Chapter 10 – Boundless Great Snow (2)

Looking at Jeremy Scott, who was chewing jerky with his eyes closed, I clutched my wildly beating heart.

‘It, it worked! I thought it would end before I could even start…’

Honestly, I hadn’t even expected him to let me go so easily. Because I had assumed he wouldn’t make any exceptions, no matter how heavily intoxicated he was.

There was no way that a former soldier like him would turn a blind eye to a grave offense like stealing food supplies for no reason, was there?

“…….”

Thus, I could not easily move even after Jeremy disappeared. This was because I felt as though the intangible aura emanating from him was still scanning me.

“A door once closed does not open twice.”

As I stood unable to take a step, overwhelmed by that aura, a voice came from the empty air.

That low, gloomy voice contained the meaning of urging me to get lost because I was a nuisance, but somehow, I felt a deep longing and regret within it.

“Thank you. I will never forget this favor.”

“Favor, my foot. If you are that grateful, buy a bottle of whiskey on your way back. I heard the whiskey made in the Immortal Ember’s brewery tastes exceptionally good.”

“…I will try.”

Bowing my head toward the empty air, I moved along. I wanted to ask why Jeremy felt such emotions through me, but I postponed it for next time.

Because right now, every single second was precious.

It was just as I readjusted my mask and scanned the outside.

“You fool… Why are you wearing a mask uselessly? Are you planning to advertise that you are a thief in broad daylight?”

“Ah… yes.”

I took off the mask and revealed my bare face.

This was because I realized that he had already seen through my identity during the brief conversation we had shared, especially at the part where he told me to buy the First Ember’s whiskey.

He already knew my destination. And the reason I was going there…

‘Then, asking who I was wasn’t asking for my true identity, but because I wasn’t acting like the real Aylen Vale.’

When my thoughts reached that point, the nerves in my entire body began to stand on end.

Because if that were the case, it meant Jeremy had been guessing my identity ever since we first crossed paths.

‘Was he really a general of the Ember of Advance? His observation is remarkable…’

He was truly like a ghost.

“Before you go, check the tavern counter.”

“Yes? Why there…”

“Tsk, are you going to steal the whiskey too? Take the money, I mean, the money. And take other things while you’re at it.”

For a moment, I felt embarrassed. As someone who had played as a dictator in , I was confident that I wouldn’t lose to anyone in a battle of words, but unlike the game, reality was not that easy.

‘This is already the second time I have been swept into a conversation. Game and reality are truly different.’

Between the game I had only accessed through a screen and the reality where even the trembling of pupils became a signal, there was a difference as vast as heaven and earth.

Even the way I had silenced the Wayne brothers just now was not by the logic of words, but by the momentum and atmosphere of the moment.

“Then, I will really be on my way.”

After engraving this blood-and-flesh realization into my bones, I headed to the counter. In the money box, there were gold, silver, and bronze coins.

‘So, how much is the whiskey? I need to know to take it…’

Having no sense of money in this world, I couldn’t estimate the price of the whiskey from the Immortal Ember. Just as I was about to slip a single gold coin into my bosom to minimize volume and leave.

“A magic gun…?”

A pistol-shaped magic gun shoved into a corner caught my eye. Though a thick layer of grey dust had accumulated, as if it had been neglected for a long time.

‘It’s a considerable masterpiece. Was it a cherished item from his days as a general?’

Wiping the dusty surface lightly with my hand, a luxurious blue silver gleam was revealed, along with ‘General, Jeremy Scott’ engraved in intaglio on the slide, and a pattern of two crossed pistols sensibly carved on the grip.

All of those things fully revealed the class of the magic gun and its owner.

‘So this was what he told me to take.’

It was an item that might have been his everything at one time. To think he would entrust such an item to a scoundrel like me.

I didn’t know what kind of story lay behind a man who had played the role of a general in the Ember of Advance, causing him to call himself the tavern owner of a nameless, insignificant Ember.

However, it would certainly not be a hopeful story.

Click!

Fastening the accompanying holster around my waist, I slotted in the magic gun and bullets. Although I felt more reassured than before with this plausible armament…

‘The real enemy is not beasts or bandits. It’s the world itself.’

Soon, my heart sank heavily with fear and tension toward the Eternal Snowfield.

Because I couldn’t aim a magic gun at formless coldness and hunger.

“Let’s go to the Immortal Ember.”

Just like that, I finished all my preparations.

Whoosh—!

The sound of the blowing biting wind sounded like a battle cheer inviting me to the unpredictable battlefield of the Boundless Great Snow.

* * *

The Eternal Embers base area existed within the shape of a hollow basin.

In other words, a place surrounded on all sides by huge ice walls 100 meters high was the Ember. That was the basic urban structure of this world…

Whoosh—!

Which meant that I had to climb that dizzying height of the ice wall with all my might to proceed to the Boundless Great Snow.

“Pant, pant… Ugh…!”

Barely mounting the ice wall, I exhaled rough breaths. Dry heaving rose.

‘What madness…! Just how many times did I almost die!’

Even though ten minutes had passed since reaching the summit, my limbs were still trembling from the dread and fear of death.

This was because, while relying on a single unstable iron ladder to climb the ice wall and escape Ember, I had experienced the brink of death more than ten times.

‘The weather was unusual. It seemed to be the harshest since I had possessed this body…’

It wasn’t that I hadn’t climbed ice walls before. Because even in the game, climbing ladders was a part of the life-risking content.

There were quite a lot of players who died while climbing ladders, to the point that death from falls ranked third among the causes of death in .

Of course, in the game, unless it was an unavoidable situation, players never climbed ladders in such bad weather.

For the faster the wind speed, the more severe the shaking of the ladder became, and from then on, climbing transcended the realm of control, so even veterans couldn’t guarantee success.

I had just taken a gamble with my life. However, since time was more precious than life to the current me, I had no choice but to push through.

“Sigh… I must become the leader quickly and take whatever measures necessary.”

The snowfield was a dangerous place, but it was a land of opportunity with much to gain. One could secure food by catching beasts, enlarge the city’s scale by rescuing survivors, and acquire precious resources by discovering fallen Embers.

In short, the snowfield had to be thoroughly conquered by treating it as an object of exploration rather than avoidance.

So, whether by investing labor to carve the ice wall and make a primitive pathway, or by developing technology to build a magic engineering elevator. A method had to be devised somehow.

Of course, this did not apply to the 99% of players in the nurturing stage who couldn’t even enter the political and management parts, but for a player aiming to clear the game, preparing countermeasures for snowfield entry and exit that were unaffected by the weather was essential.

‘After all, there is a limit to the resources inside Ember alone.’

Having finally gathered myself, I stood on my feet and looked down at the distant depth.

The buildings that had become as small as ants from being too far away, the members of Ember busily moving between them to carry out their given duties, the laborers paving pathways through the snow field to head to their workplaces…

The only thing heard was.

Thump, thump—!

The operating sound of the Eternal Embers, the eternal ember that spewed wavelengths of mana and heat with the magic stones it greedily devoured.

“It is truly small…”

Was it said that life was a tragedy when seen up close, but a comedy when seen from afar? At this moment, everything felt like a game.

However, because I knew better than anyone that this harsh world was no longer a game but a bitter reality.

“Wait for me. I will surely return alive.”

Glancing coldly at the insignificant city, the circular Ember formed around the Eternal Embers, even more ruthlessly than the malice harbored by this world, I—

‘The day I return. No one will dare speak my name lightly.’

Crunch, crunch!

Finally began to advance toward the First Ember, the Immortal Ember.

* * *

Somewhere in the middle of the Boundless Great Snow, where one was bound to lose their sense of direction with everything covered in snow.

Chug, chug, chug—!

The magic engineering off-roader, the integration of current technology created by the artistic harmony of magic engineering and mechanical engineering, was slowly advancing with a fierce engine sound toward the place indicated by the arrow of the built-in magic orb.

