When Entering (1)
While Ludwig was gradually adapting to Grylls and the routine of the Forest of the Four Seasons, the Iris Kingdom was still suffering a monstrous headache over its Magic Tower, which remained stubbornly suspended high in the sky.
Because no one could foresee when the immense structure might suddenly plummet to the earth, the public's anxiety only swelled with each passing day. Pushed to the brink, the King of the Iris Kingdom issued a royal proclamation to calm the masses.
"People of the realm, be at ease. We are safe."
Truly, an announcement that inspired boundless trust and confidence.
Royal authority and prestige meant nothing when a cataclysm hung suspended directly above their heads, threatening to crush them at any second. The tower had to touch the ground before anyone could exhale a sigh of relief. As terror mounted day after day, civil unrest intensified, and citizens even began packing their belongings to evacuate the capital.
Amidst this escalating pandemonium, what was Kadir doing—the archmage virtually responsible for the entire disaster?
"Should I just make a run for it?"
[You irresponsible wretch. Do you dare call yourself a leader?]
"Coming from a failed leader like you, that's rich."
[A cutting remark, indeed.]
With every passing day, Kadir's mental fortitude eroded just a little more. He had strained every nerve and exhausted all his arcane knowledge trying to decipher the nature of the Sky Whale ambergris, but every single attempt had ended in failure.
It was the biological byproduct of a creature hailing from the mythical era. With the limitations of modern knowledge, it was simply impossible to analyze. The great irony was that it was precisely because Kadir was a master of his craft that he was able to recognize it was truly impossible. Anyone lesser would have stubbornly clung to the task, convinced that a solution must exist if they only kept digging.
His recent aura of leisure was merely the hollow calm of a man who had accepted that analysis was an absolute dead end.
Even with my lifetime of accumulated wisdom, analyzing it is fundamentally impossible... Just what kind of creatures did the ancient gods keep at their side?
And what kind of realm was the Forest of the Four Seasons to harbor such mythical beings?
In the distant past, driven by relentless curiosity, Kadir had set foot across its boundary exactly once. But he had only dipped a single foot across the border and retreated immediately; had his entire body crossed over... he shuddered at the mere thought. For a wizard, being severed from mana was nothing short of a death sentence.
Perhaps that shark was a mythical creature as well.
He recalled the carcass of the shark-man Grylls had gifted him some time ago. Through rigorous anatomical dissection, Kadir had realized that such a creature could not naturally exist in this world. At the time he received it, he hadn't fully understood, but after witnessing the majesty of the Sky Whale, he had formulated a working hypothesis: it was overwhelmingly likely that the Forest of the Four Seasons was home not just to the Sky Whale, but to an entire ecology of mythological fauna.
That beast called a giraffe is the same. Not even an ancient fossil of such an animal has ever been unearthed.
A beast absent from all historical records. Every time he pondered it, his lower half stirred with scholarly passion and fervor. Though, naturally, that arousal shriveled the moment his eyes drifted back to the ambergris sublimating into thin air before him.
Kadir took a leisurely sip of his tea and brooded over what was to come.
About a week remains until the Magic Tower falls. Perhaps even less.
The ambergris was shrinking at an alarming rate. Once it disappeared entirely... he had no desire to imagine the aftermath. Should he prepare contingencies on the assumption of a crash? That, too, was virtually impossible. The slightest miscalculation would reduce the royal capital to an infernal slaughterhouse.
Fleeing really is the most sensible option.
Rationally speaking, gathering up the remaining ambergris and the Undying King, abandoning everything, and slipping away into the night was the smartest move. After all, not a single soul alive knew the true cause of the levitation. So long as he kept his mouth shut, no one would ever know.
Though that fellow would curse me to high heaven.
He couldn't do it. He would never be able to face the Previous Generation Hero. Even in death, his old comrade would hunt him down to the deepest pits of hell just to point a spectral finger and sneer.
Kadir let out a heavy sigh and fixed his gaze upon the ambergris. Even now, microscopic golden flakes were crumbling from its surface.
If external analysis is impossible... what must I do?
All his life, Kadir had lived as a consummate wizard, analyzing, categorizing, and calculating the fundamental laws of the world. He had never understood martial warriors who entrusted their lives to raw physical instinct and gut sensation. The late Hero had been no exception. Yet now, standing poised upon the precipice of ruin, his mind drifted away from cold logic and veered toward raw instinct.
