The First Snow of the Northern Empire
The First Snow of the Northern Empire
Valder had transformed into a beast-hybrid monster.
Low stance, two-handed axe clenched tight.
"Aslan, how do you want to handle this?"
Rumel asked it casually, as if there were nothing to worry about. He was menacing, certainly, but he was no priest.
Aslan knew Valder wasn't a priest for a simple reason.
A real priest radiated divinity—that unmistakable presence—and with it came the crushing pressure of divine power. Valder showed neither. Just a beast's form and the brute force that went with it.
More telling still, the hybrid shape was too clean.
The priests Aslan had fought, the ones he'd seen serving the Self-Birthing Mother in the game, were grotesque patchworks—three beasts fused together at minimum, sometimes over a dozen. Valder had two at most. A human-deer body with a carnivore's maw grafted on, wolf-like.
Nothing more.
So no. Not a priest.
That didn't mean the situation was trouble-free.
'Is this even monsterization?'
Aslan understood monsterization's standard side effect: cognitive decay. Full transformation into a beast's form always cost the subject their reason. Yet Valder was lucid.
Which pointed to one conclusion.
There was a priest behind this man.
Aslan made his decision. They needed information. That meant subduing Valder, not killing him.
Valder lowered his horns and braced to charge. Aslan swept a hand over his cloak, and Richard stepped forward.
Thud. A leg planted. Both arms extended.
A single man standing against a full-force rush looked precarious, but Aslan watched without a flicker of concern.
Horns met outstretched arms—and Richard moved.
"Hup!"
A sharp exhalation. He twisted his planted leg and pivoted around his arms.
When the rotation stopped, the positions had reversed. Valder's momentum carried him up and over Richard's center of gravity.
"What—?!"
Valder's startled cry confirmed it. Richard had spun him like a thrown sack.
KABOOM!
The massive body slammed into the floor, cratering it with a roar of impact. Richard chambered a fist. Rumel's spear tracked the target. Tiyamal stepped back, reaching for a hand axe. Aslan moved first, catching Richard's punch.
Bang!
The Dragon-king's hand stopped that fist cold. Rumel and Tiyamal froze too. Aslan stepped past them.
"I'll handle it."
"Who handles who—!"
Valder surged up, swinging his two-handed axe with a roar.
Scrrrritch!
Aslan's dagger was already drawn, deflecting the axe-head in a shower of sparks. The blade slid off the black feather-steel as if gliding on ice. Valder absorbed the recoil with his hips and swung again, and again.
Two daggers out, Aslan met the storm of blows head-on.
Clang-clang-clang-clang-CLANG!
And in that exchange, Aslan confirmed it. Valder was fully in control of his faculties.
He was, after all, a Master of Combat.
He had crossed blades with countless warriors. He knew the difference between a brute-force swing and technique. Valder's attacks had technique.
Clang-clang-CLANG, shing!
A hip-driven axe stroke aimed at the neck. Aslan caught it with a dagger and angled it away. An overhead rotation targeting his skull—he slapped the haft aside and let the strike slide past.
The deflection cost Valder his stance. Aslan's dagger found the opening.
Crunch.
"Gckh!"
A rising diagonal slash. No mercy for a compromised structure. The dagger carved through Valder's arm, and the arm dropped.
Clatter. THUD.
The two-handed axe and the severed limb hit the floor together.
Aslan watched the arm begin regenerating instantly. He made a fist.
Bvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv!
The turbine whine answered him. The fist accelerated. Valder never even registered it.
KRA-KOOOOOOM!
Valder's body rocketed backward without a single groan. He plowed through tables, chairs, furniture, crockery, hit the wall, and bounced. Aslan shook out his fist and studied the crumpled form.
"Nngh... not yet...."
Valder was already healing. The severed arm had regrown. The crushed legs were knitting back together.
Definitely not a priest. A Self-Birthing Mother priest's regeneration was far beyond this. But this was not negligible either. Not the kind of regrowth you could dismiss as simple monsterization.
'I'll need to study this further.'
Since the opportunity was here, he would test the limits—regeneration rate, resistance to law-based attacks, effective hardness.
Aslan crossed his two daggers and rushed at the downed Valder.
"You miserable bastard! I'll tear your throat out!"
