Chapter 160 : Chapter 160
Chapter 160: Villain
I do not agree with the idea that people can understand others.
There are countless cases where people do not even understand what sort of heart they themselves have, so how could they understand a completely different existence?
Because of that, I also do not believe there is such a thing as a choice made perfectly for someone else.
In the end, even a choice made for someone else can only be decided from one’s own position.
In that sense, this was not consideration for the leader, but hypocrisy for my own sake.
If he was going to die anyway, then at least he could die without knowing that he had been betrayed by the half-wit he cherished most.
Well, it was also clean and convenient that way.
“Kkwek. Tearing into your neck while you were asleep was too easy.”
“......Kkwek. Why reveal the truth now?”
For a question directed at a liar, the leader asked with a much more at-ease face.
Forcing away the discomfort that irony gave me, I opened my mouth.
“Kkwek. The protagonist's bastard is very petty.”
“Kkwek. What?”
The leader asked back, unable to understand my mutter, but I quickly changed my words.
“Kkwek. I had no desire to have my neck cut off by human hands either. Kkwek. Put another way, that means I don’t have much time either. Kkwek. I also wanted to finish this quickly and leave before that bastard noticed something and came back.”
Making up a plausible lie was not very difficult for me.
As long as I had a skeleton I could add flesh to, I could keep a passing lie going as long as I wanted.
Fortunately, I already had more than enough experience points from deceiving Ratel.
Perhaps the unexpected variable of my false confession had left the half-wit quite flustered, because he only looked back and forth between me and the leader, and did not act rashly.
“Kkwek!!”
Only after the leader charged at me did the half-wit move a step too late.
The half-wit hurriedly tried to grab the leader, but this time, he could not stop the one-armed bastard, who was thoroughly worked up.
Thanks to that, I had to narrowly dodge the furious leader’s body slam.
After anxiously looking back and forth between me and the leader as the leader rolled on the ground, the half-wit soon bit his lip and turned away.
I checked the direction the half-wit was heading.
Fortunately, the bastard did not run away.
Instead, he charged toward the dead end.
Yes, that’s how it should be.
I felt relieved at the sight of the half-wit moving exactly as he had in the original work.
Then I grabbed the leader as he charged at me again.
“Kkwek!! Do you know what I almost did because of you?!”
“Kkwek. Well, did you almost kill the wrong person?”
The leader grew even more excited at my sneer and thrashed violently.
It was the fiercest reaction he had shown so far, but it was not to the point where I could not block it.
If anything, because his movements had become simpler from how worked up he was, all I had to do was pressure his joints each time he put strength into his body to swing his arm.
Perhaps the leader, whose movements had been restricted, had revived the fear that his neck might be torn into.
The bastard stopped attacking me and began struggling desperately to protect his own neck.
Though neither made much difference.
I watched the bastard thrash for a moment.
Because this would probably be the last time I saw him alive.
If the half-wit became certain the leader would die before his eyes, he would definitely attack the leader.
After all, that was why the bastard had continued acting like an idiot while suffering all sorts of humiliation until now.
Once the mask he had forced down over himself was removed, the bastard’s desire would also be unveiled.
Cutting off the neck of the bastard who ate the leader would be the remaining Ratel’s role.
I opened my mouth toward the bastard, who did not stop struggling until the very end.
“Kkwek. How do you feel right now?”
At my question, the leader stopped struggling.
It did not seem to be a change made because he meant to answer my question.
Because the look in the bastard’s eyes was saying it.
What the hell is this crazy bastard talking about?
“Kkwek. What the hell is this crazy bastard saying now?”
The leader immediately proved that my guess had not been wrong.
Well, asking how he felt right after confessing that I had tried to kill him did seem like some kind of psycho question.
But it would also be strange to simply keep pressing the leader down in silence until the half-wit reached the end of the path.
I made the question more specific.
“Kkwek. I’m asking if you’re relieved that your enemy is me, not the half-wit.”
This question did not seem to look entirely insane.
The leader’s eyes shook.
It was a short and simple answer.
Yes, he was going to die anyway.
The last emotion the bastard would bear would be hatred.
Perhaps there was no need to add betrayal on top of that.
I still did not think Ratel’s argument was right.
Because I would never know what the best choice for the leader was until the day I died.
Nor did I have any intention of worrying about it any more than this.
I turned my eyes away from the quieted leader and looked at the half-wit, who had reached the end of the path.
The bastard was also staring at me and the leader with unreadable eyes.
I shrugged at him, as if telling him to do as he pleased.
At this point, the stage for your sake is complete, isn’t it?
Go ahead and move however you want.
Of course, you will have to handle what comes after on your own.
***
From the moment the half-wit first entered the passage and chose the path to the right, the choices he could make to avoid Ratel and me narrowed down to two.
One was the option of continuing right as he was.
I did not know what lay at the end of this path either.
Judging by the fact that the half-wit in the original work had not chosen it, I could only assume it was not particularly favorable to him.
The other was the path the bastard had chosen in the original work.
Well, strictly speaking, it was the path he had chosen to send Ratel away.
At any rate, this time the bastard would be with him too, so dividing it like this probably did not have much meaning.
I watched the half-wit’s back as he hurriedly ran off, then struck the floor hard twice.
Startled by that sound, the bastard flinched and stopped walking.
