Chapter 39

Chapter 039: The Trial of the Lame Armament Maker

CLANG─!

Deep within a volcano where chains hung in heavy loops, as though they could coil around and crush even a castle gate, and the flames of magma blazed fiercely from every direction.

The air screamed beneath heat that distorted even space itself, and within a furnace that heaved under enormous hammer blows, a man was forging a sword.

CLANG─!

Each time the hammer fell, sparks that flew from the blazing blade streamed down like blood.

When he pulled on a chain, the crater connected to the surface pulsed like a bellows, driving the smithy’s heat to its limit.

HSSSS─!

The man shoved the wailing unfinished blade into the lava up to his wrist and murmured quietly.

“The fate of mortals….”

The gods often compare mortals to fleeting blades of grass.

WHOOSH─!

If a mortal life is an intricately interlocked clock, a god’s intervention is like a single grain of sand falling inside it.

A trivial whim stops the mainspring and ruins everything.

A single indifferent touch becomes a great wave, and the world humans built collapses vainly like a sandcastle.

At times, it is like a glass bead sunk in the deep sea, shattering under the water pressure from nothing more than a gaze quietly peering at it.

CLATTER─!

Yet occasionally, those who break the destined yoke and resist fate appear.

The one who broke through the trials of the Twelve Heavens with his bare body, Heracles (Ἡρακλῆς).

CLANG─!

The one who cut through the labyrinth and opened the road to Athens, Theseus (Θησεύς).

HSSSSSS─!

The girl who saved her homeland beneath the banner of God, Joan of Arc (Jeanne d'Arc).

CLACK─!

The warrior who overturned the tide of war with a single sword, Cheok Chun-gyeong.

CLANG─!

And….

“Prove it, Doran.”

If you truly are the Doran I know.

Then a trial of this level is something you will lightly trample underfoot and smile at.

CLANG─!

***

My thoughts stopped at the sight that entered my vision.

A great Kokokura army filled the vast wetland in black.

However, what sent a chill down my spine was not their sheer numbers.

The helms lavishly decorating their heads.

The breastplates wrapped firmly around their chests.

The pitch-black weapons held in their hands.

Armaments on an entirely different level, incomparable to the shabby scrap of iron strapped to my calf or a mass-produced longsword.

They were not rusty scrap metal, but top-grade weapons, each and every one exuding a profound sheen.

A sense of helplessness, like sinking into a sticky swamp, wrapped around my entire body.

I felt a terrible mockery shaped by vast malice that a mere mortal could not dare resist.

The moment my frozen brain understood the situation, and every strategy and tactic I had simulated countless times in my head crumbled into cold ash─

“Fuu─uck!!!”

CRASH!

My despair became a roar of fury, spreading ripples around the raft.

As my lips trembled at the feeling of the blood throughout my body running cold, Radi, who had not yet grasped the situation, muttered blankly.

“H-How did this….”

“…….”

“Why is the Kokokura Tribe… wearing heavy armor…?”

I clutched my head and forced my mouth open.

“……Someone had a hand in this. Someone who doesn’t want the adventurers, including us, to get out of this place alive.”

“But… th-that can’t possibly be possible! Those are monsters, you know? Producing and supplying hundreds, thousands of pieces of equipment tailored to monster physiques in such a short time… that shouldn’t be possible, and even if it were…!”

“You mean, what kind of being would pour effort into something so unproductive and inefficient?”

…Nod.

Of course there was one.

A being as fickle as a child throwing a tantrum, twisted as hell, and with so much time on its hands that it carried out every kind of goddamn bullshit imaginable.

“A god.”

The transcendent beings of this world.

Those goddamn bastards with broken personalities.

I had a rough idea which one of them had done this shit too.

｢Creator: Lord of the Volcano｣

‘That goddamn hammer bastard.’

The gods here often use epithets that reveal themselves instead of their true names.

Lord of War and Struggle, Seeker of Wisdom, Mother of the Earth, and so on.

And considering the epithet Lord of the Volcano and the trait of equipment creation, there was only one conclusion I could reach.

“……Vulcanus.”

A god who symbolized volcanoes, fire, conflagrations, smithies, and the like in ancient Rome.

In effect, a being identified with Hephaestus, only under a different name.

“That lame bas─tard.”

A hollow laugh that might have been a sneer or a scream burst from my mouth.

As expected, the gods of this world were nothing but lunatics.

They could kindly go fuck themselves.

“Is… is there no way?”

“Wait. I’m thinking right now.”

A frontal breakthrough? Annihilation. Guerrilla warfare? How, on top of a raft? Underwater combat? Suicide.

Then what if I transformed and infiltrated? If their detection equipment caught me, it would be instant death.

I clutched my forehead and ran dozens of simulations through my mind.

But the more I did, the more this situation’s absurdity only stood out.

Even if just one or two of those bastards were mixed into a crowd, our survival rate would plummet, and there were hundreds, thousands of them.

Even if we hunkered down inside the mangrove swamp, with those numbers, we would be discovered before long and slaughtered.

‘Damn it… To break through those numbers, we really need overwhelming force, or nothing will work….’

No matter how I thought about it, there was no answer in the current situation.

“……Let’s return to camp for now.”

When one Kokokura soldier in a pitch-black helm looked around our way and adjusted its grip on a glaive, I slowly backed the raft away.

When I returned to the sandbar and reported the terrible scene I had just witnessed, the people began to stir in shock.

“H-How does that make any sense…?! A monster army numbering in the hundreds or thousands? And most of them are wearing unbelievably powerful equipment….”

