Chapter 167 — Confession
When the leader opened his eyes, a bitter laugh escaped him at the absurdity of his powerless body.
He had lost consciousness so many times today that he could no longer keep count.
Moreover, his last memory before blacking out was of the dimwit hurling something with all his strength into his face.
He had become enraged while chasing the bastard, who was darting through unfamiliar paths in ways he had never seen before, and had pushed himself too hard as he leaped after him.
Just before he fell after losing his footing, it had once again been the dimwit who caught him.
His relief at surviving lasted only briefly.
The moment the leader remembered that the dimwit had saved his life only because he wanted the position of leader, his mood plunged straight back to the bottom.
The leader firmly gripped the dimwit’s hand around his arm.
Aside from the fact that he was the one being held rather than the dimwit, it remained true that the bastard had finally stopped running away.
“Kweek!! You’ve been secretly following me all this time?! Kweek!! And yet you deceived me by pretending you knew nothing?!”
When the leader shouted at him, the dimwit’s eyes darted from side to side.
So you do know you did something wrong?
Satisfied that the dimwit showed at least some sign of remorse, the leader opened his mouth to continue scolding him.
At that moment, the dimwit suddenly squeezed both eyes shut.
What is that supposed to be now?
The leader narrowed his eyes, unable to understand what strange thing the dimwit was doing this time.
Then the dimwit hurled the object he had been clutching preciously in his other hand directly into the leader’s face.
Pop!
With the sound of a small pouch bursting, a horrible smell and cloud of powder flooded his nose and mouth.
“Kweek!! You!! Kweek!! You little...!!!”
The dimwit’s face, visible through the haze of tears and powder, became the leader’s final memory.
The bastard had attacked him without even trying to conceal it anymore.
He must have been regarded as a complete fool.
Feeling wretched, the leader laughed again.
Then again, his body was already old and worn out, something he had forced to keep moving through nothing but fighting spirit and greed.
There had been no reason for him to cling so stubbornly to life after the moment the dimwit tore into his neck.
Had he not survived, he would never have been deceived by that bastard for so long.
Remembering the dimwit’s vacant face helped the leader more than expected.
Perhaps because rage had flared within him, a little strength began to return to his body.
When he raised his upper body slightly, his field of vision widened.
“Kweek?”
Thanks to that, his eyes met a pair of vacant eyes watching him from a short distance away.
It was the dimwit.
“Kweek!!! What are you doing there?!”
The leader wasted the strength he had barely regained on shouting, then collapsed back down.
That damned bastard kept making his heart rise and fall so violently that it felt as though his lifespan had shortened even further.
“K-Kweek...!”
The dimwit also seemed startled by the violent reaction. He jumped and shuffled backward on his rear.
Seeing the dimwit’s pathetic behavior for the first time in a while somehow drained the leader’s anger.
“Kweeek, you idiot. Stop sitting there and get lost.”
The old orc who had once been the leader weakly waved his one remaining arm.
Showing weakness did not suit his temperament.
Especially not in front of the one who had reduced him to this state and could finish him off at any moment.
If you’re going to kill me, then hurry up and do it. Why are you lingering nearby like this?
“Kweek, or at least stop pretending to be a ridiculous fool. Kweek, there’s no need to act stupid anymore.”
His remaining lifespan was already short.
The one-armed orc wished that, for whatever time remained, the dimwit would stay out of his sight.
Or at the very least, remain far away.
But the stupid, cowardly bastard did not leave his side. He was surely waiting for the leader to become too exhausted to move.
He was surely watching him die until he could no longer resist or attack.
The leader’s wildly fluctuating temper ignited once again.
Yes, in the end, this bastard was no different from all the others.
No, he was even worse.
Had he openly coveted the leader’s position and drooled over it from the beginning like the others, the leader would not have needed to feel this filthy.
The dimwit had pretended to be stupid and acted as though he had no ambition.
But in the end, all he wanted was the position of leader.
How truly foolish.
“Kweek, I have no intention of going down quietly.”
The one-armed orc muttered as he slowly pushed himself upright.
The dimwit flinched while watching the sluggish movement.
But apparently it was not threatening enough, because the dimwit cautiously began to close the distance between them.
The one-armed orc clenched his fist tightly.
He had no intention of meekly surrendering the position of leader and dying.
It was too unfair to keep being deceived by the bastard every single time.
There is nothing stopping him from doing the same.
Even if he died, he intended to leave the dimwit with a wound that would remain until his own death.
He would injure him badly enough to leave a scar even larger than the one already on his neck.
Every time the dimwit saw it, he would regret what he had done to the leader for the rest of his life...
However, that hardened desire for revenge soon crumbled once again.
It was because remembering the scar on the dimwit’s neck naturally brought back memories of the past.
The day the dimwit was first born, struggling inside the cave in the cliff.
When the leader remembered the sight of him painfully coughing up blood with his neck pierced through, the anger occupying his mind strangely began to retreat.
Even if the dimwit ended up like that again, it did not feel as though the leader would feel any better.
Just imagining it already made him feel sick.
....I’ll hit him only once.
That should be enough.
Watching him stamp his feet and cry stupidly one more time...
That alone would probably satisfy him.
Afterward, he thought he could die by the dimwit’s hand.
