Chapter 3
I wanted to rush into that forest right away and bite through their throats.
The ‘beast’s instinct’ to tear out their guts and build a tower from their bones dominated my entire body.
‘I’ll kill them. I’ll kill them all.’
My heart began pumping as though it would burst.
The veins stood out on the hand gripping my ax.
But.
“Varg... flee...!”
The fallen Gorgon grabbed the hem of my clothes and whispered with difficulty.
His gaze.
The gaze of a father determined to keep me alive even if he had to die.
At that moment, a crack appeared in my vision as it turned red.
Reason seized instinct by the collar.
‘No. Even if I can win by fighting here, Father will die.’
I ground my teeth and clamped my mouth shut before I could roar.
Then, instead of reaching for my ax, I stretched my arms toward the fallen Gorgon.
Flash!
“...What is this?”
Gorgon had no time to be confused.
I swept up the 230-centimeter-tall giant in a bridal carry, just as I had carried Kara last night.
“Hold on tight. You’ll bite your tongue.”
“Hey, hey! What are you doing? This is so undignified...!”
“Here we go!”
Instead of charging at them, I turned around and began sprinting across the snowfield.
Boom!
A single stomp of my foot kicked up a blizzard.
The Bloodfang bastards finally grasped what was happening and shouted.
“Fire! Don’t let them get away!”
Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh-!
A rain of arrows poured down behind me.
Stinging pain spread across my back.
One arrow.
“Ghk!”
Two arrows.
“Varg!”
Ten arrows.
Every time an arrow pierced my back, it tore away a piece of flesh.
But I didn’t stop.
Rather, I grew even faster.
「Berserker’s Blood」.
The power that had existed since my very first memory, the power that had let me tear out a wolf’s throat in the body of a three-year-old.
Pain became my sword.
My shield.
The blood flowing from me became lubricant.
The more arrows struck me, the harder my leg muscles became, like steel, and my speed began to outstrip the wind.
‘Shoot more, you bastards!’
I gritted my teeth and ran.
Arrows stuck in my back?
‘They only make my blood boil more!’
Carrying Gorgon, my body bristling with arrows like porcupine quills, I raced madly across the snowfield toward the tribe.
That day, the Winterclaw Tribe was turned upside down.
Varg returned covered in blood, carrying the chieftain with dozens of arrows embedded in his back.
Yet I set down the chieftain with an unruffled face, then growled as I pulled the arrows from my back one by one.
“Move! The chieftain is in critical condition!”
The Winterclaw Tribe erupted into chaos the moment my shout rang out at the entrance.
“C-Chieftain!”
“Those are arrows from the Bloodfang Tribe!”
The tribespeople were horrified to see me carrying the chieftain in a blood-soaked state.
But I didn’t stop.
I pushed through the murmuring crowd and headed straight for Granny Baba’s tent.
“Granny! Granny Baba!”
When I flung open the tent flap as though I would tear it off and charged inside, Granny Baba, who had been grinding herbs, opened her eyes wide.
“What in the world happened to you? And why is your father in this state again!”
“It was an ambush. Frost-viper venom! Hurry!”
I laid Gorgon down on an animal hide.
His face had already turned blue-black, and black foam bubbled at the corners of his mouth every time he drew a ragged breath.
“Tsk, tsk. You fool. It finally came to this.”
Even as she clicked her tongue, Granny Baba moved swiftly.
She took an antidote from her waist, poured it into Gorgon’s mouth, and applied mashed herbs to the wound.
Only then did the tension leave me, and my legs began to tremble.
Thud.
Just as I was about to sink to the ground.
“Dad...!”
The tent opened, and silver hair came flying in.
It was Kara.
With an ashen face, she rushed inside and knelt beside Gorgon.
“Dad! Wake up! Dad!”
“Stand back, Kara. He needs to be kept still.”
Granny Baba restrained Kara.
“I’ve contained the poison. He’s tough enough that he won’t die.”
“Sob....”
Only then did Kara cling to her father and burst into tears.
Then, suddenly, her gaze turned toward me.
“...Varg?”
Her sky-blue eyes widened.
I was a gruesome sight.
Broken arrowheads were lodged in my back like porcupine quills, and my entire body was drenched in a mixture of Gorgon’s blood and mine.
