Slave (2)
"Greetings! A mighty and vigorous morning!"
If you ask me, I am Grylls!
Scritch! Scratch! Scritch! Scratch!
And a slave to life, toiling away the second I drag myself out of bed!
"Ugh. Fucking hell."
I spat a curse through a cloud of wood dust with every rhythmic stroke of the saw. I had been at this timber-processing grind since the crack of dawn, and though the profanity flowed freely, my pile of squared logs steadily grew.
I should've just asked the dwarf to do this.
I had figured doing it with my own two hands would be better since I needed precise, customized widths. That reasoning had been sheer madness. Doing it all by myself was a marvel of inefficiency. What irritated me even more was the fact that everything was proceeding exactly as planned. You might wonder why someone would get pissed off when things go smoothly, but the logic was simple: if I messed up, I could at least use the mistake as an excuse to quit. When everything went swimmingly, I couldn't even walk away. In the end, driven past stubborn pride straight into sheer resignation, I turned into a mindless machine and sawed away at the wood.
"Kkyu! Kkyu!"
"Kkiii-ing!"
While I poured my soul into manual labor, Wonmo and the baby raccoon were busy frolicking around the yard. Wonmo seemed to have figured out the baby raccoon's limits, playing gently without causing any trouble. A petty thought crossed my mind—here was the master busting his back while the freeloaders played at their leisure—but I let it go with a quiet sigh.
Well, they're just kids.
Getting mad at children for playing was pathetic. Besides, I was the one who had decided to do this work in the first place. Throwing a tantrum now would only make me look deranged, so I held my tongue.
Being able to work without any interruptions is a blessing in itself.
In truth, being able to engage in woodworking was proof of how comfortable things had become. If I were still engaged in a desperate, minute-to-minute struggle for survival, carpentry would have been an unthinkable luxury. Even so, with winter officially over as of yesterday, I needed to keep a sharp eye on the movements of the local fauna. Right before winter ended, after all, the raccoon family had been ambushed by a giant serpent.
This peace might not last past today.
The Forest of Four Seasons was a place where predicting the local wildlife was an exercise in futility. I had encountered a decent variety of beasts so far, but there was no telling what new horror might crawl out next. An actual unicorn might gallop out from the brush, or something infinitely more grotesque could show its face. While I prayed nothing of the sort would happen, blind optimism was a deadly habit here. It was far safer to keep working while remaining primed to react the second my gut sent out an ominous tingle.
Snap!
The sharp crack of a stepping foot snapping a dry branch rang out unnaturally loud.
It wasn't just the noise—the entire atmosphere of the forest had frozen solid. Not even the faintest whisper of wind or rustle of leaves lingered; only a suffocating, heavy silence hung in the air.
"……."
I stopped my saw mid-stroke, pouring every ounce of focus into my hearing. To ensure I hadn't imagined it, I glanced toward the others.
"Kkyu?"
Wonmo, who had been tumbling joyfully across the grass, froze in place and whipped his head around. Having caught the dangerous scent, he pulled his body back into a defensive crouch. He was on full guard.
"Kkiing?"
"King. Kkiii-ing."
The baby raccoon, perhaps still too young to grasp the danger, merely cocked its head in bewilderment. However, the battle-tested Mother Raccoon scooped her child up and retreated toward safety, confirming beyond a shadow of a doubt that danger had arrived.
Who is it?
I took slow, deliberate steps backward toward the cave, scanning the perimeter. The fact that the intruder hadn't revealed itself despite snapping that branch meant it was observing our reaction. In the brief window of stillness, I slipped inside the cave entrance and geared up. Fast Tree Sloth, sensing the gravity of the situation, swiftly crawled onto my back.
Rustle— Rustle—
Just as my preparations were complete, the thick brush leading up toward the river parted violently. The intruder slowly strode forward, having apparently abandoned any desire to conceal itself.
Crunch—
"……."
"……."
The intruder stepped into the open. The first thing that caught my eye was its coat. A pure white fur, starkly out of place against the lush forest greenery. It wasn't the soft, downy fluff of a cub; it was stark, bleached white. As startling as that snowy pelt was, its eyes were far more grotesque. Cold, crimson eyes, vivid as fresh blood, bored into me with chilling malice.
…A gorilla?
