Chapter 63
A hideousness that could never be explained by simply calling him ugly!!
That bastard’s bone structure and musculature were worlds apart from those of modern humans──a new branch in the evolution of humanity!!
“Wow! This is fucking fascinating!”
I forgot all about the situation, my heart pounding at the discovery of a new life-form that stirred my scholarly curiosity.
I might be an archaeologist, but this was a groundbreaking discovery that would endure forever in the history books of the future. It was an academic shock on par with an orca-human hybrid, born when an orca mated with a human, coming ashore to demand its rights!!
“S-shut up!! Who are you calling a half-orc?!!!”
The blockhead’s fucking ugly face grew even uglier with rage as he yelled.
“My name is Tabula!! I am an Einheri who serves the great Heavenly Madness, an immortal warrior!! I am no half-orc!!!!”
“You’re… not a half-orc?”
His words sparked a realization in my mind.
“Then……”
It was an intuition like mud lying beneath the surface being stirred up by a pebble tossed into the water.
At the sensation of recalling something I’d forgotten, I trembled and asked him,
“Then you──wanted to be called a ‘half-human,’ not a half-orc?”
A half-human!
It meant an orc with human blood in his veins, not a human with orc blood.
'I can’t believe this!'
I was painfully aware of my mistake and deeply regretted it.
This was unconscious racial discrimination!
I’d already learned about the discriminatory customs surrounding humans and mixed-blood demi-humans in my conversation with Clara the blacksmith, and even lamented them!
There was no doubt that I was in the wrong.
The things I hated most in this world were racism, commies, political correctness, and professors, yet I’d unknowingly committed a serious act of discrimination against a mixed-blood person!!!!
I tried to imagine how deeply my words must have wounded him.
If he considered himself a warrior of the Horde, how much must he have hated the human blood flowing through his body?
My unconscious racism had denied his identity and treated him as human.
It was an innocent but violent use of language, as cruel as Black children asking an Asian mixed-race kid why they lived in America!!
“I’m sorry, brave orc warrior. Forgive my mistake.”
Having realized my error, I sincerely apologized to Tabula.
“──You are not a human with orc blood in your veins, but an orc with human blood in yours. I will no longer deny that.”
Though we were enemies who could only survive atop each other’s corpses, that was no reason not to respect one another.
─Tremble, tremble, tremble.
Tabula trembled as if moved by my apology. His burned fist clenched tight.
The sight made my heart ache. Just how much discrimination had he endured for even a little understanding and consideration to move him so deeply?
Tabula’s entire life must have been marred by discrimination for his hideous appearance and his race. I could only hope that my understanding would become one of his last memories.
─Glint.
After trembling for a long while, Tabula raised his head.
“……I’ll kill you.”
Tabula’s single eye, the other covered by an eyepatch, filled with fury. The hulking half-human roared as if unleashing all the hatred he’d accumulated over the years!!
“I’LL KILL YOUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!! KITAIAAAAAAN!!!!!!!!!!!!”
“What?!”
I was taken aback by his rage, powerful enough to bring the cave down.
Why was he angry? And why was he calling me a Kitaian?
Was it because my face was exposed now that my mask had broken? I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why Tabula was furious.
Not only was I not from that country, but deliberately using a label colored by someone’s nationality was a stepping stone to nationalism!
Could he really be a goddamn fucking racist? I was bewildered by the ugly sight of him charging at me, veins bulging on his scalp, when I suddenly realized something.
“──Ah. I see.”
He was someone who defined himself as an orc, not a human.
To him, all humans were enemies, monsters, and prey.
Calling me a Kitaian must have been like us humans categorizing goblins as swamp brats, desert brats, and so on.
“But do you know this, warrior of the Horde?”
I took up the Stance of Heaven and Earth and declared,
“If you define your identity as an orc──then you’re no longer human.”
Orcs are monsters.
Monsters are enemies of humanity.
So it’s OK to kill them.
He couldn’t object to such a cruel, emotionless, STEM-style line of reasoning. After all, it was perfectly ordinary and universal for humans to kill creatures that weren’t human.
In that case, the greatest courtesy I could offer him was to lay him to rest as a warrior, at the very least.
Steeling myself, I kept <Burning Hand> active and crooked my fingers at him.
“──Come. This is your grave, pseudo-human.”
“DIIIIIIIIEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Enraged, Tabula charged like a beast that had lost its reason.
Whoooosh!!!
