“So you failed to bring back anything?”

An eerie voice rang through a dilapidated hut in a remote mountain area a short distance from Arhan’s village, hidden behind tall trees. Its owner was a decrepit old man, his face creased with wrinkles as he rested in a creaking rocking chair.

“Y-yes. Sh-she said there was n-nothing to give me. Treated me like some leper.”

“Hmm. I made you look as pitiful as possible to stir people’s sympathy, but was it all pointless? Evoking emotions is difficult. A pathetic orphan, a beggar’s appearance, a starving little girl. I thought those three would suffice.”

“I-I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Before the cold-voiced old man stood a girl, bowing her head pitifully as she apologized. Mottled with dust, she was so thin she looked as though the slightest touch might snap her.

“Still, we learned something useful. I thought that village was deserted, but now we know someone is staying there. And contrary to the rumors about a monster or another dark mage having already claimed the place, there’s just one girl who knows a little swordplay...”

The old man smiled, tapping his fingers against the end of the chair’s arm.

“Judging by the eyes I’ve scattered about, she’s a 「sword walker」 at best. I should dispose of her quickly and build a new labyrinth there. I was getting tired of this filthy hut anyway. I’d like to wash in hot water for the first time in ages.”

“Th-then you’ll forgive me...”

“No. We may have obtained useful information, but you still failed to carry out my original command, didn’t you?”

The old man slowly leaned forward and snapped his fingers. The girl’s bowed body was abruptly hauled upright. He surveyed her with cold eyes.

“My command was to bring back food, and you failed. You must therefore be punished for that failure, child. That is the way of mages.”

“Ah, ah...”

“Let’s have you go hungry for just one more week. Lately, I’ve been wondering what happens inside a child’s body after more than ten days of starvation. I intend to take a good, slow look at every part of you for my magical research.”

The girl’s eyes trembled violently at his words. As tears welled in them, the old man extended his wrinkled hand and stroked her head. Then he spoke in a kindly voice.

“Why that expression, Haylin? Once I’ve finished speaking, you ought to thank me.”

As the old man stroked her head, the girl, Haylin, ignored her trembling body and forced the corners of her mouth upward into a smile. It was the only thing she could do before the aged mage.

“Y-yes. Th-thank you.”

To stay alive.

“If you do a good job of starving for a week, I’ll let you eat the girl who drove you away. I’ve been curious. What would happen if a human swallowed another human whole, without cooking them? And what emotions would they feel...?”

Even as those horrifying words followed, Haylin could only keep smiling however she could, cursing the cruel fate that had delivered her into this terrifying dark mage’s clutches.

* * *

I lit a fire and put 「Wildness」 in it to heat. Even heating and eating this monstrously large sword was an ordeal. Lifting it with both hands was already a struggle, and it was far too large to fit into my mouth all at once.

「It looks as though you’ve caught some enormous beast and are roasting it whole for a feast.」

“Since I have to eat it all by myself, isn’t this torture rather than a feast?”

「Wildness」, supposedly wielded by an orc during his lifetime, was simply too big. I doubted even renowned knights could swing it. It was astonishing that this blade had been made for use as a weapon at all. Surely something this size ought to have been made as a religious symbol or a decorative piece for a statue to hold.

“Whew.”

After heating the sword in the fire, I broke it into manageable pieces. Then I slowly put pieces of 「Wildness」’s blade into my mouth. The fragments wreaked havoc inside it, sending waves of excruciating pain through me.

“Urgh.”

Since I couldn’t swallow it in one go, I had to keep enduring that pain as I chewed and swallowed, then picked up another piece and put it in my mouth. It hurt twice as much as eating the previous swords.

“Ugh, fuck.”

My throat felt torn apart, my tongue pierced, and my whole body seared as though I had swallowed a ball of fire. My brain felt as though it would boil and melt, but I had to endure it. I gritted my teeth and fought to stay conscious. Even when the blue sky turned yellow and the bright sunlight dimmed, I held on. And I doggedly chewed and swallowed every last fragment of 「Wildness」.

