Chapter 113 :

Episode 113 - Good Person (2)

I quietly looked down at the brat desperately pulling at Lia and me.

He was a kind child.

This child, whose name I did not even know, was clearly what the world called a good child, and would probably grow into what people called a good person.

Because the reason he overcame his fear and ran to us must have been pure consideration.

It is not easy to possess both deep faith and a spirit of sacrifice at the same time.

"I wasn’t kind to you because I’m a good person."

At my voice, the fellow flinched and looked back and forth between me and Lia.

"Run away with us!!"

The startled Lia braced herself with strength and spoke, and the fellow shouted as if frustrated.

Then, while checking the cabin from which Ratel might emerge at any moment, he put more strength into his grip again.

"You two aren’t bad people. If you go around with a terrible sinner like that, then in the end, it’s no different from you committing sins too. If the two of you help, we can take the fallen temple person with us too."

The two immature hands wrapped around my arm were trembling.

I spoke while slowly shaking off the brat’s gentle hand.

Then I took my eyes off the child’s questioning gaze and looked toward the second floor of the cabin, where someone was probably stalling for time so the father and son could escape by now.

"That guy...... That man didn’t do something like that because he’s a bad person either......, probably."

As I spoke, I grew a little less confident and changed my words, and the cabin brat looked up at me with confused eyes.

"I don’t know what you’re talking about right now. I don’t know why you’re defending that sinner either."

"I’m not defending him."

"If that man is threatening you, now is your chance to run away."

The fellow said, sounding frustrated.

It was only natural.

Something that betrayed the deeply rooted truths and morals of the world was happening right before his eyes, so it would be stranger if he could accept it all at once.

The people of Abiran were not yet ready to live in a collapsed world.

"Think carefully. What almost killed you today, and what saved you and your father. If you quietly think about it every day, one day, you’ll suddenly realize something. Then judge again at that time. What kind of people we are."

The brat looked back and forth between me and Lia with anxious eyes.

"What if I don’t know even after thinking about it every day? When exactly is that one day? Can’t you just run away with me now?"

The brat reached out again, but this time, I did not let him grab me.

"No, that one day will definitely come. It might be as soon as today or tomorrow."

Because that protagonist bastard would definitely make it happen.

After finishing my words, I shoved the brat strongly toward his father.

"Now run like your tail’s on fire. There’s no good person you’re looking for here right now."

The brat hesitated for a moment, then soon began running away exactly like his tail was on fire.

I could not tell whether the brat ran because he heard my words, or because he saw Ratel coming down the stairs.

After watching the backs of the limping father and son leaving for a moment, I turned my head without regret.

In the end, the boat departed while leaving the unconscious guide behind in the cabin.

If the river completely dried up, he might become the orcs’ first victim, but honestly, that was none of our concern.

Lia looked at the receding cabin with a worried face.

"What do we do? Even if we reach Limis like this, there’s no one to prove our identities."

"We have the seal and the tournament victory certificate, so it will work out somehow."

Jing answered calmly.

"Does that man know we have the seal?"

At my question, Jing subtly avoided my gaze.

"If he’s lucky, he’ll find out soon. If he’s just a little less lucky, he’ll die before he notices."

It meant that if he ran away before the orcs stormed into the cabin, he might notice, but if he did not regain consciousness until then, he probably would never realize it forever.

It was an answer I could never have imagined from the old him.

I could not tell whether he had accumulated many feelings toward the man during that time, or whether Jing was starting to resemble Ratel.

Besides, there was one more person who did not care about something like the guide at all.

"Could the orcs swim over and attack the boat?"

It was Lia, rowing on the opposite side of Jing and unable to take her eyes off the island.

Perhaps her fear of the orcs was stronger than her resistance to leaving the guide behind, because Lia already seemed to have forgotten about the guide who would be lying unconscious in the cabin.

Looking at her, one question could not help but come to mind.

‘Am I the only one here worried about the guide?’

Perhaps she had been quite shocked by the strength of the orc that had dragged the cabin owner’s son in, because her face was full of solemnity and anxiety.

