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Chapter 386: The Story After (18). [Side Story 18]

“According to you… that’s when hell truly began, right?”

In the past, Ketal had once told Arkamis about his past.

That meeting his own kind was, ironically, the start of hell.

Ketal gave a bitter smile.

“It was.”

When he first met a barbarian, he couldn’t have been happier.

Unlike the strange creatures he’d always encountered, this one was human, just like him.

Through conversation, he intended to ask what this place was, and how to escape it.

“What are you?”

The barbarian asked with a puzzled look.

The language he spoke wasn’t Earth’s tongue.

Yet Ketal understood perfectly, as if his body itself remembered.

He stammered as he opened his mouth.

“…I am—”

His name surfaced naturally.

“I am Ketal.”

“Ketal?”

The barbarian looked as if he had never heard such a name.

Ketal smiled brightly at the sign that communication was possible.

“Nice to meet you. Truly, it’s great to meet you!”

At last, he’d met a human, not a monster.

At last, he could gain information.

Overjoyed, Ketal hurriedly asked,

“Are you a barbarian? You look like my kin. Do you live here? Do you perhaps know a way out?”

“Way out?”

The barbarian tilted his head, not understanding.

Ketal pressed again.

“This is the wilderness, isn’t it? A place unfit for people to live? I want to get out of here, to the outside.”

“Outside? What’s that?”

The barbarian asked back, as if he didn’t even understand the concept of “outside.”

“…Huh.”

Something was wrong.

The conversation didn’t align.

Ketal’s face stiffened.

The barbarian, unconcerned, grabbed his axe.

“But more importantly… you’re new here. You look like you’ve got some strength.”

He bared his teeth, and in an instant, killing intent surged.

Ketal stepped back.

“Wait.”

“Die!”

The axe came down, aiming to split Ketal’s skull.

He barely managed to raise his own axe in defense.

“…So from the very first meeting, he tried to kill you?”

“That’s right.”

Hearing the story, Arkamis asked with a grimace.

Ketal nodded.

“That’s the kind of beings those barbarians are. You know it as well.”

“I did know, but… hearing it from you directly makes it feel strange.”

“To continue—yes, I defeated him.”

The barbarian had laughed heartily, telling Ketal to kill him.

Of course, Ketal had no intention of doing so.

Instead, he bombarded him with questions.

Strangely, the barbarian answered them, perhaps thinking it was the victor’s right.

Ketal’s questions were simple:

How to escape this place.

Do elves exist in this world.

Do dragons exist.

Does magic exist.

The barbarian’s answers were equally simple:

“What do you mean escape?”

“No.”

“No.”

“What’s magic?”

“……”

At that moment, Ketal realized.

The world he had entered was not a fantasy.

It was nothing more than a wretched hell.

“After that, I was as good as dead while still alive.”

Through the barbarian, he joined the tribe.

He asked others as well, but the answers were no different.

Ketal completely gave up.

This was hell.

It was punishment for presumptuously hoping for fantasy.

Thinking so, he abandoned everything.

“Of all my years, those were the most horrific.”

Looking back now, it was a miracle he hadn’t killed himself.

More precisely, he didn’t even have the energy to.

He merely waited for death to eventually come.

“Then… change arrived.”

“The explorer,”

Arkamis said.

Ketal nodded.

“The first person who brought me brilliant hope.”

* * *

Whoooosh!

The wind blew—sharp, murderous wind that cut flesh and tore lungs.

Ketal accepted it all with a blank face, like a sinner inflicting punishment on himself.

Behind him, a barbarian approached.

The same one Ketal had first met.

“What are you doing?”

“Get lost.”

Ketal’s reply was curt, but the barbarian was used to it.

“Mealtime soon. Eat.”

“Eat it yourselves.”

“Weird guy.”

To the barbarian, Ketal was strange.

He neither sought food, nor enjoyed battle.

He looked human, but was entirely different.

The barbarian left without much care.

Ketal stared blankly after him, then thought to himself.

‘Should I die?’

Dying wasn’t hard.

One strike of the axe to his own head would end it.

He had thought it a thousand times.

But never acted.

He didn’t even have the will.

