To the Summit of the Mount of Demonic Beasts (1)
A revelation never arrives in a form easy to understand.
It cloaks itself in symbols, twists them, then twists them again. That is why ordinary people so rarely grasp a revelation when it comes.
That is simply the nature of revelation.
A gleaming shard of omniscience — something so complex that it must be unraveled before a human mind can even begin to comprehend it.
"Where… am I?"
So it was hardly surprising that Hans failed to grasp the situation at once when he opened his eyes in a snowfield wreathed in fog.
An ambush!
Realizing he was not in the bed he had fallen asleep in, Hans's hand shot instinctively toward his hip — the place where the sword he never removed, even to sleep, ought to have been.
His fingers cut through empty air. No blade.
"Tch."
He clicked his tongue and dropped into a combat stance, eyes sweeping every direction. His mind spun furiously through the sudden crisis, calculating every possibility.
A demon? An attack? An illusion? Or have I been abducted alone?
He turned in place, staring into the fog for what felt like an age — until a fierce wind suddenly slammed into him and shoved him hard.
"Ugh!"
The wind tore through the mist with raw force. It was like sunlight spearing through a crack in a shutter, splitting the dark. Where the wind passed, the fog parted.
And there, along the long, straight path it left behind, rose a vast and towering mountain. Its summit was crowned in perpetual snow, white and still.
A familiar mountain. He had seen it through his window just before going to sleep.
"The Mount of… Demonic Beasts?"
As if confirming the answer, the eternal snow gave a faint glitter — not the bright, pure light of a morning star, but an ominous dark crimson.
Hans set his feet along the path the wind had opened. He could not say why, but something at the peak of the Mount of Demonic Beasts was calling him.
It was no warm invitation to an evening meal. A dark, viscous malice was summoning him.
The pull was overwhelming.
He had to go.
He had to climb to the summit of the Mount of Demonic Beasts.
As if possessed, Hans took a step toward the mountain—
Thud!
"Argh!"
Hans tumbled off his bed and clutched his head. He must have landed crown-first; his skull rang like a struck bell.
"Ah… nngh…"
Only after a long while did the pain subside. And as it faded, the dream he had just lived through rose up again. Dreams usually crumble like sandcastles the moment you wake — yet every single moment of this one remained vivid.
Fog. Wind. Snowfield. The Mount of Demonic Beasts. That ominous light, and the pull.
"This is…"
Something out of the ordinary. Sensing it at once, Hans bolted upright and sprinted down the corridor. He felt bad about thundering through the halls in the dead of night, but there was no telling when the dream's memories might dissolve.
He needed to deliver the news as fast as possible. To whom?
"Hero!"
He flung open the door to Kenis's room with all his strength.
A woman's private chamber. Deep night. A man in his prime barging in without so much as a knock.
It was an enormous breach of etiquette — but Hans's head was so full of the dream he had just had that nothing else existed.
Only after he had shoved the door open with full force did the realization hit him.
What am I doing right now?
He looked exactly like a pervert sneaking into a woman's room.
A wave of dread crashed over him. Every sense sharpened; the world began to move in slow motion.
His fingers twitched pitifully, trying to catch the door as it swung free of his grip. Too late.
Hans's fingers were the death throes of a caterpillar caught in a bird's beak — fleeting, futile.
No!!
The door kept opening. As it swung inward, the air of the room rushed out to meet him. In that slowed world, a sweet fragrance announced itself with perfect clarity.
Hans's nose twitched before he could stop it.
In that brief, scent-dazed gap, the door finished its merciless swing and laid the room bare.
"Huh? Sir Hans?"
"Hans, what are you doing here?"
"Coming all the way to the Hero's room at this hour… Don't tell me you had the 'dream' too?"
Inside the Hero's chamber stood several familiar faces — members of the Apostle unit, veteran hunters of Montegros, and knights of the Empire.
Had every single person gathered here shared the exact same dream?
Kenis, standing at their center, looked at Hans. She did not appear to have been sleeping at all.
"Sir Hans… did you have the 'dream' as well?"
"Hah…"
His legs gave out under the weight of pure tension. Hans collapsed where he stood, unable even to form a reply.
It was the second most spine-chilling moment of his life — right after the time he had crossed blades with a demon.
Crunch. Crunch.
The moment the sun rose, six warriors began the climb. Hans took the lead; a hunter who claimed to know the Mount of Demonic Beasts like the back of his hand volunteered as guide.
"This way."
The northern hunter set their course. Even the weather seemed to bless them — not a cloud in the sky, visibility perfect.
Far ahead, the summit of the Mount of Demonic Beasts was plain to see.
The ominous light from the dream did not glitter there now, yet the premonition that something waited for them refused to fade.
Crunch. Crunch-crunch.
Only the sound of boots on packed snow filled the air. No idle talk passed among the warriors.
All of them had shared a single dream. Kenis had interpreted it as a revelation.
