Baramunz
Baramunz
The group didn't need long to reorganize. It helped that they hadn't expended much to begin with, but the bigger reason was that priests of the Predator left no bodies behind.
Aslan watched the last remnants of the priest dissolve into flecks of light and rise into the sky. The expression that settled on his face was bitter, and his companions kept stealing glances at him.
What Angie felt, watching him, was a pang of sympathy. His plans were always flawless, his preparations absolute. He met every obstacle with a will that refused to bend and a meticulousness that left no gaps. Nothing ever looked like it could truly stop him.
Yet even Aslan had things he couldn't do. All his strength and knowledge couldn't save a priest. The Forest Keeper had died in the end—grieving, full of regret.
Angie recognized the grief in him and it hurt to see. Knowing that his power reached a limit left a hollow ache in her chest, something close to a sense of loss.
Ereta, by contrast, found herself deeply intrigued by this unexpected side of him. A thoroughgoing sadist who didn't quite realize it herself, she had spent a long lifetime savoring the pain of others. Her sensitivity to suffering bordered on instinct, and she could read Aslan's with ease.
She was so attuned to injury that she spotted wounds others missed. And right now, she saw pain in Aslan.
She also knew he had been building his reputation for a good while. She could guess how many times he'd faced moments like this.
He'd suffered this same thing over and over, and here he was—still standing, still mourning without being worn down. Ereta watched him endure without breaking and found herself fascinated.
What exactly made this man the way he was? She was keenly curious.
Fay observed only Aslan. Unlike the other two, who were seeing him like this for the first time, Fay had already witnessed it before.
The Aslan she knew wasn't the type to collapse under pain.
And sure enough, she was right. He shook off the wound almost at once.
The sight had been painful. The evil god was targeting him personally.
The pressure felt like an entire world bearing down on him at full speed—a crushing weight no single person was meant to carry.
But that weight wasn't new to Aslan. It was just another stretch of the same twelve-year road. He set aside the sorrow, the anger, the ache, and spoke to his companions.
"Let's move."
A single flat word, but the bleakness it carried was deeply familiar to both Angie and Ereta.
Only now did they understand: Aslan had become the man he was by enduring this kind of pain again and again.
Nothing had changed. All that accumulated anguish couldn't bring him to his knees.
His motivation was simple.
If I don't do it, no one will.
That was what drove him.
He swallowed the familiar hurt and renewed the vow.
He would kill every last evil god.
Because he was the only one who could.
A little more suffering was something he could bear.
"...It's fine. Don't worry. I got emotional for a moment, but I'm used to it."
He said it simply, addressing the eyes fixed on him—Angie's anxious, worried gaze and Ereta's look of deep fascination laced with its own kind of concern.
Aslan answered those stares with a faint smile and walked on, unhurried.
His companions followed, and before long they passed the boundary of Ardar Forest.
Leaving the woods behind, they headed southwest. Across plains that carried the scent of the sea they traveled, resting when they needed to, pressing on when they could, making for the mountain kingdom.
Three days into the journey, Aslan finally caught sight of the enormous mountain range rising before them.
The Mountain Kingdom of Baramunz.
*
The Mountain Kingdom of Baramunz.
As the name implied, the kingdom occupied a vast stretch of highland terrain along the Baramunz Mountains. Truthfully, it resembled a tribal confederation far more than what its name suggested.
Four great tribes divided the land among themselves, and each tribe contained distinct clans.
Its society was tribal to the core rather than royal—yet it was still a kingdom.
A confederation in practice, but not in name, for the one who ruled was a king, and the structure of the state was that of a monarchy.
In that sense, the mountain kingdom was unique.
The lands that touched the mountains or cut into them were shared out among four tribes: the Honor Tribe, the Hill Tribe, the Silence Tribe, and the Crown Tribe.
They appeared equal at a glance, but they were not.
The Honor Tribe, the Hill Tribe, and the Silence Tribe were all vassals to the Crown Tribe, whose chieftain was the king.
The Mountain Kingdom of Baramunz walked the line between tribal confederation and kingdom. Despite that peculiar system of rule, it had survived for a very long time with the Kingdom of Bida on one side and the Kallus Empire on the other.
"Whoa, shit—mountains can be that big?"
Aslan knew exactly why. He mulled over the reasons while Angie's muttered awe reached his ears.
A natural fortress, shaped by two colossal mountain ranges, that made defense effortless.
Fierce, hard-bitten warriors.
A culture built around the hunt, combat, and war.
All of it—and more—added up to formidable military strength.
Everything about the mountain kingdom made it tough, and that was what had let it survive sandwiched between a sprawling empire that worshiped the God of War and a kingdom that claimed descent from an ancient empire.
Angie stared up at the peaks with her mouth hanging open. Aslan let his gaze trace the ridgelines and reached back through twelve years of memory, back to the game.
Even in the game, the mountain kingdom's military had been potent.
Its warrior-heavy population meant the kingdom could field troop numbers that rivaled its neighbors, and the quality of those soldiers was markedly superior.
The troops and mercenaries you gained after forging an alliance were better than anything you could get from other main quest routes.
Back when Aslan was still Lee Hyun-woo, the younger man had often run the main quest through the Baramunz route for exactly that reason.
That experience framed his thinking now.
In this struggle against the evil gods, in this fight to carve out a different ending, cooperation with the Mountain Kingdom of Baramunz wasn't optional. It was essential.
The problem was that it wouldn't be easy.
Reaching the kingdom and clearing the quests was never the hard part. The difficulty lay beyond that—or, more precisely, right at the starting line.
