Chapter 160 :

Chapter 160 - Villain

I do not agree with the idea that people can understand others.

There are countless cases where people do not even understand what feelings they themselves have, so how could they understand a completely different being?

That is why I also do not believe there is such a thing as a choice made perfectly for the other person.

In the end, even a choice made for someone else can only be decided from one’s own position.

In that sense, this was not consideration for the leader, but hypocrisy for myself.

If he was going to die anyway, then at least he could die without knowing that he had been betrayed by the dimwit he cherished most.

Well, that was also cleaner and more convenient.

“Kweeek, biting into your neck while you slept was far too easy.”

“....Kweeek, why reveal the truth now?”

The leader asked, with a face that seemed much more at ease for one directed at a liar.

Trying to erase the discomfort caused by that irony, I opened my mouth.

“Kweeek, because the protagonist bastard is extremely narrow-minded.”

“Kweeek, what did you say?”

The leader, unable to understand my mutter, asked again, but I quickly changed my words.

“Kweeek, I also did not want my head to fly off by a human’s hand. Kweeek, in other words, that also means I do not have much time. Kweeek, I also wanted to finish things quickly and leave before that fellow noticed something and came back.”

Making up a plausible lie was not that difficult for me.

As long as there was a skeleton to attach flesh to, I could continue a lie or two as much as I wanted.

Fortunately, I already had more than enough experience deceiving Ratel.

The dimwit seemed quite flustered by the variable of my false confession, and only looked back and forth between me and the leader, unable to act rashly.

“Kweeek!!”

Only after the leader charged at me did the dimwit move one step late.

The dimwit hurriedly tried to grab the leader, but this time, he could not stop the thoroughly excited one-armed fellow.

Thanks to that, I had to narrowly avoid the enraged leader’s body slam.

The dimwit, anxiously looking back and forth between the leader rolling on the ground and me, soon bit his lip and turned away.

I checked the direction the dimwit was heading.

Fortunately, the fellow did not run away.

Instead, he charged toward the dead end.

Yes, that is how it should be.

Seeing the dimwit move exactly like in the original story, I felt relieved.

Then I grabbed the leader, who charged at me again.

“Kweeek!! Do you know what I almost did because of you?!”

“Kweeek, who knows? Did you almost kill the wrong person?”

At my sarcasm, the even more excited leader struggled violently.

It was the fiercest reaction the fellow had shown until now, but it was not to the point that I could not block it.

Rather, because his movements became simpler the more excited he was, all I had to do was press down on his joints whenever he put strength into his body to swing his arms.

The leader, whose movements had been restricted, seemed to have had the fear of his neck being bitten awakened again.

The fellow stopped attacking me and began struggling desperately to protect his own neck.

Though the fact remained that neither had much meaning.

I watched the fellow struggle for a moment.

Because this would probably be the last time I saw him alive.

If the dimwit became certain that the leader would die before his eyes, he would surely attack the leader.

After all, he was the fellow who had continued acting like an idiot while enduring all kinds of humiliation until now for that sake.

Once the mask he had painstakingly pressed down and worn came off, his desire would also be unveiled.

And cutting off the neck of the fellow who devoured the leader would be Ratel’s remaining role.

I opened my mouth toward the fellow, who did not stop struggling until the end.

“Kweeek, how do you feel right now?”

At my question, the leader stopped struggling.

It did not seem like a change meant to answer my question.

Because his eyes were saying it.

What is this madman talking about?

“Kweeek, what is this madman saying now?”

The leader immediately proved that my expectation had not been wrong.

Well, asking how he felt right after confessing that I had tried to kill him did seem like a pretty psychotic question.

But it would be strange to simply press down on the leader in silence until the dimwit reached the end of the path.

I made the question more specific.

“Kweeek, I am asking whether you are relieved that your enemy is me, not the dimwit.”

This question did not seem to look purely insane.

The leader’s eyes wavered.

It was a short and simple answer.

Yes, he was a fellow who would die anyway.

The last emotion he would bear would be hatred.

There might be no need to add betrayal to that.

I still did not think Ratel’s argument was right.

Because I would never know until the day I died what the best choice for the leader was.

And I had no intention of thinking about it any further.

I turned my gaze away from the quieted leader and looked at the dimwit, who had reached the end of the path.

The fellow was also staring at me and the leader with unreadable eyes.

I shrugged at him as if telling him to do whatever he wanted.

This should be enough of a stage prepared for you.

Go ahead and move however you want.

Of course, he would have to bear what came after by himself.

* * *

From the moment the dimwit first entered the passage and chose the right path, the options he could choose to avoid Ratel and me were narrowed down to two.

One was the option of continuing straight to the right.

Even I did not know what lay at the end of it.

Seeing as the dimwit in the original story had not chosen it, I could only guess that there was not much there advantageous to him.

The other was the path the fellow chose in the original story.

Well, strictly speaking, it was the path he chose to send Ratel away.

In any case, this time he would be there too, so dividing it like this did not have much meaning.

I watched the dimwit’s back as he ran urgently, then struck the ground hard twice.

Startled by that sound, the fellow flinched and stopped walking.

In the dimwit’s eyes as he turned back to look at me, there was anxiety and shock.

