Grimgal of Ashes and Illusion - Volume 14.1 - Chapter 4.01

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 well-behaved.

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?