Chapter 149 :

Chapter 149 - Preparations

Thanks to my waist being thicker than when I was human, there was not much rope left after securing it around my body.

Because I had tied the rope in several overlapping layers to endure the weight, the already short rope became even shorter.

When I was human, there had been plenty of length left over, but becoming larger made this sort of thing inconvenient.

“One wrong move and you will fall straight down.”

While I was estimating the length of the rock wall and the passage by eye, Ratel approached from behind me and gave an ominous prophecy.

“Kweek, are you warning me in advance? Kweek, that you will drop me if things get dangerous?”

“I am saying it is not too late even now. It would be better for me, who is lighter than you, to go down.”

“Kweek, how do you think that bastard would react if he learned that the human we were dragging around as bait was hiding enough monstrous strength to break rocks with one hand?”

“I think the fact that I can endure your weight alone would already be suspicious enough.”

“Kweek, that is a truth that will not be revealed until I fall. Kweek, as long as nothing unusual happens, suspicion will remain only suspicion.”

Seeing that he still looked displeased despite my answer, I continued speaking.

“Kweek, in many ways, it is right for me to go down. Kweek, at least the dimwit will not act unpredictably out of fear of me.”

When I gestured behind me with my eyes, the leader, who had been suspiciously glaring at Ratel and me as we talked, subtly turned his gaze away.

This time, when I openly looked at him, his face gradually distorted.

“What are you doing right now?”

As our gazes chased and avoided each other like a game of tag, Ratel asked in disbelief.

“Kweek, he kept looking over so often that I thought he wanted a staring contest.”

Perhaps he heard my answer, because the leader ground his teeth and turned his face completely in the opposite direction.

It happened to be the direction where the dimwit had just finished tying the rope around his waist.

Following the leader’s gaze and examining the dimwit closely, I saw the rope and knot hanging somewhat clumsily from his waist.

The way it was tied was not completely wrong, but it was not exactly tight either.

It was just barely enough to support his weight.

Forgetting that he had been avoiding my gaze, the one-armed orc strode toward the dimwit.

Then he immediately smacked the dimwit on the head.

“Kweek!!”

The dimwit’s aggrieved cry rang out after being struck on the head out of nowhere, but I let it pass in one ear and out the other.

More than the dimwit’s pain, the loose knot tied around his waist drew my attention.

The loose knot came undone as he squirmed, so I could not observe it properly.

The way the dimwit’s rope unraveled as if showing off further provoked the leader’s anger.

“Kweek!! Did you decide you wanted to die?! Kweek, this is not tying it, you simply draped the rope over yourself!!”

The leader’s lament rang out as though his insides were bursting.

Feeling the sting of his hand for the first time in a while, the dimwit held his head and complained of pain.

The leader looked pathetically at the dimwit as the latter felt around his skull, as though checking whether a hole had been made in his head.

“Kweek, untie it all. Kweek, and tie it again.”

Once the dimwit had sufficiently confirmed that the back of his head had not caved in, the leader ordered him.

“K-Kweek?”

The dimwit untied the rope again, then began making another knot.

“Kweek, no, not like that......! Kweek! You have to pull the end out there! Kweek!! Give it here!!”

The leader, who had been giving advice from all sides, eventually could not endure his frustration and snatched the rope from the dimwit’s hands.

However, he did not produce anything better than the dimwit had.

Securing the rope and tying a knot was too delicate a process for someone who was not yet used to living with one arm.

The way he handled the tool looked fairly convincing, but beneath his hand, something resembling a crushed moth was being created.

I moved toward the leader, who was diligently lowering the dimwit’s chances of survival.

When I approached behind him, a vein rose on the leader’s forehead.

Ever since he saw the dimwit offer me a fish, his wariness toward me had risen again like a mountain.

Thanks to that, he glared at me with eyes similar to when he had tried to kill me in the pit, but I ignored it and approached the two orcs.

“Kweek, if you have complaints about the dimwit, just say them. Kweek, do not pick fights for no reason.”

“Kweek, does this look like I am merely picking a fight? Kweek, I am struggling so this bastard does not die!”

Calling it an assassination attempt would have been more convincing.

“Kweek. It looks like you are doing your utmost to kill him.”

“Kweek......!”

The leader, who had been about to retort, closed his mouth again and glared at me.

Even to him, his result did not seem particularly worth boasting about.

