The Frozen Splendor of Glorious Land
The landscape of Glorious Land had frozen solid.
That was the title reserved only for the most beautiful mountains—the ones that made you catch your breath when you looked down at the world from their summit, or when you gazed up at their majestic form from their base. A name like a crown of honor.
“Glorious Land, my ass,” I muttered, standing at the peak and staring down at the view.
The scenery was a silent hell of ice, collapse, and severed stone. The screams of things that were no longer human had once filled the air, but now everything was quiet. I lifted my gaze to the sky.
The lofty, distant heavens remained as beautiful as ever. Whether people died, monsters rampaged, or someone collapsed from starvation—it made no difference. The sky stayed breathtaking precisely because it never answered.
Even when monsters appeared on the earth and began devouring humans, it remained indifferent, as if the whole affair had nothing to do with it. Yet I hated the abominable Glorious Land—which had risen up and shattered humanity’s nests—far more than I hated that silent sky.
If not for it, my hands would never have been stained with the hot, red blood of the Mountain Lord. I would never have fought a life-or-death battle to seize the inner core now clutched in my fist. And people would not have died so horribly.
The crumbling corpses of the possessed clung to me. They had once been real humans, not monsters from the beginning, so I couldn’t simply shake them off. But I had no intention of taking them with me.
At that moment, the wind blew.
The instant I resolved to abandon them, the scenery before me grew even more loathsome.
The mountain that should have protected its people had instead devoured them. The inner core in my hand pulsed with a sinister warmth, as if mocking the frozen corpses at my feet.
I tightened my grip on the core until my knuckles turned white. The wind grew stronger, carrying the faint scent of blood and frost. Below me, the ruined slopes stretched out like the corpse of a once-glorious beast.
This was no longer a mountain. It was a grave. A monument to the day the world turned into a game and everything went to hell.
And I, standing at its summit with the blood of its former guardian still warm on my hands, had become its final witness.