The creature standing before me was undeniably a gorilla. A mutant possessing snow-white fur and blood-red eyes—an albino. A genetic anomaly known to manifest not just in beasts, but in humans as well. My astonishment at encountering such a mutant was swiftly overshadowed by a piece of vital intel Allfather had shared with me in the past.
Lyse Kraone was attacked and killed by an albino gorilla.
Whatever its motives, this beast had a documented history of slaughtering humans. My guard ratcheted up to maximum alertness. Next, I observed Bbarmbo's reaction. When Bbarmbo had first laid eyes on Chief Gorilla, he had scowled with rare intensity, but his reaction to this albino was entirely different. It was closer to: What the hell is that guy? Had they never crossed paths before?
The fact that it walked out boldly instead of launching an ambush means…
Was it lost, or had it come scouting? If it had simply lost its way, I fully intended to intimidate it and drive it off. While I weighed my options, the albino gorilla swept an appraising gaze over my entire shelter before locking its red eyes onto me.
"Ha piliya bajeua."
"……."
"Ni ya-saeng-geu-ril-seu i-a? Wo bi-ni Wi-baek."
And just like Chief Gorilla had done before, it spoke in the tongue of the Central Plains.
Even having witnessed Chief Gorilla speak previously, the sight of a beast conversing in human speech was profoundly jarring. Confusion rattled my brain.
…Should I just sit down and learn Zhongyuan already?
The thought flashed through my head in sheer exasperation. In the meantime, the albino gorilla continued to babble. Because it was entirely in Zhongyuan, I couldn't understand a single syllable, so I promptly reached out to the Heavenly Demon on the Gallery for an urgent translation. Gracious as always, she gladly stepped up to serve as my personal interpreter.
The albino gorilla had introduced himself as Wi Baek. The mere fact that he possessed a proper name was absurd enough on its own. That implied Chief Gorilla had a name too, but back when we met, the atmosphere had been so murderously tense that asking for his name hadn't even crossed my mind. In the meantime, Wi Baek continued rattling off sentences in that stiff Central Plains dialect. Once more, I asked the Heavenly Demon for assistance.
Don't tell me he mistook my warning sign for a job recruitment ad? To someone unfamiliar with the context—let alone a beast—it might have looked like an invitation. But who could have predicted that another animal capable of reading existed besides Chief Gorilla? Shaking off the utter absurdity of the situation, I sent a quick message back to the Heavenly Demon.
Just as I had done with Chief Gorilla, I carved the characters provided by the Heavenly Demon into the dirt. The albino gorilla leaned forward and stared intently at the ground.
"……."
He squinted his crimson eyes and leaned his neck out, scrutinizing the scratches in the dirt for an agonizingly long time. For a moment, I wondered if he was actually illiterate, but thankfully, he finally parted his lips. The cycle of verbal relay and dimensional translation repeated.
They say you should never take in a black-haired beast, but it seemed the white-furred ones weren't any better. I had momentarily felt relieved that he could talk, but a beast was still a beast. Chief Gorilla was leagues better than this rogue; at the very least, Chief Gorilla had respected my territory.
I snorted derisively and messaged the Heavenly Demon.
If I was going to insult him, I wanted to deliver it vocally rather than writing it in the dirt. It took a few moments to grasp the phonetic nuances, but I managed to nail down the pronunciation.
Drawing in a breath, I spat out the words.
"Cao ni ma."
"……."
It was the ultimate maternal insult of the Central Plains. Every time I heard their dialect, it sounded uncannily like Earth's Chinese. I could tolerate most things, but trying to bully me with brute force pissed me off to no end. People might say, What do you expect from an animal? But precisely because he was an animal, I felt zero guilt hurling vulgarities at him.
Besides, he's already murdered a human.
That was the deciding factor. He had a track record of slaughtering people, so cooperation was completely off the table. Furthermore, proposing a suicidal war against the entire gorilla troop proved he had zero grasp of reality. Maintaining the current status quo was the safest path for my survival; breaking that delicate balance was the last thing I wanted.
Huuuff— Huuuff—
Having taken a devastating personal insult straight to the face, the albino gorilla's nostrils flared wildly. He looked ready to tear me limb from limb. Naturally, an insult of that magnitude was impossible to swallow, but he had crossed the line first. There was a limit to how much bullshit a man could take before calling it out, and Wi Baek's demands—no, his extortion—had blown past that limit by a mile.
"Zui xin si bu."
He dropped into a combat stance as he barked the phrase. Roughly translated, it probably meant, You court death.
