The Rite of the Great Warrior
I stopped dead at the message that surfaced before my eyes. For an instant my mind went blank, as if a hammer had come down on the back of my skull.
A Parasite Bug?
A monster I had never seen before. And the name, to begin with, did not sound like anything good. It was only F-Rank, but there was no telling what it might do, so I flung it into the dungeon at once.
Where had it come from? Above? Below?
No. That wasn't it. If a monster I had never once laid eyes on had suddenly sprung out of nowhere, the right conclusion was that someone had arranged it. And right now, there was only one person who could have.
I was turning my head when a face thrust in and filled my vision.
"Did it work?"
Seo Hajun.
"Hnngh."
My body flinched on reflex. I nearly shoved him off at once, and only just stopped myself.
What.
A red cross was set in the two brown pupils staring straight at me.
"Seeing as you didn't burst, I'd say it worked."
The bastard tilted his head this way and that, picking my face apart. He narrowed his eyes. He leaned in a little closer.
"Hhhh..."
He looked unsure.
"It did work, right?"
"..."
He thought the Parasite Bug had taken. He didn't seem to know it had been moved into the dungeon instead of my body.
What kind of trick is this.
I didn't know what the ability was, but between a name like parasite and the way he was examining me as if I were a doll, control seemed the likely guess. In that case... maybe I ought to hold still for now. Whatever this guy was, playing along long enough to learn his aim didn't seem like a bad idea. If he was someone I couldn't run from, then I couldn't run now either. If he wasn't, I could run later. Worth putting on an act once.
The moment I made up my mind to stay still, he suddenly reached out. Thumb and forefinger pried my left eyelid open, and he pressed his own left eye in close.
"......"
Close. Any nearer, and our eyes themselves might have touched.
The silence drew out. Even the sound of breathing, the only thing that had been circling us, receded little by little, until nothing but a heartbeat rang inside my ear. Were our eyes touching, or weren't they? My sense of distance thinned, and every nerve pulled tight upon my left eye. Nothing filled the world but that red cross.
Inside a mind going faint, I bit the inside of my lip, just enough to draw blood. It tasted of iron.
This bastard...
If he kept this up, my body was going to draw the sword before I decided to. How many minutes had passed—no. How many seconds? Stay like this and I might actually lose my mind.
Maybe I ought to just cut his throat right now...
"Bah."
At the same moment, he stepped back. The movement was so sudden I only stared, not even thinking to grab my sword hilt. He clicked his tongue, plainly disappointed.
"Fastest way to be sure would be to go back to the main body and check."
He looked down at himself, tapped the spotless armor with a finger, and shook his head.
"Shame to throw it away, though. This isn't some ordinary nobody. Whose son is this."
"......"
"If you were going to save him anyway, you might've come a little sooner."
He clicked his tongue at me, then turned his head toward where the criminals had been tied.
"I rushed in so fast, scared he'd die, that the side effects are awful. Can't even run a simple check."
I caught the clue in his words and turned it over.
So the main body is somewhere else, and he's controlling this one right now.
He looked at me again and muttered.
"And the bug didn't burst, either."
"Mmm..."
"Well, it must've worked!"
With that, he laughed out loud, all by himself.
"Wasn't the original plan, but I can just do it myself!"
He abruptly started walking. Then he looked back and shouted at me.
"Follow me!"
Following him around, I became certain of one thing. This guy never shut up.
"Oh, this way?"
"Ooh, that's pretty."
"I'm hungry."
He muttered useless things to himself without a pause. I barely swallowed the urge to plug my ears and kept after him.
The actions themselves were repetitive. He put down whatever monster we met on the road, then took out a single small bug. A many-legged thing writhed, was set upon the monster's skin, and sank in as if melting into the flesh, vanishing without a trace. And he kept right on with that disgusting work.
"Curious?"
He suddenly turned and asked me.
"Why I'm going to all this trouble."
"......"
"Nope. Nope."
