The Next Great Chief
It was unprecedented. In all the years of the coming-of-age ceremony, there had never been a time when not a single person emerged from the dungeon at the appointed hour. Realizing something was wrong, the Great Chief had entered the dungeon himself to find us. Once we met up with him, we made it out of the dungeon without any further danger.
'So this is what it feels like to ride the bus...' Even when wolves surged toward us like a tidal wave, a single punch from the Great Chief cleared the path. It wasn't that the corpses were disappearing; the wolves, struck by the sheer air pressure, were flattened against the walls like dried jerky. Yet, for us walking behind him, not even a breeze stirred.
Walking behind the Great Chief, I asked a question that had suddenly occurred to me. "Great Chief, what exactly is on the third floor of this dungeon?"
"The third floor of this dungeon houses a graveyard. Skeleton soldiers crawl out from the ground."
If it was hard to hold out in a cave with three sides blocked, there was no way we could survive in a place where everything was open. As expected, there was no paradise in the place I’d fled to. I used my remaining mana to teleport us to the entrance, and thanks to the Great Chief's efforts, we arrived at the dungeon's mouth before the exit gate could close.
"Enter one by one! I will be the last to go in!" The young barbarians filed through the escape gate.
"Eric, why aren't you going in?"
"I am the leader. If there is no danger ahead, I must guard the rear until the end."
"I thought the examiner for the coming-of-age ceremony was Brunda?"
"We settled it with a wrestling match. The strong one becomes the leader."
"You've truly become a barbarian."
After the last barbarian passed through the gate, I finally stepped out of the dungeon. Once outside, countless barbarians had gathered to tend to the wounded. The Great Chief, who had followed me out, bellowed, "This coming-of-age ceremony is a success for everyone! Your stories will remain in the tribe forever!"
"Wooooaaah!!!" Even the young barbarians who were receiving treatment raised their hands and cheered. In the midst of this, Kelrok stepped forward, carrying a bundle.
"We still need to determine the rankings! Our group must be first!"
"Wait, you were holding onto that?"
When Kelrok opened the bundle, a giant Cyclops eyeball rolled onto the ground. "One, two, three..." The barbarians gathered around began counting the eyes.
"Seventeen, eighteen?"
"Didn't monsters start appearing halfway through?"
"I heard the hunt was stopped at the four-hour mark..."
"Did you pick up what other groups threw away?"
"No! Our Leader Eric caught all of these!" Kelrok shouted, looking aggrieved.
"That's right! We caught them! The Cyclopes were so scared they fainted just by looking at Leader Eric's face!"
"Well, it would be possible for Eric, who defeated Chief Wulfric."
"Since the Great Chief was at the level of a warrior with two tattoos when he took his ceremony, it's possible for Eric."
The warriors bearing tattoos nodded as if they understood. While the dungeon entrance was in an uproar, the Great Chief stepped forward and shouted, "What are you doing! The ceremony is over, so we must hold a festival!"
"It's a festival! Catch the goats!"
"Open the storehouses! Let's eat everything!"
The barbarians filling the dungeon entrance scrambled up the hill. "Hey! You have to get treated first!"
"I'm hungry! Let's eat together!"
"Get treated and then eat, you idiot!" I grabbed a young barbarian running up the hill despite his injuries and laid him on the ground. "It takes time to prepare. Or do you want to go quickly and help prepare the food yourself?"
"Hmm, now that I think about it, my legs still hurt."
Wulfric, who had appeared from somewhere, quelled the young barbarians' enthusiasm. "Eric, you should rest too. We can't make the guest of honor work."
I followed Wulfric up to the city and entered an extra tent. I hadn't thought I was that tired, but as soon as I closed my eyes on the bedding, I fell asleep instantly.
It had definitely been the dark of dawn when we escaped the dungeon, but when I came to and stepped out of the tent, the sun was high in the sky. As I emerged, the gazes of the surrounding barbarians converged on me.
"The protagonist has awakened!"
"The next Great Chief is on the move!"
"Bring meat and alcohol! We must see the skills of the next Great Chief!"
Barbarians rushed at me from all sides. They grabbed me and hoisted me onto their shoulders.
