EP.9 Heading North -1
EP.9 Heading North -1
When tracing back through recorded history, there were countless precedents of humans being attacked by Divine Beasts.
Divine Beasts emerged from all manner of places—the surface, underground, the sea, the sky—and struck at all manner of times—day, night, dawn, weekdays, weekends, anniversaries—without discrimination.
Their unpredictable existence was nothing short of a catastrophe for humanity.
Natural disasters at least offered some degree of prediction or countermeasures to mitigate damage, but the incursions of Divine Beasts did not.
No matter how much humans struggled, they could not even measure up to the dirt beneath a Divine Beast's claws. The creatures were simply beyond comparison.
The limits of human capability meant that not only could their appearance not be predicted, but no effective response could even be mounted against them.
And now, at this very moment, we humans once again trembled under the threat of Divine Beasts.
"This has become dangerous."
"Uwep!"
"How terrible."
"This is really too much~!!"
"..."
Gathered in the director's office were some senior agents, Director Edwiner, and I.
Normally when we gathered like this, we would have spent the time chatting and enjoying ourselves. But today, that was impossible.
Everyone's expression was severely strained, the cause being a single video displayed on the screen.
A village in the north, entirely blanketed in snow.
The village, which was reportedly peaceful just yesterday, was said to have met a horrific end overnight.
As evidence of this, every building in the video lay in ruins beneath chunks of ice, and the streets were littered with heaps of flesh torn beyond recognition.
Seeing the pure-white snowfield completely stained red, it was easy to tell that those chunks were once the people and their Companion Animals.
"This is the work of a Divine Beast."
Miho's declaration, spoken gravely the moment she saw the video.
Hearing this, I looked toward Yata. She, too, gave a single nod as if in agreement.
So it was confirmed...
"As I'm sure you've all realized by now, that video is not the aftermath of a terrorist attack. It is a calamity that has visited us for the first time in 15 years."
"If that was fifteen years ago... then a Divine Beast caused this incident~?"
"That is correct."
Exactly 15 years ago, when I was 5 years old, the nation had once entered a state of supreme emergency.
The reason was a Divine Beast attack.
I remembered that the Divine Beast, having invaded from the sky, had left damage even more horrific than what was shown in the current video, using its power to cleave the very ground and summon bolts of lightning.
The Divine Beast from 15 years ago had brutally killed people and their Companion Animals, destroying everything around it.
The attack had occurred far from my home, so I had not witnessed it directly. Photographs taken at the risk of someone's life had shown me the creature...
Upon seeing the photo of the Divine Beast, I realized one fact.
Divine Beasts were monstrous entities that could never be defeated... That was what my instincts taught me.
And now, one such monster had once again attacked a human settlement.
It may have been a different entity from the monstrous Divine Beast of 15 years ago, but the damage footage from this attack showed it was a Divine Beast no less formidable.
"Director, do we happen to have any additional footage? We need to know exactly what kind of Divine Beast this is so we can respond a little more effectively!"
"Calm down, Agent Da-hye. This footage itself was obtained by the government with great effort. The remaining cameras in the village are all destroyed and beyond restoration. Therefore, there is no way for us to know exactly what kind of Divine Beast attacked."
"Then what about any survivors from the village...!"
"Regrettably, the village residents were all killed. Not a single survivor has been found."
"Th-there's no way!!"
Fundamentally, a Divine Beast's senses surpassed those of any animal.
So even if people tried to run upon seeing it, the Divine Beast would have identified every fugitive's location and killed them all.
The absence of survivors was only natural, in a way.
"Yet, fortunately, we are not entirely without information."
"Pardon? But Director, you just said there were no survivors..."
"There was a group of travelers who, having left the village before the Divine Beast attacked, managed to survive purely by luck."
"Oh!! Then the Divine Beast's appearance...!!"
"They will not know what the Divine Beast looks like, Da-hye."
"Huh? Why not?"
"Think, Da-hye. If they had been close enough to confirm the Divine Beast's appearance, would they still be alive~?"
Nine times out of ten, they would have been discovered and killed.
A Divine Beast thorough enough to slaughter every villager and destroy every camera would never have left survivors...
Their survival meant they had already escaped the Divine Beast's range, so they could not provide a close account.
"As the two agents suggest, they were so far away that they only learned of the Divine Beast's attack the following day. Hence, we could not obtain any good information. However..."
"However...?"
"We were able to glean just one piece of information about the Divine Beast."
"What is it?"
"The howling of a wolf. They all unanimously testified that the moment they emerged from the forest near the village, they heard the resonant howl of a wolf coming from the village's direction."
"Does that mean the Divine Beast that attacked the village is one related to wolves?"
"Indeed. Wounds presumed to be wolf bite marks were found on the villagers' remains, so there is no mistake."
"A wolf Divine Beast...is it indeed the Wolf That Swallows the World, Director?"
"As Agent Khan says, if one immediately thinks of a wolf Divine Beast, Fenrir is the only one that comes to mind. But it is difficult to conclude that so hastily."
The Wolf That Swallows the World, commonly known as Fenrir.
Whenever people spoke of a wolf Divine Beast, Fenrir was the first name that came to mind, his existence having been confirmed by an incident six hundred years earlier.
A monstrous glutton, the monster wolf Fenrir devoured and digested anything and everything.
Humans had suffered no damage from it since 600 years ago, but the impact of that event was so traumatic that it remained widely known among modern people.
600 years ago, Fenrir roamed through over 20 villages in a single day, devouring every living creature, and furthermore, consuming even the structures humans had built.
The next day, and the day after that...continuously gorging himself on everything, Fenrir seemed to herald the end of humanity.
Fortunately, whether he simply changed his mind midway, Fenrir altered his course, and thanks to that, humankind was able to avoid extinction.
