Ch.6Fall (6)

Isla slowly mulled over what had happened to her.

She had lost consciousness. Considering the height she fell from, she should be grateful it wasn’t worse.

The fall itself was unexpected. She hadn’t realized the foothold was so unstable.

If only the foothold had been secure, she could have pulled up that heavy monster and saved it.

On the other hand, she wondered if they would have had any chance of winning even if she had managed to pull it up.

They had been cornered.

It was a hunting drive. Someone had somehow figured out the uncertainty of the snowstorm and rough terrain to drive her and the monster into a trap.

There was no way they could have escaped in that situation. Isla had, in fact, somewhat resigned herself to this.

She fell while trying to save the monster, and at that moment, she had given up everything.

I’ve lived long enough. I’ve endured long enough.

After all, when she first came here, she knew she wouldn’t last long.

Revenge, grudges, goals.

She had put everything down and resigned herself when it happened.

The monster pulled her close.

With a deep sigh and eyes that seemed to say “there’s no other way,” it embraced her.

And then they tumbled down the cliff.

It pressed its body against hers as tightly as possible to protect her from injury, deliberately curling its body around her.

Even as everything shook and her consciousness blurred from the concussion, she knew.

If this monster hadn’t embraced her, she would have died.

That much was clear just from looking at the monster’s condition.

When they reached the ground, she saw him through her shaking vision and rising dizziness.

‘Are you… okay?’

What kind of expression was that?

The monster spoke with a forced smile that seemed relieved, or perhaps glad.

Its mouth was red with blood it had coughed up, and its entire body was covered in blood, perhaps from injuries sustained during the fall.

Its arm was broken with bone showing through, and its complexion quickly turned pale.

These were injuries no human could survive. This man was definitely a monster.

She had known this since he first regenerated from a lump of meat into a person, but now she realized it anew.

Yet somehow, she thought of this monster as human-like.

It was around that time that her consciousness faded. The muttering voices grew distant, footsteps receded, and she could no longer sense any presence around her.

She remained abandoned in this darkness for a long time.

Until gradually the darkness lifted and light began to return.

Isla slowly opened her eyes.

She was under a roof for the first time in a long while.

How long had it been since she’d slept somewhere with a ceiling? Before she could indulge in such sentiments, she tried to survey her surroundings.

“You’re awake.”

But someone spoke to her before she could.

‘No, it’s the monster.’

It was a man leaning against the wall.

In appearance, he looked like an ordinary human.

Gray eyes that were both cold and somehow gentle.

A gaze that observed silently.

Black, curly hair and thick eyebrows.

He was large in stature. The term “giant” would suit him well.

His face was handsome too. It had a noble quality that suggested royal or aristocratic lineage.

Did he take care of himself? Though she didn’t know much about monsters, she wondered if he might be a monster created for such a purpose.

“You still seem dizzy.”

But that thought didn’t last long.

The monster, Llewellyn, spoke. Isla stared blankly at Llewellyn and wagged her tail.

“You didn’t call me ‘big sis,’ so I didn’t realize you were talking to me.”

*

I couldn’t help but laugh. She was certainly older than me, but I thought she was too fixated on being called “big sis.”

Isla, regardless of appearances, was a woman living in this new continent. Whatever circumstances brought her to this land, she likely hadn’t lived an easy life.

Betrayal by others probably occurred more frequently than meals, and there must have been many nights when fear and wariness kept her from sleep.

Perhaps she had even betrayed others herself.

Yet this woman casually called herself my “big sis” and wanted me to address her as such.

It might not have been desperate pleading, but still.

It made me think something must have happened to her.

Perhaps she lost a younger sibling, or one was murdered. Maybe her family was wiped out, and she longed for that familial bond.

She called herself “big sis” because I appeared younger than her, but if I had been older, she might have claimed to be my little sister.

If our ages had been significantly different, we might have been father and daughter or uncle and niece.

But I didn’t grant the woman’s request.

I might have considered other titles, but “big sis” held a special place for me.

In my life, I’ve only had one big sister. Even if she might no longer exist.

She was my only family and blood relation who raised me and stayed by my side. My savior who dedicated her short life to saving me.

I am a person with a sense of propriety. So the position of “big sis” had to remain permanently retired.

For that reason, no matter how desperately Isla wanted it, I couldn’t call her “big sis.”

Though she probably wasn’t that desperate anyway.

As expected, Isla either didn’t care or showed no reaction as she rose with her characteristic expressionlessness.

She walked around barefoot without making a sound, then suddenly prostrated herself on the floor.

No, that’s not quite right. Her upper body was down, but her lower body remained raised.

What on earth?

While I was puzzled, Isla stretched her body fully in that position.

It was a behavior commonly seen in cats or dogs. The difference was:

It was a rather embarrassing posture for a human body.

I couldn’t even turn my head away properly as I stared at the ground with a bewildered expression.

I couldn’t understand why she suddenly did this. Actually, I didn’t really want to know. I wished she would be more mindful of the situation and timing.

It was around then that Isla finished stretching and turned to look at me.

“How long has it been?”

A translucent window appeared in the corner of my vision.

[Play Time: 8,799 hours]

“About a day.”

When I answered indirectly, Isla lightly bounced on her two legs.

“Shall we go?”

The woman assessed the situation without asking. It was as I expected.

From the beginning, the cannibals had persistently attacked only me. It meant they had a reason to keep her alive.

Such a woman would surely know where she was now. She probably had a vague idea of why I was still alive too.

“We can leave.”

I was in the cannibals’ guest room.

Me, a monster who had beaten some of them to death, as their guest.

In other words, I wasn’t in immediate danger of dying. At least not without a specific purpose.

But that didn’t mean there was no need to escape.

I had no weapons at my side. All the weapons I had collected—the mando, spear, hammer, logging axe, and dagger—had been taken from me.

I hadn’t been stripped of my clothes, but what I was wearing now was practically the same as wearing nothing.

Clothes full of holes that barely clung to my body.

Even sticky from being soaked in blood.

If I weren’t someone who had grown accustomed to wearing the same clothes for a year, I would have been craving a shower and new clothes by now.

I had only one means to fight back.

[Mourning 1/1]

Just one chance. I shook my head at the snow leopard who was wagging her tail, waiting for my response.

“There’s no need for that. At least not now.”

“That’s right.”

Isla flinched and turned toward the door. The place where the door had been was gradually disappearing, like fog lifting.

A trace of highly advanced magic. The one revealing himself was a middle-aged man.

A well-groomed middle-aged man wearing elaborate noble attire with a cape. He smiled beneath his well-maintained beard.

“If you want to do something, you can do it later.”

A polite tone with an attitude that showed even more respect.

Yet his words and behavior revealed confidence that he could respond to anything we might do.

But at the same time, he was a middle-aged man who displayed the wit and wisdom to blend seamlessly into any environment.

Isla tensed upon seeing such a man.

She puffed up her tail and held it high, slightly spreading her legs, ready to move at any moment.

He was worthy of such caution. At least I couldn’t sense it, but in this world, almost every being could sense and use magical power.

Considering that virtually all skills required magical power, Isla was surely sensing it acutely.

How monstrous the magician before us was.

“The lord is waiting.”

Red spears that could pursue me and Isla through magic, something that could only be used at high levels in the game.

The structural school of magic that could magically construct doors and dismiss them at will.

And the trained physique glimpsed beneath his cape.

This middle-aged man was a magician close to omnipotence.

That’s why he could conduct a hunting drive in such a snowstorm and see through my tricks to subdue me.

Isla seemed to have noticed this too. Seeing her distorted face, the magician kindly led the way.

After leaving the guest room, passing through doors that disappeared and reappeared on their own, I began to see things visible only to my eyes.

The structure of the walls and the form of the corridors.

The occasional pipe-like features and the closed yet efficient structure that clearly indicated we were underground.

It reminded me of research facilities I’d only seen in movies, never in real life, or the aerial fortress where I had been just a few dozen hours ago.

It couldn’t be helped. This was a laboratory created by the three clans, the dark forces of this world, for experiments or some purpose.

It had to be in the same format as the fortress where I had been, and it wasn’t strange that it gave off the feeling of a research facility.

People called such places:

Dungeons.

The cannibals were using a dungeon as their residence.

As such, the scenery we passed through was faintly permeated with the smell of blood and the foul odor of death.

Smells I never thought I’d experience in my lifetime. It was unpleasant to realize that my nose was gradually adapting, but I couldn’t show it.

I simply faced the one looking down at me in the vast room we had reached.

Golden hair and golden eyes. A small frame draped in ill-fitting clothes.

We didn’t look alike. The face didn’t resemble the one I’d seen reflected in well-polished metal fragments. Neither the hair color nor the eye color.

But I knew we were the same kind just by looking. There was something I could feel. An ambiguous sensation, whether it was a sense of kinship or revulsion toward my own kind.

It was close to intuition.

So intuitively speaking:

That is my kin and my inferior version.

But it wasn’t just an inferior version. A being that possessed something I didn’t have.

The girl, who had been ravenously tearing at a human head in her hands, smiled brightly when she saw me.

An innocent, childlike smile. Yet the blood on her lips made me nauseous.

The door behind us had closed, and Isla stood beside me, sharply scanning our surroundings.

I glanced at the therianthrope.

And recalled our conversation.

‘So that’s why there are so many.’

I had assumed the increase in cannibals was simply due to the absence of law enforcement, but that wasn’t the case.

If there were other forces in the new continent, they wouldn’t welcome the proliferation of cannibals either. Even in the game, cannibals were low-level for this reason. Everyone hated them and tried to exterminate them.

‘That’s not all of it.’

But Isla had said so.

‘About half.’

The absence of law enforcement accounted for only about half the reason.

There was another reason why cannibals had increased so much and even had a nearly omnipotent magician with them.

I realized what she had been unable to say.

It was because the leader of the cannibals was a very famous monster species.

The killer of the five grand dukes and the cause of the most terrible civil war.

Homunculus.

A dark fantasy monster like me.

I watched as such a monster smiled and offered me the head it had been eating.

It was truly disgusting, but I was secretly relieved.

At least that wasn’t my sister.