The Regressor Makes an Effort (6)
The Regressor Makes an Effort (6)
As the sun began to set.
Clatter. Clatter.
A dozen or so crude sleds bumped and rattled across the frozen earth. Each carried a fair load of wood, which only made it worse.
"Shit..."
"Huff, huff..."
Several players had ropes slung over their shoulders, hauling the sleds. They looked exactly like sled dogs. Their faces were flushed—maybe from embarrassment at how ridiculous they looked, or maybe just from the exertion.
"Wouldn't a cart have been better? Hauling a sled is a pain in the ass..."
One of the men pulling a sled grumbled. He had a point: frozen earth was hardly ideal for dragging sleds.
"Hey, can't you see it's snowing? Soon enough, carts are gonna be useless, dumbass."
Another man shot him down. With thick snowflakes pouring from the sky, the cart idea was absurd.
"..."
Watching all this, I gave a small nod.
I hadn't left the castle on some vague hunch that "it'll probably work out." Before regressing, I'd done my research.
At present, we had about three hundred ordinary people, roughly a hundred superhumans, and various weapons and tools.
Outside, the weather was freezing and it snowed constantly, with monsters set to appear after three days. The core objective was keeping the otherworlders alive. The players, being superhuman, could probably grit their teeth and endure, but the otherworlders were highly unlikely to survive the cold.
Thick cold-weather gear only slows the rate of heat loss; it doesn't generate warmth. Without a heat source, freezing to death was a certainty.
"Alright. The sun's going down soon, so let's stop here. Everyone, unload the wood and get ready."
That was why we'd brought the wood. With fuel, even the fragile otherworlders could endure the cold. People can survive as long as their body temperature is maintained.
"Hrgh..."
"Oof, cold."
After unloading the large logs from the sleds, we split them roughly into smaller pieces with an axe.
Once the pieces were gathered together, preparations were complete. Of course, the snow and cold didn't make it easy to start a fire...
"Hmph!"
But fire created with a Trait was a different story. As the woman with the prominent jaw moved around lighting the wood, people gathered in small groups, pulled off their shoes, and warmed their feet.
"Ugh, so cold..."
"I don't know if we'll be able to sleep. During the cold snap, at least they gave us tents and sleeping bags..."
We had leather mats made from spare cold-weather gear, torn up and spread on the ground, but no blankets or pillows. Inside the castle, we'd at least been shielded from the wind; outside, we had the added misery of biting gusts. It was clearly not an environment conducive to sleep.
"Wish I could drink some warm cocoa..."
"Hey, shut up and roast the jerky."
Without a large cauldron or other cooking tools, making stew was impossible. The best we could manage was scooping snow onto a shovel and shoving it into the fire to heat it up. In this weather, even warm water was something to be grateful for.
"Alright, keep a careful watch to make sure the fire doesn't go out. If it does, we all freeze to death. Anyone standing watch, if something feels off, call me."
Even though fire created by a Trait isn't easily extinguished, who knew what might happen in this weather. The most important thing to manage while sleeping rough is temperature, so focusing attention on the fire was a given.
"Hmm..."
After confirming that the players and otherworlders had roughly settled around the fires, I approached Baron Jorge, who was inspecting the sleds.
"How are the sleds holding up?"
"Hiss... They seem to be holding up well enough."
Fortunately, Baron Jorge's territory had four seasons, and his was a civilization that possessed sleds. That meant I hadn't needed to personally describe what a sled looked like.
"Of course, they were hastily made, so the joints are unstable. I can check those in the morning."
"Good."
So far, everything was going according to plan.
The advantage of fleeing outside the castle was simple. The enemy was fixed and unchanging.
Enduring inside the castle meant fighting monsters. They attacked relentlessly and varied their methods endlessly, all to find a way to kill the otherworlders.
But what about outside? Outside was cold. The wind whipped. The ground was hard.
But at least it didn't change. There might be variations in snowfall, but at least the blizzard wouldn't suddenly evolve into something else.
Of course... something even more terrifying could emerge outside. The plot might be that the castle was, in fact, the safer place.
If such a situation arose, I intended to regress quickly before we took casualties. I could also have gone out alone without the otherworlders and players to scout the safety of the exterior, but... while I wandered around out there, countless people would die. I believed this was the best option.