“Kweek, if you are done glaring, move aside.”

“Kweek, I am not done glaring yet!”

“Kweek, then move aside and finish glaring from there.”

The leader obediently stepped aside and filled the remaining amount of glaring at the back of my head with a sullen face.

I passed the leader and began retying the rope around the dimwit’s waist.

After finishing the amount of glaring he found satisfactory, the leader now watched what I was doing out of the corner of his eye.

“Kweek, you must not do it like that there! Kweek, you have to tie it once more to the right for it to be secure!”

He had many demands for someone receiving help.

“Kweek, is this how it should be?”

When I turned and showed him the result that reflected all of his picky demands, the leader checked it and nodded.

“......Kweek, yes! Kweek, that is how you do it!”

He spoke as if graciously praising me.

Ignoring with one ear the praise that clearly took the dimwit’s gaze into account, I stood up.

“Kweek......!”

Perhaps the dimwit had become used to the leader’s behavior by now, because he likewise fiddled with the lifeline tied around his waist as though the leader’s words were boring.

Even as it rolled around in his hands, the knot did not come loose and maintained its shape.

It seemed that, as expected of a leader, he properly possessed knowledge necessary for survival.

Still, I feel as though I have seen this somewhere before.

It was the moment I tried to lower my head to examine the strangely familiar knot shape.

“Are you not being too kind to someone who tried to kill you?”

Ratel, who had approached at some point, muttered quietly while glancing at the dimwit.

Shrinking beneath that gaze, the dimwit quietly avoided his place.

Watching his miserable back as he slowly moved away, I opened my mouth.

“Kweek, what does it matter? We are both trying to kill each other anyway.”

An openly incomprehensible expression appeared on Ratel’s face.

Had that bastard’s expressions become more varied, or had I become used to reading them?

“Do you not even get angry?”

At Ratel’s question, I briefly wondered how to explain this feeling I had toward the leader.

“Kweek, I think I do get annoyed.”

After all, I had clung to the wall, fallen, and gone through all sorts of chaos, so it hurt quite a bit.

Separate from being good at enduring pain, it had hurt, so naturally I had been annoyed.

However, answering yes to the question of whether I was angry felt slightly ambiguous.

“Kweek, to begin with, from my position of deceiving him in order to kill him and dragging him around like livestock, would it not be strange for me to question why he decided to kill me?”

Besides, as I had already said, I did not particularly think he had done anything wrong.

The leader had merely done what he should as an orc.

“Kweek, that is always how the law of the jungle works.”

Perhaps my calm answer rubbed Ratel’s nerves the wrong way again, because the muscles in his face stiffened further.

“So are you saying you will just let it pass every time that bastard tries to kill you?”

“Kweek, who knows? I do not think that bastard has any opportunities left to kill me.”

Worrying about when a bastard on his way to die would kill me was buying too many worries.

However, Ratel remained serious.

“Can you be certain there will not be a single one?”

Well, perhaps one might remain.

But I had no intention of giving up my life easily.

Opportunities to die had already been overflowing in both the past and the future.

“Kweek, if by some chance that happens, the leader’s death will become a little more painful.”

I would make it that way, if only to set an example for the dimwit.

My answer seemed to finally satisfy Ratel.

His expression relaxed, and the stiffness in his face loosened.

“I should also be careful from now on. If I do not want to meet a painful death.”

He must truly have felt better.

Seeing as he was making jokes unlike himself.

“Kweek, there is no need to worry. Kweek, if I intended to take revenge over such things, you would have exceeded the limit long ago.”

“When I die, will you be beside me creating that painful end?”

He asked in a voice mixed with laughter.

It will take at least a hundred years for you to die, so there is no way I will still be beside you then.

Instead, there would be others who would remain beside him until the day he died.

“Kweek, if I did that, Jing and Lia would not leave me alone.”

Doubt appeared on his face at my answer.

His expression asked why people he had barely known for long would do such a thing.

Were the three of them not that close yet?

Then again, there were still many hardships that Ratel and his companions had to overcome together.

Before they experienced all of that, I intended to somehow slip out from among them.

Before I, too, became part of the original story.

While I swallowed my future plan inwardly, Ratel’s expression suddenly stiffened.

“Kweek, what is it all of a sudden?”

Feeling guilty on my own, I feigned calm and asked him.

I looked at him after he suddenly fell silent.

