The Chainsaw Punch of Truth
I sliced through the burning tree with a roaring chainsaw.
─Teeeeeeeeeeng!
The Spirit Ward Rune smashed straight through the firewall protecting Yerna’s memories. The barrier, which should have contained mysterious magical laws, was completely obliterated. To brute-force a protective spell installed in someone’s memory using nothing but raw mana and mental strength? Yerna would never have imagined such a crude method.
It was the equivalent of showing up to a 100-minute debate with thorough research, only to get immediately chair-shotted in the face. Still, this was my style. In the face of a stubborn, logic-piercing, old-school bastard’s head-on brawl, a criminal’s self-defense was utterly meaningless.
─Whoosh!
The flaming trees densely blocked my vision, desperately trying to stop me. Since these were nothing more than memories made of information, they had no ego, but the programmed magic still tried to block the intruder even in an unfamiliar environment.
I swung the chainsaw wrapped in flames like an axe. At the same time, I kept a close eye on my mana reserves.
‘Judging by the size visible from outside, I should be able to reach the other side.’
It was all thanks to the massive increase in mana after I’d beaten the shit out of that bastard Enlir. If I hadn’t absorbed his mana and grown stronger, I would’ve run out of MP halfway and woken up.
‘If I don’t hurry, today’s investigation won’t last long.’
Since the firewall I’d already smashed probably wouldn’t regenerate, taking my time should still get results one way or another.
“Bongttari bongttari bongttari turellaru~ Bongttari… Huh?”
While humming meaningless nonsense and leisurely advancing through the forest, I discovered something other than dirt, trees, and flames for the first time.
It was a corpse. A body burned to death, to be exact.
It was a sudden appearance, but not particularly strange. A forest could have had people living in it, and this was Yerna’s memory after all.
‘Should I just pass it by?’
Even though I’d grown used to grotesque things while living in this other world, I had zero desire to rummage through a corpse. Police and detectives apparently develop PTSD from seeing too many horrible things. If a mentally healthy old-school bastard like me ended up with mental corruption, wouldn’t that be a loss for the entire world?
‘…Ugh, fuck.’
Despite making all those excuses, I turned off the chainsaw and stabbed it into the ground. It really was as disgusting as I’d claimed, but I couldn’t just ignore it. If this was someone important enough to remain vividly in her memory, I had to check.
“Excuse me. Let me take your temperature.”
I muttered whatever came to mind as I flipped the corpse over. Surprisingly, the back was completely charred black, but the front was intact. It seemed Yerna had only ever seen this body from behind and couldn’t imagine the horror on its front side.
‘Or maybe she deliberately avoided imagining it.’
Because aside from the hair color, the corpse was an elf who looked exactly like Yerna.
“Family…?”
Mother? Older sister? Younger sister? Whichever it was, they clearly shared a lot of blood. Then which direction had Yerna gone?
I stood up, pulled out the chainsaw, and spotted a shoe abandoned on the ground. It was an elf-style shoe woven from grass, small enough for a child to wear. I glanced at the fallen corpse once more before following the shoe’s owner.
I didn’t feel like I was on the wrong path. The further I went, the stronger the flames grew and the more trees blocked the way. No matter how you looked at it, the firewall was being reinforced.
“Wooden Shield, True Thousand Hands Counter!”
The chainsaw-wielding killer’s dual-wield technique pulverized the trees. I continued forward, smashing through every rejection reaction in my way.
Fade in. Fade out.
It was the same screen transition I’d experienced before. I felt the immersive sensation seeping into my mind—the feeling I called the flow of consciousness—and sharpened my focus.
I opened my eyes wide, plunged into darkness, and then awakened.
──My neck itched.
‘I’ restrained the hand that instinctively moved toward my throat. If ‘I’ had been foolish enough to scratch a wound that had only just begun to heal, ‘I’ would never have earned the trust of my comrades for wisdom.
The hand gripping the staff was extremely pale, yet the wrist was too thick to belong to a woman. It was the beautiful arm of a man, as if sculpted with an artist’s utmost care. No, to be precise, it would be more accurate to say that ‘we’ had granted the creations the functions of male and female based on ‘me’ and ‘my’ siblings. After all, the only things ‘we’ had not personally created were mindless beasts.
─Squelch.
I pulled the staff from the beast’s corpse. All the interfering beasts had been cleared away. Those who tried to flee would be pursued and exterminated by the believers. Chasing down fleeing prey was their job.
Deeper inside the path, there was a survivor who had escaped this attack. ‘I’ shook the blood off the staff and walked with dignity.
Protected by the magic of the necklace was a young elf girl. Her ears were flushed red as if heated by her own fever. The way her shoulders trembled with hiccups was probably because she was crying.
