Chapter 4
Hunting is harder than one might imagine.
Only after mastering stamina and perseverance, knowledge of one’s prey, and the ability to spot tracks can someone be called a proper hunter.
Yet even a seasoned hunter may fail to catch even a glimpse of their prey on an unlucky day.
If even those who devoted half their lives to hunting can suffer that fate, then it goes without saying that a novice who learned hunting from YouTube would fare no better.
To put it simply, Ivan still hadn’t caught a single beast.
“Tsk, I’m screwed.”
The sun began to set with nothing to show for his efforts. In the darkness, hunting would be out of the question; he’d be lucky merely not to lose his way. He was certain to go hungry today.
He was looking around for anything edible, even grass, when···.
“······!!”
A deer was eating fruit growing on a small tree.
Ivan thanked his incredible luck and tried his best to conceal his presence.
Had he ever focused this intensely in his life? Holding his breath, Ivan slowly aimed the hand axe.
The object he had held for the first time in his life felt as familiar as a part of his own body. The moment sweat trickled from his forehead, over his eyelids and chin, and fell to the ground, the axe tore through the air.
“···Keh!!”
The hand axe cleanly severed the deer’s neck. Blood gushed from its throat as it collapsed.
A strange sensation lingered at his fingertips. Ivan felt a joy he could not fully express in words.
His heart pounded with the primal satisfaction of no longer having to worry about his next meal, the pleasure of taking his prey’s life, and the sense of accomplishment from doing something for the first time in this place.
Ivan hummed as he hoisted the deer onto his back. Its pleasant weight pressed down on his body.
His footsteps on the way home were light as could be. At that moment, he was the happiest man in the world.
“Kerrrrr···.”
That was how it was, at least, until he encountered a horde of goblins advancing toward him with weapons in hand.
“Motherfucking hell. What kind of shitty game is this?”
If he had known this would happen, he would have brought the knife. Yet another absurdly unfair situation had fallen on Ivan.
***
Goblins are generally among the weakest monsters even in a fantasy world.
They are about the size of elementary schoolchildren and have pitiful strength—mere trash mobs. But things are a little different when they are armed.
Unless they were wearing armor, a knife made no exceptions. In a game, getting hit a few times merely cost you some HP. Reality was not so forgiving.
To make matters worse, the spears and daggers in the goblins’ hands were covered in rust.
As someone from the modern world, Ivan knew the danger better than most.
‘Wouldn’t even a graze be enough to infect me and kill me?’
A sharp tension ran up his spine. Ivan was not a barbarian, and he had no interest in some afterlife earned through an honorable death.
For Ivan, surviving this moment was far more important.
The goblins were slowly tightening their encirclement. What if he threw them the deer and ran?
If he offered them a good enough meal, they might not pursue him. It would at least improve his chances of survival.
Instead, he would have to shiver in the cold and starve tonight. Perhaps he would have to do so for several days.
Even so, would that really be a better life than dying miserably of tetanus···?
A sudden wave of self-loathing seized Ivan’s soul.
Was he really going to throw away the spoils he had earned through his first hard work and run? Really?
If he was going to give up and submit whenever he faced something too difficult to handle, what meaning would such a life have?
Fight. Even if you groan in pain and end up covered in blood, protect what is yours.
An unknown voice whispered inside his head.
Were they the barbarian’s lingering thoughts, etched into his body? Or a divine revelation? If not, perhaps it was some kind of mental illness.
Whatever. Ivan surrendered himself to the instinct for struggle spreading through his veins and throughout his body. As he hurled the hand axe with all his strength, he kicked off the ground.
“Kerrk?!”
The hand axe smashing through the skull of an unlucky goblin served as the signal.
Ivan swung his fist at the nearest goblin.
His sloppy stance screamed of an inexperienced novice and contained no semblance of technique. But it carried enough force to kill a goblin, and that was enough.
Thud—. Ivan felt the goblin’s skull split beneath his fist.
“Kerrk!! Kerrrrk!!”
