Chapter 141 :

Chapter 141 - Not You

As my head sank completely beneath the water, that familiar voice began tormenting me again, as though it were only natural.

[Keep the promise.]

That damned promise.

If it wanted the promise kept so badly, it should talk to the person involved, not me.

I had absolutely no intention of being bound by some bizarre contract merely because an ancestor had failed to keep a promise.

Especially when it was a debt owed by a distant ancestor of Ran Abiran, not even one of my actual ancestors.

But no matter how many times I declared that I renounced the inheritance, the voice in my head showed no sign of growing quieter.

The one fortunate thing was that there were plenty of things around to distract me right now.

For instance, the leader flailing desperately despite being unable to swim, or the orcs who likewise had no idea how to swim but had followed us down here solely to devour their leader.

Pretending not to hear the voice in my head, I checked the creatures sinking after me and continued descending deeper and deeper.

The proportions of my torso and legs were different from when I had been human, so it felt a little awkward, but underwater still favored me over those hopeless swimmers.

The distance between me and the orcs gradually widened.

I had not created that distance simply to escape them.

Well, perhaps that was ultimately true, but for now, it was meant to buy time.

I had to reach the bottom of the pit before they did.

The farther I went, the rougher and increasingly complicated the surrounding terrain became.

A continuous formation that looked as though an enormous section had been gouged out of the rock came into view.

That meant the end was near.

I was beginning to run out of breath, so I felt relieved and kicked my legs a little faster.

At last, my outstretched fingertips touched solid rock.

When I stopped advancing, the leader, who had been dragged along limply wherever I led him, raised his head.

Upon discovering the blocked passage, he opened his mouth in shock.

Watching the breath he had been holding escape in a stream of bubbles, I clicked my tongue.

He still had a little longer before he truly reached his limit.

Whether I frowned or not, his eyes noisily demanded an answer from me.

What are you going to do now?!

Ignoring his irritating stare, I snatched away the old, rusted sword he had somehow managed not to lose while being dragged along.

What did he mean, what was I going to do?

There was only one path available.

Over the leader’s shoulder, I saw that the orcs had caught up while we wasted time.

Without hesitating any longer, I drove the leader’s sword into the center of the rock.

Shnk!

Naturally, no miracle occurred in which a new passage suddenly opened merely because I stabbed a sword into the wall once.

The leader stared at me pathetically, as though I were trying to smash a boulder with an egg, but I ignored him, pulled the sword free, and stabbed it into the rock again.

Right, I had not expected to solve the situation with two sword strikes like someone from the original story.

To begin with, I did not even have a companion beside me hyperventilating from oxygen deprivation.

The leader stared at me in despair as I began digging into the solid wall.

He clearly thought I had gone insane for suddenly attempting something so reckless when we were already running out of breath.

Ignoring his gaze, I silently concentrated on hacking apart the wall.

Beyond what appeared to be a blocked wall, another space existed.

I could feel the sword piercing through the rock and reaching the other side, so I was certain.

If one fell, one normally had to restart the journey somewhere far from the intended destination, but that only applied when falling downward.

After enduring every imaginable hardship to get this far, I had no intention of allowing myself to be swept away obediently.

The leader, who had rather quickly realized that struggling would only waste his stamina and breath, watched what I was doing with a resigned expression before glancing behind him.

His memory must have been comparable to that of a goldfish.

Upon discovering the orcs now close enough for him to see their expressions, he opened his mouth again and released more of his breath.

He hurriedly reached out to retrieve his sword, but I swung it once and knocked aside his obstructive hand.

Panicking and flailing would accomplish nothing.

Just as I had wasted one opportunity to swing the sword merely to restrain the leader.

Still unable to regain his composure, he tried once again to snatch the sword away.

If he could not contain his fighting spirit, then I might as well let him do whatever he wanted.

As a considerate gesture, I hurled him toward the approaching orcs.

The leader seemed moved as well.

Judging by how widely he opened his mouth to express his gratitude despite his dwindling breath.

Finally freed from the leader’s interference, I ignored the water pressure crushing my lungs and raised the sword high.

Thud!

The instant I drove the sword in with all my strength one last time, cracks finally began spreading slowly through the rock.

After confirming that water was being faintly drawn through the gaps, I pulled the sword free.

I no longer needed to hang from the wall with the sword embedded in it, so I began kicking the cracked surface.

The buoyancy prevented me from building proper speed, but it was certainly working.

Seeing the cracks spread wider and wider, I put all my strength into each blow against the wall.

Meanwhile, the leader, who had flown all the way in front of the orcs, was desperately flailing to avoid the hands reaching toward him.

When the leader pressed himself against the wall to escape them, one of the orcs lunged at him.

Possessing an impressive attachment to life, the leader kicked off the wall once again, changed direction, and avoided the enemy’s grasp.

Whether they had become thoroughly enraged or were simply running out of breath themselves, the orcs surrounded the leader from both sides and prepared to launch their final attack.

The leader’s eyes shook violently when he realized that every escape route had been blocked.

The moment I kicked the wall one final time, both orcs lunged at him simultaneously.

Feeling a powerful current dragging everything beneath my feet, I reached out and seized the leader by the back of his neck.

The orcs collided in the space where the leader had been and became entangled.

They attempted to shove each other aside so they could seize the leader again, but they could not manage it.

The vicious current swept them away.

The water was finally draining.