It was a charge that had completely abandoned the disciplined martial arts he’d displayed moments ago. As if to make up for the loss of technique, he moved faster. Tabula’s physical abilities had increased.
─Tingle, tingle.
I held my composure beneath Tabula’s murderous aura.
“But you, you son of a bitch. I told you.”
I’d forgotten in the chaos, but his Kitaian crack had just reminded me.
That bastard had broken the mask my beloved girlfriend made for me.
“You’re dead, asshole.”
I was the one who had every right to be angry, not that bastard. As if my burning rage had taken physical form, the flames around my fist surged even higher.
Fwoooooosh─!!!!
I snuffed out the flames on my left hand and concentrated mana in my right. My right hand blazed with fire like a teppanyaki chef putting on a fiery show.
“Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak!!!!!!!!!”
Whoooooosh─!!!
Tabula approached at superhuman speed and threw a punch. His enormous fist shot straight at my head, intent on smashing it. That was the sort of thing a man mad with murderous intent would think to do.
So──all I had to do was anticipate it and dodge.
─Shwaaash!
I extended my leg and dodged Tabula’s punch. I darted into the gap beneath his fist, created by the difference in our height.
I changed my blazing right hand into a knife-hand and swung it!!
“Berlin’s Red Rain!!!!!”
─Fwoooosh!!
“Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak!!!!”
My flaming knife-hand smashed into Tabula’s flank and cut through it.
There was no sharpness to my knife-hand whatsoever. It was an attack that relied on the flames’ scorching heat and my strength to force its way through. It’d be more accurate to say I smashed and pulverized him.
“K-khhh……”
─Thoom.
Tabula dropped to his knees. Flesh and blood burst from his flank, smashed apart and seared medium-rare.
Splatter, splatter─.
The flank he’d lost to my attack was a mortal wound.
His innards had been smashed and burned. Maybe part of his lung was gone, too. No human could survive in that state. Not even a superhuman or a half-human.
I backed away with <Burning Hand> still active.
“Y-you……!”
Even as he stood on the brink of death, Tabula’s eye was still alive. If I carelessly approached to make sure he was dead, I might fall victim to a last-ditch counterattack.
In nature, a wounded animal is the most dangerous. I didn’t want to get hurt by foolishly trying to finish off a dying bastard.
Whiiiiiish─.
I sensed mana flowing behind me. Tabula and I stared each other down, directing some of our senses toward it.
“Mana of ice flowing in the North,”
Tirsi was chanting a spell some distance away.
“You, king of all currents reigning over the water’s surface. I, the petty king of laws reigning above you. This is the Third Realm of the Four Elements, the Execution of the Frozen Waste──”
Even from a distance, I sensed mana gathering around Tirsi. It was a powerful spell meant to make sure Tabula was dead. Since she could finish him without approaching, Tirsi was better suited to snipe him than I was.
“Kheh. Khehehe……. To think I fell for such a worthless provocation and made such a disgraceful spectacle of myself.”
Tabula laughed like a madman. I stayed alert and kept my eyes on him.
“If you fell for it, it wasn’t worthless, you asshole. Is my head so worthless that it fell for it too?”
I had no idea what provocation he meant, but I said it just to piss him off. Tabula laughed like a lunatic, then suddenly clamped his mouth shut.
Then he stared at me in silence.
“……I’ll teach you something.”
“Spit out your last words, you dumbass.”
What was he going on about when he was dying? What kind of brain did psychos have to possess such feelings that no one else could understand? It was fucking terrifying.
“Kheheheheh. Last words, huh? Those are mine to say.”
Muttering, Tabula suddenly jammed a finger into his one remaining eye.
─Squish!!
“What the fuck?”
The incomprehensible act of self-mutilation sent a chill down my spine. Just like when that lunatic first appeared, a strange, inexplicable revulsion crawled up my back.
Trickle─.
“You’ll regret your arrogant wisdom in Niflheim.”
Tabula, who had pulled his own eye right out, spoke as blood poured from its socket.
“It’s not over until it’s over.”
Fwoooosh!!!
The moment he smiled hideously, a nauseating mana began to rise around us. Would this be what it felt like to have radioactive waste right before your eyes? The black mana stirred an instinctive revulsion in me, and I hurriedly retreated.
“Kheheheheh! Kahahahahahaha!! Was this my fate all along?! Am I, Tabula, to become a mindless beast?!”
Tabula flung away his eyepatch. Where both his eyes should have been, there was nothing but empty darkness.
“But even so!!! I’ll take you all with me!!!!!!”
