Although I don't know how many stories about orcs have been heard from the people around me, and in those stories, this remote race on the mainland is generally described as a villain full of brutality and savagery, at least Ith has heard a lot about how the bloodthirsty orc knights captured and burned down towns in the first place, brutally killing human women and children. Looting property and other things also made his heart always full of resentment and hatred for this wild race, and of course, faint fear and horror.

It was the first time Ite's real encounters with the creatures that had been talked about all the time, these creatures covered in thick brown hair, with tall and strong physiques, almost a lap larger than a normal adult male human.

But in Ite's opinion, they are almost the same giant wolf walking upright, but compared to the obvious protruding mouth and nose of the giant wolf, the protruding mouth and nose of these orcs who obviously belong to the wolf clan are relatively low, so that the forehead is much fuller, but their eyes are the same as those giant wolves, with a few traces of scarlet between the dark yellow, which looks cruel and indifferent, making people dare not look directly. But their hands are obviously different from the forepaws of the giant wolf, they are basically similar to human palms, and they can flexibly grasp and stretch, except for the sharp nails and the thick layer of hair covering them. Their legs also looked a little awkward, not because of the same thick hairs that covered them as the rest of their bodies, but because their knees didn't seem to be able to stand up completely straight, and were always in a slight bend.

As for the kobolds who follow the werewolves, as close relatives and vassals of the wolf warrior clan, their appearance is almost a werewolf who is two sizes smaller, and even shorter and weaker than normal humans, but the color of their hair is basically black and white, which can be distinguished from werewolves at a glance, but the main difference between the two is that werewolves' ears are naturally towering, while kobolds' ears are always drooping, so that they can distinguish the two more obviously.

In various folk and official accounts, it is mentioned that the territory of the orcs is located west of the Frozen Mountains, occupying the vast Sunset Grassland and the Sunset Desert in the far west.

The social composition of the orcs is that the various races are held together under a loose and large alliance, which is known as the Orc Alliance.

The Orc Alliance is composed of a total of eight races, the upper three are the Wolf Warrior Clan, the War Lizard Clan, and the Howling Hoof Clan, which is commonly known as the Minotaurs, who take turns to hold the power of the Orc Alliance. The lower five tribes are the rat people, kobolds, fox people, rabbit people and tarot tribes, who are attached to the upper three tribes and belong to the vassal races. Each of these eight races has a common name, calling themselves the Bimon, but the other races on the continent have always been accustomed to calling them orcs.

Orcs have always lived in grasslands and deserts, and there is no suitable land for farming, so they have always lived by herding and gathering. They raise and graze mainly the Oro Beast, which is a fat, docile herbivore, which looks like a compound of a cow and a pig in a domestic animal raised by humans, with a head and body shape similar to that of a cow, but without horns, with the fat of a pig, but the body is covered with long fur, this animal gets its name from their peculiar Oro call, so it is called the Oro Beast. Although the Oro beasts are easy to raise and extremely adaptable, their meat is coarse and has a sour smell that humans cannot tolerate, so humans rarely raise and eat them, but the orcs who are not very picky about food are generally bred as the main food of ordinary orcs.

The closest orc territory to humans is the Wolf Warriors, whose territory is located on the east side of the Sunset Grassland, bordering the land of humans. In summer and autumn, the water and grass are abundant, and the fields are also full of wild fruits and edible plant roots, which is the season when the orcs do not worry about food. But in winter and early spring, everything withers, but also the season of food scarcity, if the tribe is properly stored, then tight clothing and food can survive this difficult period, if the cold winter comes early or the year of famine, a large number of captive Oro beasts because there is not enough food to feed or because of the sharp drop in the weather to freeze to death, then some tribes can not guarantee food for the winter, so the orc rangers came into being.

The original hunters were spontaneously formed by warriors from orc tribes who were unable to survive the harsh winter due to lack of food, and they roamed around in groups to loot other tribes for food to feed their tribesmen, and sometimes banded together to attack the human guards on the border to grab provisions, but this looting appeared simply for survival. However, since the signing of the Covenant of the Four Races, in order to prevent the Orcs from invading the human territory on a large scale due to lack of food, the various tribes decided to allow trade between the four tribes, so that when the Orcs really encountered a large-scale famine, they could transport food from the human land to the Orcs through caravans to sell it to solve the food shortage crisis, which was a far-reaching decision to reduce the conflict between the borders, but it gave some greedy merchants and sinister forces many opportunities to take advantage of.

Before the signing of the Covenant of the Four Races, both the Holy Empire and the Holy Radiance Empire forbade any trade and exchange between humans and orcs to curb the rise of the orc race who were short of materials, and there was no interesting production in the barren land of the orcs, so there was basically no private trade, and even after the signing of the covenant of the four races, the main trade was only to unilaterally provide the most basic food crops to the orcs from the land of the human race, so as to help the orcs survive the year of famine due to lack of food and prevent border conflicts caused by famine。

But that all changed when a group of dwarven wanderers unearthed a high-quality gold mine deep in the Sunset Desert.

