Ch.1227Once You Start Lying, You Have to Keep On Lying.

“This… that orc from before? And a giant too…? No, what on earth happened here?”

“A lot happened. A whole lot.”

After the situation ended, I called Ophelia van Sigmillus up from below where she had been maintaining a mana barrier and asked her to provide life-sustaining treatment for Caljarat.

I figured Ophelia’s magical treatment would be more effective here, since there was no guarantee that Lena’s healing miracle would work on an orc.

“Treat… this? Why?”

Ophelia looked at me as if I’d gone mad, wondering why I wanted to heal an enemy.

“Oh, once isn’t enough? You want to kill him over and over again?”

Then she asked if I was planning to heal him, half-kill him again, heal him again, and keep repeating the cycle of endless torture.

“…You don’t seriously think that’s why I called you. What exactly do you take me for?”

“A goddess of torture, slaughter, arson and destruction who specializes in carnage?”

“……”

That’s… not entirely wrong, but couldn’t she phrase it a bit more delicately…?

“…Sometimes I wonder if I should act more authoritative, like a proper goddess.”

“At this point? Isn’t that a bit unrealistic?”

Don’t say it yourself. Among the people I consider friends, you’re exceptionally irreverent.

If I were as strict and demanding as other gods, you would have been burned at the stake long ago for blasphemy and heresy. Do you even realize that?

“Anyway, don’t make him too healthy—just keep him barely alive. When he wakes up, I plan to persuade him to join us.”

“Persuade this orc…? How? Do you have some beautiful orc female prepared, like a goddess?”

Um… that’s quite a rude and discriminatory comment. Does Ophelia think orcs are just beasts who only know how to eat, fight, and breed?

“…Something like that.”

Ironically, her guess was uncomfortably close to the truth.

I wasn’t sure about the “beautiful as a goddess” part, but Bergelmir’s proposed method of persuasion was indeed to create and offer a female orc.

“In exchange for cooperating with us, we plan to give him the opportunity for the orc species to flourish again.”

“Is that possible? I thought all other orcs were already extinct.”

Ophelia tilted her head as she filled Caljarat’s body with homunculus flesh to repair his wounds.

“He says it’s possible.”

I thought the same until I heard the detailed explanation.

“Say hello. This is our new recruit, Bergelmir.”

I pointed to Bergelmir, who was lying down and resting in one corner of the ruins.

The old giant who had lost his entire lower body but somehow hadn’t died, using his mechanical armor as a life support system to cling to his tenacious life.

“His specialty is… definitely not axe-wielding, but seems to be research specializing in biological experiments. You two might get along well.”

“New recruit…? What were you really doing up there—no, never mind. I don’t want to hear it if it’ll cause brain damage. Anyway, he’s not an enemy, right?”

Ophelia pressed her forehead with her left hand and sighed lightly as she looked at Bergelmir.

The armored giant had been quietly watching with interest since she began using homunculi to repair Caljarat’s wounds.

“Pleased to meet you, little witch. I am Bergelmir. I look forward to working with you.”

“Um… yeah. I’m Ophelia van Sigmillus, court magician of Hestella.”

Ophelia responded with a sour expression, perhaps due to being called a “witch,” and quickly scanned Bergelmir’s entire body.

Specifically, his mechanical armor, the parts where the armor connected directly to his flesh, and the severed waist that seemed beyond any hope of reattachment.

Then she asked me again.

“…Hey, if he’s an ally, shouldn’t we treat him first? His upper and lower body are completely separated.”

She was suggesting that instead of providing life support to an orc who might not even become an ally, we should prioritize treating the giant who had definitely joined our side.

She wasn’t wrong.

While Caljarat was certainly in critical condition and would die if left untreated, Bergelmir’s situation was far more serious, being literally cut in half.

At least, that’s how it appeared to me and Ophelia. In reality, it was the complete opposite.

“He says he’ll handle it himself. He’s already done emergency treatment, and with proper research facilities and enough time, he claims he can find a solution.”

“Really? Well, if that’s the case…”

I wondered if giants as a species were incredibly resilient, or if the life support function of his mechanical armor was supernaturally effective.

Normally, being cut in half like that would mean certain death without some means of self-recovery, yet Bergelmir had endured throughout the battle and seemed unlikely to die from such an injury at all.

Like a cockroach’s vitality, I suppose.

No, it was beyond even that. Even cockroaches eventually die when cut in half.

—-

“I’m done. I’ve also placed a curse of deep sleep on him, so he won’t wake up from any ordinary disturbance.”

