Chapter 158 : Chapter 158
Chapter 158: The Leader and the Half-wit (4)
It did not take long for the leader to regret his choice after pulling the half-wit out and climbing back up.
Because the half-wit was, truly, astonishingly lacking in every possible way.
When ordered to go hunting, he would get shoved this way and that by the other bastards before barely managing to catch one small bird.
If he could not even catch a bird, he would steal bird eggs and bring them back, only to break every last one of those too.
“Kkwek!! You stupid bastard!! Kkwek!! Of course the eggs are going to break if you come back holding them in both hands!! Kkwek!! It would have been better to bring the whole nest instead!!”
The bastard even nearly rolled over the edge of the cliff in his sleep.
“Kkwek!! You idiot!! Kkwek!! If you’re going to fall, you should somehow take a spot farther inside!! Kkwek!! Do you want to fall again and die!!”
The leader had never known how to speak gently in the first place, but thanks to the half-wit, the number of times he shouted increased greatly.
It felt as if his condition was getting worse from yelling at the bastard.
Even so, the reason the leader did not kill the half-wit was, ironically, because he was that stupid.
The number of bastards waiting for him to weaken was slowly increasing.
The frequency with which he crushed the bastards who dared show such signs was increasing as well.
Among bastards for whom every day being a series of fierce power struggles was only natural, the half-wit...... looked like he had no thoughts at all.
Even as anger surged up, the leader could not help but be amazed.
How did a bastard like that come out?
No, perhaps falling off the cliff had made him even more lacking.
His greatest concern seemed to be nothing except how he could eat more food than what he had brought back himself.
Besides, whenever the leader looked at the bastard’s dim eyes, even while his temper flared, he felt a small sense of relief.
At least that bastard did not seem likely to covet the leader’s position.
Moreover, getting angry at a bastard who had not a single damn thing outstanding about him as an orc had an unexpected effect.
Because the sight of him barking at the bastard seemed to look different in the other bastards’ eyes.
When one showed strength, the other side naturally grew wary.
After realizing that the sight of him raising his blood pressure over the half-wit’s stupid acts looked, in the other bastards’ eyes, like proof that he was still alive and well, it became easier for the leader to endure the murderous intent he felt toward the half-wit.
A kind of symbiotic relationship had formed, in its own way.
***
At dawn, while everyone was deep asleep, the leader quietly rose again today.
After confirming that no one besides him was awake, the leader slowly moved his feet.
His secret little outing had only one purpose.
The leader’s secret hobby that no one knew about, or perhaps his new habit.
It was to slip out of the burrow before dawn ended and watch the two humans across the river until the sun rose.
Well, to be precise, the leader thought of it as monitoring the two of them.
No matter how much he thought about it, he could not understand how two humans were stubbornly living in a place where a human had been torn apart and eaten by orcs.
The fact that one of them was not physically sound, and the other was a human young enough to be unable to take care of himself, was also a mystery to the leader.
Perhaps those bastards are monitoring this side too.
So they can invade the burrow whenever the river dries up.
If that was the case, he thought he would eat those bastards before anyone else the next time the river dried.
So this is surveillance. Necessary surveillance.
The leader whispered to himself as if making a vow, then looked at the door still tightly shut in the distance.
In truth, there had been no major change like the kind the leader had been wary of until now.
The river flowed, flaunting its fullness as if the time it had dried up so completely had been a lie, and the humans on the other side of the river repeated their fixed routine every day.
Today too, the larger human would come out first and tend to the boat tied by the riverside, and before long, the small human would follow him out.
A few meaningless quarrels would pass between them, and when the father shouted, ‘That mouth of yours!’ and grabbed and stretched the small human’s mouth, the small human would flail.
That playful quarrel meant the morning had truly begun.
It meant the larger human would board the boat to fish, and then the small human would watch his parents move away with uneasy eyes.
That was the daily life of the two humans as the leader knew it.
He could not watch any further than that.
His skin could not endure staying under the sunlight any longer.
If those bastards would only stop wasting time with useless arguments, I’d be able to confirm more.
While the leader swallowed his complaint and hid his body, the house door finally opened.
“Kkwek, what?”
Seeing who had opened the door and appeared, the leader muttered before he knew it, then quickly shut his mouth again.
The one who opened the door and came out was the small human.
As if the cub was expressing with his whole body that he had come outside first without his father knowing, he closed the house door carefully and awkwardly.
Perhaps he did not know that the only people around here were his father and himself, because he kept looking around.
Well, there is one orc secretly watching here.
The small human did not seem to notice that.
Judging by how he approached the boat tied by the riverside with a greatly relieved face.
The human cub began clumsily imitating his father.
He mended the net, tidied the boat, and loaded bait onto it.
As the leader watched, a sneer hung at the corner of his mouth.
Because he expected today’s quarrel between the larger human and the human cub to grow longer.
The things the small human had touched in his own way looked utterly sloppy even to the leader’s eyes.
To the point that all of them would have to pass through the larger human’s hands again anyway.
