chap 14 9

“...Is it fine?”
“If you decide you wanna see that grandpa again, you should go see him. That’s what Yume thinks.”
“I’ll think about it.” Shihoru’s grip tightened. It was very warm.
By the time she thought she couldn’t fight the drowsiness any longer—Yume had already fallen asleep.

 

1. Solitary
The man had no name.
Because he was alone. He had no need for a name.
The man had no face.
He wore a wooden mask. No one knew his true identity.
—Maybe.
“So... hungry...” he murmured.
It was a quiet night.
The masked man stood before a certain farm.
There was a farmhouse with a straw-thatched roof, a storehouse with a straw-thatched roof, and finally a barn that, you guessed it, had a straw-thatched roof. It was quite an impressive farmhouse. The farmhouse was large enough that two, maybe three, families could live there, and the fenced fields were quite wide.
“Okay... Guess I’m doing this.”
The masked man headed towards the barn. No, not just the barn, the great barn. Do barns not get called great? What would a great barn be?
Regardless, the moment the masked man put his hand on the door of that barn which was larger than the farmhouse, “Wow,” he whispered to himself.
It was not locked. Was it going to open? This whole area, it was nothing but farmhouses. Was this just some sleepy farming village, so they were careless? Or had they just forgotten to lock up?
He opened the door, doing his best not to make a sound.
When he entered, there was an animal stench. The man’s mask was handmade, and he had, of course, included mouth and nose holes. To survive using his five senses to their fullest, that was the wild masked man’s strong style.
The barn had windows, and they were open. Thanks to that, it wasn’t pitch dark. The masked man’s vision had been sharpened, and was decently good even at night. That let him move around the barn freely.
There were three of the cow-like ganaroes, and two small but sturdy horses. The ganaroes were one to a pen, while the horses were all together in one, but all the animals were keeping quiet.
There was also a pen where straw was laid out, or more like piled up, but no animals were visible inside.
What was this pen for? It was wide. Cows, maybe? There were more than ten, probably around twenty, sheep clustered together.
One of the horses whinnied, making its lips flap.
The masked man jumped, but he wasn’t scared. Not at all. You think he’d get scared so easy? You moron.
The horses had their ears perked up and were looking towards the masked man. Though they were still cautious, they hadn’t decided he was a suspicious individual. Foolish livestock. So docile and wellbehaved.
The sheep caught his attention. But they were a little too big. The masked man went in deeper.
There was another low, wide pen. Birds. It was full of them.
The man crouched down, put his hand into the enclosure, and smiled a little beneath his mask.
“Dadehhoes, huh? They’re nice and plump.”
Their down was ash gray, and they resembled ducks. Flightless poultry. No, that wasn’t quite it. The orcs clipped their wings, rendering them flightless. They sometimes crushed their throats, leaving them unable to squawk, too.
These dadehhoes were awfully quiet. They must have noticed the masked man, but they were clustering together and sitting still. These had to be squawkless dadehhoes.
“I’ll help myself to one.” The masked man reached into the pen. He tried to catch a dadehho.
At the last moment, his hand stopped short.
He stood up and turned around, gripping the hilt of the katana slung over his back with his right hand. He didn’t draw it.
“...Was it my imagination? No...”
The masked man looked around the building.
From the pen that had nothing but straw piled in it—or so he had thought—there was a face sticking out.
What was it?
Human? No.
But probably not orc, either.
“Gumow, huh,” the masked man muttered in a low voice.
The apparent gumow said, “Zugebeshy...” or something like that.
It was nonsense, of course. And wait, what was it doing here, anyway? This was a livestock barn. Did it live here? Happily, with all its livestock friends?
Well, maybe that wasn’t impossible.
“Gumow” was a catch-all term for the offspring produced when an orc man forced a human woman or a woman of another race bear his children. Their position in society was low. To be blunt, they were discriminated against.
