[color=ed1c24][center][h2]Akeno[/h2][/center][/color]

So much for this place being private.

Akeno didn’t jump when a voice suddenly called out to her, but her body was tense as she turned to face the orc who had stumbled across her. They weren’t a familiar face, because she hadn’t been paying attention to any of the other orcs in the brood pit; maybe she should have been, maybe then she’d have some idea why this one had followed her out here and approached her. She was trying to come up with a response, perhaps something that would excuse what they’d just found her doing, when two more orcs entered the clearing.

Yeah, her hiding place really wasn’t very good.

Humans. These orcs were also humans? Like her? Why hadn’t she considered that before? The goddess never said there would be others, but she hadn’t said she’d be alone either. She should have been paying more attention to the other orcs, to see if any of them were acting oddly, like she must have been. Although, even if she had done that she probably wouldn’t have noticed anything weird; reading people wasn’t her strong suit. Well, most of the time anyway.

This young orc, who sounded old in a way Akeno couldn’t really define, wanted them all to team up. They wanted to hunt more than they were asked to, so that they could eat more than they would get otherwise. Why? Probably because runts like them would only get scraps from their own hunt anyway and if Akeno wanted to build up her strength, if any of them wanted to get stronger, they needed more than that. But there was that other skill she had too, the one she hadn’t picked; Ingestion. Eating itself was a way to get stronger for orcs it seemed; you could get Skills just from consuming something that had them.

That felt… fittingly savage, for what little she knew of orcs. Akeno wasn’t much of a movie person, or a book person, but she knew what an orc was just through cultural osmosis. Still, she wasn’t sure she wanted to complete this quest by beating some animal to death with her bare hands and then eating it to gain its strength. Not because she thought she couldn’t, though there was obviously risk involved, but because the whole thing just felt… taboo. No, not exactly that. It felt primal. Savage. It felt like something she didn’t want to be.

But if she wanted to survive for any length of time here, Akeno wasn’t sure she had much of a choice.

[color=ed1c24]“Why return at all?”[/color] Akeno shrugged her shoulders, as if dismissing her own point as soon as she’d made it. [color=ed1c24]“Why not keep everything you hunt for yourselves?”[/color]

[@Crusader Lord][@ERode][@Kazemitsu]