Valder charged to meet him, cursing. His fury might have been righteous, born of vengeance, but it didn't matter. His will never touched reality.
A horn-sweep. Aslan angled past it as if he'd seen it coming and slashed. Flesh parted, blood fountained from Valder's neck. Valder clenched his jaw and threw a punch.
The black fist struck before his own landed. Valder's hand shattered.
Blood sprayed. Bone splinters jutted through skin. While Valder clutched the ruin, the beating and cutting continued, blow by blow, accumulating across his body.
Rip. Slice.
An eye burst. Ribs cracked. A cheek split open as a kick to the groin folded him.
Shrrrk. Crunch.
Hide split. The freshly regenerated arm came off again. The dagger punched up under the jaw, severed the tongue. Another kick to the groin sent him rolling.
Bvvvvvrm. BOOM!
The turbine whined and the accelerated fist punched a hole through Valder's abdomen, launching him into another wall in an explosion of debris.
Pure, overwhelming violence.
Valder was bewildered. No ordinary human could dispense violence like this.
His imagination seized on the obvious possibility.
"You... you received a blessing too...!"
A confident guess. He lifted his head, expecting to see Aslan flinch.
Instead, Aslan looked openly disgusted. Offended. The suggestion that he had swallowed some priest's handout provoked one of his rare flashes of genuine anger.
His eye twitched. He shifted his stance.
Wide base. High posture. Fist cocked near the ribs. Before anyone could parse the movement, Aslan vanished.
Bvvvvrrrmmmm. KRRRRRACKABOOM!
Only the turbine and the thunder remained.
The Hawk Drop—the strongest single punch Aslan could deliver, a technique accumulated by the Dragon-king and perfected by Aslan himself.
Valder flew.
Whump-CRASH!
The noise was a waterskin bursting from overfill. Valder's body sounded exactly like that as it blew through the hall's outer wall and sailed into the night.
Into the inner district of Belus Nelesa, where dusk was just deepening into darkness.
The body hit the ground, bounced, tumbled. The dust cloud hung long after the crash.
"Khhuak—cough, hack!"
Valder retched blood, staggering. Aslan followed at a walk and emerged behind him.
"—hat's that racket? Go ch—"
Soldiers' voices approached, trying to make sense of the scene. Valder kept coughing, kept vomiting blood as if trying to expel his own viscera. He barely managed to raise his head at the sound of footsteps.
Aslan stood over him, black fist raised high, the other hand twisted in his collar.
And then it was just brutality. Pure and simple.
Aslan brought the Dragon-king's fist down without another word.
WHAM. BOOM!
"Gck—gckh—!"
Every impact burst flesh. Every hit to an eye, a nose, a jaw wrenched freshly healed bones and joints apart. The eyes were crushed and regenerated and crushed again, their shape blurring into a smear.
A pastoral beating—the kind that had a man begging for his life before he could even remember his vows of vengeance.
Aslan modulated his strength with precision, riding the exact threshold of Valder's regeneration. No unconsciousness. No death. Only pain.
When Valder tried to resist, tried to strike out, Aslan caught the hand and twisted. And twisted. And tore it off.
After several severed hands littered the ground, Valder stopped trying. He just waited for it to end.
It didn't end. So he broke.
"Stop! Stop! Please stop! Please! I'll do anything!"
Both hands up, shielding his face. A plea. Aslan finally let his fist fall still.
A giant beast-man, gasping, terrified. Opposite him, a man who was merely well-built and otherwise unremarkable.
Into that stark contrast, Aslan spoke.
"I'm going to ask you a few questions."
Quietly. As if the violence from moments ago had been dealt by someone else's hand.
"If I get an answer I don't want, if you hesitate, if you try to ask questions of your own... the pain continues."
The calm was absolute. The cruelty was clear.
"There is no negotiation here. Understood?"
Valder hadn't yet caught up. He stared blankly. Aslan raised his fist. The turbine whined—bvvvrrrmmm—and Valder screamed as if seizing.
"I—I understand! I understand! So please—!"
"Good."
Aslan nodded, fist still raised, his other hand still twisted in Valder's collar.
Valder swallowed hard, staring up at the General-Slayer. The slayer asked his question.
"The other warlords. What's your relationship with the Blessed?"
And on the very first question, Valder made a mistake.
