What If the Strongest Villain from the Original Story Became the Protagonist's Ally?

I walked through the forest. Just kept walking and walking. I walked while thinking about maybe giving Iris some baby talk attacks when I got back.

At that moment, I suddenly sensed the presence of a living creature.

“…A monster.”

I had a feeling it might be.

When I went over the thicket toward it, just as I’d expected, a single orc was resting with its back against a tree trunk.

We both noticed each other’s presence.

“…Guo?”

“Hm?”

For some reason, the orc tilted its head. When I tilted my head too, after a few seconds of pause—

“Guooooooo!?”

The orc let out a loud cry. I could tell from its expression that it was surprised.

So I also—

“Whaaaaaaat!?”

—pretended to be surprised. I was taught in my previous life that the initial reaction is important for this kind of thing.

But the orc didn’t have enough composure to go along with my joke. It gripped the club it had placed on the ground and immediately tried to attack me.

The strike it swung down tried to crush my skull. However, I caught it with one hand.

“Right after meeting, you’re already full of murderous intent… Don’t you understand my gentlemanly response here?”

Why do you think I bothered to wait for your reaction?

It wasn’t to receive attacks, nor was I trying to create a turn-based battle.

Purely and simply, I was going to ask this guy about the dungeon’s location.

After all, wouldn’t it be faster to beat up a dungeon-spawned monster and make it spill the location? I just thought of that.

—Huh? Can orcs speak human language? Of course they can’t. Monsters have their own monster-specific languages.

Just like humans have different languages depending on their country or region, there are inter-species languages among monsters too.

So conversation wasn’t possible. No matter how much I tortured it, the orc in front of me wouldn’t start speaking Japanese.

So how was I going to get this orc to tell me the dungeon’s location?

Simple. If I dealt it some damage, it would get scared and flee toward the dungeon.

If the dungeon was far away, it would probably flee in a different direction, but if it was nearby, there was no safer place than the dungeon. It would have comrades there besides itself.

So then… CRACK!

I crushed the orc’s club with my bare hands—with my grip strength alone.

Seeing the fragments crumble into pieces, the orc showed shock.

“Guooooooo!?”

…Somehow this guy seemed strangely human-like, or rather, it felt a bit hard to kill. But it was a monster. A beast that was hostile to humanity. The fact that it attacked me was proof of that. So I wouldn’t show mercy.

I clenched my fist tight and was about to attack—but before I could, the orc began fleeing from the scene as fast as its legs could carry it.

“…Eh?”

The scene was so anticlimactic that I found myself spacing out for several seconds.

To think it would lose its fighting spirit just from having its weapon destroyed… For a monster, it was strangely intelligent.

I wanted to doubt whether it was really an orc, but for now, the plan had worked well. If I chased after this orc, I might possibly reach the dungeon.

I chased after the orc with a glimmer of hope.

▼△▼

“Guooooooo!”

The orc desperately tried to escape from me.

“Wait, wait~☆ Onii-san isn’t letting you escape☆”

I ran while maintaining a distance that was neither too close nor too far. My mood was like I’d become the killer in a horror movie. Except what was being chased was a monster, and what was doing the chasing was a human.

After the orc continued running like that for several minutes, it eventually set foot in an open area. The surrounding trees had been unnaturally cut down. It was as if they’d been felled to improve visibility.

And that prediction hit the mark. Amazingly, in that open area there was a cliff, and in one corner of it, a large hole gaped open.

On top of that, at the entrance to the hole, there were about two suspicious figures in gray robes.

“Wh-what!? Why is an orc coming this way…!?”

Seeing the orc trying to return to the dungeon at full speed, the two suspicious figures were openly agitated.

Seeing the masked suspicious figure (me) chasing after the orc from behind, they were even more shocked.

“Is that… a monster!? I’ve never seen a humanoid monster wearing a mask!?”

“And it’s carrying equipment! We need to repel it immediately! I’ll take the orc. You aim for the monster behind it!”

“O-okay!”

The case of being arbitrarily classified as a monster. Without realizing I was human, the two began gathering mana and—cast magic. The staffs in their hands glowed, and spheres of flame were released from their tips.

—Artifacts!

Common weapon-type artifacts.

Items that could produce mysterious powers just by injecting mana. Even any scrub could easily wield power called magic.

“Bumooooooo!?”

The orc let out an ugly roar and was engulfed in flames.

Orcs were weak to fire. From the looks of it, it would die soon. As for me—

“Who’s calling who a monster, you bastaaaard!”

I deflected the magic with my bare hands and kicked the two suspicious figures away with increased momentum.