Surviving The Tutorial With An OP Girlfriend

Chapter 38 - Orc Village

“Hm? What are you doing down here?” one of the sphinxes asked. “Didn't Commander Bakari take you to the top to meet our great pharaoh?”

Adam nudged Mei and subtly gestured toward the Eye of Ra.

Taking the hint, she raised the golden eye above her head and injected it with a stream of purple mana.

A purplish-gold beam erupted from the Eye of Ra's pupil and swept across the gathered undead and sandstone golems. One by one, they froze in place and stared blankly ahead.

“Haha! Now I have an army under my command. Just call me General Mei from now on!” she declared proudly.

Several of the undead exchanged confused looks.

“That’s our great pharaoh's accessory...” another sphinx growled.

Its stone eyes widened.

“They killed our queen! Kill them!”

The hateful roar echoed across the desert, snapping the entire undead army out of its daze.

Level inefficient, command failed

“Run!” Adam shouted.

Before any of them could take a single step, a brilliant light burst from the summit of the pyramid and washed over the desert below.

The undead legion froze.

Then, as the light faded, their bodies began to dissolve. Flesh crumbled into dust, armor collapsed into rusted fragments, and even the towering sandstone golems slowly disintegrated into piles of harmless sand.

The curse of the dead has been lifted

The notification had barely appeared before the pyramid itself began to collapse.

Massive stone blocks broke free from the structure and rained down like meteors.

The three of them sprinted without hesitation.

Adam raised a barrier over their heads just as jagged shards of stone slammed into the desert around them. Each impact struck with enough force to punch deep craters into the sand.

Cracks immediately spread across the shield's surface.

Seeing it wouldn't hold, Adam quickly altered the structure of the barrier. The rigid wall softened into something almost elastic, allowing it to absorb impacts instead of resisting them outright. Stone fragments embedded themselves into the shield rather than punching through it.

Even so, the strain nearly drained him dry.

By the time they finally reached the edge of the destruction zone, all three were breathing heavily.

They turned around just in time to witness the pyramid's final collapse.

The ancient monument folded in on itself, disappearing beneath an avalanche of stone and sand. As the dust settled, the first rays of dawn crested the distant dunes.

Slowly, the ruins sank beneath the desert.

When the last traces of the pyramid vanished, all that remained was a blood-red oasis surrounded by palm trees and endless sand.

“That's a bit of a morbid sight...” Mei commented.

“It certainly is,” Adam agreed.

Granessa stared at the oasis with an expression that was surprisingly peaceful.

“I think it's amazing,” she said. “Like I've left an irreversible mark upon the world. My goddess would be proud of me, I'm sure.”

A wistful smile crossed her face.

“If only I could join her with an honorable death.”

“Uh... yeah...”

Neither Adam nor Mei had any idea how to respond to that.

Her warrior culture was still completely foreign to them.

To Adam and Mei, immortality sounded like a blessing. To Granessa, it had been a curse worse than death itself. In fact, death would have been an acceptable blessing to her.

Although it wasn't as though she had become truly immortal. Poison, disease, and old age could still claim her life eventually.

The problem was that none of those deaths mattered.

To an orc, only a death earned in battle was honorable.

The three continued their journey in relative silence, each occupied by their own thoughts.

By the time the sun reached its apex, they had finally crossed the desert and arrived at the border where golden sand gave way to rolling grasslands.

“My village isn't far from here,” Granessa said, pointing toward a cluster of hills rising from the otherwise flat plains. “It's just beyond those hills.”

Adam and Mei followed her gesture.

In the opposite direction, the partially burned forest was still visible in the distance, along with the enormous mountain looming beyond it.

Looking back, it was hard to believe how much had happened since they had first arrived in the tutorial.

It felt like a lifetime ago.

— — —

“There it is, my village!” Granessa declared proudly as they crested the top of the hill.

Adam and Mei stopped and blinked in disbelief.

Based on everything they knew about orcs, which admittedly wasn't much, they had expected a collection of tents scattered across the plains or perhaps a crude settlement of wooden longhouses like something out of a Viking documentary.

Most of those assumptions came from their brief conversations with Granessa over the past few days. The rest came from decades of Earth media.

What they found instead was a sprawling city.

Massive stone buildings stretched across the landscape as far as the eye could see. The architecture possessed an archaic flair, with carved pillars, statues, and oversized construction, but the overall layout was surprisingly modern.

Wide paved roads cut through organized districts. Trees and patches of grass lined the streets. Glass windows framed in metal reflected the afternoon sun from buildings that rose two and even three stories high.

It looked less like a primitive village and more like a thriving metropolitan center.