As if he had noticed what my action just now meant.

It was judgment so quick it almost made me laugh hollowly.

To think the leader had watched a bastard like that from birth until now and only known him as the dimwit. Something must have covered the leader’s eyes.

Whether that was his heart, weakened because it could not overcome the years, or a bond between the two that I did not know about.

Either way, there was a high chance that it belonged only to the leader.

I grabbed the leader, who was in the middle of paying dearly for his one-sided love, and retreated a little.

At the same time, the floor where the dimwit had been standing collapsed in an instant.

The terrified fellow hurriedly stepped back and avoided falling.

The dimwit somehow managed to keep his balance, but when Ratel appeared from beneath the collapsed floor, he ended up sitting down on the ground.

Being able to appear at just the right time was largely thanks to the dimwit.

The inside of the orc cave, like an anthill, was connected by maze-like passages.

Among them, some existed for the very purpose of collapsing.

The food storage was the most important place after the center of the cave, and instead of letting that place be submerged in water, they sometimes collapsed one passage to prevent flooding.

The dimwit in the original story used this quite well.

The fellow knew that directly beneath the passage leading to the food storage, there was another passage that had already been used like that once.

He also knew that reopening a once-collapsed path was not difficult.

Though he probably did not know that he was not the only one who knew that.

Ratel, who had collapsed the floor beneath us that would have been the ceiling to the fellow, scanned us rolling on the ground with his eyes.

“It looks like that one does not have much left either.”

At Ratel’s mutter, I turned my head toward the leader beside me.

Perhaps unable to withstand the shock, or perhaps because he had been overexerting himself with what little stamina he had left, the leader was rolling on the ground unconscious.

I grabbed the back of the fellow’s neck and pulled him closer.

At Ratel’s unexpected appearance, the dimwit, who had been trying to approach the leader, could not hide his panic.

It was understandable for him to be in despair, since he had realized that the escape route he had saved until the very, very end had been blocked from the beginning.

“Kweeek...!”

The dimwit cried at me in an aggrieved voice as I casually brushed myself off and stood up.

Even so, he did not charge at me or the leader.

He was probably busy watching Ratel’s reaction, or he remembered the words that I needed the leader’s neck.

Maintaining the status quo like this without eating the leader right now was the method that would allow the fellow to survive the longest.

So that is how it is.

Without needing to think any further, I dragged the leader toward the cliff.

“Kweeek...!”

Perhaps because even at a glance it did not look like I was taking him somewhere good, the dimwit hurriedly followed me.

Reaching the edge of the cliff, I threw the leader’s limp body down and let it hang over the edge.

Then I met the dimwit’s eyes, which were shaking with anxiety.

“Kweeek, this is your last chance to become the leader. Kweeek, there is no reason to deliberately leave rotten food behind. Kweeek, if you do not eat him now, then I will simply kill the leader like this. Kweeek, as I said earlier, I have no desire to risk my life just to become the leader.”

To disguise my bluff as truth, I pushed the leader’s body even farther outside the cliff.

“Kweeek!!!”

The terrified dimwit came closer.

“Kweeek, will you become the leader now, or will you watch the leader die and then die by that human’s hands?”

I narrowed the choices to two so the fellow would not need to rack his brain.

The dimwit’s eyes shook, unable to find their place.

With Ratel behind him and me in front of him, the fellow caught between us obediently accepted that he had no other options.

With a face layered with resignation, fear, and anger, the direction he chose was the cliff edge where I and the leader were.

I quietly watched the dimwit stretch his hand toward me, then pulled the leader, whom I had been holding out as if about to drop him beneath the cliff, back toward me.

It was at that moment.

The eyelids of the leader, who had not moved at all, opened.

I felt strength enter the leader’s body as he opened his eyes, and soon the fellow raised his arm while still held by me.

Making my lowered posture in preparation for an attack seem pointless, the leader’s raised hand did not head toward me.

What the leader grabbed was the dimwit’s collar.

The fellow used me as a lever and put strength into his arm to knock the dimwit over.

Even a passing idiot could tell that it was not an action meant to attack.

The same was true of the next kick delivered to the fellow, who was pushed back after failing to withstand the shock.

And the final shove toward the dimwit, who had been pushed toward the dead end.

It was not an attack.

It was salvation.

A way to let the leader escape from me and Ratel.

Otherwise, there would be no reason for the fellow to turn back and charge at me while leaving the final blow unfinished.

A curse came out on its own at the desperate face of the leader charging at me with his teeth clenched.

Damn it, it seemed it would have been better if the leader, fallen into despair, had given up on fighting the dimwit instead.

Better than watching his meaningless struggle.

The dimwit, who had been watching me and the leader, seemed to have quickly finished judging the situation.

After a brief hesitation, the fellow began climbing down the cliff just like that.

I could not watch him for long.

Because of the leader, who did not miss the opening and charged at me.

There was no way the leader did not know this was a fight with no chance of victory.

He was a fellow who had never even dreamed of attacking me unless he was certain I could not move.

Nevertheless, the leader charged in so violently that it seemed reckless.

And this recklessness of his heightened my unease.

Because it meant his goal was not to defeat me.