Chapter 1
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 1
Chapter Title: Hungry Slayer
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Dane ended his previous life in an accident and was reborn.
The scream of agony turned into a wail. The unfamiliar sensations flooding a newborn were overwhelmingly vivid.
‘This isn’t a dream.’
He instinctively knew he had been reincarnated and, while getting used to the limited view from his cradle, let out sighs in the form of cries.
‘Not a great start.’ The fluffy animal fur wrapped around his body reeked mustily.
The worn rafters on the ceiling, covered in dust and cobwebs, made it easy to guess the state of his birthplace.
A poor house was one thing—nothing to be done about that—but having a witch for a mother was quite a lot to swallow.
“Oho ho! What a fitting hair color for the child of the Silver-haired Witch Deliel. I like it.”
Calling herself in the third person was the first sign she wasn’t normal. Her laugh, her speech, her translucent hair, and her blazing red eyes all confirmed it.
Just the fact that his mom was a witch made Dane certain the world he’d landed in was on a whole different level.
‘Lucky I kept my memories. Not sure how much help they’ll be here, though.’ Being able to think at an adult level was something, at least. He decided to see this new life as an opportunity.
Dane waited for his useless infant body to grow.
Even as he struggled to control it, constantly soiling himself whenever he got the chance, his curiosity about this new life and unfamiliar world only grew.
* * *
In the northern part of the Garond Continent stood a massive wall that stretched the world to its limits.
The Tike Mountains, with their hundred peaks. Somewhere on one of those peaks, Mekel Mountain, was Deliel’s house.
Deliel’s husband and Dane’s father, Walter, was a hunter.
He’d vanish for days, sometimes weeks, only to return with game. His hauls ranged from legless critters to two-legged or four-legged beasts.
Once Dane started crawling, he watched Walter butcher his catches and learned by example.
By age five, Walter handed him a small knife and had him skin a red fox.
Dane performed the task flawlessly—something he’d only seen done—and discovered he had exceptional eyesight and a natural knack for handling blades.
At six, he filleted a baby boar and separated the meat by cut.
His first deboning and portioning.
At seven, he slit the throat of a long-tailed mountain goat, beginning his butchery.
No one had taught him, yet Dane knew the paths of bone, muscle, and flesh.
Walter was deeply impressed by his son’s talent.
“Hey, our boy’s a genius or something.”
“We didn’t have him just to make you happy.”
Deliel’s gruff reply couldn’t hide the smile on her face.
Dane didn’t take over the butchering just because he enjoyed it. He wanted to escape the otherworldly monstrosities Deliel cooked up.
Deliel’s cooking was always the same.
She crammed it full of bugs, weird herbs, and odd animal parts, then boiled it into a sticky sludge. That was her entire repertoire.
Dane had been weaned straight onto this nightmare and suffered daily.
‘Keep eating this, and I might actually die.’ Intentions aside, his pure desperation for normal food, innate talent, and past-life knowledge combined to produce results that satisfied everyone.
“Wow… this tastes totally different eaten like this.”
Walter nodded repeatedly as he ate goat skewers—alternating chunks of meat with potatoes, sprinkled with rock salt and grilled. Deliel had no choice but to agree.
Dane portioned all kinds of meat and cooked it by grilling, boiling, or steaming in various ways. Deliel stopped making her bizarre witch soups.
This was around the time Dane turned eight.
* * *
Having inherited his burly father’s build, Dane was tall for his age, and like his mother, he was strong.
He could lift large beasts with one hand to drain the blood, and thick bones posed no obstacle.
Once Dane was ready for real work, Walter took him into the mountains for several days.
They didn’t hunt right away. Walter roamed the forests, lakes, rivers, and fields, teaching Dane survival skills.
Dane learned to spark fire with tinder made from wild grass fluff using flint or a bow drill; to collect drinking water from morning dew or dig wells near rivers for natural distilled water.
He mastered crafting weapons from natural materials, distinguishing poisonous plants from lifesavers, twisting vines into rope and tying knots with them, and building all sorts of shelters.
‘This is fun…’
Every day felt like an adventure.
Whether it suited his new self as Dane or fulfilled his past life’s desires, everything he learned felt fresh and hard to distinguish.
Since Dane could replicate anything perfectly after seeing it once, Walter decided to teach him hunting techniques ahead of schedule.
Following Walter on hunts, Dane reached a point where he astonished even himself with his strength and talent.
Whatever Walter demonstrated in tracking became Dane’s prey, and the traps Dane set always caught game.
Stones he hurled at birds soaring skyward never missed, and arrows he loosed at the slightest rustle in the brush struck true.
His father’s lessons were one thing, but every beast’s movement became a lesson and revelation to him.
In the inscrutable motions beasts made to survive, Dane observed the linkages of muscle, joint, and bone.
