Conquering the Beast
An hour and some odd minutes before the final showdown—which ended after a grueling fourteen-minute struggle between Chester and the bear—Monia was sprinting through the forest. She had bolted from the shelter the moment she read the note Chester had left behind. Seeing her frantic state, Ant ran alongside her, panting heavily. Though the pup didn't understand why, he knew she was desperately searching for the suddenly vanished Chester. For over an hour, Monia and Ant combed the woods, pushing through the dense undergrowth. And when they finally found him...
Monia froze. Before her lay Chester and the bear, both collapsed in a pool of blood.
"..."
No words would come. Chester was dead. Slumped beside the massive carcass of the bear, his mangled body left room for no other conclusion.
"No, no..."
Chester was dead? Monia felt her mind go completely blank. Why? She had never even imagined the possibility of Chester dying. Yet here, right before her eyes, the unimaginable had happened. Staring at his motionless body, she felt the ground beneath her feet give way. The world turned dark. A suffocating despair washed over her, as if the very earth she stood on was collapsing, plunging her into an endless, bottomless abyss. Her vision blurred, her legs buckled, and she collapsed onto the dirt.
"Ah..."
Tears began to spill from her eyes. The moment she realized she was crying, the dam broke, and she sobbed uncontrollably.
"Ah... Ahhh..."
Incoherent sounds slipped past her lips. A terrible, swirling despair clawed at her chest, but she couldn't shape it into words. Was this the kind of agonizing scream she had only ever read about in novels?
"Ah... Ahhh! No, no, no!"
Monia dragged herself forward, weeping as she crawled across the forest floor. But her limbs refused to cooperate. Chester was lying right there. Yet, the closer she got, the more real his death became. She wanted to reach him, but she was terrified of what she would find. The agonizing conflict tore her heart into a thousand pieces. Ultimately, unable to bring herself to go any closer, she buried her face in her hands and wailed.
"Ugh... Waaaah!"
She wept for what felt like an eternity. When she finally lifted her head, her eyes swollen and bloodshot, she noticed something strange.
"...Huh?"
Chester's chest rose slightly, then fell. She stared harder. It was incredibly faint—so subtle that she would have missed it had she not been looking directly at him—but his chest rose and fell once more.
"Ah!"
Monia scrambled to her feet and rushed to his side, frantically checking his vitals.
"...Good morning," Chester croaked, his voice barely a whisper.
The moment he spoke—
"You crazy bastard!"
*Smack!*
In a fit of sheer reflex, she slapped him right on the chest.
"Aaargh!"
Chester shrieked as his fresh wounds took the brunt of the blow.
"Waaaah!"
Monia threw herself onto him, sobbing all over again.
"Ow! Ah! Ow, ow, ow! Wait! My chest! My chest! Aaargh!"
"Waaaah!"
"Aaaaah!"
After administering first aid under Chester's wheezing instructions, Monia watched him devour food. The man who had looked like a corpse just moments ago was now sitting up, tearing into smoked meat, gulping down water, crunching on plant stems, and stuffing wild fruit into his mouth.
"..."
She looked slightly to the side. Unlike Chester, who had merely collapsed from exhaustion, the bear near him was truly, undeniably dead. The very beast that had terrified her so deeply.
Did he really fight that thing bare-handed and win?
Of course, it hadn't been entirely bare-handed. The shattered remnants of tools scattered around the clearing showed that Chester had prepared as much as he possibly could. But still. He didn't have steel armor like a knight, nor had he set elaborate traps like a professional hunter. Armed with nothing but crude, flimsy tools, he had faced the beast head-on and slain it. The bear that had seemed like an unstoppable force of nature now lay motionless, its massive carcass looking utterly surreal.
Monia turned her gaze back to Chester. She had always known he was capable, but this? What if he had been properly equipped? Having recently discovered the wonders of a machete after struggling to chop bamboo with a crude stone axe, Monia now understood the immense value of quality gear. She closed her eyes and imagined Chester—not with the flimsy, makeshift tools of a deserted island, but clad in masterfully crafted armor and wielding a finely forged blade.
No matter how she pictured it, she could only see him winning.
Indeed. The paralyzing terror of the bear that had consumed both Monia and Ant was shattered the moment Chester slew the beast with nothing but makeshift gear. The fear evaporated, and the void in her heart was filled with something else entirely.
An absolute, unwavering trust in him.
At the same time, Monia felt a strange, simmering heat rise from deep within her chest.