Snorting, I raised my shield and leveled the Heavenly Demon's Sword forward, keeping my senses razor-focused on his every twitch. Up until now, he had rested his knuckles on the earth, but once he squared into a martial stance, his open palms were exposed. Whatever he had done to them, his palms were stained a sickening, blood-red hue. Just gazing at them gave off an ominous, blood-soaked aura.
That stance, those palms… his prowess might rival Chief Gorilla's.
He wasn't an adversary I could afford to underestimate. Charging in blindly would be suicide. Fortunately, I held the informational advantage. Having fought and suffered a bitter beating at the hands of Chief Gorilla before, I had a working grasp of their martial arts. This albino, on the other hand, knew absolutely nothing about me.
BOOM!
Before my thoughts could settle, the albino gorilla exploded forward. There had been considerable distance between us, yet in a single bounding leap, he erased the gap entirely. A massive, blood-red palm whistled through the air, hurtling straight for my face.
I can't block this!
Attempting to guard against that raw kinetic force would only knock me off balance or invite an immediate fatal follow-up strike. It was a harsh lesson carved into my flesh from my prior clash with Chief Gorilla. The moment that monstrous red palm bore down right before my nose, I ducked beneath it in a fluid, desperate crouch. Pivoting under the strike, I thrust the sword straight toward his wide-open midsection.
CRACK! SQUELCH!
Accompanied by a brittle shattering sound, the tip of the Heavenly Demon's Sword dug shallowly into his abdomen. Normally, that strike should have punched clean through his torso, but the albino gorilla's hide was far tougher than I had anticipated.
Shwaaaaa—
A faint blue vapor dispersed around the puncture wound. I had already anticipated that he could wield mana, and from the looks of it, he had activated an internal defensive technique. Had it been any ordinary blade, it wouldn't have scratched him, bouncing harmlessly off his hide; only the absurd, transcendent sharpness of the Heavenly Demon's Sword had allowed it to draw blood.
"Owoooogh!"
Perhaps he hadn't expected his reinforced flesh to be pierced. Letting out a startled screech, the albino gorilla leaped backward. The wound wasn't deep, but the mere fact that he had suffered injury seemed to shock his pride to the core. That momentary shock vanished in a heartbeat, replaced by a visage twisted in murderous fury as he charged me once more.
His attack was another palm strike. Surprisingly, his offensive repertoire was remarkably monotonous.
However—
KABOOOOM!
"Ah, for fuck's sake!"
The simplicity of his move was matched by its catastrophic destructive power. I barely evaded the direct path of the strike, but the resulting shockwave tore across the yard. The neat stacks of square-cut timber I had spent all morning sawing were blown apart, splintering into matchsticks under the shockwave's violent wake.
WHOOSH! WHOOSH!
Following the initial palm strike, a flurry of haphazard swings rained down. Yet, past that terrifying first blow, his accuracy plummeted drastically. He was visibly attempting to execute martial forms, but every strike whistled through empty air. It felt less like a master martial artist and more like a desperate brawler wildly flailing with the mindset of just hit him once! It was almost anticlimactic.
What gives? Why is he fighting like this?
What struck me as even stranger was what happened whenever I put distance between us. The moment we separated and a few seconds elapsed, he would burst forward and unleash a devastating, razor-sharp palm strike. During those initial lunges, his accuracy was pinpoint and terrifying, sending chills down my spine. Yet, the moment the combo dragged on, his follow-ups devolved into erratic flailing.
It's almost like… he's blind as a bat…
The second the realization clicked, I stared intently at the albino gorilla. His face wasn't just contorted with rage; his brows were knit tight, his eyes squinted into slits—not because he was furious, but because he couldn't see properly.
What if that terrifying opening accuracy was the result of him focusing every scrap of his concentration before making his move?
And what if his wild, frantic flailing afterward was driven by the frantic fear of a counterattack he couldn't clearly see coming? Above all else, he was an albino—a creature cursed with pure white fur and pinkish-red eyes. And one of the most prominent biological traits of albinism was…
Severely impaired eyesight.
A decisive path to victory flashed clearly in my mind.
I'm going to make you my personal slave.
I would subject him to a torment far worse than death. Within my dantian, I gradually accelerated the circulation of my internal mana. The condensed sphere of freezing cold qi melted, permeating the mana flowing through my meridians.
Shwaaaaa—
It was time to bring this overgrown white ape to heel.