Chapter 2

Chapter 2 : Imprisonment

A cold fear seeped through my body.

The goddess’s parting words lingered around me with the raw metallic stench of a butcher’s knife.

Like the chill of a morgue, malice pooled against my skin.

To think that merely having my identity exposed could lead to such a futile death.

But still....

‘The fact that I’m a reincarnator?’

Fine. Then all I had to do was not get caught.

I slowly closed my eyes and steadied myself.

It was not as though that restriction was not unreasonable, but in truth, that level of limitation was hardly a serious problem here.

Back when I had played Velheim in my previous life, I had gone around single-handedly crushing guilds that tried to keep me in check.

Assuming this place was similar to the original Velheim, then with the experience and knowledge I had accumulated as a former top-ranked player, surviving should be entirely possible.

I quickly finished organizing my thoughts and calmly surveyed my surroundings.

The fingers and lips that had been trembling moments ago had already gone still.

Now that it had come to this, my top priority was to confirm my condition and assess the situation around me.

Right on cue, a faint chime rang inside my head, and the log window in the corner of my vision refreshed.

Ding―!

｢You have opened your eyes in a new place. There does not appear to be anyone nearby you can rely on.｣

｢Use the abilities and tools given to you to escape from here.｣

｢If the tutorial is failed: death.｣

Like the veteran player I was, I immediately took stock of the situation.

‘For now, my body doesn’t feel too strange... and my limbs seem intact. Nothing feels severed....’

Damn, my hands and feet are tied.

Looks like I’ve been imprisoned somewhere.

And it is dark around me.

Still, it does not seem as though I have been blindfolded. 

Through the darkness, I can faintly make out vague shapes.

“......”

I steadied my breathing.

As I slowly inhaled, salty, stale air slid down my throat, and the harsh scent of rum filled my nose.

From outside came the sound of sloshing, accompanied by a rocking sway.

It seemed I was trapped in a storage hold on the lower deck of a ship.

‘...If this is a tutorial that starts with me imprisoned on a ship, then it is either ‘Raid on the Mary Celeste’ or ‘Disaster in the Javrolta Strait’.’

I identified the location in an instant.

Given Velheim’s nature, where later developments split depending on the choices made at the initial branching point, I was certain I had been dropped into one of the tutorials.

And....

Could I use the status window like a lamp?

When I quietly summoned my status window, a blue light spilled out, but perhaps because only I could see it, it was impossible to use that glow to illuminate anything around me.

In that case, I should abandon that method cleanly....

I slowly closed and opened my eyes, then carefully looked around once more. 

As my pupils adjusted to the darkness, more objects came into view than before.

The faint outline of a door, a broken barrel, a glinting glass bottle....

“Cough...! Found it.”

Still bound hand and foot, I crawled over and picked up the bottle.

Wrapping it in my clothes so the noise would not leak out, I smashed it, and the liquid inside spilled out over my body.

｢You have acquired a shard from a broken glass bottle.｣

Using the sharp glass fragment, I sawed through the rope binding my limbs.

As I briskly worked it back and forth across my wrists, the rope came apart with ease.

‘Good... that’s one problem taken care of....’

Rubbing my newly freed arms and legs, I rose to my feet.

My wrists throbbed, as though I had been tied up for quite some time, but I forced myself to ignore it.

I still could not be sure what situation I was in, so my first priority was to leave this place and gather more information.

Listening closely to the noises outside the door and confirming that no one was nearby, I slowly opened it.

―Creeeak....

As I stepped through, a typical ship’s cabin came into view.

Old ropes, a broken ladder, and rotten fish left to spoil were strewn carelessly all around.

‘Looks like this really is a storage hole below deck....’

But this information alone was still not enough to identify exactly which tutorial this was.

Both ‘Raid on the Mary Celeste’ and ‘Disaster in the Javrolta Strait’ began with you locked up in the cargo hold.

“I need to get up to the deck first.”

I hastily pulled myself together and headed for the ladder leading to the upper deck.

The ship had been lurching more and more violently for some time now, and the urgent footsteps thundering above the ceiling kept making my heart race faster.

