Foundation of Smoke and Steel Chapter 170

Daniel

They left almost imdiately for the parley with the Iron Tide. That was to be expected; what was not expected was that Daniel was thrown off. He had to admit it, and honestly, it was a strange ti to notice the feeling.

Luckily, his thoughts had ti to wander.

He had done so crazy and unprecedented things in this strange cultivation world—stuff that he wouldn’t have even considered back on Earth.

Like just a couple of hours ago, he blew the head off soone who looked like a magical samurai. Magic samurai—what would his otaku friends say to that? But the worst part was, he didn’t feel anything about it. Not a single bit. That fact alone should have scared him. It didn’t.

When he had first gotten here, he had expected more of a parallel world or a carbon copy of his own, just one that happened to coexist with a dose of magic. Fiction consumption had a tendency to shape soone like him with expectations. Parallel worlds were a common thematic setting in fiction, and thus the familiar and expectations of the characters and the audience could be managed. Tropes were tropes for a reason, apparently, and it was strange how quickly he had fallen into the patterns people discussed when telling these types of stories.

He had beco dangerous, one might even say overpowered, at least in a certain context. He was married to a woman who didn’t like him and was probably the most ethereal creature in existence. He had taken charge, fought for, and had beco sothing of a leader. It was crazy. Now, really, all he needed to complete the mid-fantasy vibe was a talking animal companion. He hoped it would be a tiger. Yes, definitely a tiger.

Checking back into reality, Daniel and the others followed Urdek toward the orc encampnt, which was surprisingly open for a race as warlike as the orcs.

Daniel was sothing of a history buff, along with his engineering and physical pursuits. It probably said sothing about him and his upbringing. Growing up really, really smart had sowhat isolated him. Not that he had been a complete social outcast, but he had definitely spent a lot of ti alone. And when you can read just about anything and rember just about everything, it makes it easy to accumulate knowledge and develop interests in different subjects.

This situation reminded him of images of Gothic Gauls and Germanic Celts. Saying all that, he wasn’t super familiar with the specific tribes the Romans conquered in his world. He knew the broad strokes. The Roman Empire lasted roughly a thousand years. It began as a Republic, rose for five centuries, had a golden age for about three, and then declined for roughly two. There was variation in those numbers, but that was the frawork he rembered.

What he did know with nerdy accuracy was that organization, logistics, and uniformity had created the Roman war machine.

He thought back to the movie Gladiator and the portrayal of the Gauls—massive, angry, individually skilled warriors who couldn’t stand against the Romans because one person could not do what two or three working in coordination could accomplish. It was probably a vast simplification, but it worked well enough in his mind to understand how great that Earthly Empire had been.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to for the genuine story.

This world, however, was different, and it complicated that analogy because of individual strength. A cultivator, a Murai, an orc could possess overwhelming personal power that could be effective against many people. Magic simply changed the equation of personal power. Look at soone like General Li, who could literally break armies. Daniel’s thought of change had already taken root. He had already proven that if magic could be harnessed through aningful coordination, then even weaker magic users could overco stronger opponents, provided they had enough of them and could synchronize properly.

So once again, coordination and cooperation could overco the individual.

Which made him wonder about the orcs.

They seed to favor individual strength despite possessing so level of logistics. You couldn’t move armies without food, shelter, and dicine, though he suspected the orcs’ robust constitution and their natural manipulation of mana and life energy helped with those problems.

Regardless, walking into the orc camp with the bowcasters, his entourage, and Li cultivators arranged in coordinated units gave him a sense—however faint—of what so Roman generals might have felt like when facing the tribes and roaming hordes of early Europe.

He had fought the red orcs. He had fought the sword demons. He had even taken down the Murai. But there had been sothing fallen about the red orcs and the sword demons. Understanding that they were demon-touched and corrupted—that was the best word he had for it—made the difference clear.

Now, looking at the groups of green-skinned orcs standing in a wide semicircle of tents and makeshift structures, with no obvious geotric formation to their encampnt, he had to wonder if this was what those Roman generals felt during parley.

The Iron Tide displayed remarkable variety. Most of their skin carried so shade of green, but so leaned closer to gray. He found himself wondering if that reflected different subspecies or simple variation, sothing akin to lanin variation in humans—Black, Asian, Pacific Islander—though he had no intention of asking.

The orcs were talking among themselves openly. They were not hiding their curiosity. They weren’t outwardly hostile—just rugged, warrior-like, and clearly inclined to solve problems with their fists if words failed.

Daniel watched as one orc punched another in the face before others pulled them apart.

Daniel thought idly that if there were ever a way to align these warriors in a single direction, with genuine coordination, they would be terrifying.

Their use of life energy, Aether, Ethan had called it, was much more noticeable when many of them stood together. Even at rest, there was a subtle hum in the air, their collective shrouds overlapping and naturally bleeding into one another. It was powerful, but raw.

Daniel studied them carefully.

He didn’t really understand what Aether was. He only knew it was described as so form of life energy. That description didn’t sit cleanly with him, because that was what he had always thought mana was—a subtle energy that could be manipulated through will and discipline. Electricity for the body and world?

If that wasn’t life energy, what was?

But Aether was distinct. He could see it in the texture of their shrouds, in the way it moved differently from mana—denser in so places, less refined in others. Every cultivator had so sort of mana thod—a structured approach to shaping energy into swordsmanship, spear techniques, casting, or simply enhanced breathing patterns that allowed them to channel mana more efficiently.

The orcs’ thods felt less codified.

More instinctive.

And far more dangerous than they looked at first glance.

I don’t like this, Ethan said, his voice resonating in the back of Daniel’s mind and interrupting his thoughts. This is not sothing the Iron Tide does.