The masked man kept hold of the hilt of his katana with his right hand, raising the index finger of his left hand and bringing it to the mouth of his mask.
“Shh... You know what that means, right? Keep quiet. Got it?” The gumow was frozen stiff. No reaction.
No... maybe it was thoroughly terrified, and couldn’t respond?
The masked man clicked his tongue. “This is going nowhere...” Hmm, or is it? It’s fine—maybe? Yeah. Sure.
The masked man crouched down again. Out of caution, he didn’t move his hand from the hilt of his weapon, and he reached inside the pen with his left.
The dadehho he grabbed by the throat let out a cry of, “Gweh!” The other dadehhoes shuddered, or flapped their wings, raising a bit of a commotion.
The masked man ignored them, pulled in his target dadehho, and held it in his arms.
“Heh heh. Good boy.”
He was salivating. The man licked his lips beneath the mask as he moved away from there. He didn’t run. Because he wasn’t in a hurry. Easy peasy. This was a cinch for him.
The gumow was staring at the masked man and gulping inside the enclosure with the straw, but it was okay.
Don’t worry, okay? I won’t do a thing to you. The masked man tried to pass by the pen with with composure.
Then it happened.
On the other side of the same divider, there were another four? Five? Five of them. The five gumows all stuck their heads out in unison.
What, what, what, what? the masked man thought in alarm. You’re popping out? I mean, you were there? If you’re there, say something. How am I supposed to know, otherwise?
In the end, one of the gumows shouted, “Wagansakah!” in a shrill voice.
Ohh, now this was trouble.
“You mor... You... Aw, damn it...!”
He considered shouting, Pipe down, you little shit! to shut the thing up, but the other gumows started raising a fuss, too. The dadehho was thrashing around in the masked man’s arms.
Well, this just went to hell.
The masked man ran. Whoosh, like the wind.
As he flew out of the barn, a well-built orc was just coming out of the farmhouse.
“Gazza?! Waganda?!” the orc shouted.
The orc was bearing a long-handled farming implement that could have doubled as a weapon.
This looks dangerous. It doesn’t get much more dangerous than this.
“Do I kill him...?!”
The masked man hesitated, but stopped, and turned around. He could’ve taken him, though. He could’ve, but if he killed every guy he could, the orcs’d go extinct, you know? The masked man was actually quite full of love, so he ran.
The orc ran after him shouting something in Orcish. When he glanced back, there were more orcs now. Not just two or three. Orcs bearing farming implements came out of the farmhouses one after another, while gumows poured out of the barns.
“What, it’s a total offensive now?!”
The masked man jumped a fence, and went running through the wheat fields.
Hunger ate at him.
It was no big deal, though.
The red moon hung in the night sky overhead.
Where would the masked man go?
 
 

2. Mercy
The man had no name.
Because he was alone. He had no need for a name.
The sun had long since risen.
The man laid his mask of anonymity at his feet as he sat before a campfire.
He’d shaken his pursuers and crossed a mountain, so he had to be safe now. Still, though, he hadn’t let his guard down. That was the etiquette of a lone man.
“...Is it etiquette, though?” he murmured.
The man cocked his head to the side. He had the feeling that was wrong somehow, but whatever. He didn’t sweat the details. That was the etiquette of a mature man with tons of composure.
The meat and organs of the dadehho he had butchered were cooking over the fire, and the fragrant smell was whetting his appetite.
“It’s about ready,” he told himself. “No... a bit longer, huh.” He could never get enough of this time.
However, he could never catch a break. It was times like this that things were most prone to go awry.
“Honestly, what a pain,” he muttered irritably.
Even as he did, the man’s lips were smiling. In all things, composure was vital, after all.
The man masked himself, and grasped his katana. He didn’t need to search long.
In the bushes, seven, maybe eight meters from the masked man, something, or rather some humanoid creature, was looking towards him.
It was crouching down, but more than that, it was small. Probably not an orc. A gumow, huh? Probably a kid, too.
“Come out!” the masked man called.
But there was no response. It was trembling. Was it afraid? Even a gumow child must have understood the masked man’s true power, and the threat he represented.
Nah, maybe not.
The masked man laid his katana on the ground, and raised his hands.
“Look. I’m not gonna kill you. Okay? Now get out here, or get lost, take your pick. Decide fast. If the meat burns, even a mellow guy like me is gonna snap. Seriously.”
Soon the gumow kid crawled out of the bushes. It didn’t approach the masked man. It stayed about three meters from the fire, cowering in uncertainty.
Well, whatever. Not my problem.
While this was happening, the dadehho was now ready to eat. The masked man shifted his mask, sinking his teeth into the fatty thigh meat.
“Oh, hoh...”
The deliciousness rang through his head, and it was dizzying.
“It’s not easy catching wildfowl and deer and whatnot around here. Maybe the orcs’ve hunted them all to extinction. Those guys don’t know the meaning of the word restraint... But, wow, this is good. Seriously.”
The gumow kid was staring at the man.
Judging by its height, it wasn’t even ten years old. It wore threadbare, filthy clothes made with rough material. It was barefoot, too. Its skin was closer to purple than green, but it was hard to put words to the color. It was emaciated, its limbs little more than sticks.
The gumow kid was holding its stomach pitifully. It had been holding its stomach all this time. It wasn’t the masked man it was looking at right now, it was the dadehho thigh, it seemed.
“I’m gonna tell you now,” the masked man snarled. “You aren’t getting any.”
The masked man polished off the rest of the thigh, and threw away the stick he’d been using as a skewer.
The kid looked hungrily at the stick that was moist with fat.
“...What? Oh, fine.”
The masked man gave the gumow kid a wing. He was, after all, a man overflowing with love, so he did things like this from time to time.
“Hold on...” the masked man said, alarmed.
The wrinkled face of the gumow kid that was tearing into the wing he’d given it showed no signs of intelligence. It was an animal. An ugly one, too.
If someone got used to seeing orcs, they might start thinking orcs looked tough and cool, but these guys who bore their blood were scrawny. Their cheekbones stuck out in funny ways, their foreheads were sloped, and their chins were tiny.
“Man, you guys’re ugly...” With a smirk, the masked man went back to eating.
There was another thigh. Then there was the breast, another wing, the neck, and the organs.
The gumow kid quickly finished the wing, licking the stick, and turning a passionate set of eyes on the masked man.
“You moron. That’s all you’re getting. I’m starving here, too, and this is the first decent food I’ve gotten my hands on in a while.”
He didn’t think the gumow kid understood his words, but it slumped its shoulders.
The masked man bit into a thigh, then clicked his tongue. “Okay, first off, kid or not, you’ve gotta be able to do something yourself. If you can’t, just quietly wait to be embraced by Skullhell. That’s the way of the world. This is the last time, okay? It’s seriously over, all right? Which one...?”
After careful consideration, he chose the gizzard. This was love. Yes, love.
“Here. Eat.”
When it took the gizzard from the masked man, the gumow kid let out a cry of glee that was close to a scream.
“If only your voices were a little cuter. Then maybe even you guys’d stand a chance...”
The gumow kid, of course, was hardly listening. It gobbled up the wing quickly, but the gizzard it carefully, carefully, nibbled away at a little at a time.
“Heh...” The masked man chuckled. “Now, the rest is mine...”
He wanted to focus on eating, but even though he enjoyed the dadehho, he never really got lost in it. Ever alert and ready to respond, observing everything around him, and keeping his ears perked up, it was all second nature to him.
Looking at the gumow kid that was nibbling away like a mouse, using its front teeth, at a gizzard that was now only about the size of the tip of his pinky finger, he took note of its wrists, ankles, and neck.
The kid must’ve been tied up. The masked man noticed the marks left by those bonds.
