Chapter 196 - [Side story]
[Side story]
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 196
Chapter Title: Side Story - Man of Narvik (1)
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The land of Narvik, where men killed each other without mercy.
That was where Bazkal was born.
“Bazkal.”
“...What?”
“You can survive on your own, right?”
“Dunno. Guess I’ll find out if I try. If it doesn’t work out, oh well.”
“Yeah, with that attitude, what can’t you do? Live boldly. Always boldly...”
Bazkal didn’t know his father’s face. His father, a hunter, had been devoured by a magic beast before Bazkal was even born.
In a stroke of fortune, his mother, left alone, hadn’t abandoned the child in her womb and raised him.
She wove nets, cooked food, and did menial labor for the knights and their organizations in the inner districts—the ones outsiders mockingly called “nobles.”
But the year Bazkal turned ten, his mother died too.
“Mom.”
The young Bazkal shook the woman lying there—his mother—but her eyes never opened again.
His mother had been stabbed with a knife. While working as a maid, she’d been caught in the crossfire of a turf war between organizations.
It was just a single stab to the gut, but the wound festered enough to kill her.
After leaving her last words, she suffered for a full day before passing.
Left alone, Bazkal lost everything.
The adults—who hadn’t lifted a finger to help when his mother was alive—naturally plundered their home and every scrap of possessions they had.
He couldn’t resist. At ten years old, he was far too young to stand against their thick arms and murderous glares.
Bazkal joined a gang of boys a few years older than him just to scrape by.
He polished the veteran hunters’ weapons, maintained their hunting gear, cleaned their homes. Only by taking on every odd job could he barely earn enough food to stay alive.
He never even attempted to steal.
It wasn’t just because he was good-hearted.
“Hey, I’m sorry!”
“Sorry? Damn right you are, you little shit. You dare eye my dinner?”
“Cut off his leg, Mirfon.”
“Nah, that’d make too much blood. You wanna smell it all the way over here? Just sever the tendons and toss him. He’ll die on his own.”
The adults of this land were all hunters, past or present, and their eyes were sharp as hawks.
Children couldn’t evade the gaze of those who hid from and trapped magic beasts.
Even Bazkal’s mother—who’d retired to raise him—had set traps in her home to catch thieves.
Kids got caught in house traps and died or were crippled. If they were only caught without dying, the hunters finished the job or crippled them.
Hunters showed no mercy to children. They knew one act of mercy would turn their homes into communal dens for beggar brats.
Years passed like that, and Bazkal grew weary.
A hopeless life, a futureless existence—it was hard to endure.
Grow up into an ordinary hunter, get lucky and marry, have kids, die.
That bleak certainty gnawed at him.
Just as he began forgetting even his mother’s last words, a momentous event shook him awake.
A clash between knights in the hunter district.
* * *
It started over something utterly trivial.
Two knights—one returning from the outer district, one heading out—crossed paths on the same road and predictably demanded the other yield.
It quickly turned into a matter of pride.
Out in the wilds, away from people, one might’ve backed down with a cold sweat, mumbling excuses. Or they might’ve parted with mutual respect.
But this was the hunter district, with countless commoners watching.
‘I’d rather die than yield to this bastard in front of a bunch of hunters.’
‘If I push hard, this punk’ll get scared and back off.’
Fatefully, both knights thought the exact same thing.
Neither yielded, both barked orders, and soon their tempers truly flared—they drew their weapons.
“You son of a bitch!”
“Die!”
The knights’ duel was spectacular.
Their swords swung at speeds invisible to the eye, whipping up terrifying gusts of wind, and clashed with ear-splitting booms.
Finally, the blades shattered from the violent impacts, but the fight didn’t end.
Even their brawling was on another level from ordinary folk.
Towering a head taller than most men, they moved with catlike agility, striking at unseen speeds.
Their blows landed with such force that each punch sounded like a drumskin bursting.
Later, one knight grabbed the other’s ankle, swung him around, and smashed him into a nearby shack. Astonishingly, it was the ground and building that crumbled, not the knight.
The hunter who owned the house watched a pillar snap and the roof collapse, his mouth agape in silent agony.
In hindsight, their fight was downright crude for knights.
Flinging weapons wildly from a safe distance out of fear of getting cut, then grappling and punching once the blades broke, hurling each other around.
It was embarrassing to even call it a knightly duel—bluntly, just a pair of strong apes scrapping.
But no matter how sloppy the technique, their superhuman strength was real.
Raw power to shatter building pillars, speeds too fast to track easily, bodies tough enough to withstand it all amid the frenzy.
When it ended, Bazkal was utterly captivated by the overwhelming existence of knights.
‘I’m going to become a knight.’
Of course, if mere desire made one a knight, Narvik would have none who weren’t.
Fortunately, Bazkal had advantages others lacked: a tougher body than most, and dogged determination toward his goal.
“What’re you doing?”
“Training.”
“Why the hell?”
“To become a knight.”
“First time hearing you lift rocks to become one.”
Bazkal practiced various body-tempering methods he’d picked up from old hunters.
Lifting massive boulders, running, twisting his waist to build flexibility—endless grueling ordeals.
