Chapter 121 :

Chapter 121 - Promise

The orc, who had blankly looked at me once, then at Ratel once, and then back at me once again, gradually widened his eyes.

Just when I thought it was a wonder he had not died at Ratel’s hands on the upper floor with reflexes that slow, he sprang up as if he had been launched.

And then he performed the suicidal act of charging straight at Ratel.

It might be one thing in a one-against-many fight, but in a one-on-one, there was no way a single orc could so much as scratch Ratel’s body.

“Kweeek!!!”

Ratel did not seem to feel that the foolish orc’s charging attack was even worth dodging.

He seized the neck of the orc charging straight at him.

“Kwee, kweeek......!”

The orc, whose windpipe had been seized in a human hand in the blink of an eye, clearly had not expected this situation.

His eyes shifted direction and shook all over the place.

The flustered creature struggled to escape from Ratel’s grip, but judging by how his movements were gradually slowing, it did not seem to be of much use.

His neck was probably only being squeezed tighter and tighter.

I, too, had some experience when it came to being strangled.

Besides, perhaps because Ratel was in a rather foul mood, he was acting rougher than usual.

He was not cleanly snapping the orc’s neck, and the way he was deliberately applying force to cause pain made it look as though he was taking out his anger on that orc.

It was not exactly a pleasant sight, and killing him right now was far too hasty a choice.

“Kwee......, kweeek......!”

The orc whose neck was being held thrashed.

I grabbed Ratel’s arm, which showed no sign of loosening and looked as though it would cut off the orc’s breath at any moment.

“Kweeek, hey, stop it.”

But whether my attempt to stop him had irritated him again, he glared at me with bulging eyes.

“Why? Since you have to live like that for the rest of your life now, do you need another companion to cling to this time?”

“Kweeek, technically, he wouldn’t be a new companion. Kweeek, I’ve never had companions in the first place.”

The thought that this was not the time to argue over something like that belatedly crossed my mind, but the words correcting his error had already popped out.

“......Kweeek, that’s not the important thing right now.”

“Jing or Lia would be delighted to hear that.”

This time, thanks to my tact doing its job, I managed to swallow the words that neither of those two would react as sensitively as he did.

The orc, who was quicker-witted than I was, did not miss the moment when Ratel’s attention was focused on me.

“Kweeeeek!!! Kweeek!!!”

Using the slight opening in his airway, he screamed desperately.

“Shut up.”

Annoyed by the noise loud enough to sting his ears, Ratel immediately clamped down on the creature’s throat again.

But the orc’s final struggle was not entirely meaningless.

The pained cry of a monster sensing death had touched the consciousness of someone who had been deeply asleep.

“Kweeek, I told you to stop. Kweeek, if this one dies here......”

“Kweeek......”

While trying to stop Ratel again, I stopped speaking at the rough cry that came from behind me and turned my gaze toward the leader.

Amid all the commotion, I saw the hand of the leader orc, which had been closed as if dead, twitch.

Soon after, his tightly shut eyelids slowly rolled upward, revealing cloudy eyes weathered by time.

“Kweeek!!!”

When the orc on the verge of death in Ratel’s hand cried pitifully, the leader slowly looked over everyone inside the cave.

For a moment, it seemed his eyes met mine, but the leader’s gaze did not stay on me for long.

Then, he proved his ability as the undisputed leader of the orcs.

Before he had even finished grasping the situation, the one-armed orc charged at Ratel.

It was a speed that made it hard to believe he had been sprawled out like a corpse until now.

The worn-out sword swung by the one-armed orc failed to leave a wound on Ratel, but it did succeed in pulling free the orc caught in Ratel’s grip.

As a bonus, I, who had been holding Ratel’s arm, was also pushed back by him.

The leader orc threw the companion he had rescued to the left.

He probably meant to divide Ratel’s attention and surround him, cutting off any place for him to flee.

It was an excellent judgment, but there was one problem.

This formation......no matter how I looked at it, it seemed like that excellent plan included me too.

With the leader and the orc he had thrown positioned on Ratel’s left and right, respectively, and me standing directly in front of Ratel, the formation was complete.

It was unmistakably an arrangement meant to surround and attack him, and Ratel must have sensed that as well, because a hollow laugh escaped his mouth.

That relaxed attitude seemed to provoke the leader.

“Kweeek!! Whoever catches that arrogant human bastard first gets the biggest tasty head! Kweeek, everyone attack at once!!”

The one-armed orc, with a vein bulging on his forehead, skillfully gave orders to me and the remaining orc.

His confident attitude made him seem accustomed to leading a group, and his murky yet powerful voice also seemed to prove that he was the boss.

On top of that, ordering the three of us to attack Ratel together was a very cowardly yet tempting command.

This might really be a chance to land one blow on that foul-tempered protagonist bastard.

But I decided to act rationally.

Even if the three of us attacked together, it was obvious that Ratel would be the one to win in the end.

“Kweeek, calm down. Kweeek, if a big fight breaks out here, the path might collapse by accident.”

As soon as I finished speaking, the two orcs’ horrified gazes fixed on me.

At the same time, I realized my mistake.

Ah, right. Orcs normally can’t speak.

“Kweeek?!”

Once the fact that I could speak was revealed, the two orcs’ reactions diverged.

Murderous intent spread through the leader’s eyes, while surprise spread through the other orc’s eyes.

I stared at the slightly lacking-looking fellow who was only now acting surprised.

I had been talking for a while already, so why was he surprised now?

Though their responses were different, the actions the two orcs took after confirming that I could speak were similar in that they came closer to me.

There was a difference in that the boss orc, who charged as if he would kill me at any moment, was somewhat more aggressive than the dimwit, who carefully took one step forward.