“It's still called a village,” Granessa explained. “But it's grown over time as all the orc clans gathered here and made this place their home.”

The two humans nodded absently while continuing to stare.

“Was your architect an isekai protagonist?” Mei asked.

Granessa tilted her head.

“A what?”

Mei waved dismissively.

“Nothing. Don't worry about it.”

“Okay...?” Granessa replied slowly. “Anyways, let's go see Gramps. He's the village chief and resident shaman. If I ask, he'll let us borrow a ship.”

“Us?” Adam asked. “Isn't it just Mei and me?”

Granessa blinked.

“Aren't we a party?”

He blinked back.

“I mean... I guess so? But why would you come with us?”

“I have a reason,” she said matter-of-factly. “I need to find a way to break my curse.”

“Ah. Fair enough.”

“Anyway, let's go meet Gramps. You two are in for a surprise when you see him.”

The mysterious grin on her face did little to reassure them.

After fighting a hidden parasitic worm boss, surviving an undead army, and killing an ancient pharaoh, they weren't sure much could still surprise them.

Then again, anything was possible in the Impossible Tutorial.

As they approached the enormous gate leading into the city, a squad of armored orcs stepped forward and blocked the entrance.

“Halt! State your identities!”

Granessa frowned.

“I've been gone for less than a month on the front lines and my own people have already forgotten me?”

The lead guard squinted.

“War Chieftainess...?”

His eyes widened.

“Is that really you? But... they said you were missing. Feared dead.”

“Do I look dead to you?!” she growled.

The unfortunate choice of words had touched a very sore spot.

The guard immediately straightened and snapped into a salute.

“Not dead! Of course not dead! An honorable death still awaits you!”

Granessa snorted and shoved him aside.

The guard stumbled several steps but wisely chose not to complain.

As the sole War Chieftainess of the entire orc race, Granessa occupied one of the highest positions in their society. The only individual who outranked her was the Great Shaman himself.

And as the Great Shaman's beloved granddaughter, she often ignored whatever rules she found inconvenient.

The guards quickly stepped aside.

“We welcome your triumphant return!”

Granessa paid them no attention and marched through the gate with Adam and Mei following close behind.

As they made their way through the city, she pointed out various landmarks.

“That's one of the training facilities.”

Adam looked toward the open-air structure and nearly stopped walking.

It looked like a gym.

A very large gym.

Massive barbells, squat racks, benches, and weightlifting equipment filled the facility. Everything appeared to be scaled up two or three times larger than normal.

Sweaty blue-skinned orcs were casually deadlifting weights marked 1,500 kilograms.

That was nearly three times the human world record.

As a professional fitness trainer, Adam desperately wanted to ask about their training routines.

Unfortunately, he had already asked Granessa a similar question before.

Her answer had essentially been: Lift the heaviest thing you can find and punch enemies until you get stronger.

He suspected the other orcs would provide equally detailed guidance.

As they continued through the city, Granessa pointed out three more training facilities.

Every single one was packed.

Orcs lifted absurd amounts of weight, wrestled each other, or engaged in blunt weapon sparring matches that looked more like attempted murder.

No matter where Adam looked, he saw towering walls of muscle. Honestly, it wasn't all that different from spending a day at work. The only notable difference was that everyone was blue and about a foot taller than normal.

Even among them, however, Granessa stood out.

She was noticeably larger than any other orc they encountered.

Noticing where their gazes kept drifting, she smiled.

“You haven't seen anything yet.”

Eventually they arrived at an enormous building near the center of the city.

Calling it a building almost felt inaccurate.

The structure was so large that Adam was fairly certain an entire American football stadium could fit inside one of its side chambers.

They stopped before a pair of gigantic doors.

Even standing directly beneath them and craning their necks back as far as possible, they could barely make out the top.

“Does a giant live here?” Mei asked.

Granessa merely smiled.

Without answering, she pushed the massive doors open and strode inside.

“Gramps! I'm home!”

Her voice echoed down a seemingly endless hallway.

The interior somehow felt even larger than the exterior. Towering ceilings disappeared into the darkness above while colossal pillars lined the corridor.

A deep rumbling voice answered from somewhere in the distance.

“I thought you died. What are you doing back here?”

“Don't even get me started!” Granessa shouted back. “That damn Goblin King was worthless. Turns out he had a giant worm controlling him, then I got cursed in the Desert of the Dead. I'm seriously pissed off!”

The voice snorted.

“Worthless.”

“Hah?! Say that again and I'll pluck your beard off, you undying bastard!”

A loud bang echoed from deeper within the structure.

The floor trembled.

Then came a series of booming footsteps.

Each one sounded less like a person walking and more like a tyrannosaurus rex stomping its way toward them.