Meeting the king.
The mountain kingdom's confederation-like nature made it more insular than most nations.
'If that were the only issue, there wouldn't be a problem.'
Aslan's thoughts were still winding forward when someone shouted.
"Next! Outsiders, state your name, party composition, and purpose!"
A tribal warrior guarding the Baramunz border.
He wore a fur cloak and rough leather armor, an axe hanging at his hip. He stood before the palisade and rattled off questions at the merchants who had stopped there.
Every word was barbed with suspicion, and his eyes were full of wariness.
When a merchant stumbled over his answers, the warrior clicked his tongue and ordered him away. The trader, hauling barely a cartload of goods, begged with tears in his eyes. The warrior silenced the pleas by resting a hand on his axe. In the end, they beat the man and drove him off.
Aslan let out a sigh at the pitiful sight. Angie, who had been studying the mountains, turned her head.
The mountain tribes had always been wary of outsiders to begin with. With the Emperor fallen and the Kallus Empire in chaos, with priests of the evil gods swarming across the land like a plague, that wariness had sharpened into outright hostility.
Most merchants and travelers were turned away. Those who were sent packing trudged back the way they'd come or set up camp near the palisade.
Aslan's group had done the same. This was their second day at the border.
"I don't know if he'll even agree to see us."
The words slipped out flat. Aslan felt stuck. He'd made it here, but there was no telling if things would go according to plan.
If this were a fight, he could be confident. But brute force and technique weren't going to carve a path through this.
And he couldn't force his way in with violence. He'd come to make an alliance, to clear the main quest.
"Huh? What d'you mean?"
At any other time, Ereta would have been sniping at Angie's guileless questions, but she'd grown tired of waiting and fallen asleep back at camp. Fay was idling there too—Aslan had asked her to watch over Ereta.
Only Aslan and Angie were at the palisade now.
"Not sure I can even get an audience with the king. It feels like he'll refuse."
"Huh? But you said the Emperor is the top guy. So shouldn't a king just... meet you? You're the Master of Combat."
Angie's logic was that a figure as great as the Master of Combat would naturally be granted a meeting.
In normal times, in almost any other nation or territory, that would be true. The title carried a fearsome reputation that reached across continents, from the Northern Continent to the Southern.
The problem was who ruled this particular kingdom.
Aslan smiled grimly and shook his head.
"That's exactly why I think he'll refuse."
"...Uh, eh? Why? You're a big deal if you're the Master of Combat."
The reason was simple. Aslan opened his mouth to explain—
"Gra-ha-ha-ha-ha!"
A booming laugh rang out, so loud that every person lined up at the palisade turned their head at once.
Even Aslan stopped mid-sentence. The laughter pulled his gaze like a physical force.
A dragon-kin stood in the direction he turned. An unusually large dragon-kin with an immense bow in his hand.
Red-scaled and wearing a fur vest, the dragon-kin let out another rollicking laugh—then reached for his clothes.
'A dragon-kin with a bow?'
Dragon-kin generally had poor eyesight. They tended to dislike ranged weapons, and it was exceptionally rare to see one carrying a bow. Near enough unheard of.
Yet the dragon-kin before him held a greatbow of obvious craftsmanship.
The laughter cut off. He stripped off his clothing.
"Wha— whaa—?"
Angie's flustered voice spread outward. It rippled through the gathered travelers and merchants and reached the warriors guarding the palisade. They traded glances, then all turned toward the dragon-kin.
Stark naked, red-scaled, holding his bow. He raised it and drew an arrow.
"Behold! Watch old Tiyamal make the highest peak in this range bow its head!"
A thunderous proclamation. The drawn arrow, the massive bow. Even Aslan couldn't make sense of what he was seeing and simply stared.
The dragon-kin ignored the dozens of eyes on him. Naked, he aimed.
He nocked a shaft as long as a short spear, pushed the bow upward like he was stretching, and began to draw it down with deliberate, immense force.
The sound that came from the bow was metallic and grotesque, like steel being twisted. The string groaned under the strain. Aslan could hear it clearly even from a long distance away.
Watching, Aslan and the border warriors realized it at the same moment.
This dragon-kin who had named himself Tiyamal was about to shoot at the mountain.
The warriors tore open the palisade gate and sprinted toward him, but they were too late. The string released.
Crack!
The air split with a sound like a thunderclap. The great arrow flew faster than Aslan's dynamic vision could track.
It outraced its own sound and slammed into the faintly visible peak.
—Boom.
The noise caught up a beat later in a rolling report. Even from here, they could see the mountaintop shear away and crumble.
"Gra-ha-ha! You see that? You see it?! Ha-ha-ha-ha!"
"Madman—grab him! Grab him!"
Warriors swarmed the dragon-kin. He set his bow on the ground, still laughing his head off, and knelt calmly as they closed in. He was still laughing when they bound him with rope.
A baffling outburst, incomprehensible public indecency, and a roaring laugh—all in one deranged package. Aslan blinked amid the absurdity.
'He actually... hit it?'
The distance from this border outpost to the Crown Peak the dragon-kin had just struck was staggering.
The target was large—a whole section of mountain—but no one should have been able to loose an arrow that far, let alone land it precisely on a peak.
'He hit that.'
No one except this dragon-kin.
Aslan watched the bound figure being hauled away, and a name surfaced in his mind.
The name the dragon-kin had shouted—Tiyamal—was the same name he'd heard about a year ago. Tiyamal Clo, the newly risen Master of the Bow.
And as far as Aslan knew, only dragon-kin bore the surname Claw.