"Wait a moment! No, and besides, what do you mean 'next Great Chief'!"
"Ask the Great Chief for details! We don't know!"
"We must test his drinking capacity! Bring the alcohol by the barrel!"
"He's the next Great Chief, so he should be able to eat at least one goat! Bring the meat too!"
Looking around, I saw bonfires lit everywhere and goats roasting over them. 'Are they more relaxed than I thought? They're eating this much?' Looking at the nomadic herding I had seen in videos back in my modern life, they did travel with an enormous amount of livestock, but the scene I was witnessing now involved eating through that massive quantity of goats.
'At this rate, they seem to be eating thousands of them...' Before I could resolve my question, I arrived at the center of the festival and was seated at the largest table. A giant beer mug the size of a human torso was placed in front of me. It was filled to the brim with a liquid that had the color of white yogurt. Beside it lay a whole roasted leg of lamb.
"Well! Let's see the skills of the new Great Chief!"
"Are you confident? Then everyone, take a seat!"
Avoiding a fight that comes to you is not behavior befitting the next Great Chief. I didn't know what the Great Chief was thinking, but I had no intention of overturning the stage he had set.
"Since you arrived late! Have a drink first!"
I stood up and lifted the massive oak beer mug placed before me. As I drank the makgeolli-like alcohol, a sharp sourness attacked my mouth. When I pulled away in surprise, the barbarians laughed loudly.
"Hahaha!!! You have to drink that to be a true barbarian!"
"Eric, are you an Imperial? How dare you fail to drink Ailak!"
"Are you joking? Give me yours."
"Ack! That's mine!"
I tried the drink in front of the barbarian sitting next to me, but the same intense sourness assaulted my mouth. The smiles on the barbarians' faces grew even wider as they watched.
"So that's how it is...? Fine! Watch this!"
I lifted the giant mug and drank it straight down. A strong sourness and a strange, fishy smell rose up, but I endured it and emptied the entire mug.
-Thud!
After cleanly finishing the drink, I slammed it down hard on the table. "Bring another one! Now it's a contest!"
My mug was refilled with new alcohol, and the festival began. The alcohol I had just consumed must have had a very low alcohol content, as I didn't feel intoxicated, but what did it matter? I spent a long time eating, drinking, and enjoying the festival.
Perhaps the Northern Grand Duke's training method included improving digestive power, as I didn't give up until the end, sitting there tearing into alcohol and meat. Before I knew it, the sun had fallen below the horizon, and the sky was stained red with sunset.
"I can't eat any more..." The barbarian who had stayed until the very end eventually collapsed to the floor and passed out.
"How are the skills of the next Great Chief!"
"Ugh... I feel like I'm going to die..."
Groans of barbarians could be heard from all directions. Looking around, I saw barbarians sprawled out and sleeping all over the street. Wulfric, who had appeared from the log cabin on the hill, approached me as I stood up.
"Eric, the Great Chief is looking for you."
"I'll go right away."
No matter how low the alcohol content, alcohol was still alcohol, so I felt a slight buzz, but not enough to cloud my thinking. As I followed Wulfric into the log cabin, barbarians with four or more tattoos were sitting around a large table. In the center of the table sat a mana stone the size of a basketball, emitting a powerful magical aura.
'Hmm, no matter how I look at it, that's a mana bomb.' A giant mana stone that was constantly leaking mana as if it were unstable. As I watched it in silence, the Great Chief spoke to me.
"It seems you've realized what it is."
"If something happens to that, it will explode, right?"
"Yes, it would blow away at least the city we are currently in."
The barbarian city was by no means small. If you measured the distance across, it was nearly 2km. 'Crazy, that's basically a small nuclear bomb.' The bomb that had destroyed the Northern Great Wall was right in front of my eyes.
"In three days, the giant octopus will approach the Great Wall."
"..."
"At that time, we will approach the octopus and detonate this bomb."
"Excuse me?" Another bomb came out of the Great Chief's mouth.
"You lead our tribe. When the Great Wall collapses, take the children and head south, taking advantage of the chaos."
"Me?"
"The other warriors will draw their attention. I entrust the children to you."