If this really was the former of those two events, then I was in serious trouble―

Creeak―.

“......!!”

Just as I was about to slip out of the cabin, I sensed someone approaching from above.

Someone descended the ladder, and I let go and stepped back.

Then, seeing the old man who emerged beneath the dim light of a murky lantern, I realized one thing.

“So this is where you were... you little rat....”

Ah.

I die for this man.

***

The instant I saw the old man’s face, my body stiffened.

I had seen that face dozens of times while playing Velheim.

[Black-Tooth Tirosh]

｢The chief oiler who oversees all the ship’s oil, his body always reeks from the cod oil that has seeped into his skin!｣

‘Y-you miserable bastard...!!’

The curse burst out of me on reflection.

Just how many times had this bastard killed me in the game?

When I had only seen him through a small monitor, he had merely seemed disgusting, but now that I was facing him in person, he was so revolting it made my skin crawl.

The body odor unique to an unwashed medieval sailor, the sleeves whitened from caked salt, the oil lantern creaking whenever the ship tilted and casting a sinister shadow across the hold....

And at the same time, I realized exactly which episode I had landed in.

[Raid on the Mary Celeste]

My luck truly was abysmal.

Of all things, I had to be saddled with the worst tutorial of them all.

Raid on the Mary Celeste was a tutorial steeped in a deeply bleak and oppressive atmosphere.

Thanks to the psychological terror that tightens around you moment by moment, players often named it one of the worst scenarios in the game.

But the greatest defining trait of this tutorial was....

‘It is impossible to survive.’

No matter how you twisted, clenched your teeth, and exhausted every means at your disposal, you could not escape death.

Even if you somehow found a way through and barely escaped one crisis, an even more dreadful nightmare was waiting for you beyond it.

It was the same kind of event as those bosses in hardcore games that butchered new players right from the start and crushed their spirits.

Before you could even begin exploring Velheim, it served as a brutal inoculation, searing the game’s unfairness into your bones.

That was why, when this event came up as your tutorial, the standard route was to die early and reset with a new character.

But....

‘If I die here now, what happens to me...?’

I was certain there would be no convenient miracle like a reset this time.

Every sensation pressing against my skin was telling me so.

If I died like this, then that was the end.

While I hesitated in fear, Tirosh discovered me and looked me up and down.

“...Your hands and feet are free. Were you trying to escape, slave?”

“Ugh....”

“Well, it matters little. A sacrifice is needed to calm the storm, so come quietly. The Sea God is angered.”

Shrring.

The old man drew a sharp cutlass from his waist and approached.

Even in the darkness, the blade flashed gold as it caught the lantern light.

The cold menace gathered at its edge seemed to allow no room for any other thought.

“Stay still, slave. Resist, and you may lose an arm or two. If you come quietly, I will at least grant you a less painful death.”

“...Damn it.”

The old man slowly closed the distance, the blade held before him.

If I let him drag me away like this, I would be bound hand and foot and forced into a death event without even the strength to resist.

If I wanted to live, then it was time to make a decision.

The moment my retreating back hit the wall behind me, I understood what I had to do.

“...Allocate my status points to Agility.”

｢You are investing stat points into Agility. How many points would you like to invest?｣

“All of them.”

｢A total of 8 stat points have been invested into Agility.｣

After the system alert, I felt my muscles tighten subtly, and my body grew lighter.

I set my stance on the swaying wooden planks.

Making sure to keep the backs of my forearms outward so the inner sides—where the arteries ran—would not be exposed to the blade, I took up a fighting posture, and Tirosh curled his lips as he muttered,

“So in the end... you have chosen the path of blood, slave.”

“...If I go quietly, blood will be spilled either way.”

“Indeed. I was surprised to hear you speaking so fluently all of a sudden... but it seems you are not a fish-brained fool like the other slaves.”

In that instant, before he had even finished speaking, Tirosh smiled and swung his cutlass.

A slash delivered in the blink of an eye.

“Ghk...!”

I rolled across the floor and barely slipped out of the blade’s diagonal path.

