Seeking the Snow Flower Sword
"Huff... Huff... How many was that now?"
Elsid caught his breath and sheathed the swords he had been swinging back at his waist.
Fighting those creatures had drained far more stamina than he cared to admit.
Even though they were mere werewolves, their regenerative abilities were absurdly strong. No matter how many bones he broke, most wounds would heal after some time, allowing them to stand back up and charge again.
Since he could not kill living beings, rendering them combat-incapable took an absurd amount of time.
Moreover, the closer he drew to the shrine that served the Ice Dragon, the greater their numbers became. This time he had faced five or six Snow Wolves at once, leaving his body in a state where collapsing from exhaustion would not have been surprising.
'I need a place to catch my breath.'
Without finding somewhere to rest, he could not advance any farther.
His body was growing colder by the moment, his throat was parched, and his stomach was screaming for food.
Elsid forced his weary limbs forward.
Though he had said advancing was difficult, the path remained a straight line with no other options.
And the heavens had not abandoned him.
'A cave...?'
Before him appeared a cave—not large by any means, yet spacious enough for a person to enter.
Without hesitation, Elsid stepped inside.
Of course, he kept his guard up.
A cave of this size could easily shelter a wild beast in hibernation.
Yet the presence of such a beast might have been preferable.
"Again...?"
Once inside, faint firelight and several shadows came into view.
The people of the Ice Palace had supposedly evacuated, and wild beasts could not make fire. That left only one possibility.
The Snow Wolves had lit a campfire inside the cave and were roasting meat.
'Retreating would only make things worse.'
Finding a cave this size had already been fortunate.
With no guarantee of finding another, he had no choice but to fight for it—whether the outcome was victory or defeat.
Keeping his hand ready to draw his sword at any moment, Elsid silenced his footsteps and carefully approached the light.
Yet...
Chomp, chomp. Gnaw, gnaw.
"Grr, Yuna... How can a human woman eat so much?"
"It's not that I eat a lot. It's that you eat too little, Fer."
"Can't be helped. Grr, ever since I started giving the prey I hunted to the females and young, I've somehow become someone who fills up after just a little..."
As he drew closer, the sounds of chewing and tearing mingled with what sounded like human speech.
What was going on?
He had been told the villagers had all evacuated, yet there were beastly growls mixed with a rough voice—and unmistakably, someone speaking the human tongue.
"What the..."
"Sniff, sniff, Yuna... I smell someone else besides you."
While he stood there puzzled, the creature whose voice blended beastly growls with a rough tone noticed his presence and informed the person beside it.
"A person... Is it your younger sister, Yuran? No, she's much weaker than me. She wouldn't make it this far—she'd be caught."
For some reason, the name of someone he had recently met slipped from that person's mouth.
"Honestly. This is all because you can't manage your subordinates. And you call yourself the leader of the Snow Wolves?"
"Grr, I've never called myself a leader. It's just that, at some point, no one stronger than me remained among the others."
"That's the same thing! Stop playing word games!"
Mid-conversation, the mysterious duo suddenly began bickering.
"Pardon me."
Since his location had clearly been discovered already, Elsid boldly stepped into view.
"Grr, Yuna. As expected, there was someone else with you."
And Elsid saw it.
The form of the being whose voice mixed beastly growls with a rough tone...
Compared to ordinary Snow Wolves standing around two meters tall, this one was smaller—roughly the height of an average adult male at about 180 centimeters. Its silver fur, marked by a massive X-shaped scar across its chest, gave it the air of a wolf warrior who had crossed countless battlefields.
"I can tell that much... but I've never seen your face before. Did Yuran send you?"
Beside that wolf warrior stood a woman in her late twenties, scanning him slowly from head to toe as if appraising him.
She was a beautiful woman with sky-blue bobbed hair reaching just below her neck and matching sky-blue eyes.
"Yes, that's correct. Then... might you be the Snow Flower Sword?"
Elsid asked the woman before him, whose appearance closely resembled Yuran's aside from her hair length.
In her hand were three or four skewers of meat, perfectly roasted over the campfire...
