The Village at the Edge of the Snowfield
The woman who came out to represent the group was named Sophia.
It was a surprisingly gentle name for a face so thoroughly overflowing with liveliness.
"Thank you so much! How could I ever repay this kindness..."
It took quite a while to calm Sophia down, as she seemed determined to bow so deeply her nose would touch the snow. I couldn't really blame her—if we hadn't shown up, every one of them might have left their bones in this place.
"...But are you sure it's fine to just escort us to the village? We should at least do something in return."
"Please don't worry about it. I'm quite exhausted right now—all I want is to rest."
"Hmm... well, if you insist. Just wait a moment, please. I'll get everything ready in no time. Alright, everyone!"
At Sophia's command, the young people sprang into genuine action. They tended to the wounded, loaded the injured dogs onto the sleds, then swarmed the snow boars I'd killed and set about butchering them.
Curious about something the young men were murmuring amid all the bustle, I sharpened my hearing, and their whispers drifted into my ears.
"Incredible... Taking down Snow Boars this easily. How many is that, anyway?"
"Those things barely flinch at bullets, you know. He's gotta be an Awakened, right?"
"Probably. Man, I wish I could awaken my mana too. Then I could travel around with a pretty girl like that as well. Hehe..."
"You lunatic, watch your mouth. Didn't you see that woman smash a snow boar's skull in with a single blow?"
"..."
Interesting.
Mana. Awakened. I could roughly grasp what those words meant without any explanation.
Mana would be what they called psychic energy, presumably. So the world had already become one where the superhuman power of psychic energy roamed freely. Not that their technology was at a level to be dismissed, of course.
"Hey, those are guns, right? Some kind of matchlock?"
I studied the men keeping watch with long rifles in hand. They were different from the modern firearms I knew, but a gun was still a gun.
"No. Given the percussion caps on the pans, they're not matchlocks. A more advanced form, I'd say."
"...Percussion caps? What's that?"
"You can think of them as a component that preceded the self-contained cartridge. Thanks to them, the guns remain usable even on rainy days. In our original history, they appeared in the early nineteenth century."
"The nineteenth century, huh... For something 'modern,' their clothes look pretty strange, though? The era's all jumbled up."
Shhk—
Sluuurp
Even as we chatted leisurely, the butchering proceeded at a rapid clip. They all looked young, but this clearly wasn't their first rodeo—moving in practiced coordination, they stripped the boars down to bone and meat in no time at all. Whatever innards were left over became the dogs' share.
"Here—these are magic stones. We absolutely have to give you these, so please don't refuse! We'll pay you back properly for the meat and hides later, too."
Clack-clack-
Sophia rubbed her bloodstained hands against her eyes to give them a rough wipe, then handed me a handful of small stones. Judging by their appearance, and by the energy of points I could feel radiating from them, they were unmistakably the same stones I earned from hunting Phantasms.
So these are called magic stones.
But why were they giving these to me? They couldn't absorb points the way I did, so did the stones serve some other purpose? Maybe they circulated like a semi-currency.
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Swiiish--
The dog sleds glided swiftly across the snowfield as the sun sank low. Sophia rode up front with us on the lead sled. Watching the wide-open landscape roll past without a single obstacle, I felt wonderfully refreshed—as if all the worries I'd been carrying had melted away.
"So, Miss Noah, why on earth were you out in a place like that? Nobody ever comes here except the villagers."
"...That's a secret."
"Aw, come on, tell us~"
Sophia was essentially a capybara in human form. Barely an hour after meeting us, she was acting like we were already her closest friends, chatting away with such easy familiarity that before I knew it, we'd fallen into casual conversation with her. She was forward, sure, but she was so brimming with energy that it was hard to hold it against her. A strange character, that one.
"By the way, Miss, you really should put this on! The men have been losing their minds ever since we left, you know."
"Hmm... I'm sorry?"
"The men are the problem, obviously. Show them a pretty woman and they completely lose their heads."
Sophia pulled some clothes out of the cargo compartment—a long coat with something like a hood attached. When Noah draped it over herself, her face vanished entirely from view.
"Better now, right? Whew... anyway, we should be arriving any minute now... Ah! We're almost there! That's the Boundary of the Snowfield right there!"
Boundary?
At Sophia's baffling words, I stared ahead—and there it was, a most peculiar sight. Beyond the snowfield, an expanse of green grassland had appeared out of nowhere.
It was a landscape that defied all reason.
"What in the world is that...?"
"What's wrong?"
"No, it's nothing."
I hadn't even enhanced my eyesight, so the others should have been able to see it perfectly well... yet none of them showed any particular reaction. Apparently, to them, this phenomenon was nothing out of the ordinary.
"Whoa there... hold up."
The sleds eventually drew to a halt right at the edge of the grassland. Sure enough, it was no mirage—the landscape was real. One more step, and grass would rise green instead of snow. Along an invisible line, verdant grass stood in stark opposition to the white snowfield.
This clearly wasn't a phenomenon of a day or two, either—at the very edge of the snowfield, there were even little huts built for the shaggy-coated sled dogs.
It's like something out of computer graphics... I knew it. This snowfield really is some kind of special place.
The moment we crossed from the snowfield into the grassland, the weather changed completely in a single stride. Unlike the snowfield with its raging blizzard winds, the grassland enjoyed a mild climate. Most of the people stripped off their heavy winter clothes and cast them aside.
"Now it really is just a moment away!"
Just as Sophia said, the village sat close to the boundary between grassland and snowfield. Perhaps to make defense easier, it had been built atop a fairly prominent hill. But the village looked somewhat different from the quiet, pastoral image I'd been picturing.