It was only because I had been watching the movement of his arm muscles so carefully that I had managed to react at all.

The blade, slicing through the air with a vicious whistle, slammed into the wall before being yanked free again.

My legs trembling, I hurriedly planted my feet and forced myself upright.

‘If I had been even a little slower, I’d be dead...!’

If I had not invested those points into Agility, if I had delayed my decision by even a moment longer.

As my insides went cold, I widened the gap between us, and Tirosh advanced with his cutlass held out.

“What a pity.”

“D-damn it...!”

I snatched up the first object I could get my hands on and hurled it at him, but the old man lazily tilted his head aside and let it pass.

Tirosh sneered.

“Fear makes fine feed for the gods. Tremble more, sacrifice. The more you do, the sweeter your blood will taste, heh heh....”

“Y-you senile perverted old bastard...!”

“Curse me as much as you like, little lamb.”

Tirosh swung his sword.

I barely avoided it by jerking my body backward.

Then came a chain of attacks, pursuing me without pause.

The curved blade lunged for my limbs like a fishhook seeking flesh.

I desperately twisted my body and fled through the hold in a disgraceful scramble, trying to escape the blade.

It was no easy thing to keep my balance while running through the middle of a ship pitching violently up and down, but I had no choice.

Blood was running down my cheek, and my soles were soaked red, perhaps from stepping on splinters, but I had no time to care.

Tirosh had chased right up behind me and was reaching for the back of my neck with a sadistic grin.

“Like hell... I’ll let you catch me!!”

Slash―!!

When I swung the shard of glass I had hidden in my palm, Tirosh flinched as it sliced into his hand.

“So the little rat was hiding its teeth.”

“Huff... huff....”

“Tch... How irritating....”

In the next instant, my vision flipped upside down.

The pain rose belatedly from my abdomen and the back of my head.

Only after seeing myself sprawled on the floor and Tirosh looking down at me did I realize that I had been kicked in the stomach.

I frantically groped on the floor and tried to rise, but....

“Ugh?!”

I collapsed face-first onto the wooden boards before I could even take a few steps.

My foot had caught in the mesh of a discarded fishing net.

Tirosh approached with a vile smile.

And just as I found myself helplessly cornered, like a fish trapped in a net―

THUD―!

A massive wave struck the ship, and my body was lifted clear off the ground.

The impact hurled me against the wall in a burst of agony, but thanks to that, I narrowly avoided being hacked in two.

While Tirosh was still spitting out curses in some dialect and trying to recover from the blow, I desperately tore the net loose from my ankle and staggered backward, clutching my throbbing shoulder.

I fervently prayed that the collision had cracked his head against a corner, but against a sailor accustomed to the sea, there was no point hoping for luck like that.

“...You were fortunate, slave.”

“Hah... haaah....”

“But such fortune will not come twice.”

Tirosh’s smile vanished, and he advanced as though he meant to finish me for good this time.

I looked up at the old man slowly closing the distance, my eyes soaked in fear.

I was afraid.

My body trembled. The shaking was so violent that hiccups escaped me.

Fear clenched around my heart.

As the scent of death grew stronger with every passing second, my vision narrowed.

The weight of death against my skin slowly cut into my flesh like a spear point.

If I kept running, might he give up eventually?

Even as I knew that was impossible, I found myself trying to turn away from reality.

‘For fuck’s sake....’

No matter how hard I tried to run on this cramped ship, I would only die.

I slowly drew a deep breath and faced that brutal reality head-on.

If I wanted to survive, then it was time to make another decision.

I lashed my trembling body into obedience and stopped the legs that were trying to retreat.

I rose, overcoming the fear surging through me.

I fixed my eyes on the enemy before me.

Think calmly, Doran.

No matter how sturdy a door is, if you keep pounding on it, it will open....

Desperately comparing everything I remembered with every detail in my field of vision, I searched for a way to live.

Should I try to catch him off guard with talk? 

Pretend to go mad and lunge at him?

Or else―

“...Found it.”

The one move that could turn this situation around.

I’ve found it now, you bastard.