The Prosthetic Heirloom
Morning arrived, and the four of them left the inn.
Henrik took the lead, guiding their way. They walked for a long time before finally reaching their destination: the front of a cemetery.
Shanette looked around, her face settling into an expression of pure disbelief.
“You kept your family’s heirloom in a place like this?”
“Why? It’s better than a holy site crawling with undead, isn’t it?”
Henrik stroked his short stubble, then walked over to one particular grave. It was old and shabby. Not even a simple epitaph had been carved into it.
He began scraping away the dirt at the front of the grave with both hands. Then he suddenly turned to look at Iris.
“Now that I think about it, aren’t you stronger than me?”
“Hmm. That’s true.”
Iris gripped the corner of the tombstone with her right hand and lifted it effortlessly with one arm. It was tremendous strength. Henrik’s face went slack with astonishment.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to a girl who looks exactly like the princess doing something like that.”
Beneath the tombstone lay an old wooden box. Henrik pulled it out and opened the lid.
Inside were a few worn crafting tools, several pieces of flesh-colored leather, and strangely shaped, complex objects whose purpose was impossible to guess. Though they looked aged at first glance, they closely resembled medical instruments.
Shanette’s expression grew uneasy.
“This… this isn’t the family heirloom, is it?”
“Oh, how did you know?”
“……”
Shanette felt a wave of emptiness. She hadn’t expected much, but still—the reward for completing the request was nothing but these shabby, worn-out items. Even an ordinary person might have felt disappointed after putting in so much effort.
Henrik clicked his tongue.
“Kid, your thoughts are written all over your face. Guess I’ll have to show you how to use it.”
He muttered to himself and picked up one of the tools that looked like a medical instrument. The small, sharp object resembled an awl. He pressed it lightly against his left wrist and drew it across.
It wasn’t even a forceful motion.
Yet his left hand fell away powerlessly.
Thud.
The severed hand dropped to the ground. It had been cut cleanly from the wrist.
“……!”
Shanette’s mouth fell open in shock. No words came out.
Kang Yoonsoo remained completely expressionless. Iris stared down at the severed hand and asked politely,
“May I eat that?”
“I know our lady has quite the appetite, but my heart is too tender to recommend such defective goods.”
Henrik casually picked up his own severed left hand. He pointed at the tool.
“This is my family’s heirloom. It lets you attach puppet parts to a living body.”
The owner has taught you how to use the heirloom.
You can now check the new information.
New descriptions had appeared over the once-shabby tools.
Heirloom of the Ellickson Family. A magical tool capable of grafting puppet parts onto a living body. It is said that a certain mad puppeteer transformed the corpses of countless children into dolls. Without exceptional crafting skill, converting body parts into puppets is an extremely dangerous act.
*When grafting another person’s body part, it must be well-preserved and free of decay.
*A sloppy attempt will sever the nerves permanently.
“W-what on earth is going on?”
Shanette stared in horror at Henrik, who was casually waving around his severed left hand.
Henrik scratched his cheek with his right hand, looking somewhat embarrassed.
“I hate sentimental stories, so I’ll keep it short. A royal craftsman suffering from an incurable disease that gradually petrified his body from the left hand onward retired and wandered the streets. He learned of this heirloom’s existence, cut off his own left hand, and replaced it with a puppet’s. Then, consumed by guilt for breaking the puppeteer’s taboo, he resigned from his position at the palace and decided to spend the rest of his life drowning in alcohol.”
While Shanette remained frozen with her mouth agape, Kang Yoonsoo calmly gathered the human body crafting tools and stored them in his backpack.
Henrik watched him and spoke in a cautionary tone.
“I’m giving it to you because we made a promise, but think carefully. Filling in missing body parts with puppets or corpse pieces isn’t exactly pleasant. The failure rate is high too.”
“I know.”
Kang Yoonsoo turned toward the path leading out of the cemetery.
There were two things he needed to do right now.
First, raid the Ruins of Ice and Souls to complete the legendary quest.
Second, find the alchemist who created Iris and gather information about the White Shadow who had noticed his regression.
Which should he do first?
Kang Yoonsoo quickly made his decision.
Blood Martial Clan.
It was a group that specialized in fierce, blood-soaked battles. Although it consisted of over a thousand members, it was still considered a mid-sized clan within the vast capital.
The requirements for joining the Blood Martial Clan were simple: one had to possess an intense desire to grow, whether through the sword, the bow, or magic. As long as that burning will for combat was proven, anyone could join.
“Recently, the Ahinkuls have been running rampant in the northeast swamps. They are beast-type monsters that feed exclusively on animal fat, storing volatile oils within their bodies. If you could eliminate around two thousand of them, the traders operating outside the capital would have a much easier time.”
As expected of a mid-sized combat clan, the requests they handled were on a large scale. Clans of a certain size frequently took on major commissions from the imperial family or mass-production orders.
The Blood Martial Clan mainly accepted requests involving bandit subjugation and monster extermination.
Jang Inwi, leader of the Blood Martial Clan, had mobilized two hundred high-level members and headed into the swamps to hunt the Ahinkuls. The creatures lived in groups, but their individual intelligence wasn’t particularly high. Their levels hovered around the 200s, so as long as the party stayed calm, group hunting was straightforward.
The last surviving Ahinkul was crushed in the head by Jang Inwi’s mace and died.
