Where Am I?
His name was Orion.
When he opened his eyes, he was face-down in a field of freezing snow.
"Hah!"
As the bitter cold spread through his entire body, Orion tried to shake off the fog clouding his mind—and then his eyes went wide as chestnuts.
"Huh?"
He was certain he had fallen asleep in his bed. So where the hell was this?
White snow stretched in every direction. The trees stood stripped bare against the cold, and the silence was so complete that not a single trace of living breath could be felt.
It wasn't even the dead of winter back in South Korea.
"No—that's not what matters right now."
Why was he sleeping in the middle of the road in the first place?
Orion checked the condition of his body.
"What the..."
The clothes he was wearing were strange. No—calling them clothes was generous. He was wrapped in little more than filthy rags. On top of that, his hands were small and childish. The moment he noticed, he realized his line of sight had dropped considerably lower than it should have been.
"Holy shit."
Even for a dream, this was a ridiculous one. It felt far too real. Was this one of those lucid dream things?
There was no sign of him waking up anytime soon.
Orion let out a sigh and started walking aimlessly across the endless white snowfield. Bit by bit, the feeling drained from his feet, and a wind cold enough to freeze him to the bone gnawed away at him.
"This is bullshit."
Then, through the silence, he thought he heard the sound of water.
"Hm?"
He stopped and focused his hearing. The sound grew clearer. Thinking a cold shower might be enough to jolt him awake, Orion started moving toward the source.
There was nothing but featureless white snow in every direction, but following the sound eventually led him to a stream. Clear water ran gently beneath a thin skin of ice—so clear that even the tiny fish beneath were perfectly visible.
After a moment's hesitation, Orion dunked his head straight into the water.
The cold was so vicious he nearly blacked out on the spot.
"Pwah—!"
Madness always came with a price. Orion finally understood the situation he was in.
"I'm screwed."
Was freezing to death the condition for waking up from this dream?
That was when someone approached him.
"Hm?"
A shadow fell across his back—and the size of that shadow was anything but ordinary.
"KRAAAAAAH—!!!!!"
"Oh hell, what is that..."
A monster well over two meters tall hoisted a tree-trunk club the size of a streetlamp over its head. Orion had seen that shape before—in games, in novels. It was an orc.
BOOM—!!!
The wooden club smashed down onto the snowfield where Orion had been standing. Chunks of rock went flying skyward. The force didn't stop there; dirt and debris sprayed in every direction.
"Ghk..."
Orion threw himself aside on pure reflex and tumbled across the snow. Sharp stones tore his skin open along the way, and blood welled up from the cuts. Wounds on a body already half-frozen delivered a pain beyond anything he could have imagined.
"KRAAAAAAAH—!!!!!"
The orc had no intention of giving him time to recover. It bellowed and charged.
BOOM—!!!
The ground where he had just been standing caved in. He barely dodged, but his footing was too unstable to avoid the flying shards of stone. The skin on his shoulder split open and blood ran down. A streak of it from his forehead blurred his vision. His clothes had long since been reduced to tatters, and to make matters worse, there was no one he could call for help.
"KRAAAAAAAAAAAH—!!!!!"
The roar was loud enough to shake the air itself—as if the creature were announcing that it had locked onto its prey.
"...Damn it."
Why did he have to suffer like this even in a dream? Just surviving reality was already hard enough to kill a person.
Thud! Boom! Thud! Boom!
The distance between him and the orc kept shrinking. Orion had nothing resembling a weapon to defend himself with. His vision swam, his legs trembled—and then his whole body began to shake. The terror of death was branding itself into his brain.
"Ha."
But his body moved before his mind could catch up. Still half-dazed, Orion snatched up a pebble lying by his foot.
"This is so fucking unfair!!!"
He put every ounce of strength he had ever possessed into the throw.
"GRAAAAAAAAGH—!!!"
By sheer luck, the pebble struck the orc square in the eye. The creature's face twisted in agony as it clapped its free hand over its face.
"Not done yet!!!!"
Orion's assault wasn't finished. Grabbing another stone, he drove it hard into the knee of the orc that towered over him.
"GROOOOOAAAGH—!!!"
The orc writhed in even greater pain and crashed to one knee with a heavy thud.
"KRAAH—!!! KRAAH—!!!"
Blinded and with no control over its leg, the orc flailed its club wildly in every direction. Orion slipped through the gaps, scrambled up, and latched onto the back of its neck.
Thud—!!! Thud—!!! Thud—!!! THUD—!!!!
Then he hammered the creature's skull mercilessly with the stone in his hand. No matter how the orc thrashed and spun, it couldn't shake him off. But a pebble alone couldn't deliver a killing blow. Little by little, the orc's vision returned.
