The Lame Smith's Trial
Clang—!
Deep within a volcano where magma blazed fiercely on all sides, heavy chains hung in thick loops, looking strong enough to wrap around and crush a fortress gate.
The air shrieked in heat intense enough to warp space itself, and inside a forge vibrating with massive hammer strikes, a man was tempering a sword.
Clang—!
With every strike of his hammer, sparks flew from the glowing blade, dripping down like blood.
When he pulled on a chain, the volcanic vent connected to the surface pulsed like a bellows, pushing the forge's heat to its absolute limit.
Hiss—!
Plunging the shrieking, unfinished blade wrist-deep into the lava, the man muttered softly.
"The fate of mortals..."
Gods often compared mortals to fleeting blades of grass.
Whoosh—!
If a mortal's life was a finely tuned clockwork mechanism, divine intervention was like a single grain of sand falling into the gears.
A minor whim stops the mainspring and ruins everything.
A single careless touch becomes a giant wave, and the world built by humans crumbles as helplessly as a sandcastle.
Sometimes, it is like a glass marble sunk in the deep sea, shattered into pieces by the water pressure from a mere, silent gaze.
Clank—!
Yet, on rare occasions, there are those who shatter their predetermined shackles and defy fate.
Heracles, who overcame the twelve trials with his bare body.
Clang—!
Theseus, who navigated the labyrinth and opened the path to Athens.
Hiss—!
Joan of Arc, the maiden who saved her country under the banner of God.
Clack—!
Cheok Jun-gyeong, the warrior who turned the tide of war with a single sword.
Clang—!
And...
"Prove yourself, Doran."
"If you are truly the Doran I know."
"Then you will easily trample a trial of this caliber and laugh it off."
Clang—!
My thoughts ground to a halt at the sight before me.
A massive Kokokura army blanketed the vast wetlands in a sea of black.
But it wasn't their sheer numbers that sent a shiver down my spine.
It was the helmets ornately adorning their heads.
The breastplates solidly encasing their chests.
The pitch-black weapons gripped in their hands.
Armaments on an entirely different level, incomparable to the shabby scraps of iron strapped to my shins or my mass-produced longsword.
These weren't rusty pieces of junk; each and every one was a top-tier weapon gleaming with a profound luster.
A sense of helplessness, like sinking into a sticky mire, wrapped around my entire body.
I could feel a terrible mockery crafted by a colossal malice, something a mere mortal could never hope to resist.
The moment my frozen brain finally processed the situation, and all the strategies and tactics I had simulated countless times in my head crumbled into cold ash—
"Fuuuuck!!!"
Slam!
My despair erupted into a furious shout, sending ripples across the water around the raft.
As my lips trembled from the sensation of my blood running cold, Radie, who still hadn't fully grasped the situation, muttered blankly.
"H-how did this..."
"..."
"Why is the Kokokura tribe... wearing heavy armor...?"
Clutching my head, I forced my mouth open.
"...Someone interfered. Someone who doesn't want any adventurers, including us, to leave this place alive."
"But... th-that shouldn't even be possible! They're monsters! To manufacture and supply hundreds, thousands of pieces of equipment tailored to monsters' sizes in such a short time... There's no way, and even if it were possible...!"
"Who would pour their energy into such an unproductive and inefficient task, you ask?"
Radie nodded.
Of course, there was.
Beings as capricious as throwing tantrums like children, disgustingly twisted, and so bored out of their minds with infinite time that they pulled all kinds of crazy, nonsensical stunts.
"Gods."
The transcendent beings of this world.
Fucking psychopaths.
I had a pretty good idea which of those bastards committed this atrocity, too.
That fucking hammer-wielding bastard.
The gods of this world often used epithets to identify themselves instead of their true names.
The Lord of War and Strife, the Seeker of Wisdom, the Mother of the Earth, and so on.
And considering the epithet 'Lord of the Volcano' and the characteristic of equipment crafting, there was only one conclusion to be drawn.
"...Vulkanus."
The god who symbolized volcanoes, fire, and the forge in ancient Rome.
In essence, a being equated with Hephaestus, differing only in name.
"That lame bastard."
A hollow laugh, somewhere between a scoff and a scream, escaped my lips.
As expected, there wasn't a single sane god in this world.
They could all go screw themselves.
"I-is there really no way...?"
"Wait. I'm thinking."
A frontal breakthrough? Instant wipe. Guerrilla warfare? How, on a raft? Underwater combat? Suicide.
Then what about disguising myself and infiltrating? If I got caught by detection equipment, I'd be instantly slaughtered.
I clutched my forehead and ran dozens of simulations in my head.
But the more I did, the more the sheer absurdity of the situation stood out.
Even if just one or two of those guys were mixed into a crowd, our survival rate would plummet. But there were hundreds, thousands of them.
Even if we holed up inside the mangrove swamp, with those numbers, we would be discovered and annihilated sooner or later.
Damn it... to break through those numbers, we need overwhelming, absolute force...
In our current state, no matter how much I racked my brain, there was no answer.
"...Let's head back to camp for now."
As a Kokokura soldier wearing a pitch-black helmet looked around and adjusted his grip on his glaive, I slowly backed the raft away.
When we returned to the sandbar and reported the horror we had just witnessed, a massive commotion broke out among the crowd.
"D-does that even make sense...?! An army of monsters numbering in the hundreds, if not thousands? And most of them are wearing incredibly powerful equipment...?"