It felt as though I had been thrown alive into a furnace. Pain surged through me, boiling my stomach, my guts, my heart and brain, even my eyeballs. Every breath gave me the illusion of flames billowing out. I clenched my fists so hard that my nails dug into my palms and blood dripped from them. Every hair on my body stood on end, and with the heat, memories began to surge forth.

Not my memories, but those of the former owner held within the sword.

『There is no paradise where you flee.』

『Those words guided me all my life.』

* * *

There is no paradise where you flee.

Those words guided me all my life.

“Berik!”

My mother gave birth to me beneath the blazing sun on the great plains bordering the Sky Mountains. She was a brave orc warrior, and she did not want the first sound her child heard upon entering the world to be a groan of pain. So she bore me without a midwife’s help, sweating profusely in the sunlight with her lips tightly bitten.

“Berik, my son.”

My mother wanted her son to become a brave warrior. It was every orc mother’s dream. And so she endured the pain of childbirth fully conscious, greeting my face with a smile and without a single scream. It was a great feat. But nature was harsh. Whether because she had given birth in such poor conditions, because she had borne me late in life, or because her allotted lifespan had always been short, my mother died not long after I was born. She went to join the ancestral gods.

“It’s all right, Berik. She will be with us.”

The words of the shaman who led the funeral gave me no comfort. I could no longer hold her, eat with her, or tell her I loved her and hear her say it back. How could she be with us? While the other orcs danced without apparent sorrow, I questioned it.

I questioned it when my brothers died bravely fighting the monsters of the great plains, and when my friends recklessly challenged imperial knights to duels and returned dead.

Despite the wishes of my mother, who had endured such pain to bear me, I was an orc who was nothing like an orc should be. I feared death. And so I was not brave. An orc without courage was unthinkable. And so everyone despised me.

“Berik! You again, snort!”

An orc must not question.

A warrior faced even the strongest enemy without flinching and accepted death with dignity. An orc had to be willing to stand against the entire world to protect his own kind. I could not. So everyone called me Berik the Coward.

“Have you run away from another fight, Berik?”

I fled from an enormous wolf, trembled in silence before a giant whose whole body was stone, and when my friends boldly challenged a knight, lost, and were beheaded, I merely bowed my head and kept my mouth shut, never mind avenging them. Because I feared death.

And so, one day, I asked my father.

“Father! Aren’t you! Afraid of death?”

My father was a brave orc warrior, a man respected by countless others of our kind. The back I had watched since childhood was broad and reassuring. Even the tusks that showed when he smiled looked magnificent.

After asking that question, I expected him to scold me sternly. Or else despise me as a disgraceful son. But he did neither.

“I too fear death, Berik.”

He simply answered me kindly.

“They say we go to join the ancestral gods, but none of us knows what lies beyond, do we? Being pierced by a spear hurts, and when I catch some spreading sickness, the fever and coughing all day are terribly distressing. If even those things hurt, I’m afraid of how painful death might be. I’m afraid when I face monsters, and when I face knights clad in iron armor. Time and again, I feel the terror of wondering whether I might lose.”

He whispered things to me that he would never say before others.

“So I understand your fear, my son.”

That day, as he honestly whispered his fears, my father seemed larger than ever.

“But even when we’re afraid, we must not run.”

“Why not?”

“Because there is no paradise where you flee.”

His weighty words lodged in my chest as though they had pierced my heart.

“There are moments when you must not run, even if a terrifying monster appears before you, even if countless legions descend upon you, even if thunder roars and lightning strikes.”

“...”

“Because only then can I protect the precious people living behind my back.”

My father’s eyes were blue and unwavering.

Like the boundless sky seen from the great plains.

“One day, you’ll understand too. For you are a fine orc as well, my son.”

“...”

“Until that day comes, you may hide behind my back. That is why I never run, why I always fight at the very front with my axe in hand. So don’t be ashamed, my treasure.”

With those words, my father took up his axe and set out.

As he strode proudly away, his back was as broad and reassuring as ever. I still cannot forget the sight of his back that day.