Wrapped in indigo flames, ‘I’ approached the girl. The flames devouring the forest extinguished themselves the moment they touched the hem of ‘my’ clothes, like courteous fairies.
“Child. Are you alright?”
The elf girl jumped in fright and ran without even looking back. ‘I’ felt a twinge of pity and waved the staff. By rearranging the space of the forest, the scenery changed. ‘I’ had teleported in front of the child.
“…Hic?!”
The terrified child stopped running. Eyes drenched in fear confirmed the shape of ‘my’ face—no, the shape of ‘my’ ears. The wariness in the child’s gaze faded. She must have thought I was one of her own kind.
“You don’t seem to be injured. What is your name?”
“…Yerna. My name is Yerna Riosalp.”
The child revealed her name without suspicion. Her eyes were pure and innocent. It seemed she completely trusted ‘me’ as one of her own kind and harbored not the slightest doubt.
“Please help me. My mother… our mother was taken by a monster…”
The sobbing child clung to ‘my’ leg, searching for her mother.
“…I’m sorry. I arrived far too late.”
‘I’ lamented and embraced the child. On the way here, ‘I’ had already confirmed that the girl’s mother had stopped breathing. Even the bloodline of high elves was meaningless if they could not awaken their power. While ‘I’ had been stuck at the peak of the World Tree, the divine bloodlines had grown thin.
─Crack.
Strength flowed into the hand gripping the staff. Once again, ‘I’ felt rage toward the self of several thousand years ago.
Was this it? Was this truly the world we had desired? If so, it was nothing more than a hellscape where the children cast out from heaven were mixed with filthy beasts and released into the mud.
A world not ruled by fate? A future carved out by the hands of children? You foolish bastard who only left behind a head. It would have been better if you had simply died when that sea god severed your neck. Then you wouldn’t have given such idiotic advice to your sworn sister.
If the chief god of the Aesir, who was called the God of Fury yet was wiser than you, had been in charge, he would have created a far better world than this hell.
My stitched neck itches. It’s not enough. The wound left unattended for thousands of years had festered. Even after a hundred years of patching it with my comrade’s body, it showed no signs of healing.
It wasn’t enough. I needed to regain even more power. For that, I required the blood of ‘beasts’—and far more sacrifices. Including the believers who would offer that blood.
“Yerna. Come with me.”
‘I’ said while stroking the indigo hair of the child in my arms.
“If you do, I shall grant you the power to take revenge on those who burned your homeland. The power to deliver divine punishment upon the beasts that caused this tragedy and the fakes who command them.”
Uranus was wrong. Odin made a mistake. This land no longer needs the ash tree or the elm. The favored child of chaos should never have existed.
‘I’ would restore the proper world that flowed according to predetermined fate.
──To exterminate every last human race existing in Midgard.
That would be the duty of the foolish god who had granted wisdom and cunning to mere lumps of mud stuck with grass.
“…You.”
The child wiped her swollen eyes and asked.
“…Who are you?”
“Hoenir.”
In response to the child who carried the bloodline of the Ljósálfar, ‘I’ revealed the name I had been called for ten thousand years.
“The God of All Wisdom, Hoenir=Vili.”
The moment ‘he’ spoke his name, I woke from the dream.
It was a morning where I woke up in the absolute worst mood ever.
I had woken up because my mana had bottomed out. But the reason I felt so shitty wasn’t just because I’d run out of mana like when I first used Beast Regression.
“Ugh, fuck. Those sons of bitches are so damn sentimental with each other.”
I clicked my tongue. The immersion from the dream had left lingering emotions. You know that feeling, right? A dream that, when looked at coldly, has zero value to be immersed in, yet when you wake up you feel like crying or your chest feels strangely heavy. That was exactly how I felt right now.
‘That’s why it feels twice as fucking awful.’
It was like watching a movie that was tear-jerking as hell even though the character lineup and overall vibe were complete garbage. Of course, that movie would be a documentary where Adolf Hitler and his descendant Kim Hitler hugged each other and bawled their eyes out.
It felt exactly like a native Korean person getting immersed in the tragedy of Japanese colonial police officers. Those motherfuckers had killed who knows how many humans, so there was no room for sympathy.
“Whatever. As expected, dream interpretation is better than the dream itself.”
I slapped my cheeks and fell into thought.
‘I’ve roughly figured out the organizational structure around Yerna.’
The president of the Trustas Merchant Company had said it before he died. To beware of the ‘fucking elves’ outside the wilderness. Combining that last will with the existence of the Compilation Battalion and stirring it all together, a completely groundless speculation popped out of the oven of my neurons.
‘──Are those fucking racist elf bastards trying to kill every single human race in this world?’
That was probably it. The ultimate goal of the organization Yerna belonged to was exactly that.