“Where’d you come from?” he asked.
The gumow kid looked at the masked man for a moment, but that was all. There was no answer. There was no way it could answer, huh.
“I guess you can’t understand me, yeah. You’re a serf... No, a slave? I’m gonna guess your kind master didn’t decide to set you free. Pretty sure you escaped... which means they’ll be coming after you, doesn’t it?”
The masked man grabbed his katana and stood up.
The gumow kid cowered.
Dogs.
There were dogs barking.
Yip, yip, yip, yip!
The masked man looked to his campfire. Rather than put it out, he was better off getting out of here.
When he grabbed the gumow kid’s arm and pulled, it meekly got to its feet.
“We’re going,” the masked man snapped.
The crispy dadehho neck skewer was still left. He pulled it off the stick, gave it to the gumow kid, and they took off.
The gumow kid followed after the masked man, neck meat held in its mouth. It had to be desperate. It wasn’t fast, but it wasn’t that slow, either. Maybe it was malnourished and underdeveloped as a result, and not actually as young as it looked.
The barking of dogs was chasing after them. He wanted to lose them, but they were closing in.
“Looks like we aren’t gonna be winning a race with these pups...!” The masked man came to a sudden stop, and pushed the gumow kid away. He immediately drew his katana.
A dog sprang out from between a gap in the trees. Its matted fur was black, mixed with gray and brown spots. It was the breed orcs often kept as hunting dogs—an orc dog, if you will.
The orc dog didn’t attack. It just barked like crazy. It was telling its master where his quarry was.
“Personal Skill, Lightning...”
The masked man jumped first to the right, then forward. Then finally, left.
Moving in the shape of a square bracket at high speed, with a flash of his sword, he decapitated the orc dog.
“Fast-strike! ...Damn. I’m so cool.”
While he was singing his own praises, an arrow flew in. Not just one, though. Two. No, three.
“Personal Skill, Eclipse!”
The masked man slid straight to the side, swinging his katana, and cut down two of the arrows.
He only missed one. Or rather, that one had been off the mark to begin with.
“Gauh!”
There was a voice from behind him.
The gumow kid was doubled over.
The arrow. It had hit it.
Tough luck, was all the masked man could say.
Its chest. The arrow had struck the gumow kid in the chest.
The masked man was about to rush over to the gumow kid— No, I can’t. They’re coming.
Again! Three more arrows!
“Personal Skill... Cured Mackerel?!”
It was a name he came up with on the fly. The man’s sword happened to draw a 〆, the first character of shime saba, cured mackerel.
He brilliantly knocked down all three arrows, then looked in the direction from which they had come.
Orcs. With blue hair. Three of them, bows at the ready.
“Comeisme!” In the language used by the undead, the masked man dared the orcs to come at him.
Orcish was still gibberish to him, but the Undead language he had at least some limited command of. More than a small number of orcs spoke Undead.
The orcs were nocking arrows. The masked man charged in at top speed.
“Personal Skill, Blinking Heaven!” The masked man appeared and vanished, vanished and reappeared.
Obviously he wasn’t actually vanishing, or suddenly appearing out of nowhere. He was deliberately moving in the opposite of the direction he faced, and making deliberately unnatural double motions to make it look that way, along with making use of the trees. It created the illusion that he was appearing and disappearing, making this a genuine skill.
“Dansuda, nnbode?!” The orcs were flustered, and didn’t loose their arrows.
“Personal Skill...”
The masked man closed on the orcs.
“...Killing Field!”
He cut off the first orc’s arm, then immediately snatched the orc’s sword with his left hand. The orcs always carried a secondary weapon, a short, curved sword.
He cut the second orc to pieces with his katana and the first orc’s short sword. Then, without missing a beat, he threw the orcish short sword at the third orc.
The orcish short sword buried itself in the third one’s forehead with a stab!
