Chapter 135 :

Chapter 135 - Fishing and Pride

As soon as he realized that there were fish in the river water, the excited dimwit immediately jumped into the water.

Leaving the bastard to rummage around in the water here and there, I examined the fish Ratel had caught.

It was a little small, but it did not seem like a species that had lived in the cave from the beginning.

It seemed a few fish had been swept in together when the river flooded.

Fish were a decent food source, but that did not mean we could just shove them into our mouths without thinking.

They might carry poison that humans could not eat.

“Can we eat this?”

Perhaps having the same concern as me, Ratel muttered.

The difference between him and me was that the bastard knew the solution.

“Hey, dimwit.”

At Ratel’s call, the dimwit approached with a wary expression.

Once the dimwit had come close enough, Ratel shoved the fish he had caught into the dimwit’s mouth before anyone could do anything.

“Kweeek!!”

Apart from being startled, the dimwit reflexively chewed and swallowed once food entered his mouth.

Everyone quietly looked at the dimwit after the forced feeding that had happened in an instant.

“Kweeek!!!”

After the bastard smacked his lips with an unbothered face, Ratel calmly opened his mouth.

“If we watch him for a little while, we’ll know whether it’s poisonous or not.”

The enraged leader shouted beside us, but it was not as if the fish that had already been swallowed could be taken back out.

I simply nodded quietly to Ratel.

While resolving that I would never eat anything the bastard gave me from now on.

* * *

Even after thirty minutes had passed since the dimwit ate the fish Ratel had given him, he showed no particular abnormal symptoms.

If anything, he seemed to have become livelier.

Perhaps because something had him excited, the bastard jumped into the puddle, pushed through the water here and there, and reached toward the fish.

Judging by what he was doing, it was clear that his hunting skills were usually terrible too.

Seeing someone who claimed to fish make such a commotion without even knowing the basics of fishing.

If this had been a long river rather than a narrow puddle, all the fish would already have run away.

Ratel, who had been watching the dimwit miss every single fish, quietly took a place in one corner of the puddle.

Thanks to his excellent choice of position, the bastard was able to snatch the fish that leapt up while escaping the dimwit.

The dimwit did all the hard work, while Ratel caught the fish.

“Kweeek, that bastard....”

Perhaps that sight was quite infuriating, because the leader, who had been watching, muttered while grinding his teeth.

“Kweeek, I’ll shove a fish into that bastard’s mouth right now.”

“Kweeek, leave him be.”

When I stopped the bastard, who was shifting as if he would go argue at any moment, the leader looked at me with a face that could not understand.

“Kweeek, he’s not the kind of bastard who’ll die from eating something like that.”

He probably would not even get an upset stomach.

He was a bastard who would survive even if he poured deadly poison into his mouth.

“Kweeek, how do you know that?”

“....Kweeek, I can tell just by looking. Kweeek, a human that stubborn won’t die from something like that.”

When I glossed over it because there was no particular way to explain, the leader let out an incredulous laugh.

“Kweeek, are you mocking me? Kweeek, then why did he feed it to the dimwit first?”

I was about to answer the leader’s question, but I was left speechless.

True. He would not die from eating that anyway.

It was not as if the taste changed because the dimwit tried it first.

After thinking for a moment about the leader’s sharp question, I reached one conclusion.

It was probably to torment him, after all.

Ratel seemed to strangely dislike the dimwit.

Most of all, I had seen several times that whenever Ratel deliberately approached the dimwit and whispered something, the dimwit’s face turned deathly pale.

But even if I spoke honestly, it would only pour oil on the leader’s anger, so I held my tongue.

“Kweeek, I’m telling you to just leave it. Kweeek, if you’re that dissatisfied, then try catching some yourself.”

At that depth, unless he was truly unlucky, he would not drown.

Since I also did not like him prying any further about Ratel, I pushed myself up.

It seemed I would have to join that strange fishing if I wanted to solve the problem of my own meal too.

“Kweeek, are you telling me to hunt?”

The leader asked back while following me with his eyes as I stood up.

His expression made it seem as if the act of hunting for himself felt unfamiliar.

“Kweeek, don’t if you think you can’t.”

This time, I was not especially teasing or provoking the bastard.

I had only thought that since he had likely spent his time shut inside, his hunting ability would naturally be poor.

But this time too, the bastard must have taken it as me scratching his nerves to provoke him.

“Kweeek...!”

The leader snorted and rose from his spot.

Then he strode toward the puddle.

As I watched the back of the bastard’s head moving away, I already felt like the picture was forming in my mind.

The image of the leader stubbornly insisting again today that he would not accept food given by a human, and Ratel answering that he could just starve to death then.

As I expected, compared to how boldly he had approached, the leader’s results were terrible.

The leader’s face as he looked down at the two minnows was nothing but grave.

“Kweeek, at that size….shouldn’t you let them go?”

I felt like it was customary to release fish that were too young.

“Kweeek...”

The dimwit compared Ratel’s mountain-like pile of fish with his own results, barely enough to cover the ground, and cried pitifully.

I was not much different from the dimwit.

In the first place, I did not have that much desire for raw fish.

