Chapter 125 :

Chapter 125 - Gluttony

The priest was in a hurry.

For him, who had lived a life with no reason to come into contact with danger, this incident was no different from a disaster.

The spark of disaster began when the holy relic, which had quietly devoured sacrifices at the appointed time, suddenly ate two knights of the temple, and that spark grew into an inferno in an instant.

For some reason, the holy relic had been eating anyone who entered the temple’s underground without discrimination, and it was only today that it had finally stopped its gluttony.

In a situation where no one knew when the holy relic might run wild again, there was no way Jing and Lia, who were hesitating and whispering to each other, would look pleasant to him.

“Are you saying you will not listen to my order?”

At the priest’s warning, which was practically a threat, Lia’s body stiffened.

“This woman has nothing to do with us.”

Lia stared blankly at Jing’s back as he blocked her from view.

In the midst of the chaotic situation, one thing was certain: he was trying to protect her.

Even knowing all of that, Lia had no idea what she should do.

If she followed the priest’s words, she had to betray Jing, and if she helped Jing, she had to become a criminal.

While Lia was unable to open her mouth hastily, the priest, who did not care who his target was, chose Jing as his next one.

“That is for me to judge. Stop resisting pointlessly and quietly follow me.”

As if he had never been interested in whatever Jing might say in the first place, he arrogantly nodded to the knight guarding his side.

For a moment, an irreverent thought crossed Lia’s mind, wondering how priests could be so similar whether in the countryside or the city, but soon her attention was drawn to the unidentified object held by the knight who approached after receiving the priest’s order.

The object itself, wrapped round and round in silk-like cloth, was strange, but what drew the eye even more was the attitude of the two knights carrying it.

It was strange that two grown men were needed to carry something merely long and thin, and both of them were frightened as if they might die at any moment.

Unlike Lia, who sensed unease, Jing was enduring the approaching fear.

The priest’s behavior of staying as far away from the sword as possible, and the knights moving it under orders, all showed that they knew what “that thing” could do to people.

The fact that they personally came all the way out here must mean something has gone wrong with the holy relic.

Thinking that the abnormality was likely unexpected gluttony, Jing rolled his eyes and checked on Lia.

Rather than let things happen like this, escaping even with a boat that had a torn sail would be better.

Having made his judgment, Jing whispered to Lia again.

“Miss Lia, when I give the signal, step back. Even if my actions become rough, do not panic.”

“W-where are you telling me to step back to? Even if we run away from here......”

“We will become fugitives.”

Jing, who had already experienced being thrown onto the crossroads of the same choice, knew well what that meant.

And that the choice ultimately belonged to oneself.

“But is that more important than losing your life?”

At Jing’s question, Lia looked at him with a startled face.

In truth, this was a gamble.

Normally, one would choose to throw away one’s life rather than become a fugitive.

However, Lia was someone Ran had chosen.

Just as he himself had been chosen by him in the past that still remained vivid in his memory.

So this was a gamble, wondering whether Lia, too, might choose the other path instead of that obvious one.

Of course, he also did not want to simply watch a young person with a bright future die like this.

“......What about you, Jing?”

Whether she was delaying her choice or sincerely worrying about him was not certain, but at least she did not treat him like a madman, so Jing smiled gently.

“There are only three opponents.”

What they had to be wary of was not the knights the priest had brought.

It was the holy relic in their hands.

Jing hardened his expression and explained the worst-case scenario to Lia, who was looking at him anxiously, in as casual a voice as he could manage.

“......And if, truly if, something happens to me, you must not look back and must head for the island.”

When Lia immediately showed signs of refusal, Jing quietly raised his hand and stopped her words.

“When you arrive, bring Lord Ran and Ratel back. That is the fastest way. Do you understand?”

To Jing, who asked firmly as if there were no other choices, Lia had no choice but to nod.

“What are you muttering about?!”

Because of the priest’s thunderous shout, irritated by the two of them quietly conversing, Jing could no longer convey anything more to Lia.

“Do not try anything foolish and follow me.”

At the command given in a voice clearly full of tension, Jing gently pushed Lia back and stepped forward.

Fortunately, that small movement of Jing’s did not seem to enter the priest’s eyes.

The scrawny man’s gaze was fixed only on the holy relic in the knights’ hands.

“Unwrap it.”

Hiding behind the remaining knight, he gulped and gave the order, and the two knights also began unwrapping the cloth with tense faces.

Soon after, the holy relic revealed itself before everyone’s eyes.

For a moment, Jing forgot his own situation and blankly had his gaze stolen by it.