The half-wit’s eyes, as he turned back to look at me, held anxiety and shock.
As if he had realized what my action just now meant.
It was quick judgment enough to make an empty laugh escape me.
The leader must have had something over his eyes to have watched a bastard like that from the moment he was born until now and still known him only as a half-wit.
I did not know whether that was the heart of a bastard who had grown weak, unable to overcome the years, or some bond between the two that I did not know.
Either way, there was a high chance that it belonged to the leader alone.
I grabbed the leader, who was in the middle of paying dearly for the price of one-sided attachment, and stepped back a little.
At the same time, the floor where the half-wit had been standing collapsed in an instant.
Horrified, the bastard hurriedly stepped back and avoided falling.
The half-wit somehow managed to keep his balance, but when Ratel appeared from beneath the collapsed floor, he ended up collapsing onto the ground after all.
The fact that Ratel could appear at such a timely moment was largely thanks to the half-wit.
Inside the ant-nest-like orc burrow, maze-like passages were connected to one another.
Some of them existed for the very purpose of collapsing.
The food storage was the most important place after the innermost depths of the burrow, and rather than letting that place be submerged, they would also collapse a passage to prevent it from flooding.
The half-wit in the original work was a bastard who used this quite well.
The bastard knew that directly beneath the passage leading to the food storage, there was another passage that had already been used that way once.
He also knew that reopening a road that had once collapsed was not difficult.
Though he probably did not know he was not the only one who knew that.
Ratel, who had collapsed the ground beneath us, which must have been the ceiling to the bastard, swept his eyes over us as we rolled on the ground.
“Looks like that one doesn’t have much left either.”
At Ratel’s mutter, I turned my head toward the leader beside me.
Perhaps he could not withstand the shock, or perhaps he had been pushing himself with the little stamina he had left all this time, but the leader had lost consciousness and was rolling on the ground.
I grabbed the bastard by the scruff of his neck and dragged him toward me.
At Ratel’s unexpected appearance, the half-wit, who had been about to approach the leader, could not hide his bewilderment.
It was understandable that he would despair after realizing that the escape route he had saved until the very last moment had been blocked from the beginning.
“Kkwek......!”
The half-wit cried in a wronged voice at me as I calmly dusted myself off and rose.
That did not mean he charged at me or the leader.
He was probably busy watching Ratel’s reaction, or remembering that I had said I needed the leader’s neck.
Not eating the leader now and maintaining the status quo as it was would be the method by which the bastard could survive the longest.
So that’s how it is.
Without needing to think any further, I dragged the leader toward the cliff.
“Kkwek......!”
Perhaps because even at a glance it did not look as if I was taking him anywhere good, the half-wit hurriedly followed me.
When I reached the edge of the cliff, I threw the limp leader’s body down and draped it over the edge.
Then I met the half-wit’s eyes, which were shaking with anxiety.
“Kkwek. This is your last chance to become a leader. Kkwek. There’s no reason to leave rotting food around. Kkwek. If you don’t eat him now, I’ll just kill the leader like this. Kkwek. As I said earlier, I don’t have enough ambition to risk my life to become a leader either.”
To disguise my bluff as the truth, I pushed the leader’s body farther out beyond the cliff.
“Kkwek!!!”
The horrified half-wit came closer.
“Kkwek. Will you become leader now, or will you watch the leader die and then die by that human’s hands?”
I narrowed the choices down to two so the bastard would not need to use his head.
The half-wit’s eyes shook, unable to find their place.
With Ratel behind him, me in front of him, and himself caught in between, the bastard meekly accepted that he had no other choice.
With resignation, fear, and anger layered across his face, the direction the bastard chose was the cliff edge where the leader and I were.
I quietly watched as the half-wit reached his hand toward me, then pulled the leader, whom I had held out as if I would drop him below the cliff, back toward me.
It was at that moment.
The leader’s eyelids, which had not moved at all, opened.
I felt strength enter the body of the leader who had opened his eyes, and soon the bastard raised his arm while still held in my grasp.
Making my lowered posture in preparation for an attack seem pointless, the hand the leader raised did not head toward me.
What the leader grabbed was the half-wit’s collar.
Using me as a lever, the bastard put strength into his arm and knocked the half-wit down.
Even a passing idiot could tell it was not an act meant for attack.
The next kick dealt to the bastard, who had been pushed back because he could not withstand the impact, was the same.
So was the final shove toward the half-wit, who had been pushed into the dead end.
It was not an attack.
This was a rescue.
It was meant to help the half-wit escape from me and Ratel.
Otherwise, there would have been no reason for the bastard to turn back and charge at me while leaving the final blow unfinished.
At the desperate face of the leader charging at me with his teeth clenched, a curse escaped me on its own.
Damn it, perhaps it would have been better if the leader had fallen into despair and given up on fighting the half-wit.
Better than watching the bastard’s meaningless struggle.
The half-wit, who had been watching me and the leader, seemed to finish judging the situation quickly.
After a brief hesitation, the bastard began climbing straight down the cliff.
I could not watch for very long.
Because the leader did not miss the opening and charged at me.
There was no way the leader did not know this was a fight with no chance of victory.
He was a bastard who would not have dreamed of attacking me unless he was certain I could not move.
Nevertheless, the leader charged at me with reckless ferocity.
And that recklessness of his only increased my anxiety.
Because it meant his goal was not to beat me.