“Hey, how much is left?”

“There are 57 km left now. If there are no issues with the weather, we will likely arrive within three days.”

Asked a white-haired man who arrogantly put his feet up on the passenger board, and a blonde man driving the car in the driver’s seat answered.

The two of them were all who were in the off-roader, which was a four-seater, but the remaining two seats seemed to be left empty for someone.

As if tired of the background that didn’t change no matter how much they drove, the blonde man grumbled.

“It’s seriously sickening. Does it make sense that it takes ten days one way? And does it make sense to use a talent like me for mere personnel transport?”

“Doesn’t everything have its own use?”

“Carlyle, it somehow sounds like your words have thorns? Are you ignoring me because I’m at the tail end of the succession order?”

The voice of the white-haired man, which had been boundlessly light, sank heavily in an instant. An unspoken aura that was hard to resist could be felt from his eyes flashing with sharp light.

Yet, the man called Carlyle kept his gaze fixed forward, as if to display that he dared not do anything to him with just this level of aura.

“Lord Heimdall, whose servant am I? I am a knight who knows honor, serving the Arcadius family that rules the Immortal Ember, and especially you. That is why my words cannot help but have thorns. By nature, a knight is one who, to his serving lord—”

“Is one who spares no loyal advice even at the cost of incurring the lord’s displeasure. I am tired of those words too, Carlyle…”

Heimdall Arcadius spoke in place of the blonde man, Carlyle. Having four siblings in total, both older brothers and sisters, he, who was fifth in the line of succession of the Immortal Ember, murmured self-deprecatingly.

“Anyway, who are the people we are transporting?”

“They are brothers named Thomas Wayne and Willus Wayne.”

That was right. They were those dispatched from the First Ember on a mission to transport personnel to participate in the novice magic engineer qualification exam.

“The Wayne brothers… it’s a name I hear for the first time.”

Having lost interest at the unfamiliar name, Heimdall picked up a bag as if hungry, only to throw it away and speak.

“Ah, I’m sick of jerky. Isn’t there anything other than jerky?”

“As you know, cooking is not yet possible inside the off-roader, so there is nothing else. We have a small amount of dried vegetables, would you like some?”

“Forget it. What does everyone find so good about those tasteless leaves aside from their rarity… By the way, where did you say our destination was? If we go there, we should be able to eat something delicious, right?”

“Lord Heimdall, I am sorry, but… the place we are going is a small Ember that has not even been granted a name, so it would be best not to expect anything.”

“Sigh… an Ember that is not even the size of a small town. Without even looking, it must be a terrible place. I won’t get any entertainment at all.”

Heimdall, who regarded the personnel transport as a sort of trip, was despondent.

“But that place, it might be quite interesting. Because the talent whom Lord Herman Melville so deeply regrets failing to recruit is indeed the Head of the Magic Engineering Department of that Ember.”

Herman Melville, the advanced magic engineer of the highest rank produced by the Immortal Ember. At that name, Heimdall jumped up.

Yet, the reason his eyes went round was not because of Herman Melville.

“Could it be Demian Vale? That man is in the place we are going?”

“Yes, that is correct. He is a person who can reach the rank of advanced magic engineer in the future.”

Demian Vale. The one who had coldly rejected the Immortal Ember’s recruitment proposal about twenty years ago.

In his recent years at forty, he was the man called the genius magic engineer of the century, who would succeed Melville after mastering all the intermediate books.

To the point that there was no one who did not know his name even in the Immortal Ember, which overflowed with talents, it was natural for Heimdall to show such a reaction.

Furthermore, to him who was born an illegitimate child and the youngest without any notable backing, the giant of the era named Demian Vale was also a highly desirable existence.

Only then did Heimdall’s eyes begin to shine with anticipation.

However, something more interesting than Demian Vale was soon revealing itself in front of his eyes…

“What is that? A person…?”

In the middle of the Boundless Great Snow, where only death lurked.

Step, step—

An unnamed man who blocked the path of the off-roader alone was exactly that.