Chapter 215

Growth

I like this old man.

Karath admired the courage it had taken for the village chief to throw away his own life in an attempt to protect the others.

Truthfully, Karath had expected something like this from the moment he decided to save them from the knights and soldiers.

From a human perspective, Karath and his companions were monsters.

Even if the humans they had slaughtered were the ones tormenting the villagers, they were still fellow humans.

There was no reason for the villagers to immediately view Karath’s group with goodwill.

That was why he had waited rather than speaking to them at once.

He wanted to see how they reacted.

If they had tried to sacrifice one of their own villagers to save themselves, or abandoned their companions and fled alone, Karath would have turned around and left without a second thought.

Nineteen years had passed since he was reborn as an orc.

By now, abandoning family or companions to save oneself, or offering them as sacrifices, had become something Karath found utterly disgusting.

“But do not worry. I am not indifferent.”

That was why he smiled with genuine approval and spoke as gently as he could to the courageous old man.

“...”

The village chief merely stared at him, his face completely drained of colour.

“...”

For some reason, the front of the old man’s trousers was also becoming noticeably damp.

Apparently he had wet himself.

Karath kept the subdued villagers restrained until they had calmed down enough to think clearly.

Once they were released, the village chief immediately prostrated himself on the ground again, just as he had done before the knights.

“Wh-what do you intend to do with us?”

“Old piss...”

Karath stopped himself.

“No. Village Chief. Do not worry. I have no intention of killing you.”

Karath had already spoken several times in the human language while trying to calm them, so none of the villagers reacted with fresh surprise at hearing an orc speak fluently.

“I simply intend to take you into our territory.”

The moment he explained his goal, whispers spread among the villagers pressed flat against the ground.

“H-he’s definitely taking us away to eat us.”

“Y-yeah. If he kills us here, the meat will spoil on the way back. He wants us fresh.”

“F-freshly delivered from the source... Is he some kind of gourmet orc?”

Their voices were extremely quiet.

Unfortunately for them, an orc’s hearing was excellent.

“...I can hear all of you.”

“Hiiiik!”

“W-we’re sorry!”

“We have committed a crime worthy of death!”

The villagers, who had already been practically glued to the ground, somehow pressed themselves even flatter.

Another few sentences and they might start digging underground.

Karath could not help wondering where all the courage from earlier had gone.

Perhaps that courage had only appeared because they had completely abandoned hope of surviving.

Now that Karath’s behaviour had given them even the slightest chance of living, their feelings had changed.

“Haa. We do not eat human flesh.”

“W-we misspoke.”

“W-we never thought anything like that.”

Yes, of course.

Karath almost clicked his tongue.

They could at least have tried to lie convincingly.

“Th-then why do you want to take us with you?”

The village chief managed to gather himself enough to ask the important question.

He might have wet himself, but he still possessed more courage and experience than most of the villagers.

“Because we need your skills. From what I saw, some of you know how to make glass and candles.”

“I-I see...”

Relief and disappointment appeared on the chief’s face at the same time.

Karath could guess what he was thinking.

Relief because they were not about to die.

Despair because they expected to become slaves again.

“Do not worry. I am not saying we intend to work you like slaves, the way those men did.”

“Wh-what do you mean?”

“I understand the importance of skilled labour.”

Karath looked across the villagers.

“Making glass and candles is difficult and important work. So is making clothing. So is farming. Without people who possess those skills, society cannot function properly.”

The villagers stared at him with eyes so wide they nearly popped out of their heads.

Apparently hearing such words from an orc was difficult for them to process.

Karath felt slightly like a performing animal in a zoo.

But humans possessed deep prejudices toward orcs.

There was little he could do about ignorance.

Ignorance itself was not necessarily a crime.

“Is it strange to hear an orc say something like this?”

“N-no!”

“Not at all!”

Knowing better and still behaving that way, however, was another matter.

Karath could forgive their first mistake with his own considerable patience.

He could not demand that every other member of the alliance do the same.

“Then get used to it.”

His voice became firmer.

“Contrary to what you humans believe, orcs, goblins, and wolffolk are not mindless monsters.”

“W-we understand.”

“We will be careful.”

The villagers swallowed nervously and nodded with trembling faces.

Karath had not intended to frighten them this badly.

Still, perhaps this was better for now.

Once he confirmed they were listening to every word, he returned to the main point.

“As I said, we understand the value of skilled work because we also understand the limits of our own technology.”

Karath pointed toward the corpse of the knight he had killed.

“We do not consider artisans beneath us, nor do we call their work trivial labour like that idiot did.”

He deliberately paused.

Several villagers swallowed audibly in the silence.

“So we wish to purchase your skills.”

Karath continued once he had their complete attention.

“We do not use money, so I cannot offer wages in coin.”

The villagers stiffened.

Karath raised one finger.

“In exchange, I can promise you a safe place to sleep every night.”

A second.

“And three proper meals every day.”

It was an absurd employment offer by the standards Karath remembered from Earth.

He sounded like the owner of an exploitative little company trying to present bare survival as generous compensation.

Karath remained perfectly confident.

Compared with the conditions suffered by serfs and slaves in this world, it was an excellent offer.

“The decision is yours.”

Karath folded his arms.

“I will not drag you away by force.”

At first, the villagers merely watched him cautiously.

When neither Karath nor his warriors moved, they slowly gathered together to discuss the offer among themselves.

“D-do you really think he means it?”

“Wouldn’t it be better to go? He said people like us are valuable.”

“You want to trust an orc?”

“He isn’t like any orc we’ve heard about. Even the nobles from my old territory couldn’t speak as sensibly as he does.”

They whispered as quietly as possible.

Karath heard every word.

“We have nothing to lose anyway, do we?”