Only then did I feel all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. In the original work, the barbarians charged at the army led by the female lead who had come for a field trip after crossing the Great Wall, and were wiped out. But there was something strange about this part. No matter how much of a genius the female lead was, her combat power at the time she arrived in the North was at the top of the 5th rank. Even considering her genius and aura, she was at the same level as, or slightly better than, a barbarian with three tattoos.
When I read it before, I just thought she won because of the protagonist's buff, but... 'The real powerhouses were all dead. And the remaining remnants were just there to stall for time, so they wouldn't have fought seriously.' There was no description in the original work of the young barbarians being killed by knights. I realized that this very moment was the final crossroads.
"If you feel too burdened..."
"Wait a moment. Are the other barbarians okay? This gathering here isn't everyone, is it?"
The number of barbarians gathered in this city right now was approximately 10,000. It fell far short of the number of barbarians identified in the North.
"This is everyone gathered here. It took a long time to discover the giant octopus."
"That's..."
"Many warriors were sacrificed in the process of evacuating the children. This is all that is left of us gathered here."
The day I first arrived in the city, I thought the proportion of children was excessively high, and the reason for that came out of the Great Chief's mouth.
"Then what about food? Even if you only feed the children, you would need a considerable amount."
"As it is, most of the remaining livestock has been converted into pemmican and stored. It will last for a few years. And the food that couldn't be made into pemmican was all eaten at today's festival."
Today's festival, where an unusually large number of livestock had been slaughtered. From the beginning, the Great Chief hadn't been thinking about what came next.
"You said the kill radius of that bomb is about 2km, right? I am actually a space mage. I can launch it that far."
I revealed the secret I had been hiding. If I let this be known, it would be discovered that I had cheated in the arm-wrestling match, but this was no time to hide it.
"Hmm? I know that. Isn't that obvious?"
"Excuse me?"
"The magic you used during the arm-wrestling match was wall magic, wasn't it?"
"You knew?"
"We aren't fools; we have to identify all the magic our enemies use."
Wulfric and the other barbarians all nodded, as if they had all known.
"No, but you still arm-wrestled?"
"Space magic is your skill too. What's wrong with that?"
"No, that's true, but..."
I felt the conversation veering off track and returned to the main point. "Anyway, if I can just secure a line of sight, I can throw that at the octopus."
"Weight isn't the problem. Due to some law, no matter how hard you throw it, it won't fly more than 10m."
"No, have you tried throwing it?"
"You have to experiment. And if you infuse it with mana, it will explode in one second."
The Great Chief said he had tried throwing a stone that looked dangerous at a glance. "Regardless, I'm not throwing it, I'm teleporting it with magic, so it doesn't matter."
"It's not easy to break through a monster army while carrying a burden."
If I wanted to teleport the giant mana bomb, I had to save as much mana as possible. In that process, I would effectively be judged as being outside of combat effectiveness. "But it's a different story if there are more forces."
"If we mobilize every available warrior, we might be able to break through."
Wulfric, who had been listening quietly from the side, interjected. "Yes, Wulfric is right. If every warrior who has completed the coming-of-age ceremony is deployed to clear a path, we might reach that despicable octopus. Are you confident you can take responsibility?"
The Great Chief's words struck home. There was no description of knights or an army finding and killing the young barbarians. Perhaps the young barbarians had survived in the original work, but because of my choice, this time all the barbarians might die and the species might go extinct. The lives of all the barbarians rested on my lips.
"...Is it possible to get rid of the blizzard?"
If I couldn't secure a line of sight, it would be impossible for me to throw the bomb with magic. At my question, the Great Chief smiled.
"The blizzard can be wiped away with a single punch. So don't worry."
"Damn it, let's give it a try."
"Yes! That's the kind of guts the next Great Chief should have!"
Even as I spoke to the Great Chief, I couldn't say the final fact. If I wanted to survive, I had to stay put and only teleport the mana bomb to the octopus. Because all mana extends from my body as the reference point. It was much more difficult to move just the object than to move together. 'If I don't think about living and self-destruct together...' Perhaps... it might be possible from a greater distance.