I held on to the leader as he was about to be dragged away and endured.

Why was this one-armed bastard so heavy?

While it felt as though my own arm might be torn off, the voice reverberating inside my head tirelessly repeated its warning.

[Keep the promise.]

Ignoring the ridiculous demand, I tightened my grip.

Between the weight that made me clench my teeth and the pounding headache, I briefly felt tempted to simply let him go.

Fortunately, the water ran out before my patience did.

The force of the torrent battering my entire body weakened, and I finally gained enough freedom to move.

Relying on my memory, I groped around and turned my head.

After pressing my face against the wall several times, I finally managed to push it into a gap between the rocks.

The moment my airways were freed from the water crushing them, I desperately gulped down oxygen.

The stagnant air was so thin that it did not help very much, though.

Feeling myself begin to suffocate again, I roughly shook off the water and looked down.

The leader’s condition was not much different.

I hauled up the bastard, who was on the verge of losing consciousness.

With only one hand, lifting the heavy leader all the way into the opening in the wall was impossible, but his instinct to survive took care of the remaining distance on its own.

He hurriedly thrust his face into the empty space and desperately inhaled.

“Kweek, gweh-egh......!”

Feeling his rigid body go limp, I sighed.

No matter how often he behaved as though he were about to stop breathing, he always managed to survive with stubborn persistence.

“Kweek......! Why did you save me!”

His breathing had returned, but his sanity apparently had not, as he demanded an answer harshly.

“Kweek, oxygen is precious, so shut your mouth.”

When I replied that the breath he had wasted merely to ask such a question was a shame, I felt his body tense again.

“Kweek, have you spent so long with that human that you have started wanting to imitate them? Kweek, you have completely lost your mind.”

I briefly considered whether it would be better to knock him unconscious rather than listen to him ramble such nonsense, but decided against it.

Once the water completely drained, I would be the one forced to carry his unconscious body back up.

Letting his tireless babbling enter one ear and leave through the other, I waited for all the water to drain.

The weaker the torrent became, the easier it was to breathe, but the leader’s voice also grew louder.

“Kweek, why didn’t you kill the three who were swept away? Kweek, someone like you could easily have finished them off!”

Eventually, his questions extended to why I had not killed the orcs who had already been carried away.

He truly was curious about everything.

How had someone so interested in his surroundings spent his entire life shut away inside a cave?

Instead of answering, I slowly loosened the arm holding him.

Startled by the sensation of his body descending again, he screamed.

“Kweek!! What are you doing!”

“Kweek, I told you that you were being noisy.”

“Kweek! Answer me! Kweek, I asked why you saved me!!”

Either he had failed to understand my warning that I would drop him unless he shut his mouth, or he was merely pretending not to understand, because he continued asking persistently.

“Kweek, I didn’t save you.”

“Kweek, then what do you call holding on to me right now?”

“Kweek, this?”

When I pretended to loosen my grip once again, I felt him cling to the wall in terror.

“Kweek, if you are playing around with my life right now......”

“Kweek, you were the one who played around first.”

I cut off his low warning.

Thanks to the torrent having weakened until it was barely noticeable, I could clearly hear him snort.

“Kweek, what do you mean I played around?”

“Kweek, you didn’t keep your word about obeying me, and you didn’t keep your promise to free me from the other orcs after reclaiming your position as leader.”

When I pointed out his shameless attack from moments earlier, the leader finally fell silent.

It was not as though I particularly wanted to blame him.

I had never trusted him in the first place. I had merely wanted him to shut his mouth.

“Kweek, now you can’t call the human above a liar anymore.”

“Kweek, that is different!”

“Kweek, how is it different?”

“Kweek, because you tried to kill dimwit first! Kweek! You were going to kill the last remaining one too and cut off all my limbs!”

Only then did I recall the scene the leader had encountered when he returned.

I had cornered the remaining orcs and dimwit together.

“Kweek, I wasn’t going to kill them. Kweek, if that had been my intention, I would have pushed them into this pit together with you.”

By now, dimwit had probably emerged from the safe pit on the opposite side with Ratel.

“......Kweek, are you saying everything was planned?”

The leader asked in a deeply suspicious voice.

“Kweek, yes. Kweek, what would I even gain from cutting off your remaining limbs? Kweek, killing you alone would still be effortless.”

When I shook my arm, his scream rang out from below.

I felt no sympathy.

Even if I overlooked the fact that he had attacked because he thought I intended to kill dimwit, his later attempt to take my head had likely been nothing more than a choice to eliminate someone threatening his position as leader.

When I stopped teasing the leader, I felt him breathing heavily.

“Kweek, was not killing those three also something you did because you needed them?”

This time, I chose to remain silent rather than answer a question that was not even worth addressing.

Of course I needed them.

I could count on one hand the number of things I had done so far without a purpose.

I saved the leader because it would be troublesome if he died, and if I killed those creatures, more orcs would gather again, and then everything would eventually become as bad as before.

And if that happened again......

“Kweek!!”

While answering the question in my head, I suddenly heard the leader scream from below.

At the same time, his weight grew heavier.

Thanks to the sudden change in weight that made it feel as though my arm might be torn off, my mind understood the situation before my eyes could confirm it.

It seemed that one of the three, the one whose persistence had been particularly extraordinary, had somehow remained behind.

—Kweeeeek!!!

Together with the enemy’s roar, which loudly asserted its presence, the leader began struggling.