Chapter 165 — Extension
“....Kweek, it must have been that important to him.”
The instant he finished speaking, the leader snapped back to his senses.
‘What did I just say?’
Only then did he notice the expressionless face of the human looking down at him.
When he realized that he had once again been swept along by this human and rambled out a strange answer, his anger surged anew.
“Kweek! What I mean is!! I’m not going to sit back and let everything go your way!! Kweek, I refuse to do anything that benefits you bastards!!”
“Impressive. You even know what I want when I don’t.”
Unable to tell whether the response was sarcastic, the leader furrowed his brow.
“Kweek, what nonsense are you spouting now?”
“I’m saying I don’t know what I should do with you either.”
“Kweek, if you don’t know what to do, I’ll tell you! Kweek, let me go right now, then throw yourself down there and die!!”
Ratel’s gaze shifted toward the cliff the leader had pointed at.
The leader had merely been spouting whatever came to mind to anger the human, but when Ratel actually started walking toward the cliff, he could not help but panic.
That was because the human’s hand was still gripping his collar tightly.
“Kweek!! Alone!! Fall by yourself!! Kweek!! Let go of me!!”
“You want me to let go?”
Ratel asked as he held half the leader’s body over the edge of the cliff.
“Kweek!! You lunatic, don’t let go!!”
Ratel rolled his eyes as he looked down at the leader struggling desperately to survive.
“First you tell me to let go, then you tell me not to. I don’t know what you want.”
“Kweek!! I said don’t let go?! Kweek!! Can’t you hear me?!!”
“I’m listening perfectly well. I’ll listen to you this time too.”
“Kweek!! Y-You...!”
The leader was on the verge of hurling curses at Ratel’s shameless confidence, as though he were the greatest listener in history.
“So, out of respect for your opinion, perhaps I should let go slowly.”
Ratel muttered quietly, as though he had never cared about the leader’s condition in the first place.
There was not a single word in that short sentence that did not sound ominous.
The leader had no time to argue.
He could feel the strength gradually leaving the lunatic human’s hand, exactly as Ratel had said.
“Kweeeeeek!!!!!”
The terrified leader tried to slap his hand away, but the fear of falling made even that difficult.
The detestable human merely stared down at him expressionlessly, as though his resistance were amusing.
Faced with those calm eyes, serene to the point of indifference, the leader finally accepted that there was no future left for him except falling to his death.
His body slipped free from the human’s hand, and the sensation of falling began to drag his feet downward.
Am I really going to die this absurdly?
Damn it.
Had I known I would die this pointlessly, I would never have clung to the position of leader until the very end.
In that fleeting instant, the leader’s regret reached its peak.
“Kweek!!!”
With a familiar cry, a green figure shot past Ratel and caught the falling leader.
The leader raised his head and checked the face of the orc who had saved him.
It was the dimwit.
“K-Kweek...!”
His arms were trembling violently from the effort of holding the leader.
Ratel looked down impassively at the touching reunion between the two orcs.
His gaze did not remain on the dimwit for long.
“Kweek, frightening him like that when you never intended to drop him was nothing more than taking out your anger.”
Ratel glared at the prince-turned-orc as he slowly emerged from the small passage the dimwit had burst out of.
“If the dimwit had been even slightly late, I was going to kill him.”
“Kweek, but you weren’t going to kill him right now.”
“....”
“Kweek, if needlessly frightening him wasn’t taking out your anger, then what was it?”
The prince spoke with complete certainty, as though such a shallow excuse would never work, but there was no reproach in his tone.
After stating an irrefutable fact, the prince turned toward the two wary orcs.
“Kweek, you heard him, right? Kweek, he said he had no intention of killing you.”
“Kweek!! You call that reassuring?! Kweek!! Then what would’ve happened if he had intended to kill me?!!”
“Kweek, you probably would’ve died before even realizing it.”
“....”
Both orcs fell silent at the prince’s clean answer.
“Kweek, so relax. Kweek, when you open your eyes, everything will already be over.”
“Kweek? What nonsense are you—”
The leader could not finish questioning the abrupt statement.
Thud!
The prince struck the back of the leader’s neck, and he collapsed unconscious.
“Kweek!!!”
The dimwit screamed at the sudden turn of events.
As always, the prince’s unpredictable actions came without warning.
He was like a letter sealed so tightly that no one could know what lay inside until they tore open the envelope themselves.
Whether it contained good news or bad news.
The cruel part was that either way, they had no choice but to accept it.
* * *
What determined the line between enemy and ally?
The protagonist in the original story had been able to slaughter the orcs without hesitation only because he had more than enough justification to kill them.
They were monsters hostile to humans, lacked the intelligence needed for conversation, and stood in the way of destroying the holy relic.
Everything had told him to classify them as enemies.
But the orcs in the original story and the orcs before me now were different.
No, perhaps they had never been different at all.
Maybe the only difference was how much time I had spent facing them.
Perhaps the leader and the dimwit had always simply been themselves from the very beginning.
It was like tripping over a stone and becoming angry at the stone.
Why did you suddenly appear and obstruct me?
Yet when I looked around, the obstacle had actually been in that same place all along.