Still clinging to its neck, Orion couldn't dodge the wooden club swinging in from behind.
CRACK—!!
"Guh—!!!!"
The blow caught him dead in the gut and sent him flying several meters before he tumbled across the gravel. Bleeding freely, the orc rolled its neck as if the fight were finally over and lumbered toward the crumpled Orion.
That arrogance was a mistake. The orc flinched, as if it couldn't believe what it was seeing. Where a broken human clutching his stomach in agony should have been, a feral beast was rising instead.
"...Die, you bastard."
Orion's eyes blazed as he crawled forward on all fours across the gravel. Then he launched himself upward and drove stones straight into both of the orc's eyes.
Shunk—!!
"Gro—"
He didn't even give it time to scream. He smashed its head without mercy.
Thud—!!! Thud—!!! Thud—!!! Thud—!!! Thud—!!! Thud—!!! Thud—!!!
Even after the creature's head was nothing but raw meat, even after the skull shattered and brain matter spilled out, Orion did not stop.
"Die! Die! Die! Die!!!!!"
Only when his rage had burned through the last of his strength did it finally gutter out.
This isn't a dream?
Orion had no choice but to accept it now. Seven full days and nights had passed, and still there was not the slightest sign of him waking up.
"You again. Get lost, will you?"
The one silver lining was that he had found a place where people lived. But as the greeting made clear, the villagers' opinion of him was less than warm.
Come on, a kid just wants to warm up by the fire and you can't even allow that?
Looking at his reflection in the stream, Orion didn't think he looked all that different from them. Clearly they disagreed. The villagers treated him like some undocumented foreign laborer of uncertain origin.
Orion was currently about ten years old. The way they treated a child that young said plenty about how deep the discrimination ran here.
"Haa..."
He was sneaking from fire to fire, warming himself wherever he could, when a particular scene caught his eye.
"Oh?"
Someone had brought in the carcass of a magic beast—and was being paid for it on the spot.
Orion immediately recalled the place where he had killed the orc. It was about half a day's walk from here. And given the freezing winter, the body was almost certainly still intact.
As always, life came down to money.
Orion took off running straight for the orc.
"What on earth is that?"
"Oh my, oh my—has he lost his mind?"
"That little kid killed that?"
The villagers recoiled in shock at the sight of Orion dragging the orc's carcass behind him after a full night of hauling. They stared at him as if he himself were some kind of monster. It wasn't entirely unreasonable. A magic beast of that size was normally taken down by a whole group, and the corpses were usually brought in on carts or stretchers.
Orion didn't care what they thought. The only thing filling his head was the determination to sell this thing and eat something decent.
He walked up to the merchant he had seen earlier.
"You'll buy this, right?"
"Uh... well, yes, but..."
The merchant looked back and forth between the orc's body and Orion's face with a completely vacant expression.
"I'm selling it. Pay up."
"Hold on—you're saying you killed that thing?"
"Yeah. And?"
The man eyed Orion up and down again, suspicion plain on his face.
"Hmm. You don't look like you're from this village. Where'd you come from?"
"Why do you care?"
Why did these people always have to tack on unnecessary questions? Orion had never met a merchant who probed like that and turned out to be honest.
He clicked his tongue and made ready to drag the orc away.
"Not buying, then? I'm leaving."
"W-wait, I never said I wouldn't buy it! Just hold on a second."
The moment Orion turned without hesitation, the merchant scrambled to stop him—then held out three of the coins that served as currency in this world.
"There. Happy? We'll handle the rest. You can leave it and go."
"Hmph."
Orion snorted and turned on his heel again. From what he had seen earlier, a smaller specimen than this orc had gone for five coins. Did this guy take him for an idiot?
"W-wait just a moment! H-hmm. Looking closer, the carcass is in excellent condition, and the magic stone embedded in the forehead looks like high purity..."
The merchant slyly added two more coins, bringing the total to five. When Orion's expression still said he wasn't satisfied, the man blanched and pushed forward one more.
"Hmm. Looks like someone over there deals in magic beasts too. I think I'll go check with them. I'm sure you understand—from a customer's point of view, getting more money is always better, right?"
The finishing blow: dangling a prime catch in front of the competition.
The merchant frantically shoved two more coins at him.
"H-here! That's all I can do! I've got to make a living too, you know!"
"Perfect. I just leave this here, right? I'm off."
Orion collected the coins with a smile. Leaving the dumbfounded merchant behind, he strolled down the street in search of something delicious to eat.
Oh, not bad at all.
This much for a single orc. He wouldn't have to worry about money for a while.