He ignored the mocking stares from boys his age. Those idiots would be looking up at him in awe once he became a knight.
Bazkal had to move far busier than others.
The harsher the training, the more food he needed, and to get it, he worked even during their rest and playtime.
Whatever time was left after work went to training. Leisure didn’t exist for him.
It was brutally harsh for a teenage boy, but Bazkal gritted his teeth through the ordeal. For one thing only: to become a knight.
* * *
Years passed, and at seventeen, Bazkal had grown into a tall, sturdy youth.
A half-head taller than his peers, with broad shoulders and thick, solid arms, anyone could see he had prime hunter material.
To become a full-fledged hunter, Bazkal sought out the old timers with his saved-up coin.
“Hunting solo?”
“Yup.”
“Deep into the woods?”
“That’s right.”
“No hiding, no ambush—just head-on?”
“How many times you gonna ask?”
“Crazy bastard.”
The retired hunter selling off his obsolete gear eyed Bazkal like a madman.
Narvik hunters had ironclad rules.
‘Hunt in groups, in the forests near the purified zones, strike only when they can’t see you.’
Weak compared to magic beasts, it was how they secured meat without dying.
Unless you were a knight, ordinary hunters couldn’t survive Narvik’s surrounding woods without following them.
Monsters there could slaughter hunters in seconds.
But Bazkal insisted on breaking every rule.
Ignoring the old hunter’s lectures, he took the gear and headed out.
Alone in the woods, he soon encountered a magic beast.
Gripping his long sword out front, legs trembling, Bazkal crept closer.
“Stay still, nice and easy?”
Shiiiik!
His first prey was a black snake called a dusk viper, a bit thicker than a man’s arm.
Nothing special beyond small protrusions under its body, and small enough to seem harmless, so Bazkal charged straight in.
He’d eaten dusk vipers the adults brought home a few times and was confident he could win.
But to a predator accustomed to attacks, the rookie’s rush was laughable.
The dusk viper shot forward like lightning, bit his arm, injected paralyzing venom, and fled.
So fast that by the time Bazkal flailed his arm in pain, it had vanished into the brush.
“Gah!”
He screamed and yanked up his bitten arm.
The forearm was already turning purple.
* * *
Back home, Bazkal groaned in agony for days.
The potent paralytic venom didn’t just numb his arm—it brought excruciating pain.
Amid the torment and fear he’d never use the arm again, Bazkal cried for the first time since his mother’s death.
While recuperating, visitors came to his house.
“Bazkal, you in?”
“What?”
“What else? Heard you got hurt, came to check on you.”
It was boys around his age—fresh-faced new hunters.
Ridiculously, they claimed to visit at night, armed, to “check on” the injured boy.
They’d heard he went hunting and got hurt, figuring there might be scraps to scavenge.
“Get lost. Don’t need you.”
“C’mon, don’t be like that...”
“I said get lost!”
With one arm limp, Bazkal brandished a small knife and drove off the young hunters.
Cowed by his venomous glare, they backed off without pressing.
Spouting the clichéd line small-time thugs always use: “We’ll see about this.”
* * *
Fortunately, days later, his arm healed fine.
With no money for medicine or a visit to the local herbalist, it was sheer luck.
Once recovered, Bazkal planned his next hunt immediately.
No turning back now.
At seventeen, his build rivaled an adult’s.
Too big for odd jobs—kids could get them, but a grown youth threatened other hunters, so no one hired him.
Joining another hunter gang was out too. The retired hunter had spread word, and they didn’t want a lunatic causing trouble.
So Bazkal hunted solo again—and finally claimed his first kill.
“Raaargh!”
Victorious after a brutal struggle, Bazkal roared with all his might.
At his feet lay a sheep horn wolf, half-shredded—the most common magic beast anywhere.
By sheer luck, it was an old, sickly outcast from its pack, perfect for a lone youth.
But victory cost him. Claw gashes wept blood from his neck and chest; his leg was bitten, the bone cracked.
Hauling the sheep horn wolf on a crude cart, limping home, Bazkal drew murmurs from the hunters.
“That kid took down a sheep horn wolf solo?”
“Gotta be. No reason for those wounds if he stole a carcass.”
“Didn’t even have trap tools...”
“Ain’t he totally nuts?”
Hunters typically dug traps, ambushed in groups, or stole scraps. Facing a magic beast head-on was beyond their norms.
That was for inner-district pros—organization warriors following knights.
To them, Bazkal was an outlaw misfit, a beast not to be poked.
Now even older hunters shied from him—no one messed with him lightly, averting eyes if he glared.
With a few magic beasts under his belt, Bazkal’s pockets fattened.
He’d brushed death many times, but unlike group hunters splitting profits, he kept it all.
Better swords, better armor, growing knowledge and skill—hunts got easier.
Years later, when sheep horn wolves felt trivial, Bazkal ventured deeper into the woods.
‘Gotta fight the real strong ones. Need bigger crises. Close to death, but not quite.’
Settling as a top hunter wasn’t enough—his dream still burned.
The dream of becoming a knight drove him inward, toward fiercer foes.