Chapter 4

Chapter 4 : This Is a Survival Story (4)

Getting out of the underground ruins was surprisingly simple.

Since Woldeer knew the entire route, all I had to do was cling tightly to his back.

He easily cleared places that would have been impossible for me alone, leaping across precarious gaps and carving a way through difficult terrain. Neither the maze-like passages nor the unexpectedly vast ruins posed any problem for him.

What was harder was leaving the altar without getting the book wet. It was a good thing I had the glass case.

I had burned through even the little strength I had finally recovered, all because I had swum out while keeping myself tense the entire time.

If not for Woldeer, it really would have been a difficult treasure hunt.

“More importantly…… is it finally time to leave?”

Still limp, I slid off Woldeer’s crouched back and pulled out the book I had brought with me.

My clothes were soaked, and since I could not exactly tell Woldeer to carry it in his mouth, I had roughly rolled it up in my hand instead. The book had crumbled even more because of that, but I did not care.

I had already read everything worth reading.

“So it was removed to the Executor…….”

The broken text caused by the error had distracted me at the time, so I had let it pass, but it had definitely been removed.

It left a bad taste in my mouth, as though I had stolen someone else’s property.

And more than that, the feel of the word Executor itself was a little……

“I am not suited to doing whatever I am told.”

That did not mean I was planning to meekly take it back and put it where it had been. It was a bound item, after all.

Shivering at Woldeer’s cool body heat as he breathed slowly beside me, I turned over and flopped flat onto the ground.

The stone floor, heated through by the day, was still pleasantly warm even though dusk was approaching.

Soothing my exhausted body, I stared at the book with its black cover.

The key points were removed and contributions.

By bringing this book out of the ruins, I had affected the flow of the Original Work and gained contribution.

Judging from the 【Epic】 Quest, the system’s goal was the destruction of the Original Work.

The 【Field】 Quest I had received this time was of the same kind. If I thought of it as the system’s way of guiding me toward the main objective—

“For an extra to become the protagonist, the openings are awfully tight.”

Was this even possible?

At this point, sheer stubbornness began creeping up the back of my neck. A petulant sort of defiance that hated the idea of the main protagonists’ story having such an enormous effect on my survival, entirely separate from whatever fights or romance they had going on.

Especially somewhere I could not even see.

“At the very least, I should stop the war.”

Unless this place was some remote mountain backwater far removed from the main setting, the war probably had not begun yet.

I pushed myself up and dusted the dirt from my clothes.

The reason I thought it might actually be worth trying was simple.

I had found a map on the very last page of the book. Long live travel records.

Before the sun fully sank and darkness set in, I unfolded the map, which had been folded over several times.

“If I am here…….”

The owner of the map had drawn the route in rough, careless lines. Scribbles, lopsided arrows, and all.

Even so, I was grateful for this much.

Why else would pirates get excited over a crude treasure map?

Even if that map looked as though it had been drawn with someone’s foot, it was better than nothing.

And in the middle of the map, there was a waterfall drawn in an odd shape. It seemed to be the source of the sound of water I had heard for the first time yesterday.

When I first discovered the underground ruins, I had assumed the sound came from the stagnant water down there, but seeing the map changed my mind.

Yesterday, when it had not rained, the timing had been just right for me to hear the faint sound of flowing or falling water. It had been a waterfall.

Since yesterday, fate had already been pushing me to leave.

I took one slow look around the base that had grown familiar after only a few days.

The chance discovery of this place, meeting Woldeer, falling into the trap, and obtaining the map—

“—Was it all really a chance?”

The feeling of being rolled around in someone’s palm was hard to shake, even though the system was so neglectful it bordered on absurd.

“Come here, Woldeer. Let us just sleep.”

By now, Woldeer had grown used to the hand that stroked him. He shifted his fangs to one side and rubbed the back of his neck against me.

Burying myself in that fluffy fur, satisfied by the coolness that washed away the heat just enough, I decided to sleep first.

For a long journey, proper rest was essential.

---

This map was clearly a four-dimensional tesseract.

“Are you hopeless with directions? Huh? Is that it?”

Either the mapmaker had been pathologically directionless—

Or the map itself was a trap.

I had the map, I knew the direction, and I had a rough idea of the forest’s size, so I thought escaping was only a matter of time.

That was before I set out.

It took a full day to reach the snowman-shaped rock made of stacked round stones, and five days to reach the cluster of trees that allegedly resembled a bird’s nest. The deep gorge and the towering waterfall running through it took more than half a month from the day I left my first base.

“Hmm. If I fall, I am one hundred percent dead.”

The heavy sound of water crashing into water from far below, at a depth like the height of a high-rise building, sent a chill of fear through me.

The sound of water I had heard back at the base had definitely come from this ridiculous waterfall. It was so enormous that, of course, the sound had carried all the way there.

The map did mark a bridge farther upstream, past the gorge that looked as though it had been clawed through the earth, but……

“It has to be believable first.”

For all I knew, it might still take another three days and nights to reach it, judging by the mapmaker’s sense of distance.

“Should I pray that the bridge is still intact?”

And because it was a map drawn on an ancient relic, I had no way of guessing its age, which meant I had no way of knowing whether the bridge still existed at all.

One wrong step, and I would end up bungee-jumping into that waterfall.

“So this is where my life in this place ends.”

The thought made me solemn despite myself, and I swept back my hair, soaked through with sweat.

“Woldeer, come here.”

Woldeer, who trailed cold air everywhere he went, was the perfect cooling item for hot weather.

Half sprawled across his back, I looked around the area in a slow circle. No matter where I looked, there was still nothing remotely resembling a bridge.

