Crunch!
-Grrrk... grrk... grrrrk!!!
"W-what the hell?"
The guy who heard my question
didn’t answer—
he started punching his own mouth, as if to stop it from opening of its own accord.
-Gg... rrk...!
A punch wasn’t enough, apparently.
Veins bulged on both hands as he poured strength into them
and clamped his own mouth shut to keep it from opening.
He was straining so hard I thought his head might burst.
I couldn’t help but be thrown.
"[Honesty]" from that dish doesn’t get blocked like that.
If all it took to keep your mouth shut was to hold it closed yourself,
half the enemies I’ve used that dish on would never have talked.
"[Chef’s Special Sauce]" isn’t a force that pries a mouth open; it alters emotions.
Under normal circumstances,
the very act of trying to clamp your own mouth shut like that
wouldn’t even occur to you.
And yet he’s trying to cover his mouth anyway...
which means he’s enduring the effect of the [Honesty] dish
to some degree.
Damn. How high is his mental fortitude?
No—more than that.
What in the world was he about to do,
that my question makes him lock his mouth that hard?
"When a man is asked,"
the way to get the answer
is very simple.
Srrk.
"he should answer."
"G-ggrrk—!"
I took a step toward him
and knocked away the hands covering his mouth.
That was enough.
"Now. Say it again."
"I... I am the oldest in the tribe. Even Kurdan, the one who was High Shaman, may have been born with greater mana and taken the High Shaman’s seat ahead of me, but he is younger than I am."
"Huh?"
Once the obstruction over his mouth vanished,
even though he so badly didn’t want to speak,
his mouth moved on its own and began spilling the information I wanted.
"Our tribe’s average lifespan is short... so we respect the wisdom of those who have lived long. The Great Chieftain, now dead, often sought my counsel."
"Why are you suddenly saying that?"
"On the day I advised him to make a contract with a demon... the Great Chieftain assigned me a task."
...What?
What did I just hear?
You advised... a demon contract?
The Green Manes tribe,
driven to ruin by that very choice—
the one who proposed it
was you?
It was
this man.
*****
Otherworld beings.
Because of them, the lives that once ran the steppe faced annihilation.
After a long war,
those who had become certain that ordinary means could not overcome this crisis
ultimately—
[Participate in the Great Council.]
Orcs, of course,
and all the peoples who lived upon the steppe, the Orcs’ domain under the protection of the God of the Steppe,
gathered in one place.
When crisis comes, it is the place where all life of the steppe shares its counsel.
For the convening of the [Great Council],
those who assembled there
began to present the measures each had conceived.
-We may struggle for a while now, but our tribe will never be defeated!
A powerful warrior who, at a young age, had risen to Great Warrior of the Green Manes—
Kargara shouted loudly.
-The history of our tribe proves it!
-Grrk, Kargara speaks true!
-If we trust in the protection of the God of the Steppe and continue to fight, the victory will be ours!
Kargara,
and the warriors who followed him—
they insisted on fighting the monsters without letup.
-...Calling it an insistence is generous.
-We are already fighting without stopping, and all that repeats is defeat after defeat.
There were few who lent an ear to that opinion.
In the end, Kargara’s claim amounted to maintaining the status quo.
No such proposal was going to fly.
-The steppe’s territory may simply be too vast. If we gather the tribe in one place...
-That means the spirits we commune with will be fewer and the domain of the God of the Steppe will shrink. Even if the front can be compressed, if our strength weakens, there will be no real difference.
-Then what about this method...
Even though all life of the steppe gathered and put their heads together,
among them,
not a single proposal looked truly useful.
As the council dragged on,
a massive orc who had watched in silence with a grave expression—
the Great Chieftain—
opened his mouth with careful tone.
-...What about making an alliance with the other races?
He who stood at the pinnacle of life on the steppe,
for words like that to come from the Great Chieftain’s mouth—
-Excuse me?
-We have the strength and numbers to run the steppe, and they have the walls and the skill to hold territory that we lack. If the two could be joined... would the result not be quite good?
-...
When the Great Chieftain finished,
everyone who heard him...
fell silent and stared at him, at a loss for words.
-W-well.
-What... should we even say...
The Great Council, which had been proceeding at full clamor,
fell into a heavy hush.
The suffocating silence
stretched on for a long while.
-...Ha ha! Even the Great Chieftain makes jokes sometimes.
The head of the shamans,
High Shaman Kurdan, broke the silence with an awkward laugh.
-A j-joke?
-Ah. Yes. Of course it was a joke!
“Other races,”
he had called them,
but in their world,
“other race” was just one of many ways to say “enemy.”
For absurdly long ages,
they had opposed, warred,
and killed one another.
Between the otherworld beings who had driven them to the brink of ruin
and the other races that existed in this world,
the difference
was only which side was stronger.
As for the depth of hatred...
those two were equal.
-...I see. Is that so.
At Kurdan’s words,
the Great Chieftain seemed to ponder for a moment, then
-Yes. It was a /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ joke.
he said with a gentle laugh.
-I thought everyone seemed worn out by the long council and wished to clear the air.
-Ah! Indeed!
-The Great Chieftain needs to learn how to tell jokes. You spoke so seriously, I naturally thought you meant it...
-...As if that could be.
Thus,
with no real measures forthcoming, the council dragged on.
-...What about this.
The one who had lived the longest on the steppe,
a shaman whose long-accumulated knowledge and wisdom even the High Shaman conceded—
-Borjin?
Borjin spoke.
-This is something I heard when I was very young, from an elder who was then the oldest in our tribe...
-If you were very young, how long ago was that supposed to be?