A fierce, burning rage filled the creature’s eyes.

“Kweeek, you......!”

I felt like I knew what misunderstanding the one who had been the leader was having.

He probably thought that I, who could speak, had been aiming for his position as the next leader and had torn into his neck.

“Kweeek!! Were you the one who attacked me!!”

Having thoroughly misunderstood after seeing that I knew how to speak, he charged at me, aiming for my neck.

I wondered whether I should fight him or simply watch.

Since we were both in the state of orcs, and I had a healthy body on my side, subduing him did not seem difficult.

The only problem was the amount of lifespan he would lose in the process.

Should I just let him grab me once for now?

In any case, judging that turning the leader’s attention away from Ratel would also help lengthen his lifespan, I obediently accepted him grabbing me by the collar.

And I regretted it immediately.

No matter how close to death he was, a boss was still a boss, and the grip squeezing my neck was fierce.

But compared to the attack that followed, that level of discomfort was no more than tripping over a stone while walking down a road.

“Kweeeeek!!”

Compared to him letting out a shriek and thrusting his mouth toward me to bite off my neck, that is.

Thanks to my needlessly sharpened sense of smell, I could feel the unpleasant stench of an orc’s unique fishy odor mixed with the creature’s breath even more clearly.

Grinding out a curse, I pressed hard against the leader’s neck and kept my distance so that he would not tear mine out.

Still, one thing had become clear.

If he wanted to regain the boss position after his neck had already been bitten, he had to attack the opponent’s neck again.

I had probably let him have about enough by now.

I threatened to kick the leader orc in the stomach as he was starting to lose strength.

The leader dodged my slow attack and retreated.

I did not miss the gap and opened my mouth while gasping for breath.

“Kweeek, how about using your head a little? Kweeek, even now, I’m deliberately letting countless chances to kill you pass by. Kweeek, your lifesaver......no, not that. Kweeek, anyway, I did save your life, so there’s no need to be so hostile.”

“Kweeek, you saved me?”

The leader slowly looked me over as if he had heard every absurd nonsense imaginable.

“Kweeek, I don’t know what else to call dragging you all the way here when you were unconscious and heavy on top of that.”

I felt someone’s piercing gaze from beside me, but I pretended not to notice and turned my head away.

“Kweeek, then why in the world did you keep me alive?”

At his question, I rolled my eyes once.

“Kweeek, because someone has to sit in the leader’s seat.”

At my fairly honest answer, the leader gasped for breath.

“Kweeek, you’re saying you don’t intend to become the leader?”

What blocked my voice as I was about to answer that doubtful question was the scream of the one remaining orc.

“Kweeeeek!!”

What is it this time?

When I turned my head toward the place the scream had come from, I saw a bizarre scene: Ratel’s sword was at the subordinate orc’s neck, and the sword the leader had dropped was pointed toward me and the leader, who were tangled together.

“What kind of nonsense are you trying to pull now?”

I did not know exactly what had happened on the upper floor, but perhaps because he had a lot built up toward the dimwit, Ratel asked while pointing his sword at the creature’s neck.

“Kweeeeek!!!”

At the dimwit’s frightened cry, the leader rolled his eyes.

The creature had clearly judged that, in this situation where he had no allies at all, there would be nothing good about letting the dimwit die.

The leader sprang away from me, then rushed forward, grabbed the dimwit by the hair, and pulled him back.

At the somewhat rough handling, the dimwit screamed and retreated.

The leader, as if he did not care about that, looked back and forth between me and Ratel with strange eyes.

Realization flashed across his face, and soon after, a thin sneer mixed with anger appeared.

“Kweeek, I nearly fell for it. Kweeek, were you planning to join hands with a human and become the boss?”

At the creature’s idea, which had suddenly veered in a completely different direction, Ratel and I looked back and forth at each other.

To think he saw us as close enough to even join hands.

If he had felt the chilly air that had been hanging between Ratel and me before he woke up, that was a conclusion he never could have reached.

The leader seemed to take my stunned silence as affirmation.

“Kweeek, to think you coveted the leader’s seat enough to accept help from a mere human. Know shame.”

The leader spoke to me with the most contemptuous gaze he could muster, but unfortunately, it did not deal much damage.

After all, he was alive thanks to help from me and Ratel.

But unlike me, who did not think much of it, it seemed that borrowing the strength of a human was an indelible humiliation among orcs.

“Kweeek, you stupid fool, who doesn’t even know how filthy it is to become the leader by borrowing a human’s strength.”

The creature glared at me and spoke with eyes filled with a deeper hatred than when he had heard to his face that I had aimed for his neck.

His voice was so full of anger that I wondered if he might die from high blood pressure if he learned that I was actually human too.

Come to think of it, the one he had charged at as soon as he regained consciousness and his eyes rolled with rage was none other than Ratel.

It seemed there had been a reason the orcs in the original work charged at Ratel’s group as if they would kill them the moment they found them.

Whether it was hatred or anger, the fact that the leader had regained his reason was a good sign.

What mattered now was whether we could move him while keeping him alive.

“Kweeek, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Perhaps thinking my answer was an excuse, the corners of his eyes shot up again.

“Kweeek, even if you become the leader by joining hands with humans, do you think you’ll be able to lead the group properly? Kweeek, I don’t know what you did, but humans don’t keep promises, you foolish bastard.”

Amid the creature’s long speech about humans, a word came out that I could not simply let pass.

Promise.

He had definitely said promise.

It was a word that had been grating on my nerves ever since we approached this strange island, and the leader had also said something similar before.

It was a commonly used word if one wished to call it common, but still.

Orcs who had lived since birth on an island surrounded on all sides by rivers probably did not often have reason to bring up promises with humans.