Jang Inwi slowly returned the mace to his belt. It was a simple motion, yet it took him quite some time. He lightly swung his thick left arm.
“Everyone worked hard. The fact that there were no deaths is the most pleasing part. Take a rest.”
The clan members set down their weapons and began to relax.
Jang Inwi was a man of firm conviction and overwhelming drive for battle. Not only had he chosen a difficult-to-wield but highly destructive mace as his main weapon, his basic combat fundamentals far surpassed those of ordinary travelers.
Above all, he possessed one distinct characteristic that set him apart from others.
Jang Inwi was a one-armed warrior.
After being suddenly transferred to the Silfia Continent, he had lost his right arm to a ferocious monster. Anyone else would have fallen into despair immediately.
But Jang Inwi refused to give up. Although he had originally been right-handed, he trained with savage determination using only his left arm. Despite being one-armed, he rose to the position of leader of a mid-sized clan and commanded its battles.
After countless fights, he finally achieved the class of Indomitable Gladiator. It was only possible because his tenacity surpassed everyone else’s.
Of course, if he still had both arms, Jang Inwi would have easily overwhelmed the leaders of other clans. There were even rumors that the Blood Martial Clan remained mid-sized because people viewed its leader as a one-armed man.
Yet the clan members respected him deeply. The sight of their one-armed leader fighting with burning passion and treating every member equally set many hearts ablaze.
While everyone was either eating rations or resting on the dirt floor, a continental came running toward them.
“Boss! I found something really strange over there!”
Unlike other clans, the Blood Martial Clan accepted both travelers and continentals without discrimination. Because of that, narrow-minded people sometimes mocked them as “mongrels.”
Jang Inwi rose slowly.
“What is it?”
“Well… honestly, even I doubt my own eyes, but… if we’re talking fishing, it’s a record-breaker. If we’re talking night activities, it’s a real whopper.”
The continental’s name was Durman. He was the head of a household. He had once been a retired mercenary after causing trouble due to his heavy drinking, but after Jang Inwi helped him, he had turned over a new leaf and now worked tirelessly to support his family.
Jang Inwi scratched his cheek with his left hand.
“A record-breaker? A whopper? Did you find some treasure chest?”
“Aigoo, just come and see for yourself.”
Durman urged him. Hearing him speak like that made Jang Inwi genuinely curious.
He followed Durman deeper into the swamp. As they advanced, a strange chill began to creep over them. Even though it was still between summer and autumn, the air touching their skin was abnormally cold.
Jang Inwi tilted his head.
“Was there a place like this in the swamp?”
The farther they walked, the more the damp ground hardened into solid ice. By the time the trees with lush green leaves had turned into withered, skeletal trunks, an astonishing sight unfolded before them.
“Ah!”
It was a spectacle that had no place in a swamp. Thin layers of frost and pure white snow. The breathtaking winter landscape was almost painful to look at.
Amid the dizzyingly beautiful scenery stood a massive structure. Jang Inwi could hardly believe his eyes.
The building itself was made entirely of ice. Elegant engravings were firmly etched into the transparent surface. Even the greatest craftsman in the world could not have created such a precise ice structure.
And its size was so enormous that he couldn’t take in the entire building at once. This could not possibly be something humans had built.
“……It’s a ruin.”
“Right? I was shocked too.”
A ruin. A dangerous place where hundreds, sometimes thousands, of monsters made their home. In the language of the world he once lived in, it was essentially a dungeon.
Instead of being filled with monsters that hated intruders, the heart of a ruin always held rare treasures. Moreover, the person who claimed first place in conquering the ruin would obtain special power.
This was Jang Inwi’s first time actually seeing a ruin. He had heard that ruins usually appeared in remote areas far from cities—wastelands, canyons, and the like.
Yet here one was, not far from the capital. The sudden drop in temperature around them was undoubtedly the ruin’s influence.
Durman swallowed hard.
“What should we do? Since it’s a ruin, reaching the heart would mean a huge payoff. No other clans have spotted it yet—should we claim it for ourselves?”
Jang Inwi stared at the ice ruin and pondered for a moment. Then he shook his head.
“No. Conquering this ruin with just our forces would be premature.”
A ruin powerful enough to change the climate itself. There were surely incredibly strong monsters inside. Normally, the minimum number of people for a ruin raid was two hundred. The force he had brought was roughly that size.
However, Jang Inwi instinctively sensed that the difficulty of this ice ruin was exceptionally high. The Blood Martial Clan had many miscellaneous classes and lacked even a single healer, since they usually fought straightforward battles. Rushing in recklessly could result in deaths.
Getting swept up in greed and ruining everything went against Jang Inwi’s cautious nature.
Durman clicked his tongue in disappointment.
“Tsk. It feels a bit of a waste to just look at a ruin right in front of us and leave.”
“It’s fine. We can come back after we’ve grown stronger, or bring more people next time.”
Jang Inwi patted Durman’s back with his left arm. But Durman still seemed reluctant to let go of his lingering attachment. He walked closer to the ice ruin.
A relatively small plaque had something resembling letters carved into it. However, frost covered the surface, making it hard to read. It was clearly the name of the ice ruin.
Durman brushed the frost away with both hands.
The ruin’s name was fully revealed.
“Winterkill Ruins, huh? Heh heh. Damn, even the name of the ruin is brutal……”
Durman, who had been chuckling, suddenly stopped speaking.