Disaster (1)

I wasn't just shoveling; I was practically quarrying the ice with a pickaxe, swinging with every shred of strength in my arms. The problem was that whatever monstrous weight rested overhead collapsed inward the moment I broke free a chunk, instantly refilling the void.

If Bbarmbo hadn't fed dry logs into the hearth while I slept, the chimney flue would have been choked blind by dawn. Had my only lifeline for air been smothered... I shuddered to imagine it. The giant sloth wasn't merely an unmatched battle mount; he was a godsend in domestic survival.

Could other animals even survive an onslaught like this?

It wasn't just the wildlife. I doubted whether the vegetation could endure it either. With this sheer tonnage of frozen weight crashing down, normal plant growth ought to be utterly impossible. Yet all around, ancient canopies soared high enough to form a dense woodland. The flora had to possess unnatural vitality, or some mysterious ecological secret kept the timber from snapping under the strain.

If winter in the forest is already this unhinged, how savage are the other regions?

The forest was supposed to be the "temperate" baseline. The jagged alpine glaciers or the scorching wastes beyond would be worse, not better. And the humid jungle where the gorilla troop lived had to undergo its own seasonal torment. Common sense dictated that the rest of the world was just as chaotic.

Just mindlessly hacking away won't get me anywhere.

I briefly entertained shimmying up the chimney shaft to break out, but dismissed it almost immediately. The borehole was far too narrow. If my shoulders wedged in the stone chute, I would die a humiliating death trapped in my own soot. My only viable course was to bore through the front blockage, no matter how long it took.

I have to clear the entrance before another blizzard hits.

If fresh snow fell on top of this, I could be entombed in the cave for months. Having a vent was small comfort; the cave's structural integrity worried me far more. Snow gains terrifying mass as it compresses. Could natural stone arches hold up against thousands of tons of frozen burden, especially after I had chipped out sections to run the flue?

Sitting idle was suicide.

At least I have plenty of firewood.

I pulled back the canvas flap sealing the interior and built a roaring bonfire right before the frozen barrier. Since the snow had fused into dense ice, using fire to soften it was the only rational approach. I didn't simply wait for it to melt; as soon as the outer layer softened, I tore into it with the pickaxe, working in aggressive cycles.

Thwack! Crack!

As the ambient heat seeped into the compacted crust, breaking it apart became markedly easier. I stayed vigilant, shoveling away the icy slush before meltwater could cascade into the hearth and douse the flames.

How much time passed? After what felt like endless hours of swinging and scooping, the ceiling stopped collapsing inward. At last, pale daylight filtered through the breach.

"Whew!"

Drenched in sweat despite the freezing draft, I leaned against my shovel and surveyed the fruits of my labor. I had finally cleared the frozen barrier choking the cave mouth. Stepping into the opening, however, brought no relief. The clearing itself remained buried under drifts far taller than my head, framing the cave entrance in a sheer canyon of blinding white.

Do people in Siberia and Canada really live like this?

How anyone endured this year-round was an absolute mystery. Gazing at the narrow trench I had carved, an old military memory surfaced: freezing winter mornings spent on snow removal duty, scattering sacks of calcium chloride across the frozen asphalt to melt the ice.

Does calcium chloride even exist in this world?

This reality ran on alchemy rather than modern chemistry. In our history, chemistry evolved from alchemy, but considering elixirs could reattach severed nerves and knit bones in seconds, this world's chemical sophistication was likely astronomical. Synthesizing a simple de-icing compound should be child's play for an alchemist.

And if all else fails, plain salt works too.

I remembered hearing back home that road crews sometimes used rock salt instead of calcium chloride to lessen environmental damage. I could simply buy salt on the Gallery auction house. Though pricey, coarse salt was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠an indispensable survival staple with constant turnover, meaning supplies never ran dry.

I'll ask about alchemical de-icers later. For now, let's salt the ground.

I scattered handfuls of coarse salt along the exposed soil of the trench to prevent re-freezing, expanding my cleared perimeter section by section. Fortunately, the sky remained clear, allowing me to set up secondary campfires to speed along the melting. Still, keeping this path open and carving out a functional yard posed a daunting logistical headache.

Forget the chimney—I might need to excavate an actual emergency tunnel.

I would have to consult forum members from northern climes for architectural advice soon. I had no idea how long this brutal cold snap would persist, but it showed zero sign of abating anytime soon.

By the time midday rolled around, I had finally cleared the immediate vicinity around my shelter.

Unlike a barren snowy peak, the trees here are still fully alive...