I cannot control the ambergris from without. But what if I were to assimilate its essence directly into my own flesh and command it from within...?
It was nothing more than a wild hypothesis born of desperation and intuition. But the golden hour was slipping away. He could procrastinate no longer. Steeling his resolve, Allfather opened the interface and logged onto the Gallery. He had no intention of exposing his true identity; he was here purely to solicit desperate aid.
Kadir mused once again that the youth named Grylls possessed a remarkably tender heart. That didn't make him a fool, however; Grylls was a firm believer in reciprocal exchange. If Kadir managed to survive this ordeal, he swore he would grant whatever favor the young man asked of him, no matter how unreasonable.
Assuming I survive, that is.
Kadir stared down at the golden mass resting in his palm. A chunk of ambergris the size of a clenched fist. What was he about to do with it? Something so revolting that his stomach twisted merely considering it. Ambergris was an excretion of the Sky Whale. Whether it had come out of the front or the rear, it had spent time fermenting in the beast's guts.
"...Gulp!"
[...?]
Without another second of hesitation, Kadir shoved the entire mass into his mouth and swallowed it whole.
Watching from the shelf, the Undying King's emerald eye-flames flared in utter disbelief.
[Have you completely lost what little wits you possessed? Consuming literal dung now! Truly unhinged!]
"Shut... up! *Cough!*"
Kadir choked back a retch, tuning out the Undying King's appalled screeching as he threw every ounce of his consciousness into deep meditation. His rationale was straightforward: if he could not analyze the ambergris from without, he would absorb its miraculous vitality into his own vessel. By comprehending its resonance from within, he would either command the levitation field or seize direct control of the Magic Tower itself.
I must become one with the ambergris. Such crude, reckless integration is the way of brainless martial artists, but...
In this dire hour, no other avenue remained. Kadir plunged into profound contemplation. He paid no heed to the lingering taste of the substance; allowing revulsion to register would only shatter his focus.
Yet perhaps the essence contained within the ambergris was simply too overwhelming. Or perhaps the mortal frame of a human was inherently unfit to process the sacred harvest of a mythological beast.
Crack— Craaack—
Webs of jagged, hairline fissures began to tear across Kadir's flesh. Concurrently, a violent mana storm whipped through the private laboratory, flinging reams of parchment, historical scrolls, and arcane treatises into a roaring vortex.
[Whoaaaaaa—!]
Regrettably, the swirling debris swept up the Undying King as well. Helplessly tumbling through the howling gale, the ancient skull wailed in dizzy indignation.
Drip—
A thick thread of crimson trickled from the corner of Kadir's lips. His internal organs were rupturing under the catastrophic pressure. The spiderweb fractures spidering across his skin began to thrum with a ghastly, undulating violet luminescence. Even a layman with no understanding of magic could tell his life hung by a precarious thread. Yet Kadir refused to utter a single groan, anchoring his mind to his focus with sheer, unyielding willpower.
He pushed his concentration beyond its absolute limits, deeper and deeper, until—
Craaack! Shatter!
The luminous fissures tearing through his body widened with terrifying speed.
BOOOOOM!!!
An earth-shattering explosion engulfed the entire laboratory.
I blinked at the bizarre private messages suddenly sent by NecromancyIsLove. The guy was constantly roleplaying some theatrical character and spouting eccentric gibberish, so I figured it was just his usual schtick. He would probably post another weird rant later anyway. Still, a faint sliver of concern lingered in the back of my mind.
"#%^#."
"Like this?"
"#%^^!"
Right now, my combat training under Ludwig was far more important. Perhaps he felt slightly guilty over yesterday's Sweet Potato Mattang feeding frenzy, because he was instructing me with wholehearted devotion. Was it difficult training under someone when you couldn't understand a word he said? Honestly, yes, it was grueling. But because he physically repositioned my limbs and corrected my posture down to the millimeter, it was far from impossible.
"You. Eyes. Good. Well done."
What blew me away was that he even peppered in short phrases of Korean here and there. It had only been three days since we crossed paths, yet he was already picking up vocabulary. I hadn't even formally sat down to tutor him. I couldn't tell if everyone in this fantasy world was a natural linguistic genius, or if Ludwig was simply brilliant.
Then again, Ggobongi picked up the language on his own, too.
