Chương 16: Before the Monsoon

By the time Karath finished working the children hard, or rather playing with them, evening had arrived.

"Hup." Thud. Around that hour, the adult male orcs who had left to hunt in the morning began returning with their prey.

"Wow. I do not think I have ever seen one of these before." Karath approached Uncle Goldin, who had returned carrying a monster resembling an armadillo. Its appearance might have been similar to an armadillo from Earth, but its size was entirely different. Goldin possessed an enormous build even by orc standards, yet he still had to grunt when lowering the corpse to the ground.

"Krahahaha! This one is rather difficult to catch. Its shell is so hard that most attacks cannot even wound it." Perhaps pleased by Karath's interest, Goldin immediately adopted a triumphant expression and began speaking. Among the orcs, Uncle Goldin was a rare example of someone who talked far too much.

"Once you complete your coming-of-age ceremony and enter the forest, you may encounter one of these yourself, Karath. As you can see, its shell is extremely hard, which makes it difficult to kill. Krahahaha! There are two ways to hunt one." Once Goldin began talking, his mouth seemed powered by a motor. He eagerly explained how he had hunted the armadillo-like creature while mixing the story with generous amounts of self-praise.

"Good grief. Why does a grown male talk so much?" While Goldin was describing his life-or-death struggle with the creature, Aunt Gerina approached, struck him across the back, and drew a portable stone knife. She had come to butcher the monster he had caught. Since the adult male orcs were responsible for the tribe's most dangerous duties, scouting and hunting, the female orcs handled the remaining work. Butchering and cooking hunted monsters were included among those duties.

"Now, all of you need to watch carefully." Gerina addressed the thirteen and fourteen-year-old girls who had followed her. Female orcs who had completed their second maturation no longer played with others of the same age. If they continued playing with male orcs who had also completed their second maturation, their bodies would not survive the experience. Before Karath introduced a variety of games, fighting had been the only form of recreation among the orcs.

No matter how sturdy female orcs were compared with human women, brawling with fully grown male orcs was still unreasonable. As a result, the adolescent males continued striking one another for entertainment until their coming-of-age ceremonies, while the girls began receiving what could loosely be called bridal training. Crack! Gerina raised her sharpened stone knife and drove it down through the creature's hide. The monster was much larger than an armadillo from Earth, but its anatomy was similar.

Its increased size meant its back shell was undoubtedly stronger than an ordinary armadillo's, but its belly, which normally faced the ground, was not nearly as hard. Slice. Slice. Crack. With practiced movements, Gerina followed the boundaries between shell and flesh, dismantling the carcass while minimizing waste. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Aunt Gerina, could I have some of that shell?" Karath asked cautiously as he watched her work. The shell on the creature's back had been the reason it caught his attention in the first place. That was also why he had endured Goldin's boasting, even applauding at the appropriate moments despite having no real interest in the story. Crack! Slice!

"What do you want with this hard shell?" Like the capable homemaker she was, Gerina continued butchering the creature with her stone knife as she questioned him.

"There is something I want to make with it." Karath answered as though it were nothing important. There was an object he had wanted to make for a long time. He had simply kept postponing the project because he lacked a suitable material. The moment he saw Goldin carrying the armadillo-like monster into the settlement, inspiration had struck him across the back of the head. He could make it with that shell. The season when he would need the object was also approaching, so he had to obtain the material somehow.

"Hmm. Is it important?" Gerina paused and looked back at him.

"This shell is extremely durable, so the settlement uses it for valuable tools. You should choose something else if you only intend to make a toy."

"It is important. I am not making a toy."

"Like when you built the new houses?"

"Yes. Like that."

"Very well." After asking him several questions, Gerina appeared to reach a decision. She separated the entire back shell from the flesh with her stone knife and handed it to him.

"Hmm..." Karath accepted the shell with a slightly troubled expression. It was far too large, and he had no intention of using it whole.

"Uncle Goldin."

"What is it, Karath?" Goldin, whose confidence had diminished slightly after Gerina struck him, looked over in confusion.

"Could you pull these plates apart one at a time? I am still young, so I do not have enough strength. An orc warrior as powerful as Uncle Goldin should be able to do it!"

"Krahahaha! You truly know how to judge an orc. As expected of a future chief!" The moment Karath praised him, Goldin released another booming laugh and accepted the enormous shell.

"Hnnngh!" Goldin lifted the edge of a single plate and pulled. Veins like swollen worms rose across his thick forearms. Riiip. With an unpleasant tearing noise, one of the plates separated from the shell. Karath accepted the hard plate, which was about the size of the folded paper tiles he had played with as a child in his former life, and grinned from ear to ear.

"Wow! Uncle Goldin really is the best!"

"Krahahaha! Exactly! No one else seems to understand that!" Perhaps the continued praise improved his mood. Goldin kept tearing away plates as veins bulged across his arms.

"And listen to this, Karath! Three years ago, I encountered a troll for the first time while hunting..."

"Wow. That is amazing."

"And last year!"

"Uncle Goldin really is the best."

"Krahahahaha!" Goldin's mouth never stopped moving even as he tore the plates free, and Karath inserted praise at the appropriate moments. Praise did not make a whale dance. It made Uncle Goldin dance. Eventually, Goldin succeeded in tearing every plate from the enormous shell.

"Krah... Krahh... I-impressive, is it not, Karath?"

"It is extremely impressive!" Goldin's laughter had grown considerably rougher by the time he finished. Both arms, which had remained swollen with veins throughout the work, were now twitching uncontrollably. Karath decided not to notice. Several days later, a quiet sound reached his ears as he slept inside the comfortable earthen house. Patter. Patter, patter. It was a familiar and soothing sound. Had he still been on Earth, it would have made him crave green onion pancakes and makgeolli.

In this world, however, it was the sound of already miserable living conditions becoming even worse. Karath opened his eyes with a sense of foreboding, and the noise grew clearer.

"Damn it." The curse escaped his mouth naturally. Still hoping he might be mistaken, Karath opened the door of the earthen house. Patter, patter. Patter, patter, patter. Outside, countless raindrops carrying the faint glow of the moon fell from a dark sky. It resembled a beautiful painting created by nature, with countless white dots and lines drawn across a sheet of black paper. That might have been his reaction on modern Earth. His present opinion was much simpler. They were completely screwed.

No other words described the situation properly. The forest surrounding the settlement experienced a monsoon around the beginning of summer. True to the name, rain fell continuously for at least two weeks and sometimes as long as a month. It occasionally stopped for half a day, but that was only a brief pause before several more days of rain. After such relentless downpours, flooding was inevitable. Houses collapsed, water poured into the dwellings, and every variety of flood damage struck the settlement.

Winter was the season when the most tribespeople died, but the monsoon was the season that made their lives most miserable. Karath had spent the past several days using the armadillo shell to create something that could protect them from that disaster. He had wanted to finish his preparations before the monsoon began, but the rains had arrived earlier than expected that year. Expecting a weather forecast in this damned primitive environment would have been absurd.

The orcs could only predict the rainy season through the experience accumulated over their lives. Karath had believed there were still around two weeks remaining. He had never expected the monsoon to arrive so suddenly in the middle of that night. The earlier pattering proved to have been nothing more than the signal announcing the beginning of war. A waterfall began pouring from the sky instead of mere rain.

"Damn it all." He could not simply accept the disaster because his preparations were incomplete. Ignoring Delina's startled cry of "Karath!?" from behind him, Karath gathered the objects he had prepared over the past several days and stepped out into the rain.