"Setting aside the number of monsters... where did the armaments suddenly come from? Logically speaking, it shouldn't be easy for thousands of monsters to acquire equipment en masse..."
"O-of course, we aren't doubting you, Doran-nim, but honestly, it just sounds so absurd..."
The guild members trailed off awkwardly.
Well, even I, who had seen it with my own eyes, wanted to deny reality, so how could they not?
"Radie, pull that out."
"Yes."
Radie fumbled inside her robe and pulled out an object.
Grade: Legendary
Boots forged by combining the tough hide of the Kraken, Lord of the Deep Sea, with the core of a storm! A constant spray of water swirls around the wearer, deflecting ranged attacks and making everything they touch damp.
Allows the wearer to walk on water. Crafted exclusively for Kokokura Warriors; if they fall into the hands of anyone else, all effects are lost.
"Th-this is..."
"I picked it up on the way back; it had washed up in the current. See the mucus on the inside here?"
"Then, it's really..."
"Yes. A significant number of the Kokokura warriors were wearing gear like this. I picked up a few more and left them on the raft, so if you're still skeptical, go check for yourselves."
I trudged over and sat down on the edge of the sandbar.
The adventurers who had fled to the island after being chased by the Kokokura seemed to have already witnessed them and foreseen this disaster; they looked somewhat resigned to their fate.
Since the gear was custom-made for the Kokokura, it was also impossible for us to gather the lost equipment and rearm ourselves.
As their heads cooled and reality set in, the guild members began to sob one by one.
"Ugh... to die so suddenly in a place like this..."
"If only we could have died on land, where at least our remains could be recovered..."
While I was filtering out the adventurers' laments and calmly searching for a way out, I sensed someone nearby. I looked to my side to see Malton standing there with a bitter smile.
"Quite a predicament... Mind if I sit beside you?"
"Go ahead. ...Damn it, things have gone completely south. I expected some kind of anomaly in the wetlands, but I never imagined it would be something like this."
"Well, if we put our heads together and think hard enough, surely there must be a way to break through."
"There has to be. But this time, it feels different."
It was a sensation on an entirely different dimension from any crisis we had faced before.
It was different even from when we escaped the Mary Celeste.
Back then, it felt like being an ant tossed into a storm. Now, it felt like a volcano erupting and raining down fireballs directly upon us.
An irresistible trial from an absolute being, designed to break one's very will to fight.
In the past, there were occasional instances where gods handed down trials, but those only appeared once a player reached the ranker level, with a level of at least three digits.
At the very least, it wasn't an event we should be encountering at this stage.
As I gritted my teeth and racked my brain, Malton sat down heavily beside me and spoke.
"We're rather out of luck this time. It is common for the gods to act on a whim, but to think we would be the ones caught in it..."
"Tell me about it... I never expected to be thrown into a situation like this so suddenly..."
"Well, but as someone who already serves two evil gods, I believe you will surely find a breakthrough. Aren't the tricks of the gods already a familiar affair to you?"
At Malton's calm, smiling encouragement, I quietly raised my head.
And when I met his green eyes, there was a profound depth dwelling within them.
Not the gaze of a loafer cracking jokes with me as usual, but the gaze of an elf who had lived vividly in this world.
The gaze of a veteran, and a companion I could always trust.
Looking into those strong, upright eyes, I remembered exactly who Malton was.
A close friend who had shared life and death with me for ten years.
A being who had laughed with me as we crossed the boundary of death, raged at injustice, and rejoiced alongside me as we crushed the cults of evil gods.
"If there is no path, we simply have to make one. You will surely find a way. Just as you have done countless times before."
"...Countless times? Don't tell me you..."
"Radie looks worried as well, so you should go to her. We, who lead these people, cannot afford to show a discouraged face, can we?"
"Ugh...!"
Malton burst into a hearty laugh and slapped my back, sending me stumbling forward as I stood up.
Smiling bitterly at the stinging encouragement, I cleared my head, and the suffocating view seemed to open up just a little.
Since it's come to this, should I summon the evil gods and fight fire with fire?
If I offered up an arm or a leg as a sacrifice, there might be a 0.01% chance they'd spare me a glance.
Though if it were Goddess Agatha, who transmigrated me, she'd probably just laugh, ignore me, or heal my severed limbs only to throw me right back into the jaws of death.
The moment I kicked a stone by the stream with a self-deprecating chuckle, the water's surface suddenly surged.
Chomp—!
A green anaconda swallowed a frog swimming on the water in a single bite and leisurely slipped away.
It was a sight I had seen countless times since entering the wetlands.
But the moment I saw it, a flash of inspiration struck my mind like lightning.
"That's it—!!"
As I let out a wild shout, Malton looked over, the corners of his mouth curving upward.
"Did something come to mind?"
"Yeah. It's practically a suicide mission, but...!"
A crazy gamble with odds of success that couldn't even be calculated.
A bet so reckless and terrifying that even the gods would shake their heads.
But...
That's exactly my specialty.
If I was going to die anyway, I would grasp onto even a thread of possibility and claw my way up.
Even if that thread wasn't a rotten rope, but the body of a snake hissing with a venom-soaked tongue.
"...Radie, get on the raft right now. Malton, gather the people."
"Understood. I knew you would find a way somehow."
I responded with a fierce smirk, then raised my middle finger toward the sky.
A god's trick?
They can go screw themselves.
I will survive, no matter what.