Completely unaware that the leader had reduced his cruel revenge to nothing more than a harmless knock on the head, the dimwit slowly approached him.
The one-armed orc watched as the dimwit drew nearer.
At last, the bastard came close enough to touch if he reached out.
The wait did not last long.
Finally, the dimwit snorted once with a solemn expression, as though he had made a great decision.
Then his mouth slowly opened.
“K-Kweek, y-you should eat.”
The leader’s eyes widened at the stammered answer.
Yes, an answer.
The dimwit was speaking.
The one-armed orc stared blankly at the human food that had fallen before him.
It took him a moment to accept that what the bastard had offered was neither an attack nor a defense, but a single biscuit.
It seemed it would take even longer to understand the intention behind it.
The one-armed orc, who lacked the patience to wait that long, glared fiercely up at the dimwit.
“....Kweek, what is this?”
Are you trying to choke me to death?
At the leader’s question, the dimwit’s eyes rolled around beneath his eyelids.
Unable to understand his intentions and lacking the strength to move, the leader silently watched what the dimwit did next.
As he watched the dimwit stammer through his words, anger rose from the depths of his chest all the way to the top of his head.
The leader knew.
He knew that he himself had told that detestable human that he was not angry about the dimwit’s betrayal.
The answer had come out without much thought, but it had been neither a bluff nor a lie.
At that moment, he had genuinely felt that being deceived by the dimwit did not matter.
Perhaps the belief that death was close had made everything else seem unimportant.
But knowing in his mind that the dimwit had betrayed him and having undeniable evidence thrust directly before his eyes produced entirely different levels of rage.
After swallowing the miraculous elixir called fury, the leader forgot his pain and sprang upright.
“Kweek!! You...! You...! Why are you...?!”
The sentence the leader could not finish contained many meanings.
So it really was your doing.
How could you do such a thing?
And above all, what do you mean, eat? Why do you still possess only that much intelligence even after learning to speak?
Eat?
What kind of idiotic answer was that?
In truth, no matter how intelligent an answer the dimwit had given, the leader still would have become furious.
But he no longer possessed enough reason to judge that.
His feelings had been hurt too deeply.
“Kweek, that isn’t what I’m asking! Kweeeek, why did you throw this here?!”
In the end, only the final question emerged in a proper form.
“K-Kweek, o-obviously, I gave it to you to eat.”
The dimwit spoke as though he still could not understand the question.
Then he rummaged around and laid out the game he had brought from the food storage, further fueling the leader’s anger.
The sight brought back a memory from the recent past.
The strange expression the dimwit had worn while watching him, now unable to catch even a single fish properly.
And once again, humiliation made his face burn.
“Kweeeek!!! What is this?! Are you mocking me now?!”
Remembering the intense humiliation he had felt back then, the one-armed orc shouted.
In the past, that rage would have been enough to make him attack immediately.
But the current one-armed orc no longer had the strength.
He also knew that even if he attacked now, he would not be able to defeat the dimwit.
Yet despite his furious shout, the dimwit neither became angry nor attacked the leader.
He merely blinked.
“Kweek, there’s n-nothing to mock. What am I supposed to m-mock?”
Speaking as though he truly could not understand, the dimwit pushed another biscuit he had secretly taken from Ratel toward the one-armed orc.
More precisely, he was afraid of being struck, so he cautiously nudged it forward with his foot.
After moving the biscuit a handspan closer, the dimwit once again studied the one-armed orc’s expression.
“Kweek, th-the leader is good at hunting. Kweek, if you eat and r-regain your strength, you’ll be good at it again.”
Gaining a little confidence when neither shouting nor scolding followed, the dimwit slowly pushed the biscuit closer again.
The leader no longer looked at the human food.
Instead, he stared at the dimwit’s clumsy face and eyes filled with expectation.
The leader’s anger slowly faded.
Then a pain like being pierced by a blunt arrowhead began deep within his chest.
The sensation, somewhere between agony and a dull ache, soon spread throughout his body.
“Kweek, if you f-forgot how, I can t-teach you again.”
The leader dimly realized what filled the dimwit’s eyes as he imagined that impossible future.
It was affection far beyond what the leader could contain.
At that moment, the dull pain spreading through his body seemed to burst all at once, striking the leader’s head like a shock.
“Kweek, you’ll r-remember soon. Kweek, because the l-leader is good at everything.”
For some reason, the leader did not want to hear the stammering words, so he avoided the dimwit’s gaze.
“...Kweek, you idiot. I can’t hunt anymore.”
“Kweek, w-why? Kweek, because your a-arm hasn’t healed? Kweek, that’ll h-heal quickly too if you eat well.”
“Kweek, you idiot. No matter how well I eat, this won’t heal. Kweek, I’m never going to recover.”
For the first time, they were having a long conversation.
The leader had never known there were so many things one could learn simply by speaking to another.
For example, the assumption that the dimwit looked down on him could never have been true in the first place.
The bastard did not even seem to understand that the leader was in a condition from which he could never become strong again.
It felt as though all the tension drained from his body. As though the sharp thorns surrounding him had finally laid themselves down.
At the same time, a profound sense of relief filled his chest. As though something he had been searching for over many long years had finally returned.
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