Chapter 143 : Chapter 143
Chapter 143 - Change of Plans
When I climbed along the wall and escaped the pit, fish that had failed to move along with the water were left flopping around where the pool had been.
A lively movement that did not match the fishy sight entered my eyes.
“Kkweeeek!!”
It was the half-wit, excitedly picking up and eating the fish scattered across the ground.
Seeing that bastard filling his stomach, despite being the root cause of everything if we really got down to it, made a hollow feeling wash over me.
Because in the end, I had no choice but to conclude that the bastard did not possess intelligence on the same level as the leader in the original work.
Even if he had eaten the leader’s neck, it meant that right now, he was not in any state to devise a highly intelligent plan.
What exactly had I been wary of in him all this time?
He looked that thoughtless.
Watching him shove a large flopping fish into his mouth in one bite, only for it to get stuck in his throat and make him cough, only deepened the emptiness I felt.
“Kkwek?”
Noticing my gaze, the half-wit looked back at me.
When our eyes met, his body visibly flinched, but the bastard showed no further reaction than that.
Though he did look over my drenched state with eyes holding a little curiosity.
At the very least, he did not seem to hold any particular resentment over the fact that I had chased him together with three orcs.
Well, the half-wit surely had not expected anything like faith or friendship from me either.
There was no particular need for such things among orcs.
If nothing else, I do like this dry relationship.
While I was chewing over the advantages of living as an orc, the half-wit turned his head as if looking over my shoulder.
When I followed his gaze and turned my body, I saw Ratel climbing up from the pit.
“Kkwek, what took you so long?”
When I asked about his late arrival, since I had naturally thought he would climb up ahead of me, Ratel, who had been shaking off water, rolled his eyes.
“Wouldn’t you say this is barely any time at all? For a ‘human.’”
Ratel’s answer, that he had merely climbed up at a speed fitting the human he kept emphasizing, was fairly reasonable.
But no matter how I thought about it, I could not erase the suspicion.
Since when have you listened to me that well?
I narrowed my eyes with suspicion, but Ratel turned his head and blatantly ignored my doubt.
“Kkwek......!”
The half-wit, who had been watching the war of nerves between me and Ratel, cautiously approached.
If it had been before, I would have first suspected him of having some scheme, but now his actions looked different.
As Ratel had said, it only looked like he was lowering his tail before a new strong figure.
Though I still could not completely drop my guard.
“Kkwe, kkwek......!”
I could not tell what he was saying, but the half-wit gestured with his hands and feet as if trying to convey something to Ratel.
“What is he saying?”
“Kkwek, who knows? Maybe he’s complaining that we left him alone?”
“Kkwek......!!”
It seemed my effort to interpret his words was wrong again, because the half-wit jumped on the spot.
“......Do you know you really aren’t suited to being an orc? How have you never once guessed correctly what the half-wit is saying?”
Ratel looked at me pathetically.
Among humans, it would be hard to find anyone better at guessing than me.
It was the moment I was about to answer.
A green arm suddenly stretched out between me and Ratel.
The hand grabbed the half-wit by the scruff of the neck and pulled him hard.
“Kkwek......!”
Ratel and I stepped aside as the startled half-wit was dragged away.
The half-wit barely avoided falling and was pulled along by the hand.
“Kkwek, caring for the half-wit as soon as you come out. Your love for your subordinate really is extraordinary.”
When I said that to the leader, who had turned his body and was glaring at Ratel with wary eyes, his sharp gaze turned toward me this time.
“Kkwek!! The extraordinary one is that human bastard! Kkwek!! What the hell did you bring all the way here?!”
His eyes, full of wariness, turned toward Ratel and me.
At the leader’s rather dramatic change in attitude, I had no choice but to glare at Ratel, who had just as much of a scammer’s nature as I did.
He had said he climbed up quickly “for a human,” but he had definitely done something inhuman down there before coming up.