“Your... your body....”
Kara’s gaze swept over my entire body.
My wounds were unmistakably fatal.
An ordinary person would already have collapsed from shock in such a condition.
Even Gorgon, her father, was already suffering from poison spreading through his body from a single arrow.
Yet an almost bizarre vitality was surging from my body instead.
Kara’s eyes wavered.
She remembered.
The day we had gone hunting alone and been isolated by a snow bear.
Even then, I had slaughtered the snow bear by myself.
The wildness that grew more ferocious with every drop of blood and burned more fiercely the closer I came to death.
Varg was exactly the same now.
A life that should have been hanging by a thread, yet a wildness that burned even more fiercely.
‘Just like that time.’
But if there was one difference....
Suddenly.
Kara pulled me into her arms instead of saying anything.
My wounds stung where they touched her, but no scream escaped me.
Through our joined bodies, the tremors within me passed into her undiminished.
An uncontrollable rage that wanted to turn around at once and rush at the Bloodfang bastards to tear them apart.
But the moment Kara squeezed me tight.
The red fog lifted as though by magic.
My instincts subsided, and my reason returned to its rightful place.
“You idiot... Why did you go this far....”
“I promised... didn’t I?”
I spat out blood-mixed saliva and grinned.
“I’d protect my family.”
“......You mean I’m family too…”
Only then did tears burst from Kara’s eyes.
“Thank you... thank you so much, Varg. For saving Dad... for not coming back alone....”
Kara’s hot tears soaked my shoulder.
I patted her trembling back and felt relieved.
I protected what mattered.
My future.
And my bride.
But there was no time to bask in sentiment.
“Tear the Winterclaw bastards apart!”
Roars from the Bloodfang bastards rang out beyond the tribal fence.
Emboldened by their momentum, they had stormed into the heart of our tribe.
“They... how dare they come this far!”
Kara wiped away her tears and stood.
Her sky-blue eyes had already changed from sorrow to a chilling murderous intent.
“Varg. Can you fight?”
“Of course.”
I answered as I pulled one of the arrows from my back with a crunch.
“I nearly went mad having to hold back.”
We nodded at each other.
With Gorgon down, only the two of us could protect the tribe.
“Everyone, battle stations!”
At Kara’s shout, the Winterclaw warriors took up their weapons.
The snowfield became a scene of utter carnage in an instant.
“In Lady Sandra’s name! Execute the traitors!”
The Bloodfang bastards were consumed by madness.
They denounced us as ‘fallen traitors’ for seeking contact with the Empire and attacked.
Clang!
Kaang!
Axes collided, and fresh blood scattered across the snow.
I ranged across the battlefield, swinging my ax.
My body was in no condition to fight, but rage made me forget the pain.
Smack!
“Kraaagh!”
The heads of the bastards burst like watermelons beneath my ax.
But throughout the battle, I couldn’t shake the sense of déjà vu haunting my mind.
‘This isn’t simply a rampage by fanatics.’
That ambush I had sensed earlier in the forest.
And the poison arrow that had precisely targeted Gorgon.
This was not a strategy they were capable of devising on their own.
Suddenly, the red vision that had flashed through my mind when Gorgon fell struck me again.
A déjà vu that felt as though I had glimpsed the future—or was reliving something I had experienced once before.
In the future shown by that vision, I wasn’t there.
A world without me as a variable, the world that should have continued along its original course.
In the first red vision I saw, Gorgon had gone hunting alone and been miserably assassinated.
And the red vision that had just flashed before my eyes was not snowstorm-lashed Norheim.
It was an unfamiliar city of cold gray bricks stacked in layer upon layer.
There, an adult Kara was muttering to someone with hollow eyes.
『The mastermind behind my father’s murder, who sent the tribe to its death...』
『The ruler of the North, the Grand Duke of Northgard.』
Kara moved her bloodied lips and poured out the truth in a voice full of resentment.
『The bastard who planned to bestow on us the surname ‘Wintersword’ and use us as his slaves...』
『He set this whole thing up. If it weren’t for you, our tribe would be...』
Flash.
The vision in my eyes overlapped with the sunset in the real world.
