Meanwhile, far away in another city, large clouds of smoke appeared out of a ruined building. The smell of death hit anyone who got close enough to the place before an arrow would follow, killing them.

At one glance, it looked like a survivor camp, just like any other. People were working outside, farming on corrupt soil that eats more resources than it gives, and some were engaged in combat training.

But one thing was common between everyone. They all wore thick metal collars with a number engraved on them.

The camp itself had been a shopping mall once. One could still see the faded signs above the broken storefronts, the cracked tiles on the floor, the rusted escalators frozen mid-step, going nowhere.

However, humans were no longer their primary occupants. They had been once, shortly after the apocalypse descended, but now the camp belonged to monsters... intelligent monsters who took over the base.

Large humanoid monsters, famously known as Orcs.

The orcs had gutted most of the camp and redesigned it into their own image. Cooking fires burned in the open areas where the food court used to be, the flames throwing long orange shadows across the walls.

Bones and scraps and broken things littered the ground between the makeshift shelters they had hammered together out of sheet metal and timber and whatever else the city had left behind.

It was not a pleasant place, but it was never meant to be such a place either. Apart from the collared humans, there were a few more in the camp, but in cages.

The humans in the cages along the east wing had long stopped screaming or revolting for freedom. That happened after the first few days, before they accepted their new reality.

There were a few who still fought back whenever given the chance. However, instead of killing them, the orcs ensured to treat other prisoners exceptionally well. This way, those who acted out learned to stay in line to reap benefits like the rest of them.

Then there were the stubborn ones. The people who refused to believe the orcs could be objectively good, unlike most monsters that were always hungry to eat humans. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

Those people sat with their backs against the cage walls and stared at the floor, hoping for a hero to appear and rescue them because they had already learned that fighting it didn’t change anything.

Meanwhile, those who behaved and worked alongside the orcs were given special cages, ahem... not cages but living spaces.

Mostly, the strongest human workers occupied such cages that were separated and marked with a strip of red cloth tied to the bars.

They would go to the labor lines when the next rotation came, hauling rubble, tilling soil, breaking ground, and building whatever the chieftain needed built until their bodies gave out.

The others who were incapable of such physical labor were kept in different cages that were marked with black cloth and had a different fate waiting for them.

The orcs didn’t waste anything. That was the one thing anyone from the Otherworld could say about them with certainty.

Further down the wing, behind a heavy iron door that was always kept bolted, were the ones kept for breeding.

Yup, orcs bred with humans to promote diversity. Since their genes could easily dominate most humanoid species, they didn’t care much about their partner as long as they were strong.

But just because they could mate with humans, it didn’t mean the ritual involved was easy for humans. Nobody walked near that door if they didn’t have to.

As for those who did, they mostly ended up in the black cage, broken beyond repair, but their minds were intact. Hence, they became caretakers for the human-orc babies, and those who died for one reason or another were used as bait to hunt other monsters for food.

After all, their chieftain had decreed that eating humans was a sin. Which meant they only ate other monsters.

This was the overall structure of the human-orc survivor camp. As for its leaders... they were busy planning how to ’save’ more humans.

Near the main fire, a group of orcs was seated around a massive spit where something large and unidentifiable was roasting over the flames.

Surprisingly, they ate with proper cutlery while drinking something dark and foul-smelling from their wine glasses. They laughed at things that weren’t funny, shoved each other, and argued over needless things like soldiers who had nothing to worry about.

Their weapons were thrown all over the place. The shopping mall was their home, after all. There was no need to carry weapons with them all the time.

At the far end of the mall, where the old management offices used to be on the second floor overlooking the entire ground level, a single fire-torch burned, showing the silhouette of the tallest orc among the tribe.

Her name was Gruka, chieftain of the clan. Unlike the rest of the tribe, her small tusks were painted red, a symbol of honor among the group.

She was tall even by orc standards, broad across the shoulders, with arms that had been built by decades of war. A long scar ran from her left temple all the way down to her collarbone, pale against her dark green skin.

She wore no armor inside the camp, just a plain tank top and shorts, which she had made herself using bedsheets and curtains strewn everywhere in the mall.

She was standing over a table, overlooking the map her scouts had drawn and expanded with each expedition.

All territories were marked in different colors. Red represented the land they had already captured, signifying that no humans were left outside their influence within the region.

Then there were black zones that represented the dead zones where the bigger monsters nested, and even the orcs didn’t push into them without numbers. Hence, the need to breed like rats.

Lastly came gray, which pointed to unclaimed or uncharted ground, and there was a lot of gray... outside the city, which they already ruled over.

Gruka’s finger moved slowly across the map, tracing roads and boundaries. Her other hand rested on the edge of the table, fingers drumming once every few seconds in a slow, steady rhythm that awfully sounded like a certain song from Queen about rocking others.

"The camp is running well," She grunted, stating the obvious.

She knew that was the case because her lieutenants were competent enough to keep the daily operations moving without her constant surveillance.

That wasn’t what occupied her mind.

What occupied her mind was growth.

The current camp held roughly four hundred humans. That was enough to keep the clan supplied and comfortable in the short term. But Gruka had not built her clan on short-term thinking.

Four hundred humans meant four hundred units of labor and four hundred bait to lure smaller monsters into traps for hunting. It was functional. It was not enough.

She needed more. Besides... she needed to find ’him’. This was his world, after all.

More humans meant more labor. More labor meant faster expansion. Faster expansion meant more territory. More territory meant more resources and better chances of finding the ridiculous leader who had abandoned them in the Otherworld.

"Let’s proceed into this area," Gruka said, pointing at the closest city. "This time, send better armed people, send humans with them too. That should dissuade other humans from attacking mindlessly."

Just then, the sound of boots on the stairs pulled her attention up from the map. Her trusted scout, one lean orc named Braku, stepped through the doorway and pressed a fist to his chest in the clan salute.

"Report," Gruka said, her eyes still fixed on the map.

"Found something worth your time," Brak said, all formalness disappearing from her as she climbed the table.

She threw a dagger at the map, pointing to a spot roughly three kilometers northeast of their current position. An area Gruka had marked gray.

"Multiple human settlements there. Maybe six or seven of them, based on the area I tracked. Oh, and one of the places was invisible, but the newly installed watchtowers and the battle they had exposed it."

Gruka’s finger stopped drumming as soon as she heard that.

"Defenses?"

"Yup. Big ones," Braku grinned. "Well, there was another camp there, but nothing extraordinary to point out. Mostly, it looked to be on its last legs."

Gruka finally looked up from the map. Her yellow and sharp eyes settled on the spot Braku was pointing to.

"That invisible base... do you think it’s him?"

"You know it’s difficult to say," Braku shrugged. "But given the lord always had a strange tendency to do weird shit like that... I have a feeling it’s something he would do."

Gruka straightened up to her full height, but her tensed shoulders visibly relaxed. It was the news she had been waiting for more than a year.

She looked at the map for a few more seconds and began calculating the quickest route to the invisible territory.

"Eat fast," she finally said. "We move tonight."

"Alrighty!" Braku smiled, leaving to tell everyone about it.