-According to that elder, among the beings who can intervene in this world... there exist those more mighty than the God of the Steppe.
Having lived the longest span
-...What are you saying?
-The God of the Steppe has long cared for us, but has not given us power enough to survive the otherworld beings. In that case—
and having piled up wisdom to match that span,
a shaman wiser than any—
-serving another might... not be a poor choice.
At those words,
every tribesman bent an ear.
****
-T-that day, our tribe decided to abandon the God of the Steppe.
"..."
-The demon contract required preparation, so it was set for the next day. I, too, was preparing for the contract... and that night, the Great Chieftain summoned me.
"Why... did he call you?"
-F-for the tribe to survive... we could, per m-my counsel, abandon the God of the Steppe. We could abandon Him, but—
As the one who led the race,
as Great Chieftain,
-the Great Chieftain feared that a contract with a demon could bring harm to the tribe.
he had to prepare another method as a contingency.
-At the time, I thought it over-cautious. But I did not refuse the task he gave.
"...Task?"
-T-the reason I was acting alone... was to carry out that task...
What sort of task was it,
that this man would try to hide it at the cost of his life?
Even now,
he is resisting the [Honesty] effect to delay his answer like this?
-After the tribe lost the great war... powerful outsiders had settled on every side.
"...?"
-The head of the shamans had taken the hand of the demon that had driven us to the brink of ruin, and the tribespeople, unable to unite, had begun a civil war...
The conclusion of this
led to a single point.
-For the tribe... no—for the races of the steppe, I judged that an annihilation crisis had arrived.
A herald of extinction
far more certain than the mere loss of a war.
-The time had come to carry out the Great Chieftain’s command.
"What is that task, that—"
I asked, and
his hand trembled as if trying as hard as possible to disobey the order.
-A-a contract with a demon... defiles the purity of the race and may drive our race into peril.
But
that hand hung powerlessly behind his back.
-If an annihilation crisis comes upon the race... by any means necessary—
His hand
went to his back—
-preserve the race’s original form.
Srrr...
Some kind of shamanry must have been placed on it.
An object that had been invisible, fully transparent until now
slowly took on shape.
A large, transparent, spherical object.
How to describe its form—
...an egg?
It looked close to some kind of egg.
[Ingredient Appraisal (Enhanced)]
A transparent egg.
It was so clear that the inside showed faintly through.
[Primitive Orc Embryo]
Dozens of tiny shapes
squirmed within, wriggling.
[The Orcs gained strength through contracts with demons, but in doing so lost the purity of their race.]
[Under demonic influence, brown skin turned a grotesque green, bodies grew larger, hides thickened, and the molars likewise enlarged.]
[Shamans gained mighty mana at the cost of diminished intellect, and warriors gained great strength at the cost of greater berserk fury than before.]
[Of course, their flavor also changed drastically!]
[From the standpoint of those who preferred the original taste, it was a crying shame.]
[And there is one piece of news that would make them cheer, if they heard it.]
[Primitive Orcs, who should by rights have gone extinct,]
[a portion of them have been preserved in a special form!]
[Unlike the current Orc race that has lost its purity through contracts with demons, these are embryos of Primitive Orcs that retain their original purity intact.]
[A race that does not lay eggs created eggs with the help of the Spirit of the Earth. The fetuses within are in a sealed state; they do not grow until the seal is released, and their purity is maintained.]
[An extremely rare ingredient, effectively on the verge of extinction!]
[The bones are thick and the flesh scant, so there is little edible portion, but the taste is not bad...]
"..."
-...Grrrk.
[This specimen bears the blood of Goen, the last Great Chieftain, and is under multiple shamanic workings.]
[If given a suitable environment, one could attempt to culture them and aim for a restoration of the old Orc race.]
A race at the brink of annihilation.
A great egg.
Inside, squirming...
dozens of tiny forms.
They said these folk bear dozens of young at once... right?
I was starting to understand
what this man had been trying to do.
You know,
in those old strategy games that were once popular,
sometimes a situation like this would come up.
When your main base is completely wrecked with no hope of recovery—
you secretly send one worker somewhere else,
build a new base there,
and bet on a comeback.
"Expand."
Unwarped by demonic power—
pure fetuses.
You take those fetuses and flee as far as possible,
raise them there...
and try to raise a new tribe.
Leave the ruined, corrupted homeland of the race,
and make a new start somewhere safer.
Only, in games,
that secretly dispatched worker would sometimes get spotted by the enemy.
In those cases,
well, they usually got hunted down without mercy. Probably.
And
there isn’t much difference from reality on that point.
P-please.
A race facing extinction—
to somehow keep the race’s original form alive,
-t-the tribe’s destruction... is as good as brought about by me. So—
"..."
-no matter what happens... this one task... I must accomplish it with my own hands...!
The method chosen by that old shaman
was simpler than I expected.
-Old ones like me, you may kill as much as you please. The massacre of the tribe’s warriors and shamans—let that be the price of defeat. But...!
According to Ariella,
beasts born to mana are ferocious and proud.
In truth,
the Green Manes could not be forced to submit by ordinary means.
Short of Ariella making them into [Vassals],
as Changsu said, they are the sort to choose death over capture.
Even this man,
despite having eaten the [Honesty] dish,
possessed the mental steel to resist its effect.
And yet—
this very man now
Thud!
bowed his head,
slammed his forehead into the floor hard enough to pile it up, and said,
-Spare the lives of these children...!
By any means necessary,
preserve the race’s original form.
No matter that this was the content of the command—
does “by any means”
include getting on your knees and begging?