***
The leader’s eyes were filled with hostility and wariness toward Ratel as he retreated while holding onto the half-wit.
It was not as if he had ever had anything resembling goodwill toward Ratel in the first place, but now the nature of it was different.
Unlike before, when his gaze had only contained hatred and contempt for humans as a species, the current leader seemed to accept Ratel as a threat itself.
“Kkwek, what are you suddenly talking about?”
“Kkwek!! I’m asking what the identity of that inhuman bastard is!!”
When I pretended not to know and asked, the leader immediately shouted.
What exactly did you do in that short time?
I glanced at Ratel, but the bastard showed not even the smallest sign of agitation on his face.
Fine. Since it had come to this, I decided to imitate that bastard’s shamelessness too.
“Kkwek, isn’t he the human bastard you hate so much? Kkwek, the human we were going to use as bait.”
“Kkwek, don’t say ridiculous things! Kkwek, how do you use a bastard like that as bait?!”
“Kkwek, why couldn’t we?”
“Kkwek, are you asking because you don’t know, or are you pretending not to know?! Kkwek, that bastard is......!”
“Kkwek, so I’m asking exactly what’s strange about him and how.”
“......”
The leader, who had been raising his voice, suddenly shut his mouth.
The bastard glanced down at the half-wit, who had a puzzled expression.
I understood.
If he could only repeat that Ratel was strange, it meant there was nothing left for the leader except suspicion.
He would not want to admit that he had grown frightened of a single human without even being physically harmed.
Still, after judging that there had been no physical threat, I swallowed a sigh of relief.
No, why do I even have to feel relieved about something like this?
Because the range of accidents the protagonist bastard caused was so wide, I had to put off scolding myself for being relieved by this for now.
There was still one problem left that had to be resolved more quickly than that.
“Kkwek, he isn’t an ordinary human bastard! Kkwek, now that I think about it, it was strange from the start that a human bastard jumped into a place that deep! Kkwek, bait or whatever, we have to kill him right now.”
The leader’s wariness toward Ratel had risen too high.
The plan to naturally send Ratel outside under the excuse of using him as bait was slowly going awry.
I had to decide whether to adjust the crumbling plan and rebuild it, or create a new plan entirely.
It would not be that difficult to adjust the plan again.
The leader was simple, and his pride was strong.
That meant it would be just as easy to coax him and take him all the way to the food storage.
My hesitation was brief.
I opened my mouth toward the leader, who was glaring at Ratel while breathing roughly.
“Kkwek, yeah, like you said, he is strange.”
The leader’s expression softened, thinking I had acknowledged his words.
“Kkwek, he’s too valuable to use as bait and throw away.”
Though it immediately crumpled at the words that followed.
“Kkwek, what nonsense are you saying now? Kkwek, don’t tell me you forgot that bastard is human.”
“Kkwek, what would I forget? Kkwek, anyone with eyes can tell that.”
“Kkwek, then what is this!!”
Agitated by my sarcasm, the bastard screamed.
“Kkwek, aren’t you the one who forgot? Kkwek, that human bastard saved me.”
From you, who tried to kill me.
Even without adding the last part, the bastard seemed to understand what I meant.
“Kkwek, are you saying you’re going to trust a human now?”
“Kkwek, yes. Kkwek, so I intend to take this bastard alive.”
I saw Ratel’s eyebrows rise as he stood there with a face that said he did not care either way.
It probably meant, What change of heart is this all of a sudden?
It was just that since things had turned out this way anyway, I was going to do what that bastard wanted one last time.
In any case, I had also managed to escape the pit easily thanks to him.
At my calm answer, the leader’s eyes widened as if he had heard something unbelievable.
Then soon, the bastard snorted.
“Kkwek, you’ve lost your mind.”
“Kkwek, I’m choosing the one who saved me over the bastard who broke his promise and tried to kill me. Isn’t that pretty normal?”
The leader narrowed his eyes.
