than this and had survived them. And now, today, this moose would give its life for him to be able to eat for a few more months without spiraling further into debt.
He drew back on the string of his compound bow, taking aim at the moose’s flank between the base of its neck and the top of its shoulder, where he knew the beast’s heart and lungs to be. He wanted a clean kill, just like his father had taught him.
Bridger held his breath and steadied his hand, waiting on the wind.
But then something wholly unexpected happened. A female moose and her tiny calf came down over the ridge just then, walking straight toward the big bull.
The bull glanced up at them and huffed in greeting, then went back to grazing as regal as ever.
The moose cow and calf sauntered over and joined him, exchanging a few huffing breaths and snorts before setting in on the lichens themselves. The three of them grazed side by side, eating their fill. Even the little one.
The tiny calf wasn’t quite sure what to do at first. But he observed the big bull intently for a moment or two and then mimicked his father’s actions almost exactly.
It tugged at Bridger’s heartstrings.
He had grown up on a horse farm and had a deep love and respect for all animals. Although he had no qualms about killing them either. He knew his place in the food chain. Plus, he had done plenty of killing in his life, and not just on his father’s farm.
Yet now — in this moment — he relaxed his bow string and lowered the weapon.
The female moose’s head shot up when he did that and she looked straight across the snowy field at him. Or, at least, straight at the little copse of trees that he was crouching in. The moose cow sniffed at the air, her huge black eyes trained on his position.
Bridger remained absolutely still, holding his breath.
A long moment passed. And then another, and another. Long enough for him to wonder why he chose to remain still like that. He had no intention of killing the bull now, so what did it matter if he spooked the moose or not.
But then it dawned on him.
He liked seeing them like that. A family. And he wanted them to stay and graze, so that he could keep on watching them for as long as possible while the sun went down. It calmed him somehow. Which was a rare feeling for him these days, what with all the dark dreams that he had been having, and the PTSD, and his financial situation being what it was and all.
The sonic boom that
The moose family bolted at the sound, disappearing over the ridge in an instant. They were so damn fast, Bridger caught only the last glimpse of their tails as they fled. Then he gathered his wits about him and got back up onto his feet.
What the hell?
It felt like someone had punched him in the belly and brain at exactly the same time. He gazed around, looking for some hulking assailant that he knew was not there. And then he stared up at the sky, expecting to see some kind of aircraft or spacecraft or, at the very least, a fiery falling star. Anything that could account for that sonic boom and the strange light that had accompanied it.
But there was nothing.
No experimental aircraft. No crashing spaceship or freak meteor shower. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary at all.
It was twilight and the sun was going down quite rapidly now and everything seemed totally tranquil and calm, like every other sundown that Bridger had seen out here over the past eighteen months.
But then something did catch his eye. It was almost imperceptible at first, but once his eyes locked onto it, it was as clear as day. A doorway made of amethyst light up on the ridge.
The fuck?
Bridger tilted his head, staring at this portal.
He blinked his eyes three times in rapid succession and looked again, but — sure enough — the doorway was still there. He rubbed the back of his head, wondering if he had hit it when that sonic boom had knocked him off of his feet. But he felt fine.
In fact, he felt better than fine — he felt like he was almost in peak physical condition. He stared down at himself. He still looked exactly the same, externally at least. But he felt like his {Strength} had increased. And there was a fire raging deep in his belly.
The last time that Bridger had felt like that was the day that he had first been deployed, more than ten years ago now.
He wondered if that amethyst light that had passed through him had somehow done something crazy to his senses. Maybe he was hallucinating? People didn’t just suddenly increase in strength.
It had to be some kind of hallucination.
He looked again at the portal and shook his head back and forth. Doorways did not just appear out of thin air in the wilds of Alaska, nor anywhere else for that matter. And they certainly were not made out of light.
Yet still, Bridger raised his bow and arrow just in case all of this wasn’t some hallucination. Then he started walking cautiously toward the portal, to try and figure out what the hell exactly was going on here.
As he walked, he blinked his eyes again several times, fairly certain that the glowing doorway would disappear like some figment or mirage before he reached it.
But it did not.
Instead, something far weirder happened. Something actually began to emerge out of the portal. Something Bridger could only describe as an …
… orc.
