Silent Night (5)
Crack!
Snap! Crackle!
His muscles spasmed violently.
They contracted and relaxed in a relentless cycle, as if they had a mind of their own, writhing beneath his skin.
One moment, they threatened to tear through his flesh; the next, they squeezed his organs mercilessly.
Dalen gritted his teeth.
Hiss!
Blood surged up, steaming from his nose and mouth like a boiling kettle.
His vision alternated between blinding white and pitch black.
Only one thought echoed in his mind.
“If I falter here, I’m dead.”
He didn’t want to die.
He had fought tooth and nail to survive.
He had earned money and completed missions, all for the sake of living.
He had used his fists and his wits to alter the course of a world spiraling toward destruction.
If he were to die, it would be in a blaze of glory, battling demons, not by bursting apart after consuming a corpse.
”······!”
Crack!
He forced his convulsing muscles into submission with sheer willpower.
He held his crumbling body together from within.
He pushed back the muscles squeezing his organs with others nearby, and restrained the fibers threatening to burst through his skin with adjacent ones.
“If only my stamina had reached the level of a true superhuman…”
The regret was fleeting; there was no time for it.
His stamina and blood energy were holding up well enough.
All that remained was to gather every ounce of his remaining strength to stabilize this imbalance.
With superhuman senses and intelligence, he observed his body’s inner workings.
He summoned the winds of magic to bind his muscle fibers and used every skill he had honed to relax them.
How much time passed like this, he couldn’t tell.
Suddenly, he felt his consciousness slipping.
“···Hah.”
When he came to, he found himself standing in front of a familiar mountain cabin.
Whoosh—
A biting wind cut through the gaps in his torn armor. The snow, piled up to his ankles, crunched under his bare feet.
”······.”
Dalen calmed his racing thoughts and slowly surveyed his surroundings.
A few steps behind him lay a sheer cliff. In front of him stood the cabin and its backyard.
Dalen walked forward, his steps crunching in the snow.
Crunch.
The backyard looked like it belonged to a hunter.
A drying rack for hides. An axe for chopping wood and a pile of snow-covered logs beside it.
A low, wide table for skinning small animals, with hunting knives and a hatchet on top.
He picked up the hatchet, feeling its familiar weight in his hand.
It was the same old hatchet he had used for years, the one he had finally broken in the sewers not long ago.
“···The starting point.”
This was the place where the game began, a dilapidated mountain cabin.
It was where Dalen had first awakened in this world.
He scratched his chin. Just moments ago, he had been killing a grand demon and retrieving its corpse. How had he ended up here?
Was it a dream? Or had he died after consuming the corpse and somehow returned?
As he scratched his chin, Dalen expanded his senses. He quickly understood the situation.
“What kind of… duplication is this?”
He had two bodies.
One was still locked in a struggle, his enhanced strength battling against his will to suppress it.
The other was here, in this snowy mountain cabin.
He couldn’t move the other body, as if he were paralyzed, but both were undeniably his.
His superhuman senses couldn’t discern which was real and which was an illusion.
But instinctively, he knew that resolving something here would stabilize his original body.
“···Hoo.”
Dalen exhaled deeply, his breath misting in the cold air.
So, what was he supposed to do now?
He looked up to see the cabin window glowing brightly.
When he had first arrived in this world, the cabin had been abandoned.
The fire should have been out, the place long deserted, cold and empty.
That was the basic setting of the “Abandoned Cabin” starting point.
Perhaps that’s why the strange light beyond the window seemed to beckon him.
Creak—
Dalen opened the door and stepped inside. Warm, dry air enveloped him.
The cabin’s interior hadn’t changed much. Worn wooden furniture. A small fireplace and a bed in the corner.
But there was one difference: a desk and chair by the bed.
”······.”
A sleek, modern black desk. A gamer chair with plush support for the back and head.
And beneath it, a humming high-end computer, with a monitor on the table.
On the screen stood a hulking barbarian character.
In a vast, dark cavern, the barbarian stood alone.
In the corner of the screen, a status window showed a strength stat of 30, blinking brightly, and a message in the notification bar read:
[You have achieved a single stat of 30 for the first time. Your character has formed a small domain.]
Sensing a presence, Dalen turned around.
[Ugh, why did the delivery take an hour?]
A man in a tracksuit was approaching.
His hair was unkempt, greasy from a weekend without washing. His stubble covered his jawline, a testament to the lazy weekend.
In one hand, he held a pack of four canned beers, and in the other, a freshly delivered box of chicken.