He asked himself, then shook his head.
"It's an important plan. If I let it slip... ugh, I'd catch absolute hell. Can't!"
Lunatic.
"Oh! You know what an Irregular is?"
An Irregular? As far as I remembered, it meant a special individual among monsters.
...But wasn't that just a boss monster?
"You don't, right? Yeah, you wouldn't."
He nodded, convincing himself.
"To hunters it's nothing but a rumor. Some people think they're boss monsters. Completely different things."
He spun once in a full circle.
"They exist, you know."
"......"
"We're here!"
With his words, the mood of the forest changed. Broken trees stood all around, and the ground was gouged rough.
This is... orc territory.
Orcs. E-Rank monsters. Their physical ability alone was high enough that calling them D-Rank would not have been strange, but they were so instinct-driven and simple that actually dealing with them was not difficult.
This is the destination?
Just then, two orcs came running past in a hurry. Each had a wooden barrel in his hands.
"Gotta go fast! Or we get yelled at!"
"Don't wanna get yelled at. Running!"
Whether the liquid in the barrels sloshed all over the ground or not, the two ran with everything they had.
"Heeh? Some kind of festival?"
The bastard tilted his head. And I learned something new.
So the translation doesn't only work inside the dungeon.
Carrying that unexpected fact with me, I followed him deeper into the forest. The farther in we went, the more orcs there were to see.
How many is that?
Slipping past orcs too numerous to count, we came out into a fairly wide clearing. A feast was underway there. Great hunks of meat roasted over the fire. Orcs pounded the liquor barrels set here and there and howled. They shoved shoulders, threw punches, and drank deep.
At the center of the clearing sat three roughly hewn wooden chairs, and on them three orcs who looked to be the chieftains. All three seemed incomparably stronger than ordinary orcs, but one in particular stood out. Even seated, his eyes were about level with the orcs standing around him, and the muscle laid over his body did not look like muscle at all. It looked like armor.
Is that... an Irregular?
The Rite of the Great Warrior.
A festival the orcs offered to their great ancestors, and to the god of war those ancestors served. It was also a day when orcs, already called ignorant, acted even more exactly as they pleased. If a brawl happened to turn someone into a corpse, they could toss the body into the brush, and everyone treated it as nothing at all.
"Krahaha!"
"Your fist is weak!"
They moved only as instinct led them.
"......"
Amid all that revelry, only one orc watched in silence.
Kratos.
One of the three leaders, he did not so much as touch the drink. He was not enjoying himself. He simply sat still, as if thinking of something.
Time passed, and when the heat of the festival was at its highest, one of the three chieftains rose from his seat.
"Eat! Drink! All of it is for the god of war!"
"Waaaaaah!!!"
Another chieftain stood.
"That we yet live is because the ancestors and the god of war look down upon us!"
"Waaaaaah!!!"
The last chieftain, Kratos, rose slowly.
"Today."
He took his kin into his sight, one after another, and then spoke.
"I will bring out the divine relic."
Silence dropped over the heated gathering as if cold water had been thrown across it. Every one of them stopped what they were doing and, mouths shut, looked only at Kratos.
"...What?"
The first to react was the chieftain beside him.
"You. What did you just say?"
"You heard me."
"Kratos!"
The other chieftain drew his axe and leveled it.
"You dare say you will dig up the Ancestor's Tomb! Do you even know what those words of yours mean!"
"I know."
"Greed has blinded you!"
Kratos nodded, calm.
"Perhaps."
Admitting it, he looked around. Countless kin—brothers—were looking at him.
"How long do you mean to go on like this."
"What?"
"Every year, on the same day, we gather, drink, burn meat, and bow our heads to a god."
His fist closed. The knuckles creaked.
"This god we believe in. Have you ever thought about what it even is?"
"Shut your mouth!"
"Blasphemy!"
"What is it," his voice dropped a register, "that we must believe in a thing we have never even seen."