"Sophia! Why are you so late?"
"I'll tell you later! Hurry up and open the gate!"
"Hold on a second!"
A wooden palisade nearly seven meters high wrapped tightly around the village's perimeter. It was less a village than a fortress. The palisade itself, built from thick logs, looked extremely sturdy.
Creeeak-
"Well, I'll be—you actually caught snow boars, huh? Those'll be tasty. Huh? And who are these folks...?"
"Guests. I'll handle it, so don't worry about it."
"Oh. Oh, sure. If Sophia says so... but you'll have to report to the Unit Chief, right? She stepped out just a moment ago."
"A day or so should be fine, no?"
"Well, yeah, I suppose."
Despite its imposing exterior, the village's interior was a picture of classic country life. Seeing cozy little buildings of three stories at most clustered together, I finally felt like I'd reached the very fringe of civilization.
Hm? Something feels off.
I stopped dead at the village entrance, struck by an unfamiliar sensation on my skin. It felt like passing through an extremely thin membrane. Yet all around me, the only thing to be seen were curious stares directed at us strangers—nowhere was there any sort of barrier at all.
"You felt it too?"
"Feel what, exactly?"
"No, it's nothing."
I poked Noah in the side and asked carefully, but she seemed to have sensed nothing unusual at all. What was this thing? It didn't feel harmful, but...
"Come on, let's head to our house first!"
Before I could dwell on it any further, Sophia dispersed the crowd, grabbed our hands, and led us off somewhere.
"...This is a smithy?"
"My father's the blacksmith. Dad~!"
"Sophia! What kept ye so late?"
The house had a primitive-style forge attached to it. A middle-aged man who'd been working there came rushing out the moment he spotted Sophia. He was a little on the short side, but his entire body was packed with lean muscle—the build of a man who was unmistakably a blacksmith.
Once Sophia told her father about what had happened in the snowfield, the man spread his arms wide in welcome.
"I'm Ha Jun, and this is Noah."
"Gunter's the name. Much obliged to ye for savin' my girl. She's a wild little thing, but she's precious to me, ye hear? If only she'd mind her tongue once in a while, I'd have naught to wish for..."
"Dad, honestly! Don't say weird things!"
"It's late in the day, so rest up at our place tonight. Ah, what should I offer ye as hospitality... Let's start with supper and talk over a good meal. A body's only as good as what fills it, after all."
Gunter sounded so much like Sophia that I wondered who exactly was the parent here. In the middle of it all, when he called her his precious daughter, Sophia went red and slapped her father on the back in embarrassment—with a sound like a thunderclap. But Gunter showed not a hint of pain; he simply declared he'd feed us properly, disappeared off somewhere, and reappeared with an iron griddle piled high with meat.
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"Get a good rest, then."
After that enormous meal, Gunter lent us a spare room. There was nothing in it but a rickety old bed, but that alone was more than good enough for us.
"Ah, where's my head. I forgot to ask ye something important. Were ye plannin' to stay in this village, or are ye movin' right along?"
Gunter paused with his hand on the door as he was leaving, poked only his head back through the gap, and asked us.
"Hmm... we have our reasons. We'd like to stay here for a little while, if possible. Naturally, we'll compensate you."
Noah and I had settled on this through a wordless exchange of glances. This was the first trace of civilization we'd encountered since escaping the research facility. A place with friendly locals was the ideal environment for gathering information.
"No, it ain't about payment—it's just that this here's a Pioneer Village. As ye well know, the regulations are mighty strict."
"...Of course."
I had no idea what a pioneer village was, but I nodded along for now.
"If ye want to stay, ye'd best talk to the militia chief. I'll send word ahead, so come here tomorrow mornin'. Fair warnin'—the chief's a beastfolk, so don't go gawkin'."
"...Understood?"
Creak.
Gunter closed the door with a word of goodnight. Footsteps faded away along with the creak of the wooden floorboards. Finally, I could rest.
"Whew... what a day."
"It beats wandering the snowfield endlessly, I'll say that much. How long do you intend to stay here?"
"Hard to say? Let's see how tomorrow goes and decide then. Still, I'd like to stay for at least a few months."
Pioneer Village. Beastfolk. Yet more interesting keywords.
There'd be a lot to learn here. What we needed was a stable base of operations.
No ID, no credentials, no paperwork of any kind—will they even take us? Well, we did save their people, so they won't treat us like dirt at least. I'll worry about the complicated stuff tomorrow and just sleep for now. Though... there's only one bed...
Who knew what our relationship looked like to them, but the shabby room contained exactly one bed. And it was fairly small, so if two people lay down on it, we were inevitably going to be pressed close together.
"I do not require sleep, as you well know. You take the bed, Ha Jun."
"No way. I can't exactly have you just standing there or sitting in the corner all night. What would people think if they saw that?"
"...Hm. A fair point. It would not make for a flattering reputation. Then I shall intrude."
Sliiither...
Noah hesitated for a moment, then, apparently having nothing further to say, slid into the bed beside me. Her skin was cool to the touch—probably because she'd switched off her heat generation.
As we twisted and turned trying to get comfortable, we somehow ended up in each other's arms.
"..."
Hm.
I was the one who suggested this, but sharing a bed like this does feel a little strange. I could feel myself getting slightly embarrassed. But the feeling didn't last—with the relief of having finally escaped that labyrinthine snowfield and a pleasant fullness in my stomach, sleep pulled me under before I knew it.
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"So these are the outsiders?"
The next morning. Having a light breakfast of soup, we looked up at the figure who had appeared before us...
A massive tiger.