As if the passage of a thousand years meant nothing, that thing glowed serenely, sending out a pull that drew people toward it from its entire sword body.

What brought Jing, who had unconsciously been about to take one step closer, back to his senses was the reaction of those around him.

The knights, who carefully set the cloth down on the ground as if even touching it frightened them, quickly stepped back.

Even though Jing knew the identity of their fear, he blamed himself for being entranced and pushed Lia in the direction of the boat.

“Stop dawdling and go launch the boat!!”

After being briefly flustered by his sudden rough tone, Lia shot backward as if she had been launched.

Perhaps they had not expected someone to resist against the priest and knights of the temple, and to openly run away at that, because all three knights reacted slowly.

Or perhaps Jing was simply too fast.

Jing sprang forward in an instant, grabbed the neck of one knight who was about to draw his sword, and slammed him into the ground.

While the knight collapsed with a crash, unable even to scream, the remaining two calmly swung their swords at Jing.

“You idiots!! You should protect me first!!”

The terrified priest’s scream rang out, but it did not mean much.

Because the one whose wrist was caught by Jing, and the last one whose knee was kicked, both collapsed to the ground soon after.

At the sight of a single old man who had won a small countryside fighting tournament taking down three knights in an instant, the priest’s mouth fell open.

“Y-you, what are you? Do you think you can do this and remain safe?!”

“I do not think I would remain safe even if I followed you like this.”

Jing, who answered calmly, turned around just like that.

While tearing his gaze away from Sierra’s sword, which was still shining exactly as the knights had set it down on the ground.

He heard the enraged priest shouting something behind him, but Jing did not look back.

His instincts were telling him that he had to get as far away from the holy relic as quickly as possible.

By the riverbank, he could see Lia clumsily trying to launch the boat.

However, perhaps because the sail, once soaked in water, would not easily spread, she could not pick up speed.

“It won’t be of much use, but......”

Jing stretched out his hand.

Was it his imagination?

Perhaps the direction of the wind just happened to follow well, because the sail that had been wet and stuck together slowly began to regain its shape.

It was at that moment.

Jing realized that his choice had been a mistake.

But as always, time that had once passed did not return, and choices could not be undone either.

“Kyaaaaaak!!!”

Lia’s shrill scream and her horrified face entered his eyes.

This time, Jing made a choice he would not regret.

Because rather than turn back and meaninglessly confirm the source of the fear, he chose to push Lia out of the boat.

“Jing!!!”

“Go to the island and bring Lord Ran and Ratel back. And......”

He conveyed his request to Lia as she fell blankly beneath the boat.

Lia reached out her hand toward him, but Jing did not take Lia’s hand.

This time as well, instead of holding Lia’s hand, he chose to leave behind his final words.

“Keep in mind that there is no such thing as a glorious death. This is nothing more than murder.”

The next moment, feeling his surroundings go completely dark, Lia disappeared from Jing’s vision.

It was not only Lia.

Everything around him was pitch-black, as if the surroundings had been devoured by darkness.

Just before he was eaten by the darkness, something like a brown ball of fur seemed to catch in his vision, but even that soon disappeared from Jing’s mind.

Because in the perfect darkness he was experiencing for the first time in his life, he had to fight fear.

* * *

The plan had veered very slightly off course, but in any case, the initial goal of driving the leader toward the food storage had been half achieved.

Well, if one followed the rather excessively optimistic old saying that beginning is half the task.

“Kweeek, look carefully. Kweeek, as you go forward, two steep paths will appear in total. Kweeek, if possible, I would like to go around them, but......”

While roughly drawing the cave’s structure on the ground again and explaining, I looked at the dimwit, who was studying the floor carefully.

“Kweeek, come here and check this.”

“Kweeeek?”

Perhaps he had already forgotten that Ratel had nearly killed him, because the dimwit obediently approached me.

The dimwit had at least the bare minimum of usefulness.

He had grasped the situation outside in his own way, and most importantly, he could express it in words.

“Kweeek, so the places where the other orcs are gathered right now are here and here, right?”

I asked again while pointing at the cave structure I had drawn on the ground.

“Kwee, kweeek?”

The dimwit tilted his head.

“Kweeek, you can gesture with your head either horizontally or vertically, in a straight line. Kweeek, there is no need to add rotation.”

Contrary to my expectation that, since he had separated from the orc group, he would be able to help identify the locations of the remaining orc groups inside the cave, the dimwit could not give a clear answer at all.

“He can’t recognize it because your drawing is too strange.”