However, the dimwit seemed greatly shocked by the fact that even if all the fish caught by the three orcs were combined, they still did not reach what Ratel had caught.

Especially as he looked back and forth between the two or so fish the leader had caught and the leader’s face, his expression was full of disappointment.

“Kweeek!! What do you mean, let them go!! Kweeek, this much is enough!!”

Perhaps his pride had been quite wounded, because the bastard needlessly snapped at me and tossed the two fish into his mouth at once.

It was obvious they would not even send a message to his stomach, but the bastard patted his belly with a deliberately satisfied face.

“That’s good. Your stomach is smaller than it looks.”

Ratel muttered, then roughly cleaned the fish he had caught and chewed them down.

The leader glanced at the fish piled beside Ratel.

It was enough to say that every fish in the puddle had been caught by Ratel’s hand.

The leader, who had been silently watching that sight, opened his mouth.

“Kweeek, hey, human bastard, if you have a conscience, hand the rest over to the dimwit. Kweeek, you didn’t even catch them with your own strength, so why are you eating so shamelessly?”

Ratel, who had suddenly been pointed out, looked at the leader expressionlessly.

“Kweeek, what are you staring at? Kweeek, hand half of them over to this side.”

Perhaps thinking he had found an easy opponent, the leader’s voice was filled with force.

Just as I was about to stop the bastard because his attitude was becoming unpleasant to watch—

Ratel stood up without saying a word and approached the remaining pile of fish.

A triumphant look crossed the leader’s face, as if he thought the bastard would obediently give up the food this time.

I found that leader rather fascinating instead.

Even after going through so much until now, he still did not know that bastard.

Was the prejudice against humans lodged in his heart that firm, or was he simply avoiding facing reality?

Naturally, Ratel did not grant the leader’s unreasonable demand.

Instead, he chose to push all the remaining fish back into the puddle.

“Kweeek!!!”

The dimwit looked with regretful eyes at the fish swimming back into the water, but Ratel turned away as if it was none of his business.

“Kweeek, wh-what kind of...!”

At Ratel’s action, the leader jumped to his feet.

“Kweeek, if you weren’t going to eat them anyway, you could’ve just left them there. What’s the point of letting them go again? Kweeek, you wouldn’t even have caught them if not for that dimwit bastard!”

Wrong.

He would have succeeded in fishing even without the dimwit’s help.

But Ratel did not bother to give such an excuse.

“It’s my choice.”

Instead, he provoked the leader’s temper once more.

“Kweeek!!! What did you say?!!”

And the effect was also excellent.

The enraged leader snorted as if he would charge at Ratel at any moment.

Whether the bastard was furious or not, the living ones among the fish Ratel had released back leapt and flopped into the river water like fish returned to water.

Watching them made my already queasy stomach churn.

I pushed the fish left as my share forward.

In an emergency, I did not want to leave behind food I disliked just because it tasted bad, but if I forced any more into my mouth, I was certain nausea would rise up.

“Kweeek, the rest of you can eat it yourselves.”

“Kweeek??”

The dimwit, whose fishing results had been just as bad as the leader’s, brightened up.

The excited bastard grabbed a few fish and hurriedly shoved them into his mouth.

The leader watched the bastard’s unhesitating appearance for a moment, then when his eyes met mine, he turned his head sharply away.

Was it that his pride would not let him eat it?

He was probably someone who usually ate what other orcs had hunted anyway.

He really made his body suffer by getting prideful in strange places.

“Kweeek, unless your stomach is really the size of a fist, what you ate earlier can’t possibly be enough. Kweeek, just eat.”

“Kweeek!! I’m not hungry!”

Even though everyone knew it was an amount that even a sparrow would have eaten more than, the bastard insisted stubbornly.

When I silently stared at the leader, the creature avoided my gaze, perhaps embarrassed by his own lie.

“Kweeek, then we should throw away the rest.”

I shook off my lingering reluctance and stood up.

“Kweeek!!”

Perhaps he had still not recovered from the shock of watching Ratel throw away the fish before his eyes, because the bastard urgently grabbed me.

“Kweeek, what? Kweeek, if you’re not going to eat it anyway, it doesn’t matter if I throw it away.”

At my claim that since it would be thrown away anyway, there was not much difference between throwing it to him and sending it back into the water, the leader glared at me with a dumbfounded face.

“Kweeek, I’m not hungry, but….I can’t let such waste happen.”

Strongly expressing his position that he was absolutely not hungry, but since he could not throw away precious prey, he had no choice but to eat it reluctantly, the leader began eating the fish.

The bastard, who had been chewing the food slowly, seemed to feel less resistance than when eating human food, and soon began greedily devouring the fish.

At the fishy smell that had grown even stronger, I turned my head away.

That did not mean the orc’s developed sense of smell stopped functioning, though.

At least to block off my sight, I turned my head, and my eyes met Ratel’s, who had been watching this side.

When I raised my eyebrows as if asking what he was looking at, the bastard rolled his eyes.

It was the moment I was suspecting whether that protagonist bastard was thinking of shoving the leader into the water this time.

The bastard suddenly overturned the bag.

Whether he overturned the bag or wore the bag over his head was none of my business.

However, the story changed a little if the original owner of the bag was me.