I had merely failed to notice it.
When unexpected factors like these intervened, the only way not to lose the path was to keep sight of the objective.
And I was not the one who decided the objective here.
* * *
After confirming that the leader had completely lost consciousness, I approached Ratel, who had silently watched what I was doing.
His unwavering golden eyes moved between me and the dimwit, who had hidden the leader behind himself and was glaring at me anxiously.
Then Ratel walked past both of them toward the opposite side of the cliff.
After creating a distance that was neither too close nor too far, allowing him to observe every movement the two made, he dropped heavily to the ground.
When I silently looked down at him, Ratel was ultimately the first to break the silence.
“....What?”
“Kweek, what do you want to do?”
Ratel furrowed his brow, unable to understand my question.
“Right now, I want to punch you.”
It was a slightly more honest answer than I had hoped for.
“Kweek, not that. Kweek, what do you want to do with those two?”
When I asked again, his mouth twisted faintly.
“What a pointless question. Obviously, I have to kill them. Both of them.”
“Kweek, I didn’t ask what you have to do. Kweek, I asked what you want to do.”
When I pointed out that his answer was wrong, Ratel’s eyes sharpened fiercely.
“What difference does it make? There are no other options anyway. You know that too, don’t you? You were the one who said I had to cut off their heads to gain power.”
That was true.
And now I regretted it a little.
Had I known things would turn out this way, I would have postponed telling him that he could grow stronger until much later.
Or at the very least, I should not have given in to this young bastard’s stubbornness.
Had I refused to listen when he said he would remain here, the situation would never have become this tangled.
Damn it, what good did any of that do now?
Regretting the past was meaningless.
If followed endlessly, that trail of regret would lead to only one conclusion: That I should never have been born in the first place.
“Kweek, you don’t want to kill them, do you?”
I voiced the truth he would never admit even if it killed him.
“I will kill them. Because I have to.”
His face looked calm at a glance as he spoke harshly without confirming or denying it.
But that did not mean he felt nothing.
“Kweek, you don’t have to kill them immediately.”
As if to prove it, he turned his head toward me so quickly that it almost made a snapping sound, like a fish biting bait.
“Kweek, the important thing is that the speed at which you gain strength only needs to surpass the speed at which Dito absorbs the power of the imperial family.”
“Are you saying you can slow down the rate at which that prince gains power?”
“Kweek, yes.”
Though doing so would be no different from abandoning my final safeguard for escape.
“Kweek, it won’t be difficult. Kweek, I merely need to draw him outside the capital for a while.”
“He won’t easily leave the imperial palace, where he can gather the power of the imperial family.”
“Kweek, he will. Kweek, once I reveal what he fears.”
What does he fear?
The question seemed to be written plainly across Ratel’s face, and despite the seriousness of the situation, I let out a brief laugh.
“Kweek, the Seventh Prince, Ran Abiran.”
More precisely, everything I knew.
“Kweek, once he learns that I’m heading toward an imperial family member living at the frontier, he won’t be able to stop himself from coming out immediately.”
Dito was not broad-minded enough to remain still after learning that Ratel could grow stronger just as he could.
He would probably have no choice but to move personally and cut off Ratel’s breath before Ratel could absorb that power.
He was someone who had hidden himself for many long years in order to absorb Rasia’s power.
He preferred certain victory over an uncertain gamble. Though he would never want to admit it himself.
He would undoubtedly come running to finish off Ratel, whose superiority he had already confirmed once.
At the same time, my life would also be targeted, despite having finally been declared dead.
“You think something like that will make him move?”
Ratel asked, still looking unconvinced.
From the perspective of someone who always made reckless choices, it might have been difficult to understand.
“Kweek, but you’ll have to endure the fact that this will make the journey far more exhausting and dangerous.”
When I spoke as though warning him, he nodded with a slightly dazed expression.
“Kweek, and do your absolute best to keep me alive.”
The bastard had been nodding quietly, but his neck abruptly stopped moving.
“Kweek, keep nodding. Kweek, why did you stop there?”
“You said something similar before. You said you’d help me, so I had to keep you alive.”
Yes, I had.
“Kweek, that was only a temporary alliance.”
“It was temporary?”
He raised one eyebrow again.
“Kweek, yes. But this time, the validity period is somewhat longer. Kweek, it lasts until you defeat every member of the imperial family and I can live in this world without worrying about anything.”
In other words, if he wanted to shorten the contract period, he would have to fight with everything he had.
I lowered my voice as I said it.
It was meant to be a solemn resolution, but Ratel merely responded with a light, breathless laugh.
“I think this every time, but for someone who says he doesn’t want to die, you wager your life far too easily.”
“Kweek, and for someone who keeps receiving my help, you complain far too much.”
And who was he accusing of wagering his life easily?
“Kweek, I always wager my life on the path with the highest chance of survival. Kweek, until now, that path has simply happened to be the one where I help you.”
He stared at me with an expression of complete incomprehension.
“Kweek, you’ll understand soon.”
No matter how much I deceived this protagonist or made his life miserable, circumstances almost always ended up turning in his favor.
Because no matter what anyone said, you were the one most loved by this world.
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