Chapter 149 : Chapter 149
Chapter 149 - Preparation
Thanks to my waist being thicker than when I had been human, there was not much rope left after securing it around my body.
Because I had tied the rope in several layers so it could bear the weight, the rope, which was already not very long, became even shorter.
Back when I was human, there had been plenty of length left over, but now that my body had grown larger, this sort of thing was inconvenient.
“One wrong move and you’ll fall straight down.”
While I was roughly estimating the length of the rock wall and the passage by eye, Ratel approached from behind me and made an ominous prediction.
“Kkwek, are you warning me in advance? Kkwek, will you drop me if something happens?”
“It means it isn’t too late even now. It’d be better for me, since I’m lighter than you, to go below.”
“Kkwek, how do you think that bastard will react if he finds out the human we’ve been dragging around as bait was hiding enough monstrous strength to break a rock with one hand?”
“I think just the fact that I can handle your weight would be suspicious enough.”
“Kkwek, that’s a truth that won’t be revealed until I fall. Kkwek, as long as nothing happens, suspicion will remain only suspicion.”
Seeing that the bastard still looked dissatisfied even after my answer, I continued speaking.
“Kkwek, in many ways, it’s right for me to go down. Kkwek, at least the half-wit won’t be scared of me and do something unexpected.”
When I gestured behind me with my eyes, the leader, who had been glaring suspiciously at me and Ratel talking, quietly turned his gaze away.
This time, when I openly stared at him, the bastard’s face gradually twisted.
“What are you doing right now?”
At the movement of gazes chasing and being chased, as if playing tag, Ratel asked as if he found it absurd.
“Kkwek, he kept staring so often that I thought he wanted to have a staring contest.”
Whether he heard my answer or not, the leader ground his teeth and turned his face completely in the opposite direction.
It happened to be the direction where the half-wit, who had finished tying the rope around his waist, was standing.
When I followed the leader’s gaze and examined the half-wit closely, I saw the rope and knot hanging somewhat clumsily around the bastard’s waist.
The way it was tied was not completely wrong, but that did not mean it was securely tied either.
It looked just barely enough to support the bastard’s weight.
At that, the one-armed orc forgot that he had been avoiding my gaze and strode over to the half-wit.
Then he promptly struck the half-wit on the head.
“Kkwek!!”
The half-wit’s wronged cry rang out after being hit on the head out of nowhere, but I let it go in one ear and out the other.
More than the half-wit’s pain, the dangling knot tied around his waist caught my attention.
Though the loose knot came undone with the bastard’s struggling, so I could not observe it fully.
The half-wit’s rope coming untied so blatantly provoked the leader’s anger.
“Kkwek!! Are you determined to die?! Kkwek, this isn’t tying it! You just draped the rope over yourself!!”
The leader’s lament rang out as if his chest were bursting.
At the spicy sting of the hand he had not felt in a while, the half-wit wrapped his arms around his head and complained of pain.
The leader looked pathetically at the half-wit as the bastard groped over his head as if checking whether a hole had been punched into it.
“Kkwek, just untie it all. Kkwek, and tie it again.”
Once the half-wit fully realized that the back of his head had not caved in, the leader ordered him.
“Kkwe, kkwek?”
The half-wit untied the rope again and began making a knot once more.
“Kkwek, no, not like that......! Kkwek! You have to pull the end out there! Kkwek!! Give it here!!”
The leader, who had been giving advice from the side, eventually could not endure his frustration and snatched the rope from the half-wit’s hands.
But he did not manage to create a result any better than the half-wit’s.
Securing the rope and tying a knot was too delicate a process for the bastard, who was not yet used to living with one arm.
The way he handled tools looked fairly plausible, but beneath the bastard’s hand, something that resembled a crushed moth was being created.
I moved toward the leader, who was diligently lowering the half-wit’s chances of survival.
When I approached from behind, a vein stood out on the leader’s forehead.
Ever since he had seen the half-wit offer me fish, the bastard’s wariness toward me had once again surged like a mountain.
Thanks to that, the bastard glared at me with eyes similar to the ones he had when he tried to kill me in the pit, but I paid no attention and approached the two orcs.
“Kkwek, if you have a complaint about the half-wit, just say it. Kkwek, don’t pick a fight for no reason.”
“Kkwek, does this look like picking a fight for no reason? Kkwek, I’m trying to keep this bastard from dying!”
It would have been more convincing if he had called it an assassination attempt.
“Kkwek. It looks like you’re giving it your all to kill him.”
“Kkwek......!”
The leader, who had been about to retort, shut his mouth again and glared at me.
It seemed even in his own eyes, his result was not something to be proud of.
“Kkwek, if you’re done glaring, move aside.”
“Kkwek, I’m not done glaring yet!”