If she was that scared, she could have just stayed behind with the guide.

Even so, Lia had quite readily chosen to cross the river with us.

It meant I had saved myself the trouble of persuading Lia.

In the original work, she had the goal of finding Edan, but now there was no reason for that.

Things had gone smoothly, but it was also true that there were some parts that did not sit right, so I must have ended up staring at her without realizing it.

"W-what is it? You’re not regretting bringing me onto the boat now, are you? I can’t get off anymore."

Whatever she understood from my gaze, Lia’s voice carried nervousness.

Just as she said, it was not like I could drop her in the middle of the river, so why was she so tense?

"Lia, why didn’t you follow that brat? That side might have been safer. Or you could have taken the guide and left."

When I asked, Lia frowned as if she had heard something absurd.

"What are you talking about, Ran? This side has a higher chance of survival than that side. That man is slow on his feet, and if he runs into orcs, he’s the kind of person who would throw me into their hands and run away alone. At least the people here wouldn’t do something like that."

Her logical answer was quite reasonable, so I obediently nodded.

Just as she said, following these two inhuman people probably gave her better odds of survival than being with the guide.

Lia, who had been watching me accept it, continued speaking.

"Besides, Ran didn’t follow that child either."

Perhaps remembering the cabin brat, Lia fiddled with the arm he had held onto.

It had been impressive.

The fellow, who had been supporting his limping father, had kept looking back until we completely disappeared from sight.

"It wouldn’t have lasted long anyway. I wasn’t the person that brat was expecting."

Besides, I was in a position where I had to live in hiding until Ratel brought down the imperial family.

Running away from Ratel only to become a fugitive again—what kind of contradiction would that be?

At my simple answer, Lia nodded with a more relaxed face.

"Exactly."

"Where in that conversation was there anything for Lia to agree with?"

When I looked at her with puzzled eyes, Lia continued.

"I thought that if I went with Ran, at least I wouldn’t be betrayed."

"I’m very good at betraying people."

At my serious answer, Lia let out a small laugh.

"See? You don’t want to betray me, so you’re warning me that you’ll betray me. You’re not desperately trying to deceive me."

Lia’s pleasant smile faded a little.

I did not need to put into words who she must have been thinking of.

Lia, who had seemed to sink down for a moment, soon looked at me with a bright face.

"Maybe that’s why. If I follow the path Ran takes, I feel like at least it won’t be a cliffside road. It’s a bit shameless, but right now, I thought following Ran was the right choice."

Why did the conclusion suddenly turn out like that?

Lia’s heavy trust, which missed the mark by a very wide margin, made my heart uncomfortable.

For me, who planned to run away from the protagonist’s group, nothing was as ominous as someone saying they would diligently follow me.

"Look over there!"

I was about to give her my own warning that regretting it later would be useless, but I turned my head at the sudden shout.

As if he had discovered something, Jing was pointing to one side of the island.

When I narrowed my eyes and focused, I could vaguely see something dark green crawling over the island like worms.

"Orcs."

At Jing’s low voice, Lia sucked in a breath, and only then did I realize that those clay-like things on the island were orcs.

"What should we do? It doesn’t look like just one or two. They won’t cross the river and attack us, right?"

At Lia, who fired off her worries like a rapid-fire cannon, Jing gave a grin.

"I don’t think the orcs will swim across the river, but even if they do, well, up to ten should be fine."

At Jing’s calm answer, Lia opened and closed her mouth in surprise.

"Jing and Ratel can handle ten orcs?"

"I can handle several by myself. Ratel can probably deal with even more than that."

Lia looked back and forth between the two as if she could not believe it, but thanks to that, her fear of the orcs seemed to fade, and she began rowing with a much more relaxed face.

On the other hand, the one whose expression grew serious was Jing.

"By the way, this is strange. I heard orcs cannot endure sunlight."

He muttered while unable to take his eyes off the orcs on the other side of the river.

"Yes, I have heard stories of orcs that failed to return to their caves and wandered in the daytime before being caught, but I have never heard of them moving in groups under the sun like that."

Jing furrowed his brow as if troubled.