The puzzle pieces fell into place.
He had ordered this political assassination to use our chieftainless tribe as pawns, manipulating us amid the chaos by offering his favor.
But could I be certain?
Could it simply be a hallucination born from my blood running hot?
‘No...’
There was no evidence.
No physical proof.
Only my instincts were testifying to a future that had not come to pass.
‘How dare he... think he could use us as mere tools?’
I ground my teeth.
He’d pay dearly for laying a hand on my family.
“Varg! Watch out!”
Then Kara’s scream reached me.
I snapped back to reality.
Amid the melee, I sensed murderous intent lurking behind Kara.
It was different from the Bloodfang bastards.
Someone was approaching like a shadow without making a sound.
An assassin.
‘That bastard!’
This too was no evidence.
There was no time to think.
I threw the ax in my hand.
Whoosh-!
The ax cut through the air and flew toward the space behind Kara.
And then.
Crunch!
“......!”
The dagger-wielding man who had been aiming for Kara’s neck had his head split cleanly in two.
Blood and brain matter sprayed behind her.
Kara turned around with startled eyes.
And saw me standing beyond her.
I shouted while panting.
“Don’t let your guard down, Kara! Wipe them out!”
“......Got it!”
Kara adjusted her grip on her sword.
“So they never dare come after our family again!”
At her shout, the Winterclaw warriors charged fiercely.
That day, the snowfield was dyed red.
The Bloodfang Tribe suffered a near-annihilating defeat and fled.
An overwhelming victory.
In the middle of the snowfield, a man knelt with his hands bound.
Durd, chieftain of the Bloodfang Tribe.
Kara stood before him.
At that moment, my vision rippled red once again.
That tiresome vision.
The Kara in the vision was covered in blood.
She held Gorgon’s severed head in one hand, while the sword in her other hand pointed at Durd’s heart.
『Tell me. Why did you kill my father?』
Kara, her eyes dead, was asking in a voice like a wail.
But.
“Tell me. Why did you try to assassinate my father?”
The Kara in reality asked coldly.
She held neither her father’s head nor a bloodstained sword in her hands.
And above all.
“......”
Behind Kara and me stood Gorgon, arms crossed, silently watching his daughter and son pass judgment.
Our father, who had overcome the poison and was standing on his own two feet.
He stood as a steadfast support, watching over the child who would become the future chieftain.
The vision shattered, and reality returned.
Kara grabbed Durd by the collar and shook him.
“Tell me! Who ordered you to do it!”
“Heh heh heh... I only sought to punish Gorgon, who betrayed Lady Sandra and sided with the Empire!”
Durd chuckled with bloodshot eyes.
“The spirit of the Great Snowfield Wolf, Lady Sandra, commanded it! Destroy the fallen Winterclaw!”
I stood beside her with my arms crossed, looking down at him.
I listened closely in case the name of the Grand Duke of Northgard came up, but only fanatic nonsense came from his mouth.
‘So he doesn’t know.’
It probably wasn’t because he had been silenced.
That idiot really didn’t know.
He didn’t even know that they had been used as pawns by the Empire.
“Lady Sandra... Lady Sandra...!”
Kara released his collar as though disgusted.
“You fanatics aren’t worth another word.”
She looked down at Durd coldly and snapped.
“Where was that supposedly great Lady Sandra when the Gate opened and monsters poured out?”
“W-What did you say...?”
“In the end, it wasn’t a god who protected this land, our homeland. It was your ancestors and ours—human beings who bled to defend it.”
Durd’s eyes rolled back at Kara’s rebuke.
Foaming at the mouth, he screamed as though convulsing.
“Shut up! You blasphemous bitch! Imperial whore! Lady Sandra will bring divine punishment down upon you...!”
“There’s no need to ask anything else.”
Kara turned her back on him without a hint of regret.
Then she gave me a brief signal with her eyes.
“Varg.”
That was enough.
I silently raised my ax.
“Go join the great Lady Sandra.”
Slash-!
With a dull sound, Durd’s head rolled across the snow.
A long streak of red blood stained the snow-covered plain.
It became the signal announcing the beginning of a long war.
For the next two years.
The Winterclaw Tribe entered an all-out war with the Bloodfang Tribe.