Barbarian in a Failed Game

061. The Hidden Entity (1)

It was essentially a bombardment of monstrous mass. Would this be what it feels like if an apartment collapsed and struck the ground?

The tower, having just broken free from its chains, descended upon the wyvern attempting to flee and smashed down, colliding with the ground.

Boom─! Crashing sounds echoed!

An unimagusnable roar, accompanied by vibrations that shook the ground, enveloped Khan, who was crouched on the floor.

Already muffled, his ears seemed to break entirely as the world’s sounds vanished, and his battered body couldn’t withstand the aftermath, tumbling around for quite a while.

“Damn… it!”

After his indomitable will was released, all Khan could do, given his physical condition, was grit his teeth against the pain that pummeled his body.

It was only thanks to a slight boost in stamina upon leveling up that he was even able to curl up at all.

Thud! Thud! Crash─!

Even amidst this chaos, there were buildings unscathed by the collapse of the tower.

It was probably one of those that stopped his fall by hitting his back against something hard. Always a mess after a fight…!

In the midst of the confusion, Khan calmed his mind with curses and abruptly lifted his head.

“Oh…”

It was the first thing the perpetrator said upon witnessing the disaster he caused.

The collision with the tower had not only shattered buildings but also the ground itself, unable to withstand the impact, had completely collapsed, making it seem as if the remnants of the tower had burrowed into the earth.

“Going to be a hell of a job cleaning this up,” Khan thought, groaning as he slowly picked himