Chapter 84 One More To Go

Briefly, I mentioned the kind ma'am from the Sville village, educating the orc, as she had educated me. The lesson was that everything had a price, in life, and so, if the orcs' friendship had a price, I'd gladly pay for it as I paid for my food. Again, the language barrier probably prevented the orc from grasping the essence of what I said, but he strongly nodded to my every word—up till some voice yelled out in the rather silent room.

"DO NOT PANIC, MY BRAVE ADVENTURER!" the voice shouted. As it startled me, my eyes promptly darted to my left. A human from among the prisoners felt like giving us a speech. All the orcs were surprised, too, but their eyes were more filled with fiery hatred. "The war is won by us, humans! Do not panic!" The voice spoke quickly.

One of the priorly timid prisoners grew bold and called out to me, it seemed. From their point of view, I was yet another hostage captured by the orcs, and I was pressured to do something against my will. Rapping out all the contents of his speech fairly quickly, the young lad, who was the prince I didn't know of, continued: "Therefore, fear not! They won't dare execute you—or us! I-I speak quickly because, as you must have noticed, they d-d-don't speak our tongue fluently, so they can't understand me…! You must be an adventurer! I don't know who you are for them to… Ah! But fear not! Fear not! We have to—Hagh!"

The prince was kicked squarely in the stomach by the crazy orc. But what was that anyway? By the end of the young man's speech, he only intensely groaned as he was choked by the heavy kicks squarely hitting his chest. He'd be breaking ribs in that process. Grunting again, despite his being beaten to a pulp, the young man still tried to speak.

The crazy orc, who most likely didn't understand one bit of his speech, was right to have shut the man up and kept at it. Well, whatever idea the young human had tried to get across didn't really concern me… though I'll have to admit I was a little curious. "'We have to'…?" I mumbled, echoing the boy's words. The boy spoke, the chief beckoned to his soldier, and the crazy orc went on the move. Now, what? Wasn't that human for me to kill?

After the boy had taken a proper beating, as I expected, the humans wouldn't stop at that. They weren't the kind to. Right next to the boy, there was a knight. Not a soldier, a knight. He, as his young boy was taking his beating, was only clenching his jaws till his teeth cracked.

Whatever feelings were involved here, he was the next to speak up. "My— Prin— Argh!" Stuttering his first words, he missed calling the boy a "prince" in front of the orcs. They were keeping the boy's identity a secret, and there was no asking why. Headbutting the crazy orc's tanned leg, the knight spoke to me, carrying on his prince's will. "Damn you, orcs! They— Young adventurer! Ugh!" the knight was kicked right away, but he had enough strength, plus the willpower that came along with it, to speak more or less steadily. With an orc's shadow over himself, the knight, in between many grunts of pain, spoke and spoke again.

He basically told me that they had a plan. That I mustn't speak any of what I knew. I didn't really know anything that could endanger the human kingdom, and I doubted the first adventurer you picked would either, but well. He told me they had a plan anyway, that they knew what they were doing, and enjoined me never to give the enemy crucial warfare information ever.

After the knight, the prince had recovered enough to speak again. He was a bloody mess, but he managed to pull his weight. He told me they sure had a plan, they insisted on that part, and that his sister would end the war for sure. "The heroes," he said, "from the 'other side' will also come to defeat the enemy!"

The "heroes," huh? A month would come before I met with them. So, even though at the time I didn't know it, the "heroes" he spoke of wouldn't be arriving at the scene anytime soon. The night before, sure, but they wouldn't come yet to fight in the war. Not today, not tomorrow, and not the day after tomorrow. Well.

After the 5th prince of Roerden had gotten his message across, he finally was lying on the floor, painfully breathing and coughing blood and most likely unconscious. All this spectacle I observed with my mouth shut. Didn't the humans understand their own tongue? The orc had called me a "monster." Or did they think it was just an insult thrust at an innocent young boy's face? That didn't matter, the crazy orc handled his job finely. Now, the speech had come to an end, I spoke to the crazy orc and told him I'd take the trash out if that was what was required from my orc friends.

It went on quickly. The crazy orc stepped away, happy to have me massacre the "vile" humans. The human soldiers were already quite defeated, so there wasn't much of a match for me to fight, unfortunately. I didn't know whether I was a fan of such a one-handed battle (it wasn't so fun to either watch or partake in), but as it was my mission, I accepted the chore.

Well, they were weak anyway. The weaker players have to lose, that's the rule. And those who lose, well, they don't have to smile about it, but they must be gone. Walking up to them, I complained there wasn't enough.

The quest indicator read 22/30 enemies dealt with. There were only seven enemies here. As I complained out loud about their thin number, the Warchief spoke up in his calm, chilly voice. He spoke the human tongue to me and said I could always kill more afterward. When he said that, my eyes shot wide open, then I turned to him and said yes. I asked him if he knew about the quest, as he said that, but no reply came from him. "Never mind."

When he said I could always kill more, that there was plenty enough soldier enemies, though I didn't know it, the Warchief already envisioned my joining his army and fighting under him. After the ogre stood up, he called off the meeting. Some orcs left, and some stayed.

With the new monster they "recruited" being the topic of their conversation, they chatted, and my guess was that the tattooed orc was both thanked and congratulated. Why, because he obviously recruited the powerful soldier who would certainly play a grand role in the oppressed demi-humans' victory.

And the butcher stepped into the slaughterhouse. My arms were crossed in front of my audience; I uncrossed them. I didn't mention the humans' silent plea to me, their fellow human (some of them cursed me as a traitor), but they did whisper lots and lots of words to me, telling me all sorts of things.

After I kicked the knight away from his prince and planted the borrowed orcish dagger in the unconscious prince, the boy was briefly seized by anguish, his whole face tensed up, but he quickly went away. After I did away with the soldier to the other side of the prince, the knight called me a "wicked creature." He shouted it so loudly with all the rage you could imagine. I sighed.

Orcs and humans, they kept calling the other side wicked, vile, bad, vicious, and so forth, but in the end, wasn't it all about power and solely power? Wasn't the thing they called "power" about the only thing responsible for all the wickedness spread around the Outside World? I mean, I wouldn't dive into such a philosophical debate with the knight, but I at least mentioned it to him, insisting that he mustn't utter such words. After all, everyone was potentially powerful.

So, if we all stayed ignorant motherless bastards like the knight, I told him, depending on the context and circumstances, everyone can, should, and will be called wicked, in the end. And then, the word unfortunately lost all its meaning. In the present context, both the orcs and humans could brand the other party "evil" and be stupid about it. Fortunately or not, I didn't like unthinking people.

"Who am I to say that, however!" I laughed to the knight. Just then, I remembered I was probably a dummy, too.

The warchief and his crazy orc observed me from a distance, chatting with the human prisoner. Grinning at them, I pointed to the raging knight and stuck my tongue out, my two eyes being x. "This one's already dead," the gesture meant. Braindead, yes. I stood up and killed him as he kept repeating "Curse this life!" After I was done with all the prisoners, the quest read 29 enemies dealt with out of 30. I just needed one more.