Enraged by their companion’s death, the goblins swung their weapons at Ivan.
A dagger tore past his ear, and a rusty spear narrowly grazed his side. A terrible pain struck him a moment later.
Instead of wasting time screaming, Ivan swung his fist once more. One fewer goblin remained.
With every wound, large or small, carved into his body, he felt his awareness expanding without end.
As if time were flowing slowly, Ivan kept moving his body, hitting, kicking, trampling, and crushing the goblins.
At this moment, what ruled Ivan’s body was not the fear of death but a pure desire to struggle.
Having finally chased down the fleeing goblins and crushed the last one, Ivan exhaled a hot breath. Steam rose from his blood-soaked body.
“Huuuu···.”
When he collapsed onto the snow, it seeped into the wounds covering his body. Though Ivan groaned from the pain, he enjoyed the chill.
Ivan realized that, at some point, he had begun to smile.
He realized that he had completely crossed a line he had unconsciously upheld until now. He also realized that he could never return to the way he had been before.
In any case, Ivan rather liked that fact.
***
After that, Ivan’s daily life became very simple.
He trained from sunrise to sunset, then went hunting whenever his food ran out. If he happened to encounter a monster, he killed it, and sometimes he even sought them out himself.
This amazing body grew stronger with every bit of training, as if it had no limits.
Choosing the barbarian had definitely been the right choice. Ivan nodded in satisfaction.
Magic? Muscles honed to the extreme could rival magic, if not surpass it. He was ashamed that he had once admired the life of a mere spellcaster.
Now, three years later, Ivan could feel the results of his training throughout his entire body.
Ivan grabbed hold of a thick tree as if embracing it and exerted his strength.
Astonishingly, the tree tore free by its roots with a loud crack.
Ivan casually tossed the tree aside and punched the boulder in front of him.
The enormous boulder split cleanly in half. He was already at a level where it was difficult to call him human.
‘At this point, I could probably just go back and turn the whole place upside down···.’
Three years had passed, but Ivan still could not return to the tribe.
Ivan had not paid it much attention while absorbed in his training, but over the past three years, Havel’s face had grown noticeably gloomier.
“···Ivan, I’m truly sorry. I know I have no right to ask this, but could you wait just a little longer?”
Ivan looked at Havel’s bowed head with a somewhat uneasy expression.
‘Didn’t he say the exact same thing three years ago?’
Ivan wondered whether Havel was surprisingly incompetent, but kept that thought to himself. At least he was making an effort.
“Well, I can wait that long. Like I said before, don’t push yourself too hard.”
“But···.”
“And don’t hang your head over something like this. We’re brothers, aren’t we?”
“Sniff, Ivan!!”
Havel shed tears of emotion. Despite his appearance, he was surprisingly sentimental.
After a little while, Havel awkwardly changed the subject.
“Hmm, by the way, on my way here, I noticed that trees and rocks had been smashed to pieces all over the place. I wonder if a giant has entered the forest. Be careful not to run into it.”
“···Thanks for the warning. It can’t hurt to be careful.”
Ivan awkwardly averted his gaze. Havel sensed something strange in the atmosphere but did not press him.
After making sure Havel had left, Ivan began training, tearing through the forest as he always did.
Then it suddenly occurred to him: was there any need to become even stronger?
Now he couldn’t find an opponent worth risking his life against, let alone someone who could withstand one or two punches. What was the point of getting stronger? This forest was far too small for Ivan.
“Ah···so this is how Saitama felt.”
Ivan muttered whatever came to mind as his thoughts wandered. It wasn’t as if anyone was watching, so what did it matter?
‘Are there no monsters like trolls or ogres?’
That pointless thought only needlessly cluttered his mind. Today, he would quit everything, drink some liquor, and rest.
Ivan longed for some new excitement, for a ray of light to descend and brighten this boring daily life.
But he wasn’t seriously expecting anything to happen.
Ivan wasn’t foolish enough to harbor such baseless hope.
“······?”
That was, at least, until he found an old man collapsed with half his body covered in snow.