Chapter 136 :

Chapter 136 - Influence

The protagonist bastard turned my bag upside down and shook it out as if it had belonged to him from the very beginning.

I could not tell whether he was doing it simply to check inside more comfortably, or whether he was deliberately doing it in such a blatant way just to make me angry.

There was a high chance it was the latter.

Fine, since he had taken it anyway, I watched what the bastard did with the mindset that he could search through it as much as he wanted.

After looking around at the belongings rolling about, Ratel eventually picked up one of the miscellaneous items.

When I saw the cylindrical object wrapped in rough cloth in the bastard’s hand, I flinched slightly.

It was not as if I had especially tried to hide it, but I had not expected that to come out of the bag.

Ratel untied the rough cloth without hesitation.

What appeared from inside was a biscuit that looked like a yellow lump.

“Kweeek, what is that?”

Unable to hold back his curiosity while watching Ratel’s sudden item organization, the leader asked.

“Kweeek, it’s food humans eat.”

Since it did not seem like the bastard would be able to hear Ratel’s answer, I explained instead.

“Kweeek, how do you know that?”

The leader asked with a puzzled face.

How did I know?

I knew because I had packed it myself.

Though I had not known that Ratel was aware of its existence.

The reason I had kept quiet about the emergency ration was not because I wanted to eat it secretly by myself or anything like that.

It was for a simpler reason than that.

I watched as Ratel, with a suspicious face, placed the biscuit wrapped in cloth back on the ground and struck it.

Clang!

It was a clear sound, to the point that it was hard to believe it had come from something a person was meant to eat.

Ratel picked it up and spread the cloth open again, revealing a biscuit split in half.

At the damage that was slight compared to the sound, open shock appeared on the leader’s face.

“....Kweeek, as far as I know, humans don’t have the jaw strength to chew a rock like that.”

....I know.

That was why I had not bothered taking out the biscuit I had packed and presenting it as food.

Because I had been wondering whether it could even be called food.

The biscuit I bought from the grocery store owner, baked more than ten times, was literally as hard as a rock.

An emergency ration was, just as the name said, food eaten in an emergency to avoid dying, even if taste had to be thrown to the dogs.

If one excluded only its hardness, the biscuit was perfect as an emergency ration.

It had no smell, was light, was easy to carry around, and did not spoil easily.

After tapping the biscuit a few times with his finger, Ratel raised his head and looked at me.

For the first time in a while, open distrust appeared on the bastard’s face.

So you were really planning to eat this?

What, punk? I did not know I would actually end up eating it either.

I had only packed it in preparation for some possible situation.

Something like the orc subjugation taking longer than expected, or me starving because an unexpected situation occurred.

Though I had not known I would really end up eating this thing that looked utterly tasteless.

The bastard, who had been taking out and counting the remaining biscuits as if dumbfounded, suddenly paused.

When I glared at the protagonist bastard, thinking I would hear whatever else he was dissatisfied about this time, his mouth slowly opened.

“There are four.”

Only then did I realize that the reason the bastard had not immediately shoved the biscuit into his mouth was not simply because of its hardness.

Soon, Ratel raised his head and looked at me.

“Are these for four people?”

At the question of whether I had packed shares for the two who had fallen away as well as his own share, I thought for a moment.

Because I wondered whether telling him the truth was really the right thing to do.

But it did not take long for me to decide that letting him misunderstand me would feel even more uncomfortable.

“....Kweeek, one of them was probably a bonus.”

It was not a lie.

It was merely the result of the shopkeeper’s generous offer to give one extra if I bought three, and the commoner’s spirit that had crossed over with me from modern society.

Ratel must have sensed my sincerity too, because a pathetic look crossed the bastard’s face.

* * *

Neither the leader, nor even the dimwit, coveted the rock-like biscuits.

Contrary to when he had returned the fish to the water, Ratel distributed the biscuits no one had asked for equally to everyone.

The fact that my share looked especially large was surely an illusion created by my own desire not to eat the biscuit.

After forcing even the dimwit, who adamantly refused, to hold a biscuit in his hand, the bastard sat down on the ground as if satisfied.

At Ratel’s contrarian nature, like a green frog, the leader also ground his teeth and threw his own share to the dimwit.

Holding the biscuit, I quietly stood up and found a new spot a little away from the water.

They say that joy doubles when you share delicious food.

But if you eat tasteless food together, it felt like the misery would double instead.

There was no reason to eat something already tasteless while confirming each other’s rotting expressions.

The dimwit did accept the biscuit the leader pushed onto him, but even the dimwit seemed unsure whether this could really be eaten.

The bastard tilted his head and kept sneaking glances at Ratel.

Ratel put the biscuit into his mouth without much hesitation.

And then he began chewing the food expressionlessly.

Even as a clacking sound, one that should not come from the act of chewing, rang out, the bastard’s expression did not change.

“Kwee, kuweek?”

The dimwit, who was instead startled by the noisy sound, even cautiously examined Ratel’s jaw, as if he thought Ratel’s tooth had broken.

Well, even if his tooth had broken, it would probably grow back quickly if it was him.

I stopped paying attention to Ratel and tossed the remaining half of my biscuit into my mouth.

When Ratel and I began eating the biscuits one after another, the dimwit, who had hesitated for a while, also put the rock-like ration into his mouth.

