Chapter 73
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 73
Act 2. Despair is the Color of Ash
His earliest memory always began in the same place.
A vast plain, stained gold. The wind whipped across the grass.
As he pushed through the undulating stalks, a strangely deep blue sky poured down over him. Swept up in an intense thrill, Barkas wandered aimlessly along the boundary between the gold and the blue.
At some point, he no longer knew where he was headed. He simply ran through the wind, lost in the moment.
He was free.
He could go anywhere and do anything. The beautiful world before his eyes whispered as much.
His heart hammered as if it might burst. The heat of the blood rushing through his veins and the chill of the dry air filling his lungs—every sensation told him he was alive.
He tasted the ecstasy of life.
However, that brilliant moment did not last.
Thick gray walls closed in on him from all sides. It was a space so cramped he could neither sit nor lie down. Trapped in a hidden room no different from a coffin, he clawed at the walls until his fingernails were crushed.
That futile resistance soon crumbled.
Through a narrow crack in the wall, a fanatic’s eye peered in at him from time to time. The priest would never let him go until the "evil" dwelling within him was utterly extinguished.
Amidst that abyssal despair, he began to kill off his own senses.
First, he severed the sensation of pain. Next, he paralyzed his senses of taste and smell. Eventually, he no longer felt hunger, and the desire for sleep vanished.
He could no longer be called a living creature.
Only after his contents had completely evaporated, leaving nothing but an empty shell, did the door to the tomb open.
With hollow eyes, he looked up at the person standing against the light. Instead of a cold eye glinting with a strange fever or a frigid face cast from steel, a slender face, pale with shock, entered his vision.
A woman with dark hair and light-colored eyes reached out toward him. Her thin fingers touched his cracked cheek. However, he felt nothing but a faint pressure.
That hand, which might have been his salvation, led him out of the tomb. Biting sunlight poured into his pupils. A strangely pale landscape filled his retinas.
He soon realized that every object reflected in his eyes was the color of ash.
A colorless, odorless, faded world.
It felt as if the entire world might crumble into dust at any moment.
No. Perhaps it was he who had become ash.
*
He slowly lifted his eyelids.
For a moment, he couldn’t perceive where he was. Only after several seconds did the ceiling of the tent, draped in dark shadows, come into focus.
He slowly raised his arm. He saw not the gaunt hand of a child, but the hand of a man with prominent bones and tendons.
As he felt his hand as if to confirm his own reality, a sound like the cry of a beast drifted in from outside.
Barkas rose mechanically. Almost simultaneously, a soldier burst into the tent.
"Sir Sieorkan! A dire wolf has appeared!"
He immediately swung his feet off the bed. While he grabbed the halberd leaning against the headboard and headed outside, waiting attendants swarmed him, fastening a lightweight breastplate around his torso.
Shaking off their cumbersome touch, he quickly scanned the chaotic campsite.
The pale dawn light faintly illuminated the orderly rows of tents and the soldiers running frantically between them. Soon, he spotted a pitch-black beast within the fray, its body length reaching nearly eight kvet (approximately 240 cm).
The monster seemed to have spotted him as well. Lowering its massive body flat, the giant wolf let out a savage roar and lunged.
He stepped forward half a pace with his left foot and held his halberd diagonally. The heavy axe blade at the end of the long pole tilted toward the ground.
Just as the black shadow filled his vision, he gripped the shaft tightly and swung it in a wide diagonal arc.
The crescent-shaped blade tore through the wolf’s tough hide, severing dense flesh and heavy bone in a single stroke. Viscous blood erupted like a fountain from the stump where the head had been.
Wiping the liquid from his cheek with his sleeve, he turned his head to survey the surroundings. He saw gray beasts scattering nimbly between the coniferous trees that stood like a fence.
Realizing they were retreating, Barkas lowered his gaze to the heavy carcass sprawled on the ground.
...It seems this one was the alpha.
When wolves lose their leader, they lose their structure and collapse in an instant.
He drove the sharp tip of his spear into the ground and walked toward a collapsed tent to check for damage. Between the broken poles and the pile of sand-colored fabric, he saw a furry, black beast lying dead. As he bent down to examine the wolf carcass—its heart pierced through—a light voice with a flippant tone reached him from behind.
"You’re having quite the rowdy welcoming ceremony on your first day back home."
Turning his head, he saw a man wearing only a loose coat over his bare chest. He was a warrior of the Barakan clan. He drove his own halberd into the ground and gestured toward the forest with his chin.
"Shall I have my men track them down?"
"We cannot afford to scatter our forces right now. First, manage the damage and tighten the perimeter."
"There isn’t much damage to speak of. They just made off with one pack horse." The man massaged the back of his neck with one hand, responding nonchalantly. "One greenhorn who had his coming-of-age ceremony this year got hurt a bit, but fortunately, there were no fatalities."
Barkas straightened his posture. The sun, which had risen fully before he knew it, was illuminating every corner of the messy campsite. He calmly looked around to gauge the exact extent of the damage before turning his eyes back to the man.
"Clear the campsite. We move before more beasts are drawn by the scent of blood."
"As you command."
As the man turned away with a leisurely stride, Barkas also moved toward the center of the camp. Soldiers struggling to calm the agitated horses and servants clearing away broken tents flickered past his pupils.
Passing them, he walked to a water skin placed next to the large main tent. A shadow, pale as a ghost, was reflected on the clear rainwater collected the day before.
He stared down at it for a moment, then scooped up the water with his hands to wash the blood from his face. The sensation of the lukewarm water applied a minute stimulus to his skin.
Wiping it away roughly, he brought his hand to the tip of his nose and sniffed. The fishy smell of blood had vanished, replaced by the faint scent of raw water.
He couldn’t tell which scent was better.
Smell was the first sense he had regained. However, he still could not connect the stimuli transmitted to his brain with emotions. He could distinguish the type and intensity of the stimulus, but it did not lead to liking or disliking. He merely distinguished between things that gave others a good feeling and those that didn’t through learning.
And according to what he had learned, the smell of blood was particularly unpleasant to people.
He pulled off his stained armor carelessly, tossing it to the ground, and checked his shirt. Fortunately, no bloodstains were visible. But there might be other unpleasant odors lingering that he couldn’t perceive.
He turned back toward his tent to change his clothes. That was when he spotted a quarter-dwarf pacing anxiously in front of the tent located in the center of the camp.
Barkas approached her immediately without hesitation.
"What is it?"
His voice was so rough it sounded alien even to his own ears. The woman looked startled, casting a frightened gaze his way.
"Ah, the young lady... I haven’t seen her for a while now..."
In that instant, a ringing sound echoed in his ears.