I brushed the thick snow off the masonry oven and clay furnace, turning the thought over in my head. As I had noted earlier, flora and fauna couldn't possibly survive under perpetual burial. If this were a permanent glacier, the terrain would be completely barren. Therefore, this state had to be temporary. Perhaps the forest would revert to normal tomorrow?

I hadn't been here long, and the forest had already proven violently erratic. If it could plunge into deep winter in a single night, it could snap back to high summer just as abruptly. The thought of thousands of tons of snow melting in an instant offered a strange sort of comfort. But daydreams were daydreams; reality was reality.

Another blizzard could strike any minute. I need to haul everything portable inside.

The iron drums holding frozen fish, the hide bellows, the masonry tools—I dragged them all past the threshold. The improvised earthen oven and furnace were too heavy to budge, so I left them where they stood. They were sturdy enough to weather a snowdrift, and even if they collapsed, I could always rebuild them.

With winter preparations and isolation safeguards finished, I wiped my brow and prepared to check the Gallery for a breather. Just as I raised my interface, a low tremor shivered beneath my boots.

Rumble...

A muffled, sinister groan echoed through the rock. The stone floor beneath me shuddered faintly. The moment the vibration registered, I bolted back into the cavern without a second thought, calmly drawing my blade and gripping the round shield.

Fleeing blindly was foolish; preparing for impact was survival. That was the vital lesson this lethal wilderness had drilled into my bones. Standing around waiting for fate to strike was a death sentence.

Rustle.

Right as I turned to guard the entrance, Bbarmbo extended a languid claw toward me. Was he asking to come out and fight beside me? But Wonmo was fast asleep in deep hibernation, and the cub needed a guardian. Forcing myself to disregard the sloth's outstretched paw, I stepped out into the open trench.

RUMBLEEEEE!

The deafening roar swelled with terrifying rapidity. The earth shook violently enough to rattle my teeth. Whatever was barreling toward me possessed horrifying momentum.

Tension wound tight in my chest. In this forest, anything could burst through the timber. Just in case, I circulated my internal mana, coating the edge of the Heavenly Demon's Sword with a humming layer of sharp aura.

Fixing my senses on the deafening roar, my ears caught the vector of the vibration.

Behind... the cave?

The source wasn't the open woods in front of me, but the towering cliff directly behind the cavern. The instant the thought struck, I whipped my head around. Hearing a threat approach from the rear was baffling, but this was the Forest of the Four Seasons. Anything was possible.

Even if that threat was...

CRASHHHHHHH!

Not a living monster, but a sheer catastrophe of nature.

"Wait, what the fu—?!"

A monstrous tidal wave of white crested over the clifftop, plunging straight down like a collapsing glacier. In that frozen heartbeat, my perception slowed to a crawl. Through the blur of descending powder, I caught a glimpse of Bbarmbo inside the cave, peering out at me with a look of profound, unadulterated exasperation.

'Why didn't you listen to me, you idiot?'

His outstretched claw hadn't been an offer to join the fray—he had been trying to grab my collar and yank me back inside.

BOOOOOOM!

"Guh! Ack! Pffft!"

No matter how powerful a creature might be, flesh and bone were nothing before the wrath of nature. I was no exception. In desperate panic, I drove the Heavenly Demon's Sword straight into the stone ground to anchor myself, but it was useless. The divine blade was far too sharp; rather than catching the rock to brake my fall, it sliced through the bedrock like butter as the avalanche hurled me forward.

Wait, this wave is carrying me toward the river!

Even as the crushing mass churned my body like laundry, my brain screamed in alarm. The current was rushing toward the water. And across that river lay an unstable biome where the geography warped at random intervals. If I got swept across, I might never find my way back to the shelter.

Not the sword—use the shield!

Abandoning the blade's anchor, I flailed the sturdy wooden shield outward, thrashing to catch it against a stout branch or boulder. Submerged beneath tons of racing snow, it was a desperate gamble, but survival demanded desperate measures.

CLUNK!

My violent thrashing paid off. The rim of the shield snagged hard against a massive trunk, and my reinforced clothing caught on a jagged bough. Just as I contemplated letting go of the Heavenly Demon's Sword to grab the trunk with both hands, my wild momentum slammed to an abrupt halt.

"Mmph! Guh-brrrr!"

Though I had anchored my position, I still had to endure the full, suffocating fury of the torrent crashing over my skull. Teeth clenched, lungs burning, I dug deep and held on with every fiber of my being.

"Phaaa!"

