From Slave to King: My Rebate System Built Me a Kingdom With Beauties!-Chapter 227: Maui Against Borg!

Far across the settlement where she’d been sitting in peaceful demonstration, Grishka heard the murmurs rippling through the crowd that had gathered around her. The Stonehide Chieftess didn’t move immediately, didn’t react with alarm or surprise. She simply smiled—a cold, knowing expression that suggested she’d been expecting exactly this development.

She had known from the very start that this must be what Maui had intended all along. The young warrior hadn’t come here for assassination or quiet regime change. She’d come to invoke the old ways, to challenge for leadership through combat that would be witnessed and legitimized by the community.

Grishka rose to her feet with deliberate slowness, her massive frame unfolding like something ancient awakening. Every orc present in her immediate vicinity panicked visibly—warriors who’d been edging closer out of curiosity suddenly scrambled backward, even the bravest among them felt their courage falter.

She began walking toward the location where the fight was supposed to take place, her heavy footsteps carrying her through the settlement with unstoppable momentum. Not a single orc dared stand in her way. They parted before her like water around a ship’s prow, creating a clear path without anyone needing to give orders.

Grishka didn’t even acknowledge their existence as she passed. Her killing intent alone was enough to break their will to resist—an aura of violence so concentrated it felt like a physical weight pressing against everyone in proximity. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

There was a sick look in her eyes that those brave enough to meet her gaze immediately regretted seeing. Blood was the one thing that genuinely excited her, combat the sole arena where she felt truly alive.

The crowd of orcs who had surrounded her simply followed behind at a respectful distance, their earlier fascination now mixed with desire to see what was happening at the challenge circle.

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The challenge was accepted by Borg with a mixture of drunken bravado and genuine fury, and immediately everyone present began creating a circle around the two combatants. Warriors moved with practiced efficiency, forming a ring approximately forty feet in diameter—large enough to allow for movement and tactical maneuvering, small enough to prevent either fighter from fleeing. Torches were grabbed and repositioned to illuminate the makeshift arena, casting flickering shadows that danced across the packed earth.

The crowd swelled rapidly as word spread through the settlement. Orcs emerged from dwellings, abandoned their posts, left their meals half-eaten to witness what was about to unfold. A formal challenge was rare enough to be noteworthy, but one involving their controversial chieftain and a mysterious warrior who’d been living among goblins? That was the kind of spectacle that would be discussed for years.

Borg had retrieved his primary weapon—a massive two-handed sword that was nearly as tall as Maui herself, the blade thick and brutal, designed for cleaving through armor and bone with raw force. He was obviously drunk, his movements carrying the slight imprecision of significant intoxication, his eyes bloodshot and his balance occasionally wavering. Some in the crowd might consider this an unfair fight.

But in truth, the situation was far from unfair when all factors were considered.

Borg was genuinely unpredictable when intoxicated—his tactical thinking degraded, yes, but he also stopped telegraphing his movements the way sober fighters did. He also completely lacked any form of self-control in this state, which meant each strike he threw was a genuine killing blow rather than measured attacks.

Maui, on the other hand, was significantly rusty from extended absence of real combat. The way Kraghul had defeated her so thoroughly back during the settlement raid was painful proof of this deterioration. Or Borg nearly killing her in their past violent encounter before Byung’s intervention.

She had once been an entertainer or rather, was, someone who performed for crowds and glory.

However, the full moon hanging overhead might compensate for this lapse. The silver light breaking through clouds carried significance that few in the crowd fully understood yet.

A few orcs were genuinely surprised to learn of her tribal affiliation when whispers started spreading through the crowd. Not everyone had known where Maui originally came from. But the bloodlust beginning to ooze from her very presence told them of something fundamentally evil lurking beneath the surface.

Shava stood at the circle’s edge, her expression carefully neutral. She kept quiet despite being a formidable warrior herself. But Borg had used trauma to subdue her spirit. She watched now as someone else fought the battle she should have fought herself.