‘Gods… is this my punishment?’ To wait helplessly here for death?

He sighed and trudged back toward the barbarian village.

Whatever else, he still needed food to survive.

“…Hm?”

On the way, he noticed something strange.

The village was noisy.

That wasn’t unusual—barbarians always fought and killed.

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Silence was the strange thing.

But today was different.

The noise wasn’t the din of battle—it sounded confused, unsettled.

Puzzled, Ketal entered.

Barbarians were crowding around something.

“Hm…”

“What is this?”

“Kill it? Or not?”

“Looks half-dead already. Worth killing?”

“What even is it?”

“What are you lot doing?”

Ketal smacked one barbarian’s shoulder.

The man looked bewildered.

“Don’t know. Something came here.”

“Something?”

Ketal pushed through the crowd—

“…Ah.”

His steps stopped.

Inside lay a man, collapsed on the ground.

He had managed to crawl this far, but fainted at the end. This text is hosted at novelFirｅ.net

But that wasn’t what mattered.

“…Ah.”

Ketal couldn’t help but utter a sound.

The man wore a thick fur coat.

On his back, a leather pack.

On his feet, boots studded for walking on ice.

In his gloved hand, a square leather object.

“What’s he holding?”

“No idea.”

The barbarians speculated.

But Ketal knew immediately.

It was a book.

Drawn as if by enchantment, Ketal approached.

“…Hey.”

He shook the man’s shoulder.

No response.

Urgently, he shook harder.

“Ugh…”

A groan escaped the man’s lips.

Alive.

Ketal’s eyes widened.

He shouted within himself.

He declared to the barbarians.

“This man is mine. Don’t touch him.”

They protested, furious at his attempt to “hoard a thing” all for himself.

Ketal’s answer was simple:

“If you’ve got complaints, come at me! I’ll hack off every limb and keep you alive, feeding you gruel forever!”

At that threat, the barbarians fell silent.

Death didn’t frighten them.

But being left helpless, bedridden—that terrified them.

Thus Ketal secured the man, brought him to his hut, lit a fire, buried him under furs, fed him cooled boiled water and minced meat.

He nursed him desperately.

And in the end—

“Ugh…”

The man awoke.

“Ah—ahh!”

Ketal let out a cry of joy, trembling.

Even now, long after, he remembered that feeling.

“I barely saved him. And we talked.”

At first, the language didn’t match.

So Ketal learned from him.

Luckily, the man was used to teaching, and Ketal’s zeal to learn was boundless.

Within days, they could converse simply.

And from those conversations, Ketal realized—

the gods had granted his wish.

Beyond this snowy hell, there truly were elves, dragons, and magic.

It was a fantasy world.

At the moment hope bloomed in despair, Ketal’s dead heart stirred again.

He and the man talked endlessly, and his conviction grew.

Arkamis asked,

“…What happened to him?”

“He didn’t last a month. His body had already been ruined in his journey through the White Snowfield. Surviving that long was a miracle.”

Ketal regretted it deeply.

He had wanted to learn more about the outside.

He remembered their final conversation.

“Cough! Cough!”

The man spat blood.

Ketal rushed to help him.

“Are you all right? Rest now.”

“No… I won’t live long anyway. Before I die, I need to pass on what I know to you.”

Wiping the blood, the man looked at him.

“Ha… to think barbarians lived in the White Snowfield. If the outside world knew, academia would be shaken. To die here, unable to reveal it… what a shame.”

* * *

At that point, Arkamis raised her hand to stop him.

“…Wait. Ketal. Something’s strange.”

“What is?”

“You said that man didn’t know there were barbarians in the White Snowfield, right?”

“That’s what he said.”

“That’s… strange.”

Because the legend of the emperor who challenged the White Snowfield and returned defeated already existed.

Through that legend, the world already knew barbarians lived there.

A man capable of venturing into the Snowfield wouldn’t be ignorant of it.

So it could only mean one of two things:

He was an utter fool.

Or—he was from even further in the past.

“…Ketal. What was his name?”

Carefully, Arkamis asked.

Ketal answered.

“He called himself Albraham.”

Arkamis’s pupils dilated.

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