Her eyes drifted to Chester's body. Having pushed himself to his absolute limits against the bear, his muscles were swollen and more defined than usual. Thick veins bulged beneath his skin, still pulsing with adrenaline. His broad, solid chest, his tightly coiled abs, and the sharp, shadowed lines of his obliques... Chester had always been in incredible shape—so much so that Monia had once privately compared his physique to a work of art.
But this was different. It was far more alive than any sculpture. It was wild... primal... hot...
Oh my goodness!
Her face flushed hot. She had never stared at him this intensely before. Was it because of the overwhelming relief of knowing he was alive? Monia found it incredibly difficult to maintain her composure under the sheer weight of his presence. Her heart hammered against her ribs, her thoughts spun in a dizzying whirl, and she found herself repeatedly swallowing dryly for no reason at all.
"What's wrong? Are you okay?"
"Huh? Uh, what? Me?"
"Your face is bright red. Did you push yourself too hard looking for me?"
Their eyes met. Through the dried blood caking his face, Chester's eyes shone with a piercing, vibrant clarity.
"..."
Meeting his gaze directly made her head spin all over again, and she quickly squeezed her eyes shut. She took a deep breath to steady her racing heart, cleared her throat, and spoke.
"Ahem... By the way, are you really okay? Your body, I mean."
Four deep, jagged lacerations marred his shredded chest. Aside from those, his body was covered in scrapes, cuts, and dark bruises. The flesh on both of his flanks, where the bear's claws had sunk in at the very end, was torn away, and his leg was so terribly swollen that she wondered if he would ever be able to walk on it again.
"Yeah." Chester nodded slowly.
In truth, his condition was bad. No, "bad" was an understatement; it was catastrophic. Previously, he had only suffered a cut on his palm. Even that had been highly dangerous in an environment devoid of proper medical care, though it had miraculously healed without a hitch. But his current injuries were on a completely different scale. On top of that, his leg was in such a state that he couldn't be sure if it would ever fully recover, or if there was severe internal damage.
"..."
Yet, the only reason Chester had dared to push his body to such reckless extremes was because he had one saving grace to rely on.
"I need to treat this."
"How?"
Chester looked down at his palm. It had healed faster and cleaner than it ever would have under normal circumstances with proper medical treatment. Staring at his hand, he said, "The top of the cliff."
"What?"
If the water flowing down from above possessed such incredible healing properties, then the effect would undoubtedly be even stronger the closer they got to the source.
"To the headwaters of the river."
Chester decided to bet on that possibility.
"We're going up."
With those words, Chester declared their ascent to the Upper Tier.
"O-Outside...! It's the outside!!"
The man had entered the cave on a whim, thinking it would be an easier path to walk. Instead, he had ended up wandering endlessly through a labyrinthine network of caverns deep within the mountains of the Floating Island. After what felt like an eternity of stumbling through the dark, he had finally found an exit.
"Light!!"
Spying the brilliant sunbeams filtering down from above, the man let out an involuntary roar and began clawing his way up the steep slope before him. Having gone without food for so long in the depths of the cave, his body had withered away to skin and bones. He barely had the strength to support his own weight, and though the slope wasn't particularly long, it took him an agonizingly long time to crawl to the top.
"Ugh...! *Cough! Wheeze!*"
The sudden, violent exertion took a toll on his fragile body, sending him into a fit of convulsive coughing. *Cough! Hack!* He had blindly devoured whatever creatures he could find in the dark caverns. Had he eaten something poisonous? The man coughed up a mouthful of dark blood, but he refused to stop, dragging himself toward the light. After nearly an hour of desperate crawling, he finally reached the mouth of the cave, pushed through the thick brush blocking the exit, and tumbled out onto the open ground.
"Ahhh...!"
The moment he emerged, the warm, stinging sunlight washed over his skin. It was the blessed light of the sun, the very thing he had yearned for during his miserable existence in the cold, dark depths.
"Ohhh!!"
Overcome with emotion, he clasped his hands together in a silent prayer of gratitude. Then, he looked around to see where he had ended up.
"..."
All around him, strange, bizarre creatures—drawn by the commotion—began to emerge from the shadows and encircle him.
Are they beasts?
The thought crossed his mind. But the figures before him seemed far too human to be mere beasts.
Are they human?
He wondered. But they were far too beastly to be human.
They were strange, incomprehensible entities that hovered on the boundary between man and beast.
"..."
- ...
For a long, silent moment, the man and the Island Owners simply stared at each other.