“Kkwek, then move aside and keep glaring.”
The leader obediently moved aside, then filled the remaining quota of glaring with the back of my head while wearing a sullen face.
I passed by the leader and began tying the rope around the half-wit’s waist again.
After finishing glaring at me to his satisfaction, the leader now watched what I was doing out of the corner of his eye.
“Kkwek, you can’t do it like that there! Kkwek, you have to tie it once more to the right for it to be secure!”
For someone receiving help, he had a lot of demands.
“Kkwek, is this right?”
When I turned my body and showed him the result after reflecting all of the leader’s fussy requirements, the leader checked it and nodded.
“......Kkwek, yes! Kkwek, that’s how you do it!”
The bastard spoke as if praising me.
Letting the praise, which was clearly conscious of the half-wit’s gaze, flow in one ear and out the other, I rose to my feet.
“Kkwek......!”
Perhaps now used to that behavior from the leader, the half-wit likewise fiddled with the lifeline tied around his waist as if the leader’s words bored him.
Even as it rolled around in the bastard’s hand, the knot did not come undone and maintained its form.
It seemed he did possess proper knowledge necessary for survival, as befitted a leader.
Still, I feel like I’ve seen this somewhere before.
It was the moment I was about to lower my head to inspect the strangely familiar shape of the knot.
“Aren’t you being too kind to someone who tried to kill you?”
Ratel, who had approached at some point, muttered quietly and glanced at the half-wit.
At that gaze, the half-wit shrank and slipped away.
Watching the pitiful back of the bastard as he slowly moved farther away, I opened my mouth.
“Kkwek, so what? We’re all aiming for each other’s lives anyway.”
An openly incomprehending expression appeared on Ratel’s face.
Had that bastard become more expressive, or had I gotten used to reading his expressions?
“Does it not make you angry?”
At Ratel’s question, I wondered for a moment how I should explain this emotion toward the leader.
“Kkwek, I think it irritates me.”
Because clinging to the wall, falling, and going through all that chaos had hurt quite a bit.
Separate from being good at enduring pain, it hurt, so of course I felt irritated.
But when asked if I was angry, answering yes felt a little ambiguous.
“Kkwek, in the first place, isn’t it strange for me to ask why he made up his mind to kill me when I’m the one deceiving him and dragging him around like livestock in order to kill him?”
On top of that, as I had already said, I did not think the bastard had done anything particularly wrong.
The leader had simply done what he had to do as an orc.
“Kkwek, that’s how the law of the jungle always is.”
Perhaps my calm answer had gotten on Ratel’s nerves again, because the muscles of his face stiffened further.
“So every time that bastard tries to kill you, you’re saying you’ll just let it pass like that?”
“Kkwek, who knows. I don’t think that bastard will have another chance to kill me.”
Worrying about when a bastard already heading to his death would kill me was buying too much trouble for myself.
But Ratel was still serious.
“Are you sure there won’t be even one?”
Well, there might be about one left.
But I had no intention of giving up my life easily either.
Opportunities to die had already been overflowing in the past and would be overflowing in the future.
“Kkwek, if something like that happens by a one-in-ten-thousand chance, the leader’s death will become a little more painful.”
Because I would make it that way, if only to set an example for the half-wit.
My answer seemed to finally satisfy Ratel.
With a much more comfortable expression, the bastard relaxed the face he had stiffened.
“I’ll be careful from now on too. If I don’t want to meet a painful death.”
It seemed he really did feel better.
Judging by how he was making jokes unlike himself.
“Kkwek, don’t worry. Kkwek, if I were planning to take revenge for things like that, you passed the limit long ago.”
“So when I die now, are you going to be beside me and create that painful end?”
The bastard asked in a voice mixed with laughter.
It would take at least a hundred years for you to die. There’s no way I’ll be beside you until then.
Though there would be other people who stayed by his side until the day he died.
“Kkwek, if I did that, Jing and Ria wouldn’t leave me alone.”
At my answer, puzzlement appeared on the bastard’s face.
His expression asked why people he had not even known for long would do such a thing.
Has the relationship between the three of them not yet become that deep?
Well, there were still many hardships Ratel and his companions had to overcome together.
Before they went through all of that, I planned to slip out from among them somehow.
Before I too became part of the original work.
While I swallowed my future plan inwardly, Ratel’s expression suddenly stiffened.
“Kkwek, what is it all of a sudden?”
Feeling guilty alone, I pretended to be calm and asked the bastard.
I looked at him as he suddenly fell silent.
“......What are you going to do if it turns out those bastards are accepting you as a comrade?”
Perhaps trying to change the subject, the bastard was making an absurd assumption.
Relieved that it was only an assumption with a probability converging infinitely toward zero, I gave a small laugh.