Why is he doing something so useless?
Is he trying to prove his usefulness or something?
It was a case of a completely useless bastard doing pointless work and only increasing the workload.
The small human, who knew nothing, approached the door with a proud face.
What, is he going to boast about that mess to his father?
Thinking there could be nothing more pathetic than that, the leader watched the small human.
But contrary to the leader’s expectations, the human child did not go inside the house and call his father.
Instead, the bastard crouched down in front of the door.
Unable to understand what on earth that was supposed to be, the leader glared at the small human, and his eyes gradually widened.
The small human was clearing away the large and small stones on the ground.
The leader stared blankly at the small human’s back.
Suddenly, the leader realized that the small human had grown quite a bit.
Yes, he was a human child, so of course he would grow.
The reason he had become newly aware of this fact was because the leader had watched the human every day, but the leader himself did not know that.
The leader, as he was now, also did not have the leeway to think about such things.
The leader hurriedly tore his gaze away from the small human and turned his body.
There was still a great deal of time before the sun would rise, but he did not want to stay there any longer.
His chest churned, and he felt as if he was going to vomit.
It must be because those human bastards were disgusting, the leader thought vaguely.
***
Today too, the leader sorted the prey his subordinates had caught, distributed it, and guarded his place.
It was something he had repeated every day, and yet today, strangely, he could not concentrate, as if his mind were floating.
It was because uncharacteristic stray thoughts had intruded.
Had the larger human gotten angry after seeing the chaotic work the small human had left behind?
His head said, of course he had, but his instincts strangely said the larger human would have shown a different reaction.
He could not imagine exactly what kind of reaction it would be, but he just vaguely felt it would be so.
And tomorrow, they would probably fight again over something trivial, as if nothing had happened.
Those bastards would probably spend day after day like that until they died.
No, would it not continue even after death?
The small human would grow up and make another small human, and even after the larger human died, those everyday days would continue forever.
And the stronger that certainty grew, the more his stomach churned again.
It felt like anxiety, and it felt like he was going to vomit. What the hell is wrong with me?
As the leader struck his chest irritably, an uneasy assumption crossed his mind.
Could his condition have worsened again?
The leader could no longer be as certain of his strength as he had been before.
If someone challenged him, he was not confident he would definitely win.
He was always raising his voice and struggling not to reveal that anxiety.
But today’s leader was not in a state where he could hide his agitation as skillfully as usual.
And among them, there were always bound to be bastards who were quick to notice.
-Kkwek......
The leader, who had been sitting in the center and lost in blank thought, looked up at an orc that had come to offer him prey.
The leader noticed that the bastard’s gaze had changed subtly.
The other bastard had probably noticed his abnormality as well.
That meant this bastard might decide at any moment to charge at him and seize the leader’s position.
The leader glared at him while hiding the tension in his eyes.
A silent war of nerves continued.
The first to let go of the taut cord of tension was the opposing orc.
Because the bastard had finally decided to attack the leader.
After confirming murderous intent rising in the bastard’s eyes, the leader quickly gripped his weapon.
Even so, he could not completely erase his anxiety.
Because the churning in his chest had not yet fully faded.
Thinking this was all because of humans, the leader rose to his feet.
It was the moment he was about to begin a fight whose victory he could not be certain of.
The leader’s field of vision caught something round flying toward this side.
What is that?
When he frowned at the presence that made it impossible to focus on the battle, the opposing orc also sensed something strange and turned his head to follow the leader’s gaze.
Crack.
The sound of something thin breaking spread, along with a fishy stench.
-Kkwek......!
The small scream of the orc who had taken the flying something to the face spread with it.
The source of the fishy stench was an egg.
An egg had suddenly fallen from the sky and intervened out of nowhere.
The leader kicked the orc, who was repeatedly wiping raw egg from his eyes, and turned his head toward the direction from which the egg had suddenly flown.
There stood the half-wit.
With a small nest held dearly in his arms, the bastard was watching the leader’s reaction.
If nothing else, he was a bastard who listened damn well.
He had truly carried out the leader’s advice that if all he could bring back were eggs, he should bring the whole nest instead.
“K-kwek......!”
When their eyes met, the frightened bastard hurriedly did the meaningless thing of hiding the nest behind his back.
The moment he saw that pathetic sight, the leader burst into an empty laugh before he knew it.
He probably had not done it on purpose.
He had most likely tripped and nearly fallen again.
While trying to regain his balance, one egg must have flown all the way here from the recoil.
But the moment he saw the bastard’s dim eyes, he could not help feeling the tension drain away.
The bastard probably would not change.
He had been stupid and dim-witted from the moment he was born.
At least until the leader died, he would remain like that.
When he thought that, his churning stomach suddenly settled.
This time too, he did not know the reason, but that sort of thing did not matter.
My mind is at ease now, so what do I care about?
After that day, the leader stopped climbing up every dawn to secretly watch the humans.
Thinking that watching those bastards would only disgust him, and that there was nothing good about it at all.