In 473 A.D., a group of dwarven prisoners exiled by the dwarven king wandered to the territory of the orcs, and the dwarves were still fragile nominal allies with the orcs, so the orcs also acquiesced to the homeless dwarves entering their territory. Of course, they also had their own ideas, and initially the orcs just wanted to get a group of skilled blacksmiths. However, when this group of wandering dwarves explored the extremely rich gold mines in the depths of the Sunset Desert and handed over the gold mines to the rulers of the Orc Alliance in exchange for the conditions of settling in the orc territory, the orc rulers who had been plagued by poverty did not hesitate to give permission, but this decision also angered the dwarves, and the dwarven king who learned the news immediately protested and terminated contact with the orcs.

The allure of gold is incomparable, and the news of the discovery of rich gold mines in the orc territory instantly spread throughout the continent, of course, it cannot be ruled out that the orcs deliberately spread it. As a result, countless merchants and adventurers who heard the news took huge risks, through various ways, in order to chase huge profits, and privately contacted the orcs, and a series of hidden underground trade routes sprung up like mushrooms after a rain, and all kinds of material resources were continuously sent into the caves and tents of the orc rulers, and boxes of gold also poured into the continent, and then scattered and transported to different castles and manors in various places.

If you ask which race is the best at business and trade on the entire continent, ten out of ten people will frown and tell you the same answer, and that is the vile and filthy gnomes.

For the dwarves with rough personalities and grumpy personalities, they have always had a commendable virtue, and that is integrity. If a dwarf makes a promise, then it will be fulfilled even if it is to take his own life. It is harder to get a dwarf to tell a lie than to kill them. Therefore, when other races on the continent express the truth of their words, they often add a metaphor of "what I say is as true as the promises of the dwarves".

But the dwarves, who are close relatives of the dwarves, are seen as a different extreme, a mixture of shamelessness, cunning, philistine, and greed. The creatures, who were smaller and weaker than the dwarves, were born merchants, because their small and weak bodies could not do much work that required strength, but the gods of creation were also fair, and he compensated for the weakness by giving them a clever and cunning brain. A race that can reproduce since ancient times naturally has its way of survival, and the flexible gnomes are born with a thirst for money and an instinctive acumen for the operation of trade, so since ancient times, no matter how the dynasty changes on the continent and how the hegemony rotates, the Golden Balance Business Group established by the dwarf clan has always firmly occupied the prominent title of the largest business group in the mainland.

Legend has it that it was this Golden Balance Merchant Group that secretly colluded with some orc rulers to integrate the orc marauders who were originally scattered and chaotic, and organized them into a powerful force that roamed the border between orcs and humans, and this emerging force was also known as the orc rangers. But this organized gang of hunters has long since deviated from its original purpose and has become a complete tool of human control.

For the orc rulers, the main beneficiaries of this group, the primary role of the rangers is to monitor and listen to the movements of the human army, and to guard against possible human invasions, just like the countless human guard stone castles built by humans on the rolling frozen mountains. Covered by long borders, they sometimes raid passing merchant groups and human strongholds, looting supplies and population, and sometimes they are used as blades in the dark to slaughter all tribes that are hostile to those behind them. Of course, for the other initiator, the Golden Balance Merchants, it was also their duty to ensure that the Traders traded safely on the Sunset Meadows, but all this was hidden, as the gnomes had never denied any connection to the notorious Hunters, even though their Traders had never been attacked on the Grasslands.

Looking at the werewolves in front of him, who were at least one head taller than ordinary humans, their sturdy bodies were draped in brown leather armor inlaid with iron plates, although they looked quite shabby, they were actually very strong. At the waist were a short sword of the same style and simple appearance, although it was so simple that it did not even have a gauntlet, but a glance at the blade knew that it was made of fine iron.

This is a very intriguing discovery, because since the signing of the covenant of the four tribes, due to the proposal of the human race, all races on the continent are strictly forbidden to transport weapons into the orc territory for trading, and the orc territory has never found rich iron ore and the orcs lack of smelting technology, so the orcs have always lacked weapons and armor made of fine iron, and it is good for ordinary orc warriors to have a mace with a few iron nails nailed to a thick wooden stick as nail teeth, but now in a group of werewolf knights, you can see a uniform style of fine iron short sword, which is something that even the tribal guards of some large orc tribes can't do。

"That's what they often call orc hunters......"

Ite looked at these orcs blankly, and didn't seem to smell the pungent stench emanating from their bodies, which is also the body odor that all orcs have, and the vast majority of orcs with thick body hair seem to have a natural rejection of bathing, and even some orcs who live in remote areas take two baths in their lives, so other races on the continent often add a stinky prefix to describe them contemptuously when mentioning orcs.

A tall werewolf warrior with a strong smell lifted him up and put him on the wolf's back, and the kobold servant who followed him untied the rope in his mouth and stuffed a small piece of dry jerky into his mouth.

In a short time, the makeshift camp was set up and the team was ready to go.

Ite secretly estimated that this team was probably composed of nearly three hundred giant wolves and more than a hundred werewolf knights, and dozens of kobolds acted as subordinates. All the booty, including human captives and equipment, were carried on the back of the giant wolf, and the leader of the team was a werewolf wearing a chain mail, wearing a strange leather helmet with black hair, riding a black giant wolf that was obviously larger than the other giant wolves, and with his roar, the werewolf leader rode the black giant wolf first, and the team followed quickly towards the depths of the grassland.