This disaster of a map made me feel like one of those idiots who set sail in search of a treasure island that did not even exist.

Even so, since the place the mapmaker had come from seemed to be near the source of the river, I continued upstream along the gorge.

It was around then that Woldeer, who usually made strange noises and fussed constantly, fell quiet.

Walking beside me, Woldeer repeatedly rubbed his face against my leg and curled his tail around my waist.

“Are you anxious?”

Ever since the day I set out in search of a way out of the forest, Woldeer’s behavior had grown steadily stranger.

He whimpered in his sleep, cried out in the middle of the night, and even bit down on my leg to stop me from going. And now he had added stubborn silence to the list.

Even now, he circled around me with the most pitiful expression he could manage—which still looked like the expression of a predator drooling over something it wanted to devour.

As I stroked Woldeer, I hesitated again and again.

Because part of me wondered whether it would be better to leave him behind.

Woldeer’s behavior was not entirely outside what I could have expected.

According to the book, Woldeer was probably one of the dominant species that held territory in this forest.

That fluorescent fur mixed with violet and gray, those bizarre cries, those pitiful little horns jutting from his head, and so on.

The monster described in the travel record was a territorial beast that ruled this 〈Black Forest〉.

A creature that stole the lives of the living when they appeared, and tore apart even the dead when their corpses were abandoned.

Within the Black Forest, it was both scavenger and ruler, a monster with no natural predators.

“Well, if you do not want to leave, you do not have to come with me.”

Grrrang! Kang!

As though asking why I was stating the obvious, Woldeer dashed ahead first, and I could not help curling my lips into a smile.

It was hard to think of Woldeer as the terrifying monster described in the book when he showed such endearing affection.

“If you were really that kind of monster, you would have eaten me first. If you like me enough to leave your home……”

But before long, it felt as though Woldeer’s unease had infected me as well. The closer we drew to our destination along the gorge, the more my pace slowed.

I even found myself chewing at the inside of my cheek, every nerve strung taut as I tried to identify the source of the chill creeping over me.

Then, when we finally reached the narrower upper stream, I found a bridge crudely lashed together with rope.

It was the same bridge I had seen on the map.

And beyond it, for the very first time, I saw something that could be called a person crossing toward this side.

At that sight, I came to a complete stop.

There was a cliché.

The saying that people were more frightening than ghosts.

‘Was that the source of the unease?’

His appearance reminded me all over again that this really was another world.

His hair was white and cut short. His skin was not merely pale, but almost bluish. He looked less like a human being than like something that ought to have had scales.

There had been no mention in the travel record of any humanoid species that looked like that.

Perhaps there had been no need to describe them because they were so common, or perhaps the humans of this world originally looked like that, and the writer had not felt the need to note it.

Half fear and half curiosity, I kept spinning out possibilities, and only realized I had missed the proper moment to react after he had already spotted me.

When he had nearly finished crossing the bridge, our eyes met. He tilted his head ever so slightly and made a short sound.

“Ah……?”

Gooseflesh rippled over my entire body.

There was no way I should have heard him properly from that distance, and yet his voice pierced through the savage roar of the water rushing far below the gorge and lodged itself directly in my ears.

Arrrkang!

Woldeer’s fur bristled as he growled. With that enormous body, he shoved me tightly toward the side as though trying to shield me.

Woldeer was trembling.

‘……Trembling?’

At that moment, the man who had only been staring finally moved.

With a deep leap, the roughly woven wooden planks creaked and the bridge screamed beneath him, and the dozens of meters between us ceased to mean anything in an instant.

“Hhk!”

My eyes met his as he burst into the space right in front of me.

The gleaming silver eyes of a predator snatching up its prey.

I knew that kind of force was not coming just to say hello.

And yet I could do nothing.

All I managed was to bury myself deeper in Woldeer’s stiffened fur.

There was not even time to react.

The pure white rod that had pierced through Woldeer’s neck stopped only once it was right before my eyes, and blood dripped from its tip.

“――, ――――?”

The man gripping the white rod tilted his head, then smoothly yanked it free.

Bluish blood, almost violet, sprayed everywhere in an arc following the sweep of his arm.

—THUD.

Woldeer, who had been trembling, collapsed to the ground without strength.

“―――?”

His voice reached me as though muffled by water, so even if I could have understood him, the words never truly registered in my ears.

I only stiffened where I stood and became certain that this really was a survival story.

‘Should I run? Can I even get away?’

It was only natural that my mind, spinning so furiously, stopped functioning properly.

I forced my shaking legs to move. It was pure instinct, the urge to get away from this place, away from the ground soaked with Woldeer’s blood.

Now, while he was examining Woldeer’s corpse.

Without looking back, I bolted for the bridge he had crossed.

The path leading deeper into the Black Forest was blocked by him, which meant I had only one choice.

Well, fucking lucky me, right?

Not only had my options been narrowed, I had not even been left with anything to think about.

I knew it too. I knew this was only a final, desperate struggle. There was no way I could outrun someone who could cross a bridge like that in the blink of an eye.

Still, would it kill you to spare me, you bastard?!

“―――, ――.”

I did not even make it halfway across the bridge.

He seized me by the back of the neck and slammed me face-first into the wooden planks, and as I fell, the dizzying height below suddenly felt two hundred percent more real. I squeezed my eyes shut.

As an added delight, the flimsy bridge pitched up and down violently.

If I fell, I would die. If I fled, I would die. Now that I had been caught, I was going to die anyway.

With him pressing down on my shoulder, the only way left to escape him was through death.