“Kkwek, that human clearly said he came here to cut off the leader’s neck. Kkwek, does that mean you’ll become my enemy from now on?”
Right, that was still there.
Once again shuddering at the protagonist's bastard's unhelpful honesty, I pretended to be calm.
“Kkwek, I won’t help him. Kkwek, but if he can obtain it with his own strength, I won’t bother stopping him either.”
I quietly swallowed the words that Ratel could wipe out not just the leader’s neck, but every orc on the island, then continued speaking.
“Kkwek, but if you attack this human, then I’ll stop you, not the human. Kkwek, you know better than anyone what will happen in the process.”
At a glance, it might have sounded like I was saying I would protect Ratel, but in reality, it was a warning to prevent the leader from challenging him rashly.
After going to the trouble of bringing the leader all the way to the front of the food storage, I could not let the plan collapse so vainly here.
I continued my warning toward the leader, who had not erased his displeasure.
“Kkwek, I’ll keep guiding you as promised. Kkwek, I’m not a bastard who calls humans liars, then breaks promises himself like someone else.”
That last sentence had definitely scraped at his nerves.
The leader’s expression turned cold.
“Kkwek, what did I do wrong?! Kkwek, you’re the one who threatened my position first! Kkwek, you’re the one who tried to kill the half-wit too!”
“Kkwek, I said I never tried to kill him.”
The half-wit glanced at me, but I remained confident.
My intention had been to test the bastard, not kill him.
Though the result had been disastrous.
“Kkwek, it doesn’t change the fact that you got in my way.”
It was quite a shameless kind of anger.
Truly an orc-like way of thinking.
Well, the only one here who was most orc-like was that bastard anyway.
In that sense, he was right.
“Kkwek, right, you did nothing wrong.”
The bastard had simply followed his instincts.
His instincts as a leader, his instincts as an orc, perhaps even his instincts as a living creature.
There was no one here who would particularly blame him for acting like that.
No, in the first place, no one had that much interest in the bastard.
“Kkwek, then what is this? Kkwek, why are you suddenly saying you’ll side with the human?”
I looked back and forth between the bastard questioning me in agitation and Ratel, who was watching me with his arms crossed, then opened my mouth.
“Kkwek, because I like the human side better.”
At the simple answer, the leader fell silent for a moment and looked back and forth between me and Ratel.
His eyes held confusion, anger, and several other emotions mixed together.
It was unexpected.
I had thought he would immediately shout.
Just as the bastard had done until now.
But this time, his anger was quiet.
The leader glared at me and Ratel with boiling eyes, then squeezed his eyes shut and opened them.
“Kkwek, do whatever you want.”
His eyes, full of certainty, were speaking.
You will definitely regret this.
The easiest way to create a plausible lie was to mix a little truth into it.
That meant that in the current scam, which was mostly lies, a bit of my sincerity was mixed in.
It was a lie I had created too hastily, so even I found it hard to know the ratio or where the truth was hidden.
That was probably why.
Why I felt the urge to add one unnecessary line to the confident leader and prove that his words were wrong.
I opened my mouth toward the bastard, who was turning away as if he had nothing more to say.
“Kkwek, if it’s someone who risked his life to help me, then I don’t mind being fooled once.”
Risked his life?
The side of my head stung from Ratel’s gaze, which held strong dissatisfaction at his inability to agree, but I ignored it.
If that bastard had honesty, then I had no conscience.
The leader, who had fallen for my unconscionable scam, ground his teeth.
“Kkwek, you’re doing something foolish.”
“Kkwek, I don’t care if it’s foolish. Kkwek, if it’s that bastard, then I don’t mind being fooled once.”
“Kkwek, you don’t mind being fooled?”
“Kkwek, it would mean something that important happened.”
“......”
The leader turned his body and moved away from me and Ratel without replying.
The half-wit, who had been hesitating back and forth, followed behind the leader.
But his gaze remained fixed on me and Ratel for quite a long time.