Now to finish up, there was only the half-lucid first orc who was missing an arm. If the orc was just standing there in a daze, it was no more a threat to him than any of the trees.
The masked man let the tension out of his shoulders, then gently decapitated the orc.
“Hmph. You’re not terribly skilled. Just a bunch of thugs hired by the farmers, huh...?”
The masked man swung his katana to wipe the blood from it before sheathing the blade, then quickly rifled through the orcs’ possessions.
Nine of the copper coins used as currency between the orcs and undead. Otherwise, nothing but junk.
When he got back to the gumow kid, it was trying to pull the arrow out of its chest.
“You idi— Stop that!”
He tried to stop it, but it was too late. The gumow kid pulled the arrow out, and the wound began spurting blood.
“Ow! Oah?!” The gumow kid wasn’t reacting in pain so much as shocked panic.
“Calm down!” The masked man tore a strip off the tattered cloak he wore.
It would have been better if he’d had clean cloth, but this would have to do.
He pressed the strip from his cloak against the gumow kid’s wound. It turned a deep red as he watched.
“Hold that there. You understand? Hold on here. ’Kay?”
Seeing the gumow kid nod, the masked man pulled a leather pouch from the bag slung over his shoulder. The pouch contained a number of medicinal herbs. He ground one up with his hands, and a refreshing, but slightly bitter, smell spread out.
“This is medicine. Me-di-cine. Medosun.”
“...Saraza?”
“I dunno, but, yeah, probably that. It’ll staunch the bleeding. Stop, blood. ’Kay? I’m putting it on.”
The masked man mercilessly applied the crushed herb to the gumow kid’s open wound.
The gumow kid groaned and writhed, but somehow managed to take it.
“It hurts, huh?” the masked man said. “Well, suck it up. Stand pain. ’Kay?”
“...Aye.”
The gumow kid had to be used to bearing pain. It might not be true for all of them, but if you were born and grew up as a gumow, you didn’t have any other choice.
The man tore more strips off his cloak. He covered the wound he had rubbed medicine into with a strip, and then wrapped another strip over top of it. He tied a knot to make sure it wouldn’t come undone.
“Okay. That looks more or less good. Can’t stay here forever, though. There’re probably more of them coming... Dammit. Guess I’ve got no choice.”
The masked man moved his katana and bag from his back to his front, and knelt down in front of the gumow kid.
“Hey, get on. Ride, back, me.”
The gumow kid was clearly hesitant.
“Hurry it up. Hey, hurryap!”
When he loudly encouraged it a few times, the gumow kid finally got on the masked man’s back.
“Why am I doing this...?” the masked man muttered.
Even as he did, he kept running.
The gumow kid had to be in a ton of pain, but it clung tightly to the masked man’s back. It wasn’t heavy. If anything, it was light.
Okay, that was a lie. Yeah, it was heavy, okay?
“What am I doing...?” The masked man felt a laugh welling up.
He wanted to shout out loud.
What am I doing here?! Seriously, seriously, seriously!
He wouldn’t shout, of course. The masked man was no fool.
“Am I being true to my own heart...?”
He thought hard about that.
Soon, he found his answer. Then the masked man nodded.
“Well, then there’s no problem.”
 
3. Name
That man had no name.
No face.
None knew the true identity that lay beneath his wood-carved mask.
Some believed there might be none. Probably. I mean, hey, why not? What do you think?
The masked man stripped off his shoes and stood in the middle of a river.
Not a big river. A stream. It could have been because of the recent lack of rain, but the water was only up to the masked man’s waist, and the current was relatively mild.
The masked man just stood there, like a piece of caught driftwood or something.
These were things he was not thinking:
Why?
Am I becoming one with nature?
Is this natural?
Instead, his head was close to empty.
Nearly free of worldly thoughts.
Suddenly, he moved.
The masked man crouched slightly, sticking his right hand into the water.
Effortlessly, he snatched a fish.
