A/N: Finally leaving the orc region! lollll. Sorry it wasn’t as creative as I would’ve wanted. I just hope it was still entertaining to read, regardless.
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Althea curiously used the improved [Eye] skill to check the other orcs, confirming that she could indeed see people’s stats and skills!
How...interesting.
She always knew that the orcs’ base stats were much higher than those of humans of the same level. However, it was the first time she saw how exactly it differed.
For example, now she knew that an orc’s experience point requirements were twice those of hers back when she was at that level.
The difference in stats varied from orc to orc, but they were definitely far stronger than humans of the same level; some had stats even twice or more. It was a bit new to see it with her own eyes.
She could see Fufi’s, but Fufi was her battle pet and was part of her own force. Seeing others’ stats was a bit subtle.
It inexplicably felt like she was seeing other people half-naked.
Anyway, she didn’t have much use for this now and using it once consumed some mana, so she definitely wasn’t idle enough to check everyone’s stats out of curiosity, especially since she was about to venture to the walls again.
One had to remember there were plenty of strong monsters along that wall. She and her husband, despite their levels spiking over the past month, would still find it troublesome if they got mobbed over there.
But she did decide to do some ’random sampling’ when using the new skill, just because she was curious about the stats of orcs and their averages.
She chose at random and chose different sample types. For example, there were meat lovers and vegetable lovers, there were level 15s and level 25s, and there was also the factor of age.
To summarize, their base physique and agility were truly superior to that of humans. She looked at the animals with similar ’species’ as the half-orcs, like bears, foxes, and birds, and knew that the stats of half-orcs were literally around the median between humans and orcs. This was by prorata approximate since their levels were different.
The innate ability was indeed only one per orc or half-orc, though the orcs also had passive manifestations of their skills. The half-orcs did not have this. Even Maomao, whose ability was her strong penetrative kicks, did not have this set as default, and she had to consume energy to use it.
In contrast, orcs had active and passive manifestations of their abilities. For example, Ohara’s passive was plant-sensitive by default, but it was more like instinct and an alert. It was her active skill that allowed her to focus on a plant and know more details about it.
Another interesting contrast was a comparison between two bunnies. The Half-orc Maomao’s ability was [Penetrative Kick], and the orc bunny from Feyun Tribe also had a skill that roughly translated to [Penetrative Kick] as well, except the characters used were different.
The full-blooded orc bunny’s skill worked best for digging soil and rocks rather than flesh. Of course, it could also cause a lot of damage to monsters, and this one was far stronger than Maomao’s despite having the same level.
The other fox had a different skill tree from Gochi, though. This one actually had something like a charm skill, which would confuse whatever he faced as long as its level wasn’t too high.
She had witnessed this before, during the tunnel defense when the camp was mobbed, though she didn’t know it was a skill. At the time, she just thought the monster tripped and bumped its head on the wall, but now she realized it had been ’charmed’.
Then she caught sight of an interesting ability: Honing. There were no descriptions in the stats, but the universal language of this world was quite rich, so Althea could actually infer the description of the skill because of the word itself.
The language was so rich, likely because the elves consolidated most spoken languages that were still being used in the world back when they were alive.
Further, it seemed to update itself too, absorbing the new words and idioms used by the people, and perhaps even creating its own based on the established etymology rules.
Perhaps the system also had a little AI feel, which could be shown with the various judgements like in oaths, so it wouldn’t be too out of the world for it to create its own terminologies.
The honing skill implied a sort of ability to attach to a target of choice, and the ability to track them to the ends of the land. As for how it could compare to the special abilities gained by humans, for example, Wolfe’s (Terran Survivor #48) ability [Colorful Traces], they had no idea yet.
This honing skill would be quite useful in Alterra. Here, they don’t really go out of their way to hunt specific creatures or orcs. Even if they did, it was very rare, and many other orcs had skills like scent detectors to do the same functions.

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