It was a company employee whose hobby was gaming—his past self.
[A game without a pause button, what a joke.]
The man clicked his tongue and walked past Dalen without a second glance.
He placed the beer and chicken on the table, sank into the chair, and resumed playing the game.
With one hand, he casually ate chicken and drank beer, killing mobs and gaining experience with little effort.
[It’s all cold now. Tsk. What was the next quest again?]
”······.”
Watching the clicking mouse and the colorful monitor, memories flickered in Dalen’s mind.
His characters that had died. The NPCs he had killed.
The worlds that had perished and those he had abandoned.
The playthroughs he never intended to clear.
The times he joined the forces of evil, just to blow off steam from work.
On the day he broke up with his ex-girlfriend, he had joined the minions of an evil dragon and set the world ablaze.
Crunch.
Unconsciously, he ground his teeth together.
A wave of inexplicable guilt washed over him.
It felt as if millions, billions of lives had perished at his fingertips.
The excuse that they were just bits of data seemed insignificant in the face of the living, breathing world he had experienced.
Can you deny the world you’ve lived in?
If not, what about the worlds you’ve destroyed? The inhabitants?
The heroes you killed for fun?
Dalen realized he was biting his lip hard.
Drip.
Blood trickled down his chin.
Hiss…
His lips, torn and healing repeatedly under the pressure of his jaw and the regenerative power of his blood energy.
The rising steam blurred his vision, and Dalen snapped back to reality.
The man at the monitor.
He was Dalen’s past, the embodiment of the guilt threatening to consume him.
In front of it all.
“Hoo.”
Dalen finally let out a deep sigh.
He spoke.
“So what.”
Back then and now, all I’ve done is struggle to survive.
And I still have no intention of dying, you bastard.
Click!
The monitor went dark.
And his vision followed suit.
“······Damn.”
Dalen opened his eyes.
He felt slightly dizzy, like he’d ridden a roller coaster three times in a row at an amusement park.
Of course, with his current body, even three hundred rides wouldn’t faze him.
He hadn’t been to an amusement park since his early twenties, so it might just be a distorted memory.
Squelch.
He stepped on the demon’s blood and flesh beneath him. Dalen noticed his vision was a bit clearer.
What was this? His sensory stats hadn’t increased when he retrieved the corpse.
“Status window.”
He naturally summoned his status window, and the changes became clear.
――――――――
Name: Dalen
Level: 9
[Strength: 30] [Dexterity: 16] [Stamina: 16]
[Senses: 17] [Intelligence: 19] [Magic: 14]
Skills: Dehaman’s Armor Combat (D), Night Vision (E), Blood Energy Regeneration (C), Leap (E), Flame Arrow (D), Rapid Freeze (D)
――――――――
In addition to the stats gained from retrieving the corpse, all his stats had increased by 1.
Except for strength, which thankfully remained fixed at 30.
That wasn’t all. His skill proficiency had noticeably improved across the board.
Even the lowest proficiency skills like Leap and Flame Arrow had increased by over 10%.
“This is a first.”
It was the first time he had experienced such rapid growth outside of leveling up or corpse retrieval.
Growth independent of the system was something he had never encountered before.
“I have a hunch.”
Dalen stroked his chin thoughtfully.
The notification window on the monitor in the cabin had been a clue.
A message about forming a “small domain.”
While the concept of domains was something Dalen had encountered multiple times in the game’s settings, it had never been applied to the actual system. But in this world where the game had become reality, he had learned time and again that such minor details could be crucial.
“I should ask the old man about this.”
If anyone knew, it would be Felber, the elder wizard of the Elgaia Tower. Dalen’s excellent memory recalled Felber’s introduction word for word.
“A geomancer who cultivated a small domain, wasn’t it?”
Of course, it wasn’t something to ask about immediately. After several battles and the strain of his enhanced strength, his body was battered and exhausted. He looked fine on the outside, but the accumulated fatigue was enough to knock him out at any moment.
Rest was the priority.
Clank.
Dalen picked up his broken sword, scattered shield, and axe. As he rummaged through the bodies of the sacrificial victims, he found a few more traitorous commanders from the guard unit. He stripped one of them, using the tattered clothes to wrap the broken sword pieces and shield, slinging them over his shoulder. He tucked the axe into his belt and loosened the straps of his armor, which was now little more than rags.
Splash.
Dalen left the cavern, leaving ripples in the blood-soaked ground. His splashing footsteps were the last sound before a heavy silence settled over the cave.
“Dalen! You’re back.”