However, the terror of that wolf never vanished, leading humanity to bestow upon Fenrir the epithet—the Wolf That Swallows the World.
"The first reason is, if it were Fenrir, that obliterated village would have left no trace at all, having been consumed entirely. Moreover, that Divine Beast would never be satisfied with just a single village."
Indeed, it would be strange for Fenrir, famed as a glutton, to leave without eating a village.
To draw a human analogy, it would be no different from a renowned competitive eater drinking three spoonfuls of an appetizer soup and then leaving, claiming to be full.
"The second reason is the difference in ability. As you can see in the video, the village structures were destroyed by chunks of ice that seem created through an ability. But we have never once heard of Fenrir manipulating ice."
The ability of Fenrir known to people was Maintenance Power.
Literally the power to maintain the status quo. Assuming Fenrir bit a living creature, the wound would never heal, never disappear, even if one attempted to staunch the bleeding or suture it.
This Maintenance Power applied to inanimate objects as well. It was a special ability such that, even if one tried to place a single stone to restore a building Fenrir had torn apart and left, that stone would crumble and vanish on its own.
Due to this ability, the traces Fenrir left behind after his rampage 600 years ago remained in a state of desolation for at least a year.
Not a single lifeform would grow, nothing would change—a void unto itself.
"In any case, for these reasons, it seems difficult to confirm that the wolf Divine Beast is Fenrir."
"Then what in the world is it...?"
While everyone else struggled to identify the Divine Beast, Yata told me exactly what it was.
"The identity of the Divine Beast that attacked the village is Hati, dear husband."
Hati?
As I silently tilted my head in question, Miho noticed and tactfully cast an illusion over the surroundings, ensuring that Yata and I could speak comfortably.
"Thanks, Miho."
Miho answered my gratitude with a faint smile and a slight tilt of her head.
When I turned back to Yata, she began to explain.
"A name you've never heard before, right? Well, Hati is a Divine Beast that lives in the northern snowfields, where temperatures drop to minus 100 degrees. Since he had never once descended into human territory before, it's only natural that you wouldn't know."
"Minus 100 degrees...? It lives in an insane place like that?"
"Yes. Hati is one of Fenrir's offspring, an ice wolf obsessed with the moon."
"To think it was actually the offspring of that notoriously infamous wolf..."
"Its ability, as you saw in the video, is to manipulate ice. The only peculiarity would be that it is only active when the moon is out?"
"That's what you meant by 'obsessed with the moon'?"
"That creature harbors the insane dream of one day devouring the moon."
Still, calling a Divine Beast's dream insane, though...
Then again, Yata's own future had changed into something you could now call insane too.
If I could, I wanted to change that future even now.
"Anyway, why did a creature that has supposedly never come to human territory attack us?"
"Well, obviously, because of someone, right?"
"Is it because of me after all?"
"If you're curious, want to look at that part of the video for a moment?"
When I turned my head to where Yata's fingertip was pointing, a chunk of ice appeared on the screen.
"What about that ice chunk?"
"If you look closely, you'll see the oddity."
"Hm...?"
As Yata suggested, I scrutinized the ice, and indeed, something was written in blood in tiny script atop the ice chunk.
At a glance, they looked like random blood spatters. On closer inspection, however, they were unmistakably written characters.
"What's that?"
"That is the ancient Rune Language, now nearly extinct."
"Rune Language...?"
"You can think of it as a script, a kind of legacy left behind by old fogies of a bygone era."
"R-really? Yata, can you possibly interpret that Rune Language?"
"I can't read it fluently, but I do have some knowledge, so it's possible."
Meaning Yata was also an old fogie...
"Dear husband~? You're not having a strange thought, are you?"
"U-uh, no! Of course not!"
"Don't misunderstand and think of me as an old fogie, okay? Even if I look like this, among Divine Beasts, I'm still very fresh and young!"
She really did know everything.
I should reflect on that.
"Ahem! In any case, I'll interpret it for you."
"Yeah, thank you."
"Tiwaz, Ansuz, Gebo."
Yata recited words I was hearing for the first time.
She nodded as if she had finished interpreting their meaning.
"What does it mean?"
"Fight, god, companion."
"Fuck."
Well, the meaning was certainly simple and straightforward.
It was a blatant message telling me to come and fight.
Ah, I'd thought a moment like this would come someday, but now that it had, I truly hated it.
Why would a creature living well up north come all the way here to pick a fight?
It should have just stayed in its nest, dreaming about devouring the moon...!!
"Are you okay, dear husband?"
"I can't really avoid going, can I?"
"Honestly, I want you not to go, dear husband. But..."
When I turned back to where Yata was pointing, the Director and the senior agents were discussing the topic of a dispatch, saying they had to grasp any amount of information about the Divine Beast before Hati attacked again.
"Haaah..."
"For your sake, I will tell you one future. If you do not go now, Hati will keep killing humans until you appear. Eventually, consumed by regret, you will face him anyway..."
"Is that the worst future you've seen?"
"Yes... I'm sorry! I wish there were a better future, but...!"
"No. That future isn't your fault, you know? And you're giving me advice so I don't make the wrong choice, aren't you? So if anything, I should be thanking you on my end."
"Dear husband..."
I lightly stroked the apologetic Yata's head and smiled.
So that she wouldn't carry any guilt over it.
"So I have to fight him eventually..."
The difference was whether I fought now, before I had regrets, or postponed the fight and later fought while steeped in bitter remorse.
There appeared to be no future in which I avoided the fight entirely.
If that was the case, then there was only one choice I could make.
"Let's go. To the North."
If it was fate that one of us must die, then there was no helping it.
For the peace of me and my companions, I had no choice but to fight the Divine Beast...!