The Giant's Desert
The Giant's Desert
"Human. Brought all the weapons."
"Human... takes our weapons. Bad."
"I'll give them back intact. Just watch."
Cutting through the clamor of the giants, Aslan knelt on one knee and studied the weapons before picking one up.
The weight that met his hand told him immediately—even for someone who handled every type of weapon at master level, wielding this would be difficult.
In the end, he set the weapon back down.
"As I thought."
Looking over the enormous stone axes and hammers laid out before him, his suspicions hardened into certainty.
Despite the giants' crude craftsmanship, the weapons arrayed on the ground were well-made and meticulously maintained. Aslan's gaze traveled across them, and the giants peered at him with anxious expressions, watching like men afraid of what he might do.
They seemed worried he would confiscate their prized weapons—or worse, damage them.
Aslan had no such intention. And since he stood to gain nothing from taking such crude implements, he simply examined them in silence.
Deep blue stains remained on the axe-blades and hammer-heads. Their color and texture resembled the ectoplasm sometimes seen in occult horror games, and something about them felt familiar.
A familiarity exclusive to Aslan—or more precisely, exclusive to wild mages.
The familiarity alone was enough to convince him, but conviction wasn't enough.
He needed to verify it.
Aslan scraped a finger across the bluish semi-solid residue coating a stone axe.
The sticky texture clung to his fingertip. Layered over that texture was the unmistakable presence of mana.
Reading that presence, Aslan let out a sigh.
'Not a wraith after all.'
It was closer to a creature shaped from mana. Something more akin to a familiar or summoned beast—depending on the circumstances, you could even call it a slime.
But that didn't mean it was entirely unrelated to wraiths. Its primary component was mana, but the base material was closer to a soul. Something molded from souls. A fabricated monster, deliberately designed to reproduce wraiths.
'I can't perceive souls directly... but it reacts to Purity. It definitely contains souls.'
When Aslan drew the single-edged blade in his right hand and lightly grazed the blue residue, the ichor flared white—wreathed in blazing radiance—and vanished, burned away.
Clear proof it contained souls. If Purity's ability to cut souls or divinity affected it, there was no need to debate the matter further.
On top of that, its physical properties allowed it to ignore purely physical force. This was undeniably a soul-infused monster.
He didn't know who had made it, but he could tell how it had been made.
The structure of a viscous substance radiating blue mana was, to Aslan, startlingly familiar.
The tattoos winding around his entire right arm—tattoos that could store and release recorded spells, activating any stored spell at maximum efficiency regardless of the catalyst's quality. A technique of the Ancient Empire, mana tattoos. The pigment used in that near-lost art closely resembled the viscous fluid left behind when wraiths were slain.
They must have molded souls using this mana-infused slime. Aslan was certain, yet still puzzled.
No school of magic he knew—no matter how thoroughly one searched—contained a spell that produced pseudo-wraiths like these.
Only two possibilities existed for wielding magic that didn't exist.
Either an archmage of master-level attainment had created it, or it was wild magic.
Of the two, Aslan considered the wild mage scenario far more likely.
Plenty of mages lacked morals or ethics, but the fields of soul and death magic were outdated relics, long since fallen into decline. Considering that recent magical research focused almost entirely on efficiency against priests and gods, this was far too antiquated.
'A wild mage, then.'
Aslan straightened up and returned the single-edged blade, its Purity now withdrawn, to his waist.
"Take your weapons back. I'm done with them."
While the giants snatched up their weapons with frantic haste and eyed Aslan with lingering suspicion, his brow furrowed, betraying his unease.
He didn't know how or why, but whoever was behind this wraith incident was unmistakably a wild mage. A wild mage who had achieved a deep, fundamental understanding of souls.
And therein lay the problem.
Wild magic. It was too crude to even call a proper discipline, differing fundamentally from conventional magic. If magic was something built from intellect and wisdom, wild magic demanded total comprehension of the relevant element—and physical modification of the caster's own body.
To conjure flames with standard magic, a simple hand sign or incantation sufficed.
To conjure flames with wild magic, you first had to understand fire itself. Its taste, its texture, its form, its theory. How fire ignited, how it spread, how it was extinguished. And beyond all that, you had to understand flame on an intrinsic level.
Then came body modification. You had to reshape your own flesh through wild magic until your body became capable of manifesting the fire you had so thoroughly comprehended. Only then could you wield flame through wild magic.
In other words, wild magic was a form of body-modification magic—turning your own transformed flesh into the instrument that unleashed the wild forces you had internalized.
A magic of supreme inefficiency, the very avatar of irrationality. And for that very reason, all wild mages were insane.
After comprehending something the human mind was never meant to grasp, their sanity broke. Or the process of mutation stripped away their humanity and twisted their minds.
That was why Aslan limited himself to surface-level body enhancement and weapon reinforcement.
Aslan lifted his head and stared down the road the wraiths had retreated along, thinking through the method a wild mage would have chosen to create these creatures.
First, modify an arm into something capable of touching souls, somehow. Next, fashion an organ that could infuse mana into those souls—or retrofit the already-modified arm to serve that dual function. Finally, mold the souls by pouring mana into them through that organ. Into wraiths.
He didn't know why the mage had sent the resulting wraiths against the giants, but wild magic of this nature was deeply dangerous. This was soul-manipulation magic. There was no telling how such wild magic might evolve from here. It could become wild magic that forcibly stripped souls from living beings.
With these thoughts turning in his mind, Aslan looked toward the horizon, stretching endlessly along the trail the wraiths had left behind.
Some time had passed, but combining his Survival skill, Luck, and mana sensitivity, the trail wasn't difficult to follow. It wouldn't be a short path. The tracking itself would be grueling, and facing a wild mage who handled souls promised to be a difficult fight.