After finishing emergency treatment on Caljarat, Ophelia cast a sleep curse on him as a precaution against potential problems.

Normally, her skills wouldn’t allow her to cast an effective curse on a demigod, and even if successful, it would be immediately dispelled with minimal effort.

However, perhaps because he was unconscious and severely injured while allowing direct contact, Caljarat succumbed to Ophelia’s curse without resistance.

Of course, if he regained consciousness, he could break the curse as easily as breathing, but the very purpose of this curse was to prevent that consciousness from returning.

Now that it had taken hold, he would remain helplessly asleep until the curse wore off, unless subjected to a major external shock.

“Well done. So, how long will this last?”

“Hard to say, it’s my first time casting it on a demigod… but since it took hold so well, I’d guess about four days.”

Only four days… but that should be enough time to prepare a way to subdue him when he wakes up. It was helpful assistance.

“That takes care of things up here… everything okay down below?”

“Some passages collapsed, but nobody died or got seriously injured. Those who were buried managed to dig themselves out.”

“Good. Go down and tell everyone the situation is resolved and they can resume work.”

The earthquakes that had been disrupting the excavation were aftershocks from Bergelmir and Caljarat’s battle above. Now that the fight was over, there would be no more seismic interference.

With that thought, I asked Ophelia to go down and relay the order to resume work, but instead of nodding, she pointed to the side and asked me:

“What about Turangkai? Should we let him know he’s here?”

“…Turangkai?”

Ah, right. I’d forgotten about him.

In the direction Ophelia pointed sat a large monkey in tattered clothes, slumped like a sack of barley.

Someone I had been half-certain was dead, and even if alive, never expected to encounter here.

“What are you doing there?”

“…You told me to stay out of the way if I didn’t want to get involved, didn’t you?”

Oh… I did say that, didn’t I? Bergelmir’s words had been so shocking that I’d completely forgotten.

…Well, at least I remembered now.

‘So, what to do with him…’

I pondered for a moment.

News of Turangkai’s survival. Normally, I would have immediately told the rock monkeys about this, but… that was a bit awkward now.

Just a few days ago, I had gathered all the monkeys and announced that Turangkai was away on a confidential mission and wouldn’t return for a while.

At the time, I had lied to postpone announcing Turangkai’s death… but now it turns out he’s not dead.

Of course, I’m glad he’s alive, but the timing is rather unfortunate.

If I now announce, “Surprise! He was actually just two days away!” what would that do to my image?

Even the rock monkeys, with their below-average intelligence, would realize my speech had been a complete lie.

Even if they were surprisingly stupid enough not to make that connection, they would at least find something suspicious.

“Hmm…”

“…Why are you looking at me like that? Is there something you want to say?”

Additionally, to prevent my lie from being exposed, I would need to coordinate stories with Turangkai beforehand, and I was reluctant to tell him about my speech.

Unlike other rock monkeys, Turangkai was quite intelligent and would immediately understand why I had given such a speech.

That instead of trying to rescue him, I had assumed he was dead but lied to the rock monkeys to keep using them.

…Yes, it would be better not to announce this right away. There’s nothing to gain from it, so I’ll postpone sharing the news of Turangkai’s survival.

Of course, Turangkai would desperately want to go down and announce his return to his kind, but…

“Turangkai, I’m really glad you made it back safely, but… sorry, could you do one job for me first?”

Preventing that wouldn’t be difficult.

“Actually, it’s not a request, it’s an order. I won’t accept refusal.”

After careful consideration, I ordered Turangkai to scout ahead in our planned direction of advance and prepare some basic groundwork there.

Turangkai grumbled about why he had to do such work without rest immediately after returning, but eventually agreed when I told him no one else was as talented for information gathering, and he left.

That wasn’t a lie.

With hero-class combat ability and survival skills that let him burrow underground to hide or escape from most dangers, where else could I find such a talented scout?

The order to scout for dangers and prepare the ground was also reasonable given the rapidly changing political situation in central Naraka.

[Your skill at covering one lie with another has reached artistic levels. Perhaps you should change your title to Goddess of Fraud and Swindling?]

Hersella, who had watched this farce to the end, mockingly laughed at me after Turangkai left with a disgruntled face.

Well, I expected as much. With her personality, she wouldn’t pass up such a perfect opportunity to tease me. It was entirely predictable.

‘…Shut up. It’s not like I don’t feel guilty about this. What else could I do when this was the best option?’

[How surprising, you actually have a conscience?]

‘……’

Since even I couldn’t honestly consider this action honorable, I couldn’t actively refute her and had to endure her one-sided mockery.