Felber waved, and Dalen chuckled. The old man was as spry as ever, even after a bloody battle.
“Yes, I’m back.”
“The fight here wrapped up just a bit ago. I was worried and thought about coming down myself, but it seems that wasn’t necessary. That’s a relief.”
Dalen surveyed the area without responding. As Felber had said, the battle at the cave entrance seemed to have just ended.
“Ugh, ugh…”
“Potion! Bring a potion, quick!”
“Help… please…”
The cries of the wounded and the shouts of those tending to them echoed around. The air was thick with the smell of blood and herbs. It was a familiar scene, one that often followed battles. What was surprising was the relatively low number of casualties, despite the fight against monsters.
“Three from the Silent Company and two mages, was it?”
Dalen’s keen senses told him about that many had died. The number of injured seemed higher, as Felber confirmed.
“Five dead, and twenty-one injured, not counting minor wounds. They’ll be treated soon, so don’t worry. With the tower’s help, severe injuries rarely lead to death.”
As Felber said, none of the severely injured seemed to be in critical condition. Thanks to the tower’s regenerative potions, any sign of worsening was quickly addressed.
“Argh!”
“Ahh! It feels like I’m dying!”
From the sounds, it seemed like dozens were dying, but Felber laughed softly.
“Potion treatment is always a bit painful.”
Dalen nodded. There was a reason regenerative potions weren’t used during battles in the game. The immediate, intense pain debuff made continuing the fight nearly impossible.
Of course, a single potion couldn’t heal everything, so the uninjured mages and Silent Company members were running around, helping with the treatment. Judging by the bloodstains on his hands and the sweat on his brown hair, Felber had been helping before Dalen arrived.
As an elder wizard, he was likely adept at healing spells, providing crucial aid for injuries that potions alone couldn’t handle.
“We owe you a lot. Thank you.”
“It’s not you who owes us, but the Silent Company and the Bronze Guard. Besides, we gain something from this too, so don’t worry. Sometimes, experiencing real battles is necessary to keep our insights sharp.”
Felber wiped his sweat with his robe sleeve and continued.
“Oh, the Silent Company captain is resting over there. He was severely injured in the fight with the silver-masked apostle, but after potion treatment, he’s recovering. He wanted me to tell you he’s very grateful and will repay you.”
Repay, huh. Dalen chuckled quietly, knowing the captain didn’t have much gold.
“And the apostle?”
“The Silent Company captain killed him. He finished it with a brutality I didn’t expect from him. I was honestly surprised.”
“Everyone has their stories.”
Dalen said, and Felber’s brown beard twitched with a bittersweet smile.
”…Indeed. Who doesn’t have a story?”
“Master Wizard!”
A mage urgently called for Felber, saying a potion wasn’t working well on a patient. Felber excused himself and hurried over.
“It’s because a broken monster claw is lodged deep. We need to remove it first before treating. Elle—Zuitum.”
At his soft incantation, a six-fingered hand rose from the ground. The earthen hand, guided by Felber’s will, delicately probed the patient’s wound.
Dalen watched as Felber performed a surgical procedure using magic, followed by potion and healing spells, before moving on.
“Time to go.”
As he walked out of the cave, he spotted Gawain asleep. Despite his injuries, his face was peaceful. Perhaps because he had avenged his family with his own hands.
The silver-masked crocodile-man’s dismembered body was preserved separately in a corner.
Tap, tap.
As Dalen passed by a young mage, he whispered in his ear.
“Don’t think the elder wizard didn’t notice. Even I could tell.”
The mage flinched, startled, and his hair briefly turned gold under his robe before quickly reverting to brown. Dalen chuckled softly, giving the mage a pat on the back to send him on his way. The mage scurried off.
Was his name Tommy? It seemed this young mage hadn’t matured much since the sewer incident.
“Felber will handle his education well.”
It was a matter between master and apprentice, not something for Dalen to interfere with. Allowing the mage to tag along likely meant Felber intended for him to learn a lot from the experience. For a naive boy to mature, there was no better place than a blood-soaked battlefield.
Whether a wizard or a farmer, the wisdom of the elderly who have lived honorably is always profound.
Step.
As Dalen emerged from the cave, dawn was breaking. Beyond the distant bronze walls, the sun peeked over the horizon in a riot of colors. Dalen sighed.
“I’ll visit the branch soon! Let’s catch up!”
At the elder wizard’s shout from behind, Dalen raised a hand and waved. After seeing the chaos in the cabin, he felt like having a cold beer before bed.