I’d gotten lucky. On my first attempt, I’d pulled out the most important information. The first step had been a huge success.
‘Extermination of humanity, huh. That’s more realistic than world destruction.’
If that was all, I could just think of them as KKK elves and figure out how to beat them. But—
‘Fuck, the mastermind behind that terrorism is apparently a god?’
I felt like I was going to lose my mind from the absurdity. Even a passing roe deer knows that religious terrorist groups are dangerous. But a religion where the actual god doesn’t just bless them but rolls up his sleeves and jumps into the fire to save his followers? Holy shit. That’s actually pretty cool. If their doctrine wasn’t racism, I might quit being non-religious and join them.
Why do all these criminal organizations get so tight-knit inside their own turf? I’m almost falling for them. Those sons of bitches.
‘…Hoenir. Hoenir, huh.’
I recalled the name of the god I had become the subject of in the butterfly dream. What the hell is the God of All Wisdom? I’d never heard of it. The fact that I, a former archaeology lab slave at one of the most prestigious universities in this world, didn’t know the name meant he wasn’t famous among human society.
It’s a thought I’ve been having a lot lately, but I really regret not reading Norse mythology books back when I was on Earth. Everyone, study mythology diligently in preparation for being transported to another world. Don’t end up like me.
Love you, Mom.
‘Anyway, that Hoenir guy is probably the boss.’
There probably wasn’t anyone higher than a god. Well, in a cult, even God gets killed by the pastor if he talks back, but in this case the cult leader was a 100% genuine god. Was he like Veronica, a descendant of the gods or a fallen deity?
No. Just from the information I’d read, he seemed to be Odin’s best friend who had been farting around and acting all high and mighty since the mythic age. If a guy like that was running around in person, who would dare replace him?
I also roughly understood why I had been able to read the memories of a strange god even though they were Yerna’s memories. Hoenir had probably breathed into Yerna and told her his own story.
‘The problem is that for an organization with an actual god as its boss, Yerna’s group doesn’t seem all that impressive.’
If they were hiding from everyone, I’d have to admit they were hiding ridiculously well. I didn’t know exactly how old Yerna was, but she had to be at least a hundred years old. Yet an organization centered around a god still hadn’t achieved its goal after all that time? Not until the little elf girl had grown up and started muttering about killing human scum?
That would only make sense if this Hoenir guy was the world’s greatest patience junkie.
‘And if you have a lot of capital, there’s no need to play the long game.’
Here’s a personal truth of mine. People who aren’t afraid of loss never play the long game. Why do people get scared every time they buy items in Junior Naver’s Animal Farm? Because the money they worked hard to save disappears the moment they buy equipment!
‘On the other hand, those Jammin kids who use cheat automatic money bugs have nothing to fear.’
If you’re not afraid of losing, you stop caring about how precious money is and just do whatever the hell you want. You flaunt your power while doing so.
What does that mean? The reason that god-blooded bastard picked up baby Hitler Yerna, raised her, and played the long game was probably because there was a reason he had to endure and endure.
─Scratch scratch.
I scratched my neck. The itch I’d felt in the dream was no joke. I wasn’t sure, but it seemed Hoenir also had restrictions on his actions. My speculation was that he needed sacrifices to overcome them. The very human sacrifices that Odin so despised.
“Hmmmmmmmm…”
I recalled how Yerna had kidnapped adventurers from the City of the Dead. Offering them as sacrifices to the god, then using the remaining blood relatives to create doppelgangers?
‘What a fucking frugal bitch.’
It was a shame my abilities hadn’t been good enough. I should have killed her more painfully.
I ruffled my hair.
“This is giving me a headache first thing in the morning.”
It felt like I’d gone out for a casual scouting trip and come back having discovered a nuclear weapons development facility in enemy territory. You want me to explain this to my wives? Wow, fuck. I’m going to lose my mind.
Even the owner of the neighborhood bakery who has to tell his family that a giant franchise is moving in next door to put them out of business probably wouldn’t feel this devastated.
“Sigh.”
They say ignorance is bliss, and the old saying isn’t wrong about a single thing. It was a fucking good morning where the wisdom of the sages seemed to seep into my bones.
“Mmm…”
At that moment, Franc, who had been sleeping in the bed, grabbed my hand while sleep-talking. I blanked out for a second before gently stroking her cheek.
‘Yeah, fuck it. Sighing isn’t going to solve anything.’
Shitty things happen in the world whether you’re on Earth or here. All a person can do is pray or work hard so that things within their reach go well. So that I can enjoy a happy life of kissing and fucking with my adorable wives.
Even a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
I hugged the sleeping Franc once more, then got out of bed. First of all—yes. Let’s prepare breakfast for my dear wife.