I glanced over the people huddled together asleep, then spread out a mat and lay down on the ground myself.
Cold, hard, and uncomfortable.
But we only had to endure for five days.
**
Day 2.
It was cold, but the atmosphere was still manageable. Most of the otherworlders had started coughing, but not to the point of being bedridden with fever.
Thanks to the accumulating snow, we could finally use the sleds as sleds.
"Been a while since I slept rough, not since I ran away from home as a lad."
Baron Jorge cracked a grin and joked. He still seemed to have some composure.
Day 3.
Now the players began coughing too. All the otherworlders looked pale. A fair number couldn't walk and were being carried on the sleds. To think people could become this worn out after only two nights of sleeping rough.
No, it wasn't just sleeping rough. We'd been walking all day, which was reason enough to collapse. And this was the third day, not just one or two.
As the number of sick people increased, so did the frequency of rest stops and the rate at which we consumed the wood we'd brought. Anxiety began to spread among the people.
Three days of walking forward. The 'threat' I'd spoken of was nowhere in sight. This entire ordeal began to feel like aimless wandering.
"Must we keep walking?"
"Can't we just... just rest a bit? I've lost all feeling in my toes..."
We were walking to escape monsters, yet there wasn't a single monster to be seen. Were monsters even real? Could it be that the man was simply insane? A hidden piece? Had he deceived us all?
At first, I tried my best to coax, soothe, and persuade them, but the seeds of distrust had already taken root in their hearts. In the end, I was forced to be coercive.
"If you split off now, do you think you'll survive? Where's your wood? Your fire? Your food? Just shut up and follow. Understood?"
It left a bad taste in my mouth, but I had no other choice. Splitting off now would be nothing short of suicide.
This is right. I just had to repeat that to myself.
Day 4.
Almost no one had the strength left to pull the sleds anymore. Did we even still need them? The wood was nearly gone, but the sleds were loaded with the sick. Someone had to pull them.
"...This is serious."
Baron Jorge said he'd used about half the elixir. Four people were on the verge of death, so he'd mixed it with water and fed it to them. The effect couldn't compare to the original elixir, but with so many sick, he had no choice. The otherworlders were barely alive.
The snow had piled up so deep now that our feet sank in, eating away at our stamina. Snowshoes proved largely useless.
"Huff, huff."
Even during rest stops, we had to shovel away snow to build a fire. People were so numb that they'd sometimes burn themselves on the fire.
Everyone's faces were dark. One day remained, but they had to endure another full day. Yun Jung-hyun and William Smith, who had forced smiles while encouraging people, were now silent.
That night, there was an attempt to steal a sled and run away. It came to nothing because I caught them, but I won't forget the hostile look in their eyes.
Is this really right? No one's dead yet. But there are enough people on the brink of death to fill a truck.
Day 5.
Now, fewer than ten people were still able-bodied. Each of those ten had to pull a sled, and the backlash was immense. It was a natural result of forcing the strong to sacrifice.
But even so, no one threw down their sled and ran away. They'd all realized by now it was far too late to stop.
When night fell, having run out of wood to burn, we broke apart the sleds for fuel. We had just enough sleds left to barely carry all the patients.
"Ugh, uhh..."
The woman who had drained her mana to its limits, her face deathly pale, struggled desperately to light a fire. Baron Jorge squeezed the elixir down to the very last drop and fed it to the territory residents. Players were forced to share the potions they'd been saving until the very end.
It was the last night. With the belief that they just had to endure a little longer, people gritted their teeth and fell asleep.
The cold creeping into my head was familiar now.
**
-4 : 11 : 31
"Wake up."
"..."
"Wake up."
"Ah, geez..."
I emerged from a shallow sleep, rubbing my slightly swollen eyes. In the darkness, I couldn't see the face of the person who'd woken me, but I recognized the way he spoke. It was Eom Hong-jun.
"...What is it?"
Everyone was exhausted and collapsed. Why would he wake me from precious sleep? Irritation began to well up before I could stop it.
"Th-there..."
Eom Hong-jun lifted a trembling arm and pointed toward the horizon. It was the direction we'd walked from, back toward the castle.
"Something's coming from over there..."
"..."
Something was coming, he said.
There was only one thing that could be coming from that direction.
"Wake everyone up."
Four hours remained.
The monsters had reached us.