Blood dripped from his black eye sockets as if a broken bottle were leaking its contents. He raised his dangling optic nerves high toward the sky, as though offering them up.
“Great Madness who dwells in the heavens!! Your Einheri offers you a sacrifice—grant me your blessing to burn my lowly kin to ashes!!”
KWA-BOOOOOOM!!
Black mana swirled around Tabula like a storm. Just then, Tirsi finished her incantation, aimed her wand, and shouted.
“Be sealed in the glacier’s coffin and sleep beneath the sea! <Dominion of Eternal Permafrost>!!”
─Krrrreeeak!!
Three pillars of ice rose from the spot Tirsi’s wand pointed at. The newly formed pillars wove ice together like a coffin, trying to freeze Tabula inside.
Whoooooooosh─!!
“Kahahahahahahaha!!!”
Even in that life-or-death situation, Tabula spread his arms and let out a thunderous laugh.
【You who taste blood, I ask you about berserkers (At berserkja reiðu vilk spyrja)!!!】
“──Fuck!!”
A spell incantation! I realized I was fucked, snatched a spear from a nearby bandit, and threw it at Tabula, channeling the power of Beast Regression into it after shutting off <Burning Hand>.
Shwwwwick─!!
─Kang!!
The spear I threw bounced off harmlessly. It couldn’t penetrate the vortex of black mana. Tirsi’s ice magic didn’t seem to reach inside the vortex either.
【They are called wolf-skins, those who bear bloodied shields in battle (Ulfheðnar heita, þeirs í orrostumblóðgar randir bera;), their spears reddened, ready for war (vigrar rjóða,es til vígs koma)!!!】
I could understand the language that bastard was babbling. Germanic? No, it was older than the language used by the Vikings of today.
'Ancient magic used in the Golden Age!'
A cold sweat broke out. This was no joke; it was truly dangerous. I didn’t know what it did, but it was the sort of magic he’d activated by sacrificing his own eyes. If it went off, there’d be no way to deal with it!
There was nothing to do but stop him.
But──even that was impossible!!
【As the berserkers howl (grenjuðu berserkir), the wolf-men roar and swing their iron bars (emjuðu ulfheðnar ok ísǫrn dúðu)!!】
Tabula finished chanting. The eye that had remained intact even amid the vortex of mana was crushed and burst inside his enormous hand.
【Frenzy (Hamask)!!】
─Fwoosh!
The vortex of black mana stopped. Like a thread cut loose, the mana spinning in its own centrifugal force spread throughout the cave.
KRAAANG─!!
With the vortex that had hindered the freezing gone, the pillars of ice completed their coffin in the blink of an eye. A five-meter-long black ice coffin rose up, completely concealing Tabula’s body.
And then, nothing happened. It was as if all the commotion moments earlier had been a lie.
“……Fuck.”
I took a sword from a bandit’s corpse and stared at the black ice coffin. My heart was beating so hard I felt like it might jump out of my mouth.
──I knew it. The real fight was only just beginning.
Because enemies always came back to life in situations like this? No.
Because there was no way unlucky me would win so easily? No.
It was because that foul, soul-souring presence
was still emanating from inside the coffin.
Krrrk….
─KRAAASH!!!!!
“KyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAA!!!!!”
A huge figure burst out of the shattered ice coffin. It was a bipedal monster with its body covered in thick brown fur.
Its two legs were reverse-jointed, but its straight arms looked human—except for the cleaver-sized claws on its fingers.
Where its eyes should have been were empty sockets, with something black streaming from them. Judging by its viscosity, it was probably blood.
─Thud!
The beast, which looked like a cross between a boar and a wolf, emerged from the coffin, planted all four limbs on the ground, and growled. It was blind, but its nose and ears were fine. For a beast, that was enough.
“……Arthur.”
“I’ll take the front. You support me from behind with magic.”
We said exactly as much as we needed to, no more and no less. Tirsi and I understood each other without needing many words.
Neither of us asked the beast who it was.
“Krrrrrrrr……”
The monster rose with a rumble in its throat. Its empty eye sockets stared at me as if they would never lose sight of me.
I grinned and held out my fist.
“Paw.”
“──KryyyyyyyyyaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!”
The beast leaped.
Blood tears spilling from its empty eyes.
I swung my sword.
Using the fear that threatened to burst my heart as kindling for my fighting spirit.
There wasn’t a hint of hesitation in the murderous intent we turned on each other.
Because the only choices before us were to die or kill.