That Unique Monster Who Just Got the 'Consciousness' Passive Skill

"That's a relief," the leader smiled, after telling me not to worry about retrieving their bodies on my own. The Guild Bureau—that was some organization some chubby adventurer, who was my hero, mentioned back in the woods—would take care of retrieving them for the deceased's families and stuff. "But anyway. Let's forget about that. Why collect the head, you ask? Well, aren't you an adventurer, too?"

"...Oh!" I jumped. No way. They found me out when I did nothing? After a second, I asserted they didn't. And so, I was happy to ask the man whether I could be an adventurer, too, calling him a sir. Taking enthusiastic steps toward him, my eyes sparkled a thousand stars, and I insisted. "Say, can I become like you, too, sir? You think I could become an adventurer, too, sir?!"

"Ah," the man replied, perplexed, and left it at that.

After what I'd just heard, it was only natural I reacted that way, really. Were people not hyped about adventuring? I still had no paths to take in life, so I'd gladly take that one. Besides, when I brought up the topic to my old advisor, he said he didn't think it was half-bad.

But the leader simply ignored me. "Let me finish first," he stepped back. Like a manual, then, I was happy to see he didn't mind giving me a more or less detailed answer to a related question: the question regarding the orc head. "You collect the heads in order to trade them for silver coins. Right? You do." Turning to his friend, he whispered some words. "I don't think I understand the kid, though." But I ignored that. I was just really happy to hear about adventurers.

On the battlefield, on the human side, there were thousands of people. However, these thousands could be divided into two categories. The soldiers, and the adventurers. The soldiers were all the same—they all had the same dress code. Going from top to bottom, they wore helmets, breastplates, gauntlets, and everything. That was about the overall of their category… and that was it.

A sentence could describe them all. Wasn't that boring? Thankfully, that wasn't like the adventurers at all, I'll have you know. They were completely different. It was like they were from different worlds. My old man taught me a lot about the world every day. It wasn't like we were having classes together, with me as a student and him as a teacher, but he spoke a great deal of both useful and useless information, sometimes with no end. He was my advisor: I had him talk to me about the soldiers.

There was very little to say. Aside from talking about the army—that was to say the corpus the soldiers formed—you could barely speak a word about a regular soldier. They had no character. Now, that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. I just meant that soldiers weren't as entertaining. Talking about adventurers, now, as opposed to the soldiers, you could tell them apart. In so many different ways. So, in a few words, I liked them. In a way, everything about them, to the most minute detail, said 'I am free to live,' and I liked that.

After a long moment of silence, the kid who liked contact turned to his leader and spoke the same words his leader did. "You're telling me this like I'm understanding him, hehe." Maybe I was being too enthusiastic.

Calming down, I also manage to calm down the awkward smiles put on the group's faces. After I chased all the stars from my eyes and my urge to be jumping around happily, the kid they saw vanished at once. Taking on a stern expression, I formally apologized for being so childish and asked them about the orc head again.

"So you wanna collect it, don't you? Ah, well, but then you must already know, right?" I told him I indeed knew, but I wanted him to tell me anyway. If I said I didn't know, I was afraid they'd aim their sword at me and basically be rude people. I insisted I wanted to have him tell me like I was a teacher interrogating a student. Would he have the right answer? If he didn't—no passing grades for him, I'm afraid.

Though he was quite reluctant to explain the essentials of his business with the orc head, after I used a tiny fraction of my Intimidation skill on him, he became more docile and decided to explain at once. He even called me his boss, for some reason. What about the orc head anyway? I was eager for information.

With this head or any other head, so long it was an enemy's, as stated by the Guild Bureau, adventurers would be headed to the mentioned place. Namely, to the Trading Facility that was laid out specifically for the occasion. There were a lot of details at once. Speaking to me, the leader jabbed his finger at the rear behind his back. I understood the organization he mentioned, the Guild, was in charge of putting out quests for the adventurers. It wasn't the cause for war, though.

The war was between two countries. The Guild happened to be on the human side. Mostly, it was a human organization, so naturally, it accepted all human races across the Outside World and rejected the lesser races; that was the demi-human races, demons, monsters, and the like.

As war raged out, the State fought. The State, at war, was mostly the army and soldiers. And the Guild Bureau, as war raged out, like the independent organization usually do with, issued a quest to its own independent soldiers—the adventurers.

That quest was about partaking in the war, helping the State and Royal Family, and being paid in exchange for kills. Put it simply, adventurers could be another term for mercenaries, somehow. The leader explained that we all, the people present here as he casually explained all the details with a war raging just next door, were here on the Guild's orders.

Which meant we were hunting for orcs, today, as the war was against the demi-human scum, he said. A party needed to collect the heads of the foes they hewed if they wanted to be paid by the Guild.

And that was it. "But if we can't collect the head, we're leaving. Good day, boss." The adventurers turned their back to me. The first to do that was the leader. To have him speak so much detail about the situation of adventurers on the battlefield, I had to ask many questions. Answering them all, he never missed an occasion to let his white teeth shine at me. I can see that he was only after the head, however. And so, the disappointed adventurer decided to leave. What was their deal anyway? Collect the heads that weren't already harvested? Instead of fighting, they profited from some loophole or something and made their money in a way that suited weaklings best.

So they'll leave, now, I thought. Well, not so bad for my first time really talking to people. I'd say I pretty much nailed it. But jeez, what a shame. They leave me like this when I never said I'd collect the head. Did they just assume that? Wait, no, I might have said I would collect the orc head during our talk, I think. Aaah, well. Who cares about them?

After a moment's thought, I thought better of just letting them go unrewarded. As I felt grateful, I went and disassembled the orc head from the body. Seizing it by the hair, I swung it in the air and sent it the humans' way. As it rained on them, the human who called me his boss cried out, initially terrified, but then thanked the sky for sending him this gift. Granting them their wish, my old man had also instructed me to 'get back to it.' And so, flying toward the humans with a Quick Pace, my feet blasted off of the green earth as my hand was laid on my sword.

Fiercely and effectively, I bent my back forward and pushed on my legs. In a split second, the distance between me and the human group of prey vanished. Using the <Chain Attack> Active Skill—that was a combo of dark slashes I obtained from a certain swordsman at the restaurant—my body hissed through the air, like a snake of wind, and cut through every human of their party. The quest indicator went up to 4 enemies dealt with out of 30. With another slash, it went up to six. Yet another slash brought it up to eight. And it was over in an instant.

Scoffing, I joked with them. "I'll collect 'your' heads, ha-ha!" But it was obviously just that—a joke. That concluded our business together. Using Quick Pace again, I left them all behind and appeared closer to the frontline. It was to get back at it, now.