"Yeah, that's me. I'm the Snow Flower Sword, Shin Yuna. Nom nom."
At Elsid's question, the woman named Shin Yuna, the Snow Flower Sword, nodded and answered.
Then she stuffed the three or four skewers she held into her mouth all at once and began chewing.
"Um, there are several things I don't understand... May I ask just one?"
The situation was so different from what he had been told that Elsid felt bewildered.
He had so many questions—why the Snow Flower Sword, supposedly surrounded at the shrine, was here instead, and why she was with a Snow Wolf that possessed an extraordinary presence and could speak the human language.
"Ah, if you're talking about these skewers, they're made from snow rabbit meat. They're quite delicious, so if you're hungry, feel free to eat with us."
"Grr, that's right, human. Judging by your condition, you've had a rough time getting here. Eat quickly, or this woman will finish them all."
"Hmph, as if I'd eaten that much."
"You devoured half of the twenty snow rabbits I hunted, yet you talk so well."
Before Elsid could even ask his question, Yuna had guessed and answered on her own, then launched into banter with the Snow Wolf beside her.
Asking questions would likely yield nothing meaningful—only add mental fatigue to his already exhausted state. He had a feeling about that.
Growl.
'Might as well eat first.'
It felt strange to sit and eat with Snow Wolves he had been fighting to the death moments ago, but the aroma of the roasted rabbit skewers was tempting, and his stomach was protesting loudly.
To fill his empty belly, Elsid picked up a skewer browning nicely over the fire and took a bite.
One, two... He kept eating, and by the time he thought he had consumed several dozen...
"Haa, that was delicious."
A sense of satisfaction filled him as his stomach was sated.
The warmth from the campfire also gently heated his chilled body.
"In the end, you took all the prey I hunted. You're not people—you're pigs."
"Haha, it's because you roasted them so well."
"I agree. It really was delicious."
Despite being cooked without any seasoning, it was the best skewer he had ever tasted.
"Ah, that aside, what really happened here?"
Then Elsid recalled the question he had meant to ask earlier and opened his mouth.
"Aren't the Snow Wolves enemies? Why are you sitting together like this, roasting meat side by side?"
It felt odd for him to ask such a question after receiving food, but it was something he needed to clarify.
"Huh? Because we're friends. We've eaten meat together like this plenty of times."
"Then does that mean everything I did was pointless?"
"What did you do?"
"..."
Shin Yuna asked casually, while Elsid hesitated over whether to recount the hardships he had endured to reach this place.
"I can roughly guess. Yuna, he must have fought countless Snow Wolves to reach here in order to save you. So, did you kill them all?"
Before he could speak of his struggles, the silver-furred Snow Wolf with the X-shaped scar on its chest made its guess and then fixed its gaze on him, asking.
"I only rendered them all combat-incapable."
"Oh? You held back even in that situation."
"Because I cannot kill living beings."
"Not that you won't kill, but that you can't... You carry a fatal flaw as a warrior... no, as a swordsman."
After exchanging only a few words, the silver-furred Snow Wolf had already identified a fatal weakness Elsid could not erase.
"Well, I'm grateful for that flaw this time. Our Snow Wolves are a race with vitality stronger than any other. As long as they aren't dead, they'll be back to full strength in a few days."
"What is your identity?"
Elsid asked the wolf warrior, whose strength he suspected was extraordinary.
"Ah, I haven't introduced myself yet. This one's name is Fer, and he is the king of all Snow Wolves."
Yet the answer came not from the wolf warrior he had questioned, but from Yuna beside him.
He had assumed a leader would be at most on the level of a captain like Egor from before, but a king—that was surprising.
"By the way, you seem to be misunderstanding something. The Snow Wolves aren't enemies. On the contrary, they're reliable allies who will fight alongside us in the war that's about to begin."
"A war?"
"Ah, as an outsider, you might not know. Well, the reason is..."
Yuna's voice echoed through the cave as she began to explain, step by step, why the Snow Wolves that inhabited the Frost Forest had suddenly descended to the Ice Palace—and what the impending war was about.
Elsid listened attentively, not wanting to miss a single word.