"Kkweeeek!! Kwek!!"

I felt the same as I watched the fellows walking while making unpleasant sounds.

In the novel, Ratel deals with the orcs after stopping by the temple of Limis and stealing the holy relic.

It was not during broad daylight like this either.

"It doesn’t seem like they’ve noticed us."

When I lowered my voice and spoke, Jing gave a small nod.

Lia’s anxious gaze, which could hardly leave the orcs’ primitive meal, turned toward Jing.

"Even if they notice us, Jing and Ratel can take them down, right?"

"Well, we can take them down, but I would prefer such a situation not occur if possible."

"Kuweeeek?!"

At that moment, with perfect timing, one of the orcs on the other side of the road lifted its head, flared its nostrils, and looked around.

As soon as Lia swallowed her breath at the sudden reaction, the fellow charged toward the bushes with thudding steps.

Soon, what appeared in the fellow’s hand was a fairly large squirrel.

The creature, unable to avoid the suddenly appeared horde of orcs, struggled to free its captured tail, but it was useless.

The pitiful little animal disappeared straight into the orc’s mouth.

Crunch.

After the sound of small bones being crushed, the fellow’s loud lip-smacking could be heard vividly.

One living thing eating another living thing was a natural phenomenon, but at the explicit sight that stimulated both sight and hearing, I could not help frowning.

"Kkweeeek!!"

Fortunately, their goal did not seem to be hunting.

Except for the fellow that ate one squirrel, the orcs did not catch any other animals and instead moved forward little by little in a group.

Once they moved a little farther away, Jing looked at Ratel’s wet arm.

"……..Their noses are sharp. If the smell of blood spreads, they’ll gather all at once. It’s fortunate that the wind is at least blowing in the opposite direction from the island."

Jing took it as a small incident that taught a lesson, but I could not simply register what had just happened before my eyes as one point of caution and move on.

Because one assumption that flashed through my head in an instant had seized me.

Fortunately or unfortunately, my small realization was pushed to the back thanks to Jing’s voice announcing a newly arisen hardship.

"What is that?"

With a mutter thick with ominousness, Jing narrowed his eyes and looked behind the boat.

Following his gaze, I saw, as expected, a hardship suitably waiting with its maw open to screw us over.

It was a wave shaped exactly as if it had opened its mouth wide.

With a face that said this was bad, Jing turned his body and grabbed the oar.

"Damn it, what kind of wave appears in a river!"

That is because it was not just a wave, but an attack created by lingering power.

The thing that had drawn Jing’s rough curse, in other words, the thing too embarrassing to even call a wave, grew larger as if it would swallow our boat whole.

As if it were alive and moving.

Moreover, the person it was targeting was far too clear.

* * *

I could see orcs gathered at the water’s edge of the island that was getting closer and closer.

Among them was even one dull-looking fellow unable to endure its hunger and shoving fish into its mouth.

Lia was flustered and did not know what to do.

Compared to her, Jing and Ratel were utterly calm.

With this number of people and this lineup, they probably were not especially threatening opponents.

The problem was whether we would be able to leave safely again once we entered the island.

The thousand-year-old power of Sierra would not let the owner of the prophecy it had discovered once escape outside the island.

That did not mean we could keep wasting time inside there forever either.

The solution was simple.

The problem was that the process would be a bit rough.

"Squeak!! Squeak squeak!!!"

Perhaps it had felt my heartbeat grow violent, or perhaps it could not endure the commotion, but El, who had been hiding against my chest, poked out its head.

Looking at the fellow’s face as it squeaked, unable to speak, I somehow felt my mind settling, and I grabbed the fellow’s body in my hand.

Before the startled El could struggle, I shoved the fellow into Jing’s bag.

If it had been an ordinary squirrel, it would have been a harsh treatment, but well, the fellow was a thousand-year-old squirrel, so it should be fine.

Ignoring the fellow as it bit diligently, I closed the bag and quickly climbed onto the stern of the boat.

The pillar of water, swollen to its fullest, was smacking its lips as if it would swallow the boat at any moment.

"What are you doing right now?"