Amid fur and thick hides, he saw the clear pulsing of vital energy.
‘I can see it.’
The paths of scarlet blood carrying energy, how muscles unleashed instantaneous power and how that power acted—it all imprinted on him as vivid imagery.
Dane ran like a beast, faster than beasts, and anticipated their directions first.
“Jeez…”
Walter stuck out his tongue watching Dane take down rabbits, goats, and boars. It far exceeded his expectations.
After capturing game, ending its life was Dane’s job.
“Take its life in one stroke—that’s courtesy to the prey.”
Dane’s knife lived up to Walter’s teaching.
The only difference from his father was his choice of tool: instead of a sharp dagger to slit the throat, he used a square cleaver like a Chinese butcher’s knife to sever the neck in one clean cut.
Dane oddly found it fit his hand perfectly.
“Huh… liking the cleaver, huh? You’re as weird as your mom.”
Dane swallowed the urge to say it was cool.
To Walter, it was nothing short of miraculous to see his son skin, gut, joint, and slice the meat thin using just that crude cleaver.
* * *
Having always hunted fleeing beasts, the first to hunt them was a wolf.
While tracking deer signs, a distant wolf howl echoed. Walter shifted course toward an open hilltop.
Even surrounded by the gray wolf pack, Walter showed no agitation, and Dane quickly shed his tension, mirroring his father’s calm.
Seven wolves.
Each the size of an adult man, towering two heads over Dane.
Perhaps wary of Walter’s bulk, the pack circled warily without charging.
“Wolves hunt in packs. They follow the big leader’s orders. Soon, one or two underlings will launch the coordinated attack.”
His tone was casually nonchalant despite their bared fangs.
“How do the wolves look to you?”
Walter smiled leisurely at his oversized young son, checking if he was scared.
“Low fat, lots of muscle—probably tough. But the deep crimson meat looks like it’ll taste pretty good.”
“…”
Dane had an unusual obsession with meat.
“…And how do you think the wolves will attack?”
“With their teeth, biting.”
“Right. So don’t let them bite.” Walter made it sound simple, then proved it by cleaving the first charging wolf’s neck with his sword.
“And if they can’t bite again, you win.”
Back-to-back, Walter and Dane faced the onslaught.
They twisted away before fangs could connect, swinging sword and cleaver once each. In that instant, losing half the pack, the leader ordered a retreat with a long howl.
Dane stood at the hill’s edge, watching the wolves flee. They skirted the distant Black Forest before vanishing from sight.
“Even wolves avoid that forest?”
“Your mom’s barrier. Dangerous for us and beasts alike.”
Curiosity stirred.
* * *
Deliel popped up abruptly while the father and son hunted.
A large oval scattering black radiance in the air always heralded her arrival.
“Jeez… I told you not to show up like that.”
Walter grumbled low while eyeing a fleeing snow leopard, then teared up from a smack on the back.
Deliel was rough with her hands but deep of heart.
She stretched toward the escaping leopard, reeling it back with sticky black water streams—like bindings or hooks.
Dane envied his mother’s amazing power.
“Why won’t you teach me magic?”
Deliel smiled, hugged her son’s neck, and squeezed hard.
“Why can’t you get it through your thick skull? It’s not something you learn.”
She said it was the authority of some inscrutable being she’d accepted, and that as a witch’s son, Dane would have his day too.
On the way home as a happy family of three, Dane poked his mother’s shoulder with the leopard’s forepaw slung over her back.
“Tell that story again.”
After nine years of care from his helpless days, any adult awareness had long faded.
Dane was purely Deliel and Walter’s son, a nine-year-old boy learning a new world.
Deliel furrowed her brow like it was a hassle at her son’s urging, but soon continued the tale. A faint joy colored her pale skin.
“We met in a hunting party. Your dad had this cocky charm. Way weaker than me, but trying to protect me like a man—it was cute…”
The story began like that.
A fantasy novel full of adventure and romance, packed with info on this world.
Beyond the mundane beasts Dane had killed and eaten lay far more varied monsters—house-sized to mountain-sized.
Outside Mekel Mountain, all races united against ferocious monsters.
Elves were the focal point. Monsters couldn’t approach the World Tree they guarded.
Dane learned monster names and traits from his parents’ tales of exploits, imagining himself fighting them and honing his senses.
“So when can I hunt those monsters? I think I’ve caught every beast on Mekel Mountain…”
At his bold question, his parents exchanged glances and chuckled in unison.
“Getting cocky over a few beasts… What do you think, honey? Could our boy take an Epup alone?”
Walter tilted his head at Deliel’s question.
“Hmm… maybe. If he loses an arm, he could probably get one.”
“An adult Rgosa Type 1 would be tough?”
“Possible, if he’s ready to be half-crippled.”
“Well, if he wants to try, we can’t stop him. We can always have another kid.”
Dane regretted asking.