The Awakening at Ribagar's Summit
Umm… Can’t you guys stay a little longer…?
Ribagar in Niblord rarely sees monsters thanks to its brutally cold and barren environment. That doesn’t mean they don’t appear at all, though. The monstrous bird Hresvelgr that rains down storms of ice crystals from the sky and the wolf Freki that bounds across the mountain’s savage terrain without a care in the world are the kind of creatures that feel overwhelming even to chase on your first encounter.
Conversely, once you learn how to handle them they become nothing more than a mild annoyance. BOOM! I exploit the fact that their movements are fast but painfully linear, cut off their path, then slam my warhammer straight down to take care of Freki first. After that I wait for the moment Hresvelgr slows down right after launching its crystal storm, snatch up one of the fallen shards, and hurl it back to pierce straight through the bird’s torso. Done.
The monstrous bird lets out a hideous death cry and crashes to the ground. Once it’s down it can’t do anything at all, so I just swing my weapon a few times to finish it off. Unfortunately neither of the two monsters dropped any rare items. Not that it matters—rare drops from Niblord monsters really are rare, so selling them for any decent price is basically impossible anyway.
“Haa…”
I let out a sigh tinged with pointless disappointment, and the lone surviving viewer, Lainel, asked the question. The chat carried the heavy atmosphere of exhaustion, but I couldn’t exactly blame him. The time had somehow reached 11:30 p.m.—three and a half hours since we began our climb to Ribagar’s summit.
Yet according to my memory we were still only halfway up the mountain. In other words, we still needed at least another three hours to reach the top.
“Today… might be pushing it. Looks like we’ll arrive around dawn…”
My words were met with collective groans from everyone around me. Did they really want to finish this journey that badly? To be honest, I was enjoying moving together toward a single goal like this.
“You’ll feel way more moved later if you follow along in real time…”
“You said last time that you were a home security guard, didn’t you? You’ve got plenty of time…”
“Umm… Can’t you stay a little longer…?”
After that exchange, Lainel thankfully left a message saying he would try to hold out until the very end. The rest of the viewers had already promised not to drop out midway, so there was no need to say anything else to them. I could sense some frustration building toward me, but I believed they would all be satisfied once they saw the sight that awaited us.
…Still, the fact that it had gotten this late was something even I hadn’t predicted. Last time when I came alone, the trip to Ribagar’s summit had taken four hours. That meant after three and a half hours we should have been standing right in front of the peak. Yet our current pace was unbearably slow. Of course moving with fifteen people at once was bound to slow things down, but even taking that into account it was extreme.
And the cause was the monsters. Niblord is an extreme region where monsters almost never appear. Especially on Ribagar. The proof was that on my solo trip I had encountered monsters fewer than five times before reaching the summit. But we had already hit our thirteenth encounter just now. In other words, the odds were so ridiculous I could confidently call it impossible.
“H-has anyone found some kind of strange device or anything…?”
At my question every single viewer shook their heads. Well, that made sense—they were all shivering so hard from the cold that they couldn’t do anything else. …Maybe I had simply hit that absurd probability? Or perhaps having so many people widened our activity radius and attracted the monsters.
“…Let’s set off again.”
Everyone nodded at my words, and we once more began walking toward Ribagar’s summit.
The slope gradually grew steeper. No one spoke anymore. We had still chatted a little on the way up, but now everyone was truly exhausted and simply breathed out pale white puffs of air in silence. It wasn’t really my fault, yet I still felt guilty as I took one step, then another, leading from the very front.
The current number of viewers was sixteen. The heretics had been banned and never returned, so it was still sixteen. In other words, there had been zero new viewers. When I thought about that, this whole viewer-participation event might actually be completely meaningless.
I streamed to make money. But right now the stream wasn’t growing the audience, donations weren’t coming in, and someone watching might laugh and call the whole thing pointless. Even so, I had no intention of stopping these steps. Especially because I knew exactly what was waiting at the end.
How much time had passed? One second felt like a minute, one minute like an hour. In that slow flow of time I took another step.
“…Huh?”
My foot sank deep into the snow with a soft poof. The steep slope I had been feeling until now had vanished. I broke into a run up the gentler hill, my tired body moving on instinct. I had felt this sensation once before, so there was no hesitation.
“Lady Lene?”
The viewers who had been calling after me seemed to realize the slope had eased as well; one by one they began picking up speed. We ran and ran until we finally reached the end. What we saw was—
“Holy crap.”
A pure-white landscape covering the earth. And an aurora of brilliant blue embroidered across the sky.
“Whoa.”
One, then two. The viewers who had fallen slightly behind began arriving. Just like the ones who had arrived first, they let out quiet gasps of wonder.
“How is it? It’s really amazing, right?”
“You’re regretting not coming with us, aren’t you…?”
I was giggling while reading Lainel’s message when—
“Lady Lene.”
“Hyaa?! Ah, y-yes…?”
Someone placed a hand on my shoulder from behind and called my name. I spun around in surprise to find the martial-artist viewer who had said he didn’t want to come standing there.
“Honestly I really didn’t want to come this far, and I thought about running away halfway.”
“Ah, yes…”
“…But it really is an incredible view.”
“Right? Hehe…”
Yes. Sincerity really does get through.
“Isn’t it good enough that you’d want to come back and see it again…?”
“…Not quite that much.”
Guess not.
“You said you’d already been here once, right? How on earth did you decide to come here twice…?”
He spoke as if he couldn’t understand, but a smile played on his lips. Just in case, I quietly looked around and saw that everyone else was smiling with satisfied expressions too. At this rate it would surely become a wonderful memory for all of them. Including me, of course.
The moment I thought that and turned my gaze back to the aurora—
“[You insignificant creatures dare to awaken this body’s slumber!]”
The ruler of Niblord. The ferocious ancient white dragon Albion that had been sleeping has opened its eyes!
Access to Niblord will now be restricted.
The first party to confront Albion may either defeat it or abandon the attempt. The restriction will be lifted once either condition is met.
Once the restriction is lifted, the ‘Albion Subjugation’ quest will activate.