Borg rushed toward Maui with his massive sword drawn, covering the distance with surprising speed. He approached from her right side, his weapon suggesting a straightforward horizontal slash. Maui was ready to block the strike from the right—

But he suddenly planted his sword point-first into the ground, using the embedded blade as a pivot to propel himself up and over her in an acrobatic maneuver that should have been impossible for someone that drunk. His body sailed through the air, and while mid-flight he uprooted his sword and swung it down vertically with all his might.

Maui managed to leap backward just in time, her reflexes barely adequate. The massive blade smashed against the packed earth instead, the impact tremendous enough to crater the ground and send shockwaves outward.

The collision created a dense dust screen that erupted from the impact site, obscuring visibility for both fighters and spectators.

Maui was hit by the dust screen almost immediately, her vision reduced to nearly nothing. Then she felt it—the displacement of air being sliced cleanly. She realized almost too late that he was going for her head, attempting to decapitate her from the left while she was blind.

Maui couldn’t dodge, so she managed to parry instead, her twin swords coming up in desperate cross-block that caught Borg’s massive blade mere inches from her neck. The impact nearly dislocated both shoulders.

The parry forced his blow to miss, but the redirected momentum threw his balance off. He stumbled forward, overcommitted to the strike.

Maui saw her opening—Borg’s entire left side was exposed. She was about to land a clean hit with both swords that would have carved him from shoulder to opposite hip—

But Borg spat directly in her eyes with surprising accuracy.

The saliva hit her face, momentarily blinding her at the critical instant. Her killing strike went off-course by crucial inches, and Borg capitalized immediately by driving his sword toward her exposed arm. The blade grazed her skin deeply, carving a furrow through flesh that sent blood spraying in an arc.

The dust screen finally settled just in time for the assembled crowd to witness their chieftain having drawn first blood. The orcs went into an absolute frenzy—cheering, shouting, stamping feet, banging weapons against shields in rhythmic approval. Their leader had proven his dominance.

Maui looked down at the wound on her arm, watching her own blood drip steadily onto the packed earth in fat droplets that seemed to glow unnaturally red. Then she raised her arm to her mouth with deliberate ceremony and licked the blood flowing from the gash.

The crowd’s cheering faltered, confusion spreading through the ranks.

Maui looked directly at Borg. "Have you forgotten why it was advised to kill members of my tribe with one strike when it’s a full moon?" she asked, her voice carrying clearly. "The old texts warn about us specifically. About what happens when we taste our own blood under lunar light."

Borg’s expression shifted from triumphant to uncertain, alcohol-fogged memory trying desperately to recall lessons from childhood.

Then the transformation began.

The moment Maui’s blood was ingested, her eyes rolled back in her head until only the whites were visible. Her body began to convulse, muscles spasming violently. The bloodlust that had been merely present before now exploded outward like a shockwave, so intense that several nearby orcs actually staggered backward.

Her body temperature spiked—steam began rising from her skin despite the cool night air. Her muscles swelled noticeably, expanding beyond their normal proportions as supernatural strength flooded through her frame. Her breathing became rapid, almost panting, each exhalation carrying a sound that was more animal than orc.

When her eyes rolled back down to their normal position, they had changed. The whites were now bloodshot to the point of being nearly red, and her pupils had dilated to consume most of the iris.

Grishka, having finally reached the circle’s edge, watched this transformation with undisguised satisfaction. Her smile widened, showing teeth that suddenly looked far more predatory. She knew what was coming.

The crowd’s celebration died completely, replaced by a silence so profound that individual heartbeats seemed audible.

Maui’s head tilted at an unnatural angle, joints popping audibly. When she spoke again, her voice had changed—deeper, carrying harmonics that hurt to hear, as if multiple throats were speaking simultaneously.

"One strike, Borg," she said, her transformed voice making even seasoned warriors flinch. "You were supposed to end me with one strike. Now you face what my people become when the moon is full and our blood awakens the hunger within."

She raised her twin swords again, but now they moved with speed that defied physics, creating afterimages in the torchlight, humming through the air with a sound like distant screaming.

Borg swallowed hard, his drunken confidence evaporating as he realized with horrible clarity that the fight had just become something entirely different. Something he might not survive.