For that reason, Aslan could have ignored the uneasy stares of the giants at his back and simply walked his own road. He could have left them all to die and set out to find the Master of the Sword instead.
He didn't.
If he left a wild mage wielding such dangerous magic unchecked, the potential damage was incalculable. People might get hurt—might already have been hurt. And if he waited to deal with the threat until after innocents had suffered, he had no way to predict what direction this soul-shaping, wraith-forging wild magic might evolve, or how much stronger it might become.
Above all, the direction itself troubled him. Soul-manipulating wild magic. If that ever fell into the hands of a priest, something horrific would certainly follow. Perhaps a priest was already the one pulling the strings.
Which meant this was something only Aslan—the Aslan standing here right now—could do and had to do.
"Angie. Ereta."
The girl whose name he called nodded with an unhurried air. Ereta flinched at being named. Aslan shifted his gaze toward them both.
"Come here. I'll explain the plan from here on."
*
"Can't help wondering if bringing only me was the right call~"
Ereta followed Aslan with a cloth-like wrap draped over her head. Faint traces of the wraiths' passage lingered along the path they walked.
"That little one didn't seem too happy about being separated from you."
Aslan didn't answer.
He knew perfectly well it was true. Angie was the type who stuck close to him.
"If I were planning to betray you... wouldn't now be the perfect chance?"
Ereta's tone was taunting—and what would you do if I did? Until recently she had kept her silence, and seeing her act like this still unsettled Aslan.
"You're not going to."
But even through that awkwardness, he glanced sidelong at her and spoke. Ereta's eyes went wide; she hadn't expected him to engage.
"And if the wraiths come back, the only ones who can fight them are me and Angie. Your matchup against them is terrible. Leaving you behind wasn't an option either."
The only one capable of counterattacking wraiths without fear was Angie—her Health score was high enough to trade blows against most physical attacks, and any injuries she took healed rapidly.
Then, as if appending an afterthought, Aslan added, "Besides, keeping you next to me means I can handle whatever happens. You do anything, I'll deal with it."
Even at that cold remark, Ereta's expression barely changed. If anything, she looked like she had expected it.
"Baggage, is it? That's cruel. You're saying it doesn't matter if you use me like a chess piece and throw me away whenever you feel like it?"
The words came out carrying little emotion. Rather, they revealed how clearly she understood her own position.
She held the title of master, but she was also a former priest who hadn't yet grown accustomed to the techniques she now possessed—and her transformed body hadn't finished adapting. Calling her a fully functional combatant would be a stretch.
Her words carried a note of resigned agreement. Hearing them, Aslan straightened and shook his head.
"If the time comes to discard something, discarding it is best. But that approach will never get you to the gods. You won't even survive long enough to reach them."
At the unexpected reply, Ereta let out a questioning sound as Aslan resumed walking.
"I'm going to kill the gods. To do that, I'll conserve every resource—strength and people both. So don't second-guess my plans. Just follow in silence."
Beneath the firm words flickered a current of hatred. At the thin killing intent that seeped into his voice whenever the word "god" crossed his lips, Ereta felt a strange tightness in her lower abdomen and answered, "Y-yes."
The two of them walked in silence after that, following the trail. With every footprint they left in the sand, the giant's fortress village receded further into the distance.
Awkward silence. Amid the soft crunching rhythm of sand underfoot, Ereta lifted her eyes.
Thinking back, something about this made no sense. She voiced the thought.
"Why were you so sure I wouldn't betray you? The man who tore me to ribbons, who made my god abandon me. Is there really a reason I wouldn't betray you?"
Seeking from someone else the reason she herself couldn't betray him—even in its sheer strangeness, Ereta's manner was unflinching.
Aslan gave no answer, instead quietly surveying their surroundings.
"There's some distance to cover, but we'll arrive soon. Even if we set out now, we'll reach it by tomorrow morning."
The setting sun stretched long shadows across the ground. Ereta fixed a dissatisfied look on Aslan, who still hadn't replied.
She bit her lip hard and twisted the hem of her garment between her fingers. Aslan continued scanning the area for a long moment before finally glancing back at her.
His eyes were lidded, an expression of mild irritation mixed with something sharper—annoyance—settled in his gaze.
Call it contempt. A look that radiated unmistakable negative emotion directed squarely at her. Ereta felt her pulse quicken and clutched at her chest.
Her face flushed faintly. Flustered, her eyes wandered, tracking Aslan's face, his gaze. Aslan took all of this in and let a faint trace of mockery curl at the corner of his lips.
Wearing that mockery, he approached slowly. With every step that closed the distance, Ereta felt her heart beat faster.
An impulse she couldn't understand drove her heart and lower abdomen into rough, erratic motion.
Aslan stopped right in front of her, face to face, and looked down at her.
Under that steady downward gaze, Ereta swallowed hard.
"You're asking why I don't think you'll betray me?"
His voice carried a clear edge of irritation. Ereta couldn't even manage a nod. The blush staining her face deepened visibly.
"The man who tore you to pieces, made your god abandon you, beat you senseless—why doesn't he suspect you?"
"Nng..."
"Exactly because he's the man who tore you to pieces and beat you senseless. You can't betray him."
"My face... ngh."
At those words, Ereta remembered the sensation of the axe-blade shredding her flesh, the impact of Aslan's fist pounding into her body.
The moment those two memories surfaced, her heart hammered as if about to burst. Their eyes met; the crimson spread from her face to the tips of her ears. An indescribable feeling—almost like she might cry—made her glance away.
Aslan watched her do it and gave a short, dismissive laugh.
"Let's go. There's still a long way."
"...N-nehe..."
Suppressing the heat coiled in her belly and the heart that felt ready to leap from her chest, Ereta followed after him.