“Kkwek, it’s fine. Kkwek, that side doesn’t accept this as kindness.”
“What I’m hearing is that overlooking them aiming for your life is nowhere near enough to be acknowledged as kindness by those bastards.”
Ratel turned his gaze away and asked.
I shook my head.
“Kkwek, those bastards don’t have the concept of showing kindness. Kkwek, they’ll think it’s convenient. Kkwek, not that they feel grateful to me or think they owe me a debt.”
That was the conclusion I had gained while spending time with them.
Even if I shared food first, they did not accept anything that could look like consideration depending on one’s perspective as consideration.
That was also the convenient part of orcs.
They did not have useless expectations.
“Kkwek, it’s like luck that fell from the sky. Kkwek, usually people don’t think they have to repay the sky for something like that, do they?”
Well, in this world, perhaps they would say one had to express thanks to the almighty Great Emperor Sierra.
As proof, even now, the leader and the half-wit were glaring this way with faces suspicious of what Ratel and I were talking about.
They had definitely already forgotten that they had eaten the biscuits a little while ago.
A relationship where neither side expected anything from the other was convenient.
“Kkwek, even if I suddenly stepped forward and said I’d kill those bastards, they probably wouldn’t feel betrayed. Kkwek, they’d get angry and say I really had joined hands with a human, though.”
When I muttered while lightly waving a hand at the leader, the bastard’s face crumpled with a crunch.
“Sounds comfortable.”
“Kkwek, because we don’t expect anything from each other.”
Only after I said what I thought out loud did I belatedly realize I had been too honest with a child.
Before Ratel could open his mouth, I handed him the lifeline connected to me.
“Kkwek, just hold this properly. Kkwek, if anything happens...... at least pretend to pull it first.”
“You again......”
Dissatisfaction appeared on Ratel’s face at my joking request, but the bastard could not continue speaking.
“Kkwek, lead the way. Kkwek, I can’t leave my back to a bastard like you.”
That was because the leader, perhaps having judged that he had recovered enough stamina to finally depart, cut off the bastard’s words.
Ratel glared at the leader with irritation brimming in his eyes.
It was obvious he was thinking that he should have cut off the neck of the troublesome bastard long ago.
From the bastard’s perspective, whether he followed behind the leader or entrusted his back to the leader was not very important.
It was probably the difference between a fly buzzing in front of him and a fly buzzing at the back of his head.
After looking for quite a long time at me, the leader, and finally the half-wit, Ratel began climbing the cliff first, just as the leader had said.
“Better than following behind a slow bastard in front.”
Not forgetting to leave one last remark to scrape at the leader.
The leader, heated by that, climbed onto the wall immediately to chase after Ratel.
It seemed that the bastard too had realized there was not much meaning in having a war of nerves with a leader who would die soon.
Judging by how he climbed first so obediently.
Watching the bastard’s back grow farther little by little, I gave one final piece of advice to the leader.
“Kkwek, don’t fight humans.”
It’ll be troublesome if you die by mistake.
What held me back as I swallowed those last words and was about to turn away with the half-wit was the leader’s voice.
“......Kkwek, are you really thinking of entrusting that to a human?”
The leader, who had stopped with Ratel moving away, was looking down at me with eyes full of discomfort.
“Kkwek, then who should I entrust it to?”
You, who already tried to kill me once?
Perhaps the bastard did have a conscience, because he did not make the outrageous claim that I should entrust my lifeline to him.
But he still glanced at Ratel with distrust.
“Kkwek, no matter what, how is a human bastard supposed to handle your weight?”
“Kkwek, in the first place, there’s no way you can handle the weight of two orcs with one hand either.”
Are you trying to kill someone?
“Kkwek, even so, do you think it makes sense to entrust your life to a weak human?”
Perhaps still thinking his one arm was better than a human, the bastard muttered as if he could not understand.
There was no way the leader could know that for Ratel, pulling me up with one hand would be nothing.
“Kkwek!! What is it? What’s funny?!”
When I gave a small laugh, the leader lost his temper.
No, it was strange.
“Kkwek, it doesn’t seem like there’s any option where that human bastard lets me go.”
At my point, the leader stopped.
I gestured with my chin at the half-wit’s lifeline held in the leader’s hand.
“Kkwek, you just need to focus on holding the half-wit’s rope tightly.”
Of course, it would be better if nothing happened that required us to use this auxiliary measure.
The bastard, who had been stiff for a moment, soon turned his head sharply and snorted.
“Kkwek, if a human bastard dares to do that, I can’t just let him be. Kkwek, I’ll make him pay the price for killing an orc.”
Whether it was wishful thinking or not, the bastard spoke on the premise that I would die.
Couldn’t he just save me before I fell?