Ratel, who had been looking down at the ground beside the dimwit, suddenly disparaged my drawing skills.

“Kweeek, what do you mean strange? Kweeek, the strange thing is your eyes.”

“The strange things are your aesthetic sense and your hand. You drew one rat bastard wearing a hat and expect us to see what?”

This time, the creature criticized my drawing a little more specifically.

“Kweeek, a rat bastard? Kweeek, this is where we are, and these two places are the two entrances that were just blocked. Kweeek, why can’t you recognize this?”

“......This was an entrance? Not ears?”

Even after my kind explanation, Ratel humiliated me by looking back and forth between the floor and the two entrances.

The insult felt even greater because his expression was truly serious, not merely mocking me to embarrass me.

Between me and Ratel, who were facing each other while each feeling shocked, the dimwit, who had been sneakily gauging the mood, cautiously opened his mouth.

“Kwee, kweeek.”

I could not tell exactly what he was saying, but judging from how he kept nodding, it was clearly affirmation.

I looked down at the creature who had unconsciously agreed with Ratel that my drawing skills were terrible.

“Kwee, kweeek?”

But again, I could not feel any malice from him.

“.......Kweeek, it’s nothing. Kweeek, then as expected, climbing the cliff above and going to the food storage must be the safest path.”

I answered while pointing with my hand at another cave, which probably looked like the eyes of a rat bastard in Ratel’s eyes.

“Kwee, kweeek......!”

At my bitter answer, the dimwit shook his head hard while diligently adding gestures with his hands and feet.

“Kweeek, I know there is no path going this way.”

“Kweeek?”

When I waved my hand as if annoyed, the dimwit opened his eyes round.

“Kweeek, it was not absent from the beginning.”

“So there used to be a path going over this hat?”

I glared at the protagonist bastard, who insisted on using the word “hat”.

I was not sure about anything else, but this time, I felt malice.

That narrow-minded bastard was making fun of my drawing skills.

“Kweeek, yes, this ‘food storage’ is the most important place after the leader’s room. Kweeek, usually, the more important something is, the more people try to protect it even if they must sacrifice other things.”

“So they collapse other places in order to keep the food storage from collapsing.”

The creature, who answered cleverly, looked up at me.

“It’s fortunate you got the direction right this time. I wouldn’t be able to drag you around in that form.”

“Kweeek, this time, no one uselessly interfered. Kweeek, unlike someone who just drifted along without thinking, I checked our location.”

At my answer, Ratel frowned.

When I looked at the fellow’s oddly serious expression, he made an “ah” sound and opened his mouth.

“No, I was just thinking that if your eyesight is fine, yet your drawing is in that state, then it really must be a problem of skill.”

Neither my eyesight nor my skill has any problem, you bastard.

The one who interrupted me as I was about to tell him that the only problem here was his personality was the leader’s voice.

“Kweeek!!! If you don’t want to die, stop dawdling and start guiding us!!”

The creature approached while shouting and glared back and forth between me and Ratel.

“Kweeek, if I see even the slightest sign of foolishness, kweeek, know that both of you will be eaten alive. Kweeek, and you, watch these two carefully.”

The creature, having given the dimwit an unreasonable order, strode forward.

The dimwit left behind stuck to the back of me and Ratel according to the leader’s words and began watching us so intently that it was burdensome.

Thanks to someone, I had begun a slightly more troublesome journey, and I glared at Ratel, who looked as if he had no particular thoughts.

“Kweeek, don’t act emotionally any more than this.”

The fellow, who was walking forward briskly in a way unbefitting emergency food, turned back with a face that asked what I was talking about.

“Kweeek, don’t play dumb. Kweeek, I’m talking about the neck.”

“What’s the problem? In the end, it turned out the way you wanted. That leader will aim for me now, and you’ve naturally become able to blend in with the orcs.”

What kind of understanding of human relationships makes this look like blending in naturally?

“Kweeek, he could have attacked you right away.”

When I pointed out the creature’s recklessness, Ratel narrowed his eyes.

“Who are you worrying about right now?”

“Kweeek, obviously I’m talking about the leader. Kweeek, if you fail to control your strength and kill him, all the effort so far will turn into wasted suffering.”

At my warning, a sneer formed at the corner of his mouth.

“What does that matter? Your goal has been achieved.”

After leaving that short answer behind, Ratel turned around without hesitation and followed after the leader and the dimwit.

So, in other words, that meant it had been an action entirely meant to screw me over.

With that realization that felt strangely new, I felt the dimwit pushing me from behind and continued walking.