He hesitated.
The Dragon-king's fist knew no mercy.
CRASH!
"Nngh—aaagh!"
A direct shot to the face. Vitreous humor leaked down like tears from the ruptured eye. Aslan adjusted his grip on the collar.
"I know you can regenerate wounds like this. Don't expect kindness."
A voice of cold, implacable calm. Under the moonlight, teal eyes glinted chill and bright. Valder's shoulders hunched.
"The instant your mind wanders, you will have exactly two things left to say: 'Spare me' and 'I was wrong.'"
Simple threats. They landed. Violence had given them weight. Valder trembled. He understood now—a wrong answer might bring something worse than death.
So he answered generously, spilling everything.
"Th-they are comrades and competitors. I don't know if all of them—but some received their power from the same court mage I did."
"Court mage?"
Aslan frowned. Valder blinked terror-wide eyes and forced the words out.
"N-no! It's true! There are many Blessed, so there must be many mages who created them! Yes, it's certain!"
He hid his face behind his massive hands as he spoke. Aslan's expression was impassive. He was thinking.
This monsterization.
The effect clearly derived from the Self-Birthing Mother's divine power. But it was refined, far purer than any monsterization Aslan had encountered.
Standard monsterization destroyed reason, reduced intelligence. At best, the subject retained an animal's cunning—a trained dog's loyalty if they were lucky. Rare, even then.
Valder had reason. He had intellect. He was thinking clearly, demonstrating sharp insight.
Aslan suspected the cause: a mage-priest had modified the divine power.
'The question is... why would they?'
Monsterization existed to turn creatures into mindless berserkers you could point at an enemy. Preserving reason and intellect defeated that purpose. It just handed out power and created uncontrollable variables.
The change was strange.
"What do you mean, competitors?"
Valder would have the answer. Aslan was sure of it, and he was right.
"Exactly what it sounds like. We each hold our own territory, and we're all fighting to become the true Emperor. The court mage said the last one standing gets everything. The entire Northern Empire."
Aslan heard the shape behind the words: multiple priests had selected warlords, granted them divine power, and set them to a territorial battle royale.
That satisfied the second question. Aslan moved on.
"Third question. Among the people you've plundered—where is the Watcher?"
"Wat...cher?"
Valder looked genuinely confused. Aslan raised his fist, and Valder panicked.
"Wait, wait! I don't even know what a Watcher is! Explain it to me! I'm sure I can—!"
A desperate flood of words. Aslan lowered his fist.
"The Beastman. The one you took from the ship."
"The Beastman... the Greenskin? That one, the court mage took. She said—"
Valder trailed off. Aslan exhaled. They would have to go through the court mage to get the next lead. He knew it.
Valder flinched at the sigh. Aslan didn't particularly care.
"Then who is this court mage?"
No immediate answer. Valder's face twisted with inner debate. Aslan raised his fist without hesitation. A few more hits would loosen that tongue.
"Astrid! It's Astrid!"
The name came out before the punch landed, Valder squeezing his eyes shut. The fist stopped. Valder cracked his eyes open when no agony came and found Aslan staring down at him, rigid.
"...Astrid?"
A strange, strained question. Valder nodded frantically. Aslan's expression twisted into something painful. He released the collar.
Valder's body thudded to the ground. He edged backward, scuttling away. Aslan shook his head, the look on his face heavy with memory.
The power of monsterization. A priest's techniques, refined and scattered across the warlords. That was proof enough: a priest stood behind this.
That, by itself, meant nothing.
The problem was the name.
Astrid.
A name Aslan knew.
"Goddammit."
A muttered curse. Hand on his hip, clicking his tongue, unable to hide the restlessness. Valder's eyes darted, watching him. Aslan let out a long, rough breath.
Astrid had been his friend, back when he had lived in the Northern Empire. A court mage. Someone who loved her homeland, who wanted to stop the Faraway World from bleeding ever deeper into her own—a warm-hearted woman.
Full black hair. Blue eyes.
She had joked once that standing side by side, they could pass for brother and sister.
Aslan held the image in his mind and thought: had she been a priest from the start, sent to win his favor? Or had she taken the path later, for ambition?
Neither possibility was good.
The sigh seeped into the night air. Beyond it, the murmuring soldiers were drawing closer.