In any case, our training regimen adhered to a strict principle: build from the foundation up. If the fundamentals were flawed, whatever techniques you stacked on top were doomed to collapse. Agreeing completely with this logic, I obediently followed Ludwig's physical guidance.
"$^&$#."
"Like this, right?"
"%^&$."
"Alright, got it."
Ludwig didn't just instruct me; he also coached Ggobongi. Though unlike the meticulous adjustments he forced upon my posture, he merely offered the ape broad, observational pointers. His assessment seemed to be that while the martial arts Ggobongi practiced possessed tremendous depth, his ape physiology clashed with techniques originally designed for humans, which caused him constant friction. Therefore, Ggobongi had to forge and refine a unique path tailored to his own frame.
And finally, as for Wonmo...
"Kyuu! Kyu! Kyu!"
"@#$. @#$. @#$."
The cub stood beside us, clapping his little paws and cheering enthusiastically. He even broke into a joyous, waddling victory dance. Even without a translator, his meaning was crystal clear: You're doing great! Keep going! Woohoo!
Thanks to the lively atmosphere, the morning flew by in a flash. For lunch, we filled our bellies with roasted wild boar. You might wonder why we didn't finish off the leftover sweet potatoes, but indulging in them too frequently was bad for the stomach.
Besides, I shared quite a few with the fixed handles.
Everyone had sent warm words of thanks. I made a mental note to trade more frequently with Grow Big and Strong in the future. It truly felt as though today would pass as just another peaceful, ordinary afternoon.
Fsssssssssssshhhhh—
"Ah, here we go again."
That was, until the torrential deluge began. I sighed, watching the rain pour from the heavens as though the sky had burst open. Heavy rain at this time of year was a definitive herald: winter was knocking at the door. Wonmo had been packing on thick layers of blubber and growing out a dense winter coat lately, and this sudden cloudburst cemented my suspicions. A bitter, merciless winter would arrive within days. Thank goodness I had spent the autumn preparing our defenses.
I hope the outbuilding isn't leaking.
Just in case, I dashed out to inspect Ggobongi and Largo's shed. Thanks to our meticulous timber work and thatched layering, not a single droplet seeped through the roof. I did realize, however, that I had neglected to dig a proper drainage ditch, so I quickly channeled a trench around the perimeter to divert the runoff.
Good thing I hauled in the fish traps beforehand.
The moment the sky bruised into an ominous gray, I had reeled them all in from the riverbank. The water level would swell violently, meaning I wouldn't be able to hike upstream for a while anyway. Well, once the rain cleared, taking a stroll along the swollen banks to see what strange river beasts got washed ashore wouldn't be a bad idea. If it's an eel, I'll definitely haul it home; if it's a pufferfish, I'm punting it back into the drink with zero hesitation.
Let's just hope nothing grotesque washes up.
With outdoor chores wrapped up and nothing left to do, I decided to browse the Gallery. Ludwig, thoroughly drained from our rigorous morning drills, was already curled up taking a well-deserved nap. There was no sense in waking an exhausted paladin, so killing time on the forum was the natural choice.
The moment I loaded the front page, it was teeming with frantic posts about the Magic Tower. Skimming through the threads, it appeared that Kadir had somehow wrested control over the floating citadel and guided it to a flawless, stable landing. Bringing down a massive architectural fortress that had vaulted into the stratosphere... That old wizard truly was in a league of his own.
Could ambergris really have solved something that ridiculous?
Curious if anything else had happened, I scrolled further down the board. Most of the threads were completely dominated by the Magic Tower incident, though the bulk of those posts had been uploaded hours ago. Just as I was refreshing the feed in search of other juicy drama—
"Kyu-eng..."
"Hm?"
"?"
"Kyu?"
A bizarre, feeble cry echoed from the mouth of the cave—a sound none of us had ever heard before. Not only did I freeze, but Ludwig snapped awake from his nap, and Wonmo stopped his lazy floor-rolling. Even Bbarmbo, who had been lazily clinging to my back like a massive fur coat, slowly rotated his head toward the entrance.
"Kyu-ee-eng..."
An ash-gray body. Tiny, underdeveloped wings sprouting from its shoulder blades. A long, toothy snout, powerful hind legs, and disproportionately short forelimbs.
"...Who on earth are you?"
A completely unfamiliar guest had stumbled across our threshold.
"Kyu-eeee-ing..."
Its small frame was covered from head to tail in bloody, jagged wounds.