The dimwit’s face, which had been uncertainly moving his mouth, crumpled dryly.

“Kweeek...!”

I was probably not much different.

Thanks to the orc’s developed jaw, I could chew the flour dough baked like a rock without difficulty, but there was nothing I could do about this terrible taste.

The biscuit, without a single trace of sweetness, had a taste that naturally made the space between my brows shrivel.

The hard lump of flour, seasoned only with salt and containing neither butter nor yeast, had no taste except saltiness and damp flour.

The choking dryness gifted by the dense biscuit was a bonus.

It was the moment when the shopkeeper’s lie, that he had used his own secret method of adding sweetness so it would be easier to eat than other biscuits, was revealed.

“Kweeek...!”

The dimwit, who had been enduring the dry stiffness, eventually left his spot and ran to the water’s edge.

Then he hurriedly scooped up water and added moisture to his shriveled mouth.

As I looked at the back of the bastard’s head moving away, I belatedly recalled the face of the shopkeeper, who had preserved his last bit of conscience by saying it absolutely had to be eaten with water.

That old man, the next time I meet him—

“Kweeek, I’ll kill him.”

That was definitely not my inner voice slipping out.

Just because he had scammed me a little with food did not mean I was so obsessed with food that I would make him pay for it with death.

I looked at the leader bastard, who had somehow come beside me and finished my inner voice however he pleased.

“Kweeek, if you wanted to eat it, you should have said so earlier. Kweeek, here, eat this.”

I gladly offered him the remaining biscuit.

“Kweeek, that’s not it!!”

My kindness was rejected at once.

As I wondered whether, among orcs, making a murder warning during mealtime was some kind of etiquette, the leader’s face grew more and more twisted.

“Kweeek, I’m talking about that human! Kweeek, that bastard is putting strange ideas into the dimwit!”

The bastard gestured with his eyes toward the dimwit, who was desperately drinking water, and Ratel, who was sitting not far away, as if frustrated.

The biscuit’s dryness had made him drink water, but I was not sure about putting strange ideas into him.

“Kweeek, the dimwit has never once not been strange from the beginning until now.”

“Kweeek, that bastard was stupid, but he wasn’t this bad! Kweeek, at least he listened well. Kweeek, but now….”

Perhaps anger was rising in him, because the leader paused to catch his breath.

I looked pitifully at the leader, who was pushing the responsibility onto Ratel.

“Kweeek, now what? Kweeek, you don’t like that he’s rebelling against you? Kweeek, just accept it. Kweeek, all living creatures eventually become independent.”

The leader looked at me with eyes that said I was saying all kinds of nonsense.

“Kweeek, what are you misunderstanding? Kweeek, do you think we are the same as other things?”

“Kweeek, of course you’re different.”

Your temper is nastier than any animal I’ve ever met.

“Kweeek, that doesn’t mean there aren’t similar parts.”

According to my experience of going back and forth between both bodies, they could never be considered the same as humans.

But they could not be considered completely different either.

If I had to express it, it was to the degree that if I were suddenly told one day to live as an orc for the rest of my life, I would think, “It isn’t something impossible to do.”

Yes, exactly that much.

The ways they lived differed from each other, but was that not a gap that also existed among humans?

I heard that somewhere in a faraway country, cannibalistic culture still remained even now.

Of course, this side was different in that they were full of anger toward humans for an unknown reason.

“Kweeek, most things with breath in them are similar. Kweeek, there are parts that resemble the humans you hate so much too.”

Contrary to my expectation that he would immediately answer that I was spouting madness, the leader did not refute me at all.

Instead, he simply looked at me for a very long time and examined my face in detail.

The bastard’s cloudy eyes slowly scanned my pupils.

Not knowing what this old orc wanted to find in me, I quietly waited for him to open his mouth.

“Kweeek, you really aren’t the one who attacked me.”

Compared to his long observation, what the bastard produced was only a hollow conclusion.

How draining.

Where have you been listening to my words all this time?

“Kweeek, you really don’t listen to other people at all.”

“Kweeek, I thought something was strange. Kweeek, you knew nothing about humans.”

The bastard muttered, not caring about my scolding.

“Kweeek, I probably know humans better than any orc.”

If there was an orc who knew humans better than me, who had originally been human, that would be terrifying in its own way.

“Kweeek, I know very well. Kweeek, that all human bastards are the same.”

“Kweeek, do you know that in the human world, they call that prejudice?”

The leader snorted.

“Kweeeek, thoughtless bastards like you don’t know. Kweeek, only I can know.”

“Kweeek, why? Because you’re the leader?”

At the words I lightly tossed out, the leader gave no answer.

The lengthening silence led to one issue that had been bothering me all along.

Humans and a promise, and the imperial family.

So, does the content of that promise involve something that only the one who becomes the leader can know?

They say that fear of predators and threats can also be inherited through chromosomes, but the hatred of humans this bastard had seemed to be of a different kind.

The connection between leaders was also different in the sense of being eaten and eating, but more than anything, what was passed down did not seem to be only vague emotions.

It was hard to imagine that the moment one became the leader, some kind of knowledge about humans was passed down.

Should I think of it like a family heirloom passed down through generations?

There were many gaps that could not be filled, including the principle, process, conditions, and more, but the thing I was most curious about was one.

The reason, or the purpose.

Why did the orcs start passing something like that down?