The creature was half-a-head taller than he was and made almost entirely of muscle, with green skin and two ivory white tusks jutting from its lower jaw. It had sulfurous yellow eyes with vertical black slits for pupils, more like a cat’s eyes than a human’s.
And the way that it crouched low and shimmied forward, peering around at its surroundings — that was more animal-like too. All proud and fierce, like some apex predator.
It sniffed at the air and then made a kind of grunting sound.
Bridger ducked behind a huge rock before the creature spotted him, more an act of muscle memory than anything else. He had three tours in Afghanistan under his belt. Plenty of combat experience. And his Spidey sense was definitely tingling.
This was not at all how he thought this day was going to go.
Chapter Two
Bridger counted to three in his head, then he peeked up over the top of the huge rock and observed the orc.
The creature wore a loin cloth made from some kind of animal hide and carried a crude spear with a sharpened stone for a tip. The stone was fastened to the wooden shaft of the spear by some kind of twine, like something straight out of the Stone Age itself.
Except, orcs didn’t exist during the Stone Age. In fact, orcs didn’t exist at all, at least not on Earth they didn’t.
Bridger tried to process just what exactly he was seeing here.
The creature looked absolutely savage with tiny piercings made of bone through its nose and ears. It had a long shock of greasy black hair tied up into a topknot at the back of its squat green head. And it hunkered low to the ground, touching the snow with the tips of its fingers like some kind of tracker or hunter.
That’s it, Bridger thought, it’s some kind of scout. Maybe the point-man for a raiding party or something.
The creature brought a handful of snow up to its nose, smelling it, then tasting it with the blood-red tip of its tongue. Then it spat out the snow as if the stuff were poison.
It grunted again, glancing back over its shoulder at the portal, before proceeding to scan the area with its yellow eyes.
Just like when that female moose had fixed her gaze upon the copse of trees that he had been crouching in, Bridger remained completely still. He could feel his pulse quickening and a massive amount of adrenaline being dumped into his bloodstream, a sure-fire sign that things were about to go sideways.
During his first deployment, he had played tons of VR-MMORPGs whenever he got any downtime. It was a great way to combat stress, not to mention a great way to bond with the other guys in his unit. And the officers encouraged it, especially Colonel Spar. So Bridger indulged wholeheartedly and learned how to kick some virtual ass pretty early on.
Gaming hadn’t really been his thing before he had enlisted, but it became his thing during those early months of that first tour. And there was this one particular game that they had always played, Other Earth. It took place in a fantasy world full of all manner of dark magic creatures — orcs, mimics, beast-kin, and even huge, greedy dragons. Bridger had totally freakin’ loved it.
He had played Other Earth in ultra-violent, first-person-shooter mode every chance that he got and had gotten to know the game’s lore pretty dang well. And this creature here that had come through the portal, it looked exactly like the orcs from the game.
Again, Bridger wondered if he had cracked his head when that sonic boom had knocked him onto his ass. Maybe he was currently unconscious, in some kind of coma, dreaming all this?
But he had been in so many fire fights in his life, so many high-stress situations over the years, that he had a pretty good gauge of what was real and what wasn’t. And this — all this that was happening right now, right in front of him — it was definitely real.
Bridger didn’t quite know how, but he knew that it was.
And he could feel what was about to go down. The adrenaline in his system was peaking and his fight or flight response was kicking in. His knuckles turned bone white, he gripped his compound bow so hard.
He had six arrows with him. More than enough to kill this orc, if it came to that. But, hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that.
Hopefully this creature would just scrabble back through the portal to wherever it came from. And that amethyst doorway would just close on its own. And then Bridger wouldn’t be forced to fire the first shot in what could conceivably turn into some kind of interdimensional world war.
His head swam, just thinking about that.
But he needed to stay focused.
Stay frosty.
He hadn’t started anything yet. And he didn’t intend to. But then two more orcs stepped through the portal.
Great.
Just great.
They were dressed and armed exactly like the first orc was, in animal-hide loin cloths with crude stone-tipped spears gripped in their huge green hands. One of the newcomers also had a round wooden shield that was heavily scarred. Because of that, Bridger assumed that the shield-bearer must be their leader.
Maybe he could parley with them?
That was something that often worked in Other Earth. You could choose the action {Parley} and then sit with the orcs or beast-kin or whatever monster race you had encountered and smoke a peace pipe and make some kind of equitable trade.