After an eternity of white darkness, the roar subsided, and the pressure vanished. Ordinarily, an avalanche buried everything in its wake, but bizarrely, this deluge had swept cleanly through like a tidal wave, scouring the landscape bare. Because the snow hadn't settled over me, my head remained free, and I could draw a frantic gasp of frigid air.

"Cough! Cough!"

Spitting out mouthfuls of powdered slush, I wiped my eyes and surveyed my surroundings. The avalanche had stripped the ground bare, exposing raw, dark loam where towering drifts had stood moments before. But my immediate concern was geography. Crossing the river meant disaster.

I didn't cross. Thank god.

I had snagged on a massive willow near the riverbank. Looking down, I could clearly see the frozen ribbon of the river. Across the ice lay a completely different realm: a majestic, snow-capped mountain range gleaming under a pale sun. The mass of snow blanketing those distant peaks was staggering. The avalanche that had just swept over me had clearly dumped its entire load straight across the river.

Had the snow moved of its own accord, or had the forest forcibly purged it? The boundary between the two was utterly indistinct.

Could this topography even generate an avalanche naturally?

There was no sheer peak behind my cave, only a modest bluff. Confusion gnawed at me. Unless... the forest truly was a living, breathing organism that periodically purged itself of excess matter. With weather this erratic, without an automated cleansing mechanism, the flora would have perished long ago, turning the region into a barren waste like the frozen range across the water. It was a compelling theory.

If the forest is this chaotic, what on earth is happening in the other biomes?

A chill of dread settled deep in my gut. Straightening my gear, I hurried back up the muddy trail toward the cave.

"...Ah."

The scene greeting me in the clearing was an absolute disaster. The wooden barricades, the painstakingly built earthen oven, and the smelting furnace had all been obliterated, swept clean off the cliff face as if they had never existed. Rebuilding the furnace and oven was easy enough, but replacing the defensive perimeter was a massive blow.

So this is why civilization can never take root here.

When the land itself regularly wiped the slate clean with unstoppable natural disasters, building anything lasting was a fool's errand.

While Grylls was starring in his own personal disaster movie, a crisis of equal magnitude was unfolding across the vast grassland of the Four Seasons Forest.

SHSHSHSHSHAAAAAA!

A deafening deluge battered the savanna. The region naturally alternated between severe dry and wet seasons, and heavy downpours were common during the monsoon. But when the heavens ruptured and dumped a seasonal deluge all at once, the savanna had no capacity to absorb the deluge.

"Splurrr! Chuff!"

"SKREEEE!"

A catastrophic flash flood swept across the plains, mercilessly sweeping away wildlife. The hardest hit were burrowing creatures and young animals caught without shelter. Too frail to fight the surging torrents, scores of young beasts were carried away by the muddy tide.

"Hmph."

Observing this catastrophe in silence was Ludwig, still encased in the battered plate armor that served as his fortress.

"So that is why this creature possesses such preposterous legs."

"..."

He was currently perched ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠comfortably atop the giraffe's broad back, keeping completely clear of the swirling waters. Giraffes were notoriously foul-tempered, prone to shattering a predator's skull with a single kick, yet this magnificent specimen showed no hostility toward the paladin. The swollen lump crowning the beast's skull hinted at how Ludwig had earned its obedience.

Had I not encountered this beast, I would have faced dire peril.

Ludwig gazed down at the towering animal. Even amidst the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠raging currents submerging the plains, the giraffe stood steady as an iron pillar. It had merely retreated beneath the canopy of an ancient baobab to shield itself from the worst of the rain, placidly enduring the storm.

THUD! THUD! THUD!

A series of colossal thuds rattled Ludwig's ears, sending heavy ripples cascading through the floodwaters. Turning toward the disturbance, his eyes widened at an unbelievable sight.

THUD! BOOM! THUD!

A tortoise. Not an aquatic sea turtle, but a titanic land tortoise. And resting atop its colossal shell was not mere keratin, but an entire, living mountain. Its sheer scale was staggering, dwarfing the ancient trees of the plain.

As the flood submerged the plains, panicked animals scrambled up the tortoise's rocky limbs, seeking sanctuary among the verdant ridges of its mountain shell. Had Grylls witnessed the spectacle, he would have instantly hailed the behemoth as a living Noah's Ark.

"..."

Ludwig watched the living mountain plod stoically through the deluge, then slowly shook his head.

Can a mortal truly survive in a realm such as this?

His curiosity regarding Wild Grylls deepened by the minute—unaware, of course, that Grylls's own yard had just been completely scoured from the face of the earth.

I must seek shelter upon higher ground. With such a fine steed beneath me, the journey should prove manageable.

It was not a horse. It was a giraffe.