"Because our very lives were given down to us by the god!"
"Our lives, you say."
A life of being tricked by other races at the slightest chance. Of walking into traps laid by humans. Of not caring when kin died—even when brothers killed brothers.
"Is it not a curse."
"Kratosss!"
The chieftain's roar shook the clearing.
"Do not insult death!"
"A warrior who dies fighting goes to the god's side. How could that not be joy!"
The axe-bearing chieftain struck his own chest.
"Blood spilled on the battlefield is honor. Our dead brothers will fight and eat and drink forever with the ancestors in the Hall of the Great Warrior!"
"Honor..."
Kratos repeated it, low. Then he cast his gaze toward one side of the brush. The corpses of kin who had died brawling in the midst of the festival were piled there like a tower.
"We kill one another, get tricked, and repeat the same mistakes. And because it is honor, that is fine?"
"That is a warrior's life!"
At the answer, given without a moment's hesitation, Kratos said nothing for a while. Then he nodded slowly.
"Right."
As expected. Words would not do it.
"You have forgotten why there are three chieftains."
The other chieftain took up a greatsword.
"So that if one walks a wrong path, the other two may stop him."
"Kratos. We cannot let you lay a hand on the divine relic."
Right...
"I have not forgotten."
And.
"Nor that you will not understand."
Slowly, he raised his fist.
"Today I will bring out the divine relic that proud god of yours is said to have left behind."
The earth beneath his feet cracked and began to split.
"If you want to stop me."
Then stop me with strength.
"Huu..."
Kratos let out a long breath. At his feet, the two chieftains had fallen. One lay sprawled, axe dropped, gasping for air. The other knelt as if embracing his greatsword. Both were alive. He had deliberately stopped short of taking their lives.
In the aftermath of the clash, the orcs who had been reveling in the festival had already drawn far back. In the middle of the wide clearing, only Kratos stood.
"Watch."
He turned toward the Ancestor's Tomb. The moment he stepped forward to reach his goal—
Clap. Clap.
A leisurely sound of applause, utterly out of place, reached him.
"Kind of a weak finish, huh?"
Thuk!
"So I did it for you. Special!"
He turned. From the hand of a human he had never seen, something like tentacles had lanced out and punched clean through both orcs' skulls.
"...Human."
He did not bother asking where the man had suddenly come from. Face twisted hard, he kicked off the ground.
A massive fist slammed into the human's chest. The armor cracked, and fragments fell away.
"Oh. So it isn't only expensive."
"Hup!"
Kratos swung again, and tentacles filled his vision. In the space it took to seize them and burst them, the man was gone. He rolled his eyes and swept the surroundings.
"...!"
The instant he tried to look behind him, three tentacles struck the backs of both knees and his back at once. His body folded hard, and he dropped to his knees. He tried to rise at once, but purple tentacles shot out and bound his arms and both legs.
"Kh!"
He put his strength into them, and the tentacles stretched. They stretched and stretched, right up to the point of snapping—and then more burst out and lashed his body tight.
"Whoa. An Irregular after all, huh?"
"Grrh!"
He let out a sound of open admiration at the way the orc still moved, little by little.
"I'm drawing on the main body's power, so right now I ought to be about C-Rank."
He smiled brightly.
"I like you way too much!"
He took a bug from his robes.
"A host bug, more precious than the ordinary ones. I prepared it just for you, so don't be shy!"
He reached for Kratos's body to set the bug down. He tried to.
Kang—!
The sword Baek Doyun swung struck a thin membrane and rebounded. The membrane shattered with it, and the blast of air shoved the bastard forward.
"Gah!"
"Tch."
Baek Doyun lifted his sword and set his stance.
"Whoa, the artifact's the only reason I'm alive?"
He pulled a necklace with a shattered jewel from around his neck and dangled it. Then, in place of panic or irritation, he looked at Baek Doyun with shining eyes.
"The bug didn't work? How? Teach me!"
"......"