"An ominous glitter at the summit of the Mount of Demonic Beasts, and a powerful pull drawing us toward it… All six of you dreamed the same dream. This is unquestionably a revelation."
Six warriors. One dream.
"You said you saw fog and a snowfield? Surrounded by fog… that may well describe our present situation. We are wrapped in a thick mist, unable to see even the danger right in front of us."
"Ohh! So that is how it can be read!"
"…Everyone. I know it is shameless of me, but I must ask this of you. Please go to the mountain's summit. Something is surely there. It is a task only the six who received the revelation can perform."
The God had guided them to the peak.
Resolve hardened on every warrior's face. The journey would not be easy. Even so, it was a duty they had to fulfill.
Crunch. Crunch.
For the first several days after departure, the journey was so peaceful it made their resolve feel almost foolish. Not a single demonic beast — not even a trace of one — appeared.
The hunter fretted badly over that silence.
"This is a bad sign. In all my years, I've only once seen the Mount of Demonic Beasts this empty of beasts."
He muttered with a grim face.
"It was exactly like this when the Frost Dragon — that dreadful, terrible monster — took up residence on the mountain. Not a single insect's buzz. Not a beast's track. Just like now."
The worst assumption settled over them: something at least equal to the Frost Dragon — perhaps worse — might be waiting. The warriors' mood grew heavier.
"Come now, let's not talk ourselves into despair! Whatever waits up there, we simply do what we must. And what is there to fear? So long as those stars shine above our heads, the God will protect us!"
To lift the sinking atmosphere, the holy knight cried out with deliberate flourish and pointed a finger at the stars in his eyes.
Seven stars, glittering even in broad daylight.
The pupils of God.
The God was watching over them.
"He's right! With the God Himself guiding our journey, what is there to worry about?"
"…Fair enough."
The hunter nodded. Age had made him fretting and full of needless worries — fretting so early that he was infecting the others with strange anxieties.
Spirits restored, the warriors pressed on through the snow toward the summit, their steps full of fierce fighting spirit.
Hans, walking at the front, stopped short. At his hand signal, the warriors behind him halted as well.
He turned his head this way and that, sniffing the air.
Carried on the thin air of the highlands came a faint scent. Too faint to be certain, but—
The rank smell of beasts, and blood.
"Enemies incoming! Battle stations, everyone!"
Hans drew his sword and shouted. The warriors showed no panic; they calmly drew their own weapons and scanned every direction.
…Thud-thud-thud-thud!
Something was charging from afar, kicking up a blizzard. The beast-stench grew stronger by the second.
A pack of werewolves.
Their numbers… considerable. At a glance Hans estimated roughly twenty. Their eyes were bloodshot, with no trace of reason left in them.
He tightened his grip on the longsword. Wait calmly for the moment. Trust the comrades at his back.
When the werewolves' snarls closed to point-blank range—
"Hah!"
Hans's longsword carved a brilliant arc and split a werewolf's jaws. He sidestepped the next that lunged, slashed open its belly, severed an arm, shattered claws, and crushed a skull.
"Die, you bastards!"
"Kraaah!"
In an instant Hans had butchered five. The others each took two or three werewolves and were steadily seizing the upper hand.
Slash!
The holy knight's blade cleaved a werewolf clean in two.
Whiiish!
The veteran hunter's arrow punched through a werewolf's eye and snuffed out its life.
Crack!
A werewolf struck by a heavy mace had its skull caved in.
It did not take long for all twenty werewolves to lie still upon the snow.
A perfect victory.
You have won the battle!
The scouting party dispatched the werewolves with ease. Well — that much was only natural.
What the fight actually taught me was a more serious problem.
"Hold on. Why do all their skills only go as far as Power Strike α and Enhance β?"
I'd been briefly distracted by how shockingly high the game's quality had climbed, but luckily the battle ran itself without any intervention from me.
Twenty werewolves total. One look and they reeked of standard trash mobs, and the scouting party handled them without much trouble.
Hans at the front took five; the rest split the remaining two or three apiece…
Maybe it was because they weren't Hero-class adventurers — just ordinary warriors.
The hunter and the knight had no skills at all, and even the ones carrying my weapons only had embarrassingly weak skills equipped.
Even Hans himself wasn't a Hero-class adventurer, so he was running Power Strike α. I'd forgotten that, because he'd been performing so well for so long.
Hans's origins were just those of a regular adventurer. He soloed demons with the reliability of a solid everyday meal, so I'd always assumed he was at least Hero-class.
I was starting to regret slotting only Hans into the formation. The old habit of just throwing Hans at every problem was still hanging around. When I built the party, I'd taken it for granted that he was Hero-class.
A creeping thought: maybe Hans alone wouldn't be enough.
The scouting party still had a long way to go before reaching the summit — and I was sending them with zero Hero-class adventurers? Would Hans be enough?
"Hss…"
They'd beaten the werewolves without incident this time, but there was no guarantee the next fight would go the same way.
"…This is iffy."
Is this party going to be okay?