With his left hand, he caught another.
“Personal Skill, Godhand... Or whatever.”
The man let out a loud, victorious laugh, then got up out of the river.
The man who had been in a state free from worldly thought mere moments ago was nowhere to be seen, but in a way you could say he was one with nature. Maybe, I guess?
The gumow kid was sitting by the river bank. Its pallor was, well, it was hard to say if it was good or bad. The color of its skin being what it was, it wasn’t clear. It probably wasn’t good, though.
The gumow kid’s shoulders were heaving, and it was oozing greasy sweat.
The masked man chucked the two fish somewhere, then started on a campfire. “This place was a real find, huh? Those orcs, they hunt the beasts and fish without restraint. That’s not ecological. That’s egotistical. It’s ego, not eco... hey, that was clever, if I do say so myself! I’ve got to hand it to me. Well, they do say they were pushed by the human forces into the Nehi Desert, the Plateau of Falling Ash, the Plains of Mold, and some other wastelands. Guess that forced them to catch whatever they could catch, whenever they could catch it, and however much they could catch. See, I get that. I can understand the feeling, at least.”
The gumow kid was silent. It was shivering like crazy. It seemed to be all it could do to withstand the pain.
The masked man started the fire, stabbed the fish onto skewers, and retrieved the salt from his bag.
“Ta-dah! You can only really get this stuff in towns. I keep it for special occasions.”
With a generous sprinkling of salt on each fish, he started by cooking the outside of them close to the fire. Once the skin fully dried out, it was just a matter of feeding the fire kindling and waiting.
Once the fish stopped dripping moisture, it was safe to think they were done.
The man shifted his mask aside, and chomped into a well-cooked fish.
“Whoa! This is... good!”
The steaming-hot meat was wonderful. The bitterness of the innards lent it a certain spice. Then there was the salt.
Here, I would like to take a moment to profess my belief in the supremacy of salt. The whole world must bow before salt. Salt is our savior. In other words, the flavor of salt is almighty. Whether you do or don’t have that salty flavor changes everything.
The masked man offered the second fish to the gumow kid. “Hey.”
The gumow kid stared at the fried fish, simply shaking its head weakly.
“Just eat it already.” The masked man forced the stick upon which the fried fish was skewered into the gumow kid’s hand.
The gumow kid nibbled the fried fish just a little. Its sweaty face broke into a smile. “...Goo.”
“Isn’t it, though? Eat it all. That’s your share.”
The masked man greedily devoured his own fish. Not just the skin and flesh; he snapped the bones between his teeth and swallowed them, too. The gumow kid was eating its fish one bite at a time, savoring it.
“We’ll all be embraced by Skullhell someday,” the masked man said. “Today could be that day. But, still, if you can eat, eat. You’ve got to live until you die.”
In the end, over a long time, the gumow kid managed to polish off the whole fish.
The masked man patted the gumow kid on the head, and gave it a compliment. The gumow kid seemed happy, and even proud.
The masked man put the gumow kid on his back and started walking.
Southward.
The masked man was heading south.
Where was this? He knew it was orc and undead territory, at least, but the masked man did not know his precise location.
There were more orcs. They occupied almost all of the cities. Only a very few were ruled by the undead.
Orcs were the ones living in the farming villages, too. The workers were mostly gumow slaves. They were whipped, day in and day out, and forcibly put to work. If the gumows had children, their children were enslaved, too. Slaves birthed more slaves, increasing their numbers. The gumow were no different from livestock.
“Human...?” the gumow kid whispered in the masked man’s ear.
The masked man thought a moment. “No,” he denied it. “I’m not human, but I’m not inhuman, either... I am me. No one but myself.”
“...Name?”
“You want to know my name?” The masked man adjusted how he was carrying the gumow kid. Somehow, it felt heavier. “Ranta.”
“...Rawnta.”
“Yeah. And you ? What’s your name?”

Chapter end