“If we stay, we either die to monsters or continue living like Viscount Magos’s slaves.”

“If both choices are terrible, I would rather take the one that at least has a chance of being better.”

Fortunately, the discussion moved in a favourable direction.

After a short while, the village chief stepped forward.

“We will follow you, O-Orc... my lord.”

Karath had already heard enough to know their decision, but he still smiled at the result.

The village chief shuddered violently.

Karath had no idea why his smile produced that reaction.

“You made the right choice.”

Then he frowned slightly.

“And please stop calling me ‘Orc Lord.’ Hearing it makes my skin crawl.”

“Th-then what should we call you?”

“Just call me Grand Chief from now on.”

There was only one Grand Chief.

There would be no confusion.

Chapter 216

Growth

“Destroy all the houses.”

“Yes, Grand Chief.”

Once the villagers had formally agreed to follow him, Karath gave the order.

The alliance warriors immediately began demolishing the settlement.

“D-do we really need to destroy them?”

The villagers had already packed only the bare minimum they needed for travel.

They watched their homes being torn apart with obvious confusion.

“We are making it look as though monsters attacked and killed everyone here.”

“Ah... Then we’ll help.”

One villager glanced toward the bodies of the knights and soldiers.

“What about those corpses?”

“Leave them.”

Karath looked over the dead.

“If monsters attacked this place, it would make no sense for them to carefully strip off the armour afterward.”

He pointed toward the spreading blood.

“And the smell will attract monsters soon enough. They will eat the bodies and make the scene even more convincing.”

“Understood.”

After hearing the explanation, the villagers joined the alliance warriors in destroying the homes where they had lived.

Their emotions were complicated.

These crude houses had still been their homes.

They had survived here together.

Now they were tearing down that refuge with their own hands.

But there was something else weighing upon their minds.

Karath.

An orc, supposedly one of the monsters of the Grimwood Mountains.

Yet everything he did seemed carefully planned.

His reasoning was logical.

His decisions were deliberate.

In some ways, he reminded them of human nobles.

No.

Compared with the nobles they had actually known, Karath seemed considerably more intelligent.

“Then let’s leave.”

With the villagers helping, cleaning up the settlement took little time.

Various traps had been placed around its outskirts to defend against small monsters.

Karath deliberately left them untouched.

The blood of the soldiers and knights would soon attract monsters from the surrounding area.

Those creatures would trigger and destroy the traps with their own bodies, making the aftermath look even more like a genuine monster attack.

The group had been walking for some time when one of the former villagers cautiously approached Karath.

“G-Grand Chief. May I ask something?”

The young man looked as though he were apologising merely for existing.

“Ask.”

“Wh-what would you have done if we had refused to follow you?”

The other villagers immediately looked horrified.

Several tried to stop him, clearly wondering why he would ask such an unnecessary question.

“Do not worry.”

Karath answered calmly.

“If you had refused, I intended to leave you here.”

They were pitiful people who had already suffered enough just to survive in the Grimwood Mountains.

Karath had felt no particular reason to kill them.

Nor had he believed leaving them alive would expose the alliance.

Three knights and seventeen soldiers had died in their hidden village.

Naturally, Viscount Magos would eventually send another force to discover what had happened.

Even if the villagers told those investigators the exact truth, would Magos believe them?

Karath doubted it.

Orcs, goblins, and wolffolk, creatures humans regarded as monsters, had appeared from the forest.

They had slaughtered only the knights and soldiers.

Then they had left the helpless villagers alive.

It sounded like an absurd excuse.

The moment Karath intervened, the villagers’ position had effectively collapsed.

They had only two realistic futures.

Join the alliance.

Or eventually die.

Karath had understood that before entering the situation.

There was no need to explain those unpleasant details now.

He simply told them that he personally had never intended to kill them.

“...”

The villagers looked up at Karath as he rode on Buddy’s back.

Some seemed moved.

Others still looked unsure whether they could truly believe him.

“SKREEEE!”

A sudden scream tore through the sky.

The villagers flinched violently and looked upward.

“Hiiiik!”

Three wyverns were circling overhead.

Several of the more timid villagers rolled their eyes back and fainted.

A few others wet themselves where they stood.

Yet despite the terrifying monsters approaching from above, Karath, the orcs, goblins, and wolffolk showed no concern whatsoever.

“I raised them.”

Karath glanced upward.

“Do not worry.”

The wyverns were enormous and impossible to hide, so he had deliberately left them waiting some distance away while approaching the human settlement.

“Y-you r-raise wyverns?”

Naturally, the villagers found the fact that Karath treated wyverns like domesticated animals far more astonishing than the practical reason they had been kept away.

Karath had to wait until the humans calmed down before the group could move again.

Escorting nearly thirty civilians through the Grimwood Mountains should have been dangerous.

In practice, there was little threat at first.

They were still travelling through the outer region.

Most monsters were too busy fleeing from the wyverns to even consider approaching.

For the first two days, rather than fighting off monsters, Karath’s group occasionally had to go hunting simply to obtain enough food.

After around three days of travel, however, they began entering territory inhabited by larger monsters.

From that point onward, some fighting became necessary.

Even then, there was little difficulty.

Karath and the alliance warriors were all elites.

Protecting nearly thirty civilians while continuing the journey did not seriously hinder them.

If anything, watching Karath and his warriors casually cut down medium and large monsters only deepened the villagers’ growing awe.

Do not ever provoke them.

That became the shared conclusion of every former villager.

And so, entirely without intending to, Karath spent four days thoroughly planting fear and reverence in the minds of his new human followers.

At last, they reached the easternmost village from which the alliance had originally been conducting its expansion.

Karath looked toward the humans travelling behind him.

“From here onward, you are inside the territory of our alliance.”