“Leaving the number of monsters aside… where did the arms and armor suddenly come from? Common sense says it couldn’t have been easy for thousands of monsters to obtain equipment in droves….”

“O-Of course, I am not doubting you, Mr. Doran, but honestly, it sounds far too absurd….”

The guild members awkwardly trailed off.

Well, even I, who had seen it with my own eyes, wanted to deny reality, so it was only natural.

“Radi, take that out.”

“Yes.”

Radi rummaged inside her robe and took out an object.

[Boots of the Tide-Swallowing Kraken (Legendary)]

｢Boots forged together from the tough outer hide of the Kraken, Lord of the Deep Sea, and the Core of a Storm! Water spray constantly whirls around the wearer, deflecting ranged attacks and making everything it touches damp!｣

｢Allows water walking when worn, and because they were made exclusively for Kokokura warriors, they lose all effects if they fall into another’s hands!｣

“Th-This is….”

“We picked it up on the way here after it was carried over by the current. You can see the mucus inside, right?”

“Th-Then it really….”

“Yes. A considerable number of the Kokokura warriors were wearing equipment like this. We picked up a few more over there on the raft, so if you still doubt me, check them yourself.”

I trudged over and sat down on the sandbar.

The adventurers who had fled to the island after being chased by the Kokokura horde seemed somewhat resigned already, perhaps because they had already seen the bastards and anticipated this situation.

Since the equipment had even been custom-made for Kokokuras, it was impossible for us to gather their lost equipment and rearm ourselves with it.

As their heads gradually cooled and they realized reality, the guild members began to sob one by one.

“Kh… To think I’d suddenly die in a place like this….”

“At the very least, I wish I could have died on the surface, where they could recover my remains….”

As I let the adventurers’ lamentations pass by and coldly searched for a path to survival, I sensed someone and turned to the side. Malton stood beside me with a bitter smile.

“This is troublesome… May I sit beside you for a moment?”

“Yeah. …Damn it, the situation’s turned to shit. I expected an abnormality to happen in the wetland, but I never thought it would be this kind.”

“Well, even so, if we think hard, there should be at least one way to break through it.”

“There has to be. But this one feels a bit different.”

It felt like a crisis on an entirely different level from the ones before.

Even the situation when I escaped from Mary Celeste had been different.

Back then, it had felt like being an ant thrown into a storm, while now, it felt like a volcano had erupted and was pouring out balls of fire.

An Absolute’s trial, impossible to resist, breaking one’s very will to fight.

In the past, gods had occasionally handed down trials, but those had appeared only when one reached Ranker-class, with levels at least in the triple digits.

At the very least, this was not an event I was supposed to encounter at this point.

As I clenched my teeth and wrung out my brain, Malton sat down heavily beside me and spoke.

“Our luck is rather poor this time. It is common for gods to indulge their whims, but for it to happen to us of all people….”

“You can say that again… I never thought we’d suddenly be placed in a situation like this….”

“Well, but I believe that you, who already serve two Evil Gods, will surely find a breakthrough. Is divine manipulation not already familiar territory for you?”

At Malton’s encouragement, offered with a calm smile, I quietly lifted my head.

And the green eyes I met held a profound air.

They were not the eyes of an idle loafer joking around with me as usual, but those of an elf who had lived vividly in this world.

The eyes of a veteran, and of a comrade who had always been trustworthy.

In that strong, upright gaze, I remembered what kind of being Malton was.

A close friend who had shared joy and hardship with me for ten years.

A being who had laughed with me as we crossed the line of death, raged with me at injustice, and rejoiced with me as we smashed the Cults of Evil Gods.

“If no road is visible, make one. Knowing you, you will surely find a way. Just as you have done countless times until now.”

“…Countless times? Don’t tell me you….”

“Radi seems worried too, so go now. We who lead these people cannot show them a disheartened face, can we?”

“Urgh…!”

When Malton laughed heartily and slapped my back, I sprang to my feet as though I had been flung forward.

As I smiled bitterly at the stinging comfort and cleared my head, I felt as though my blocked field of vision had opened a little.

‘Since it’s come to this, should I call out the Evil Gods myself and fight fire with fire?’

If I offered an arm or a leg as a sacrifice, there might be a 0.01% chance they would at least show interest.

Though if it were Goddess Agasa, who reincarnated me, she would probably cackle and ignore me, or restore only the severed limb and then drive me back into the jaws of death.

The moment I laughed self-deprecatingly and kicked a stone by the stream, the surface of the water suddenly rose.

CHOMP─!

A Green Anaconda swallowed a frog swimming on the water in one bite and leisurely disappeared.

It was a scene I had seen countless times since entering the wetland.

Yet the moment I saw it, a lightning-like flash struck my mind.

“That’s it─!!”

When I let out a strange cry, Malton looked at me with the corners of his mouth raised.

“Did something occur to you?”

“Yeah, though it’s practically suicide…!”

A mad gamble whose chance of success I could not even estimate.

A reckless, horrific bet that would make even the gods recoil.

But….

‘That’s exactly my specialty.’

If I was going to die anyway, I would grab even a thread-thin possibility and claw my way upward.

Even if what I seized was not merely a rotten rope, but the body of a snake hissing with a venom-soaked tongue.

“…Radi, get on the raft right now. Malton, gather the people.”

“Understood. As expected, I knew you would find a way somehow.”

I answered by raising the corners of my mouth fiercely, then held up my middle finger toward the sky.

Divine manipulation?

‘They can go fuck themselves.’

I would survive, no matter what.