“......What will you do if it turns out those creatures have accepted you as a companion?”

Was he trying to change the subject?

He was making an absurd assumption.

Relieved that the possibility of his assumption converged infinitely close to zero, I gave a faint laugh.

“Kweek, it is fine. Kweek, that side does not accept this as kindness.”

“That sounds like saying that simply overlooking the fact that they tried to kill you is nowhere near enough to be recognized as kindness by them.”

Ratel turned his gaze back and asked.

I shook my head.

“Kweek, they do not have the concept of showing kindness. Kweek, they might think it is convenient. Kweek, but they will not feel grateful to me or think they owe me.”

That was the conclusion I had reached while living with them.

Even if food was shared with them first, they did not accept any act that could, depending on perspective, look like consideration as consideration.

That was also what made orcs convenient.

They had no useless expectations.

“Kweek, it is like luck suddenly falling from the sky. Kweek, people usually do not think they must repay the sky for such things.”

Well, here, they might say one had to express gratitude to the almighty Emperor Sierra.

As proof, even now, the leader and the dimwit were glaring at Ratel and me with suspicious faces, as though wondering what we were talking about.

They had clearly already forgotten that they had received biscuits just earlier.

A relationship where neither side expects anything from the other is convenient.

“It looks comfortable.”

“Kweek, because we expect nothing from each other.”

Only after saying what I thought aloud did I belatedly realize I had been too honest with a child.

Before Ratel could open his mouth, I handed him the lifeline connected to me.

“Kweek, hold this properly. Kweek, if something happens......at least pretend to pull.”

“You again......”

Dissatisfaction appeared on Ratel’s face at my joking request, but his words did not continue.

“Kweek, lead the way. Kweek, I cannot entrust my back to someone like you.”

That was because the leader interrupted him, apparently deciding that he had recovered enough strength to set out.

Ratel glared at the leader with irritation filling his eyes.

He was probably thinking that he should have cut off the neck of the annoying bastard long ago.

From his position, it did not matter much whether he followed behind the leader or entrusted his back to the leader.

It would only be the difference between a fly buzzing in front of him or whining behind his head.

After looking at me, the leader, and finally the dimwit for quite a while, Ratel began climbing the cliff first, just as the leader had said.

“It would be better than following behind someone dragging his feet in front of me.”

He did not forget to leave behind a final remark to scrape at the leader.

The angered leader immediately climbed onto the wall to chase after Ratel.

It seemed he, too, had realized there was not much meaning in engaging in a war of nerves with a leader who would soon die.

Judging by how obediently he climbed first like that.

Watching his back gradually grow farther away, I gave the leader one final piece of advice.

“Kweek, do not fight the human.”

If you die by mistake, it will be troublesome.

I swallowed the rest of those words and was about to turn away with the dimwit when the leader’s voice stopped me.

“......Kweek, are you truly thinking of entrusting that to that human?”

The leader, who had stopped while looking at Ratel moving away, looked down at me with eyes full of discomfort.

“Kweek, then who should I entrust it to?”

You, who already tried to kill me once?

Perhaps he had a conscience, because he did not make the absurd claim that my lifeline should be entrusted to him.

However, he still glanced at Ratel with a doubtful air.

“Kweek, no matter what, how is a human bastard supposed to endure your weight?”

“Kweek, to begin with, there is no way you could endure the weight of two with one hand either.”

Are you trying to get someone killed?

“Kweek, even so, do you think it makes sense to entrust your life to a frail human?”

Apparently still thinking that his one arm was better than a human, he muttered as though he could not understand.

There was no way the leader knew that, for Ratel, pulling me up with one hand would be nothing.

“Kweek!! What is it? What are you laughing at?”

When I gave a faint laugh, the leader became angry.

No, it was strange.

“Kweek, because the option of that human bastard letting me go does not seem to exist for you.”

At my point, the leader froze.

I jerked my chin toward the dimwit’s lifeline held in the leader’s hand.

“Kweek, you only need to focus on holding the dimwit’s rope tightly.”

Of course, it would be best if nothing happened that required using this kind of auxiliary device.

After freezing briefly, he soon snapped his head away and snorted.

“Kweek, if a mere human bastard dares to do such a thing, I cannot let it pass. Kweek, I will make him pay the price for killing an orc.”

Whether it was a wish or something else, he spoke on the premise that I would die.

Would it not be enough to save me before I fall?