And that night, my father died holding back a Monster Wave that had arisen near the great plains. That was the last time I ever saw his back.

It was a night of thunder.

So many of our kind had departed that the funeral was grand. After the ceremony honoring their souls, I went to see the exhausted shaman. Amid the raging wind and rain, the old shaman watched me with a strangely subtle smile.

“What is it, coward?”

In that moment, my father’s words filled my mind.

“I-I want to undergo the coming-of-age rite!”

There is no paradise where you flee.

“I’m going to fight too! At the very front, with an a-axe in my hands.”

There was no longer a reassuring back behind which I could hide.

“Like my father!”

You cannot remain a boy forever.

You cannot run forever.

Once childhood ends, you must step out into the world. Even if you are afraid, it is something you must do.

“You’ve finally grown up.”

On that night of lightning, I completed the coming-of-age rite. My body inherited the soul of the greatest warrior I knew. My father, greater than anyone.

“You are a true warrior now, Berik the Coward.”

As the years passed, my body grew astonishingly large. The body bequeathed to me by my father and mother, both great warriors, kept growing without pause. I was enormous even compared with other orcs, and that enormous body came to hold tremendous strength. Instead of an axe, I took up another blade. An enormous sword worthy of the enormous body with which I could protect my kin at the very front.

A sword larger and thicker than any other on the battlefield, forged with the will never to flee. A blade that embodied my life: to stand my ground and face what came, even amid towering waves and falling lightning.

My Wildness.

At some point, my kin began to call me this.

Berik the Great Warrior.

And as the years passed in this way, another Monster Wave descended upon us.

* * *

“Hmm.”

Since following Arhan, the Little Gladiator, to stay in the village, Seolyun’s daily routine had been simple. She rose in the morning, did some easy stretches, went for a light jog, then trained with her sword. There was no particular entertainment in the village, and she had always devoted her whole life to the sword, without so much as a hobby.

Today, as she went through the same routine, her gaze was drawn for some reason to the manor on the hill. It had already been three days since Arhan returned from his long journey. Yet far from training, he had shut himself inside the manor without showing his face once.

“Is something wrong?”

She might be aloof, but Seolyun was human too, and she was beginning to worry about him. Hadn’t he lain ill for quite some time, groaning alone, after fighting as Petel’s champion? Even at a glance, his body was as fragile as glass. Having traveled with such a weak body, he might have caught a cold.

‘It’s bothering me.’

Seolyun could not simply walk past someone who was ill. That was not something she said merely out of courtesy; it was closer to a lingering trauma. What she had experienced in her homeland had left her with several such traumas. Unable to shake these distracting thoughts, she finally decided to visit Arhan’s manor herself.

And there...

“Hah, haa—”

Seolyun witnessed an astonishing sight.

“What’s happened to you?”

“Oh. What brings you all the way here? Has something happened?”

“No, well. You hadn’t come outside for three days.”

“Has it been three days already? You must have been worried. As you can see, I’ve been absorbed in training.”

The small-framed boy Seolyun knew was no longer there.

“I’m sorry. I was completely caught up in it.”

Arhan had grown far taller than Seolyun.

His shoulders had broadened, and the muscles filling his body were tightly woven like fibers. As though he had skipped adolescence and become an adult in a single leap. His body had been forged like that of a warrior who had crossed countless battlefields, with muscles like steel.

“I’ll explain later. Right now, I can’t waste a single second.”

The boy had become a man.

* * *

「Name: Wildness」

「A crude, thick greatsword once wielded by the orc Great Warrior Berik.」

「So large and heavy that most people cannot lift it.」

.

.

.

「Consumption Effects」

「You acquire Berik’s swordsmanship and a warrior’s physique.」

「Your body is forged to suit the swordsmanship of the orc Great Warrior Berik.」

「The gap between your current physical abilities and those of the sword’s former owner is too great.」

「Forging will proceed ‘intensely’ to ensure smooth digestion.」

.

.

.

「A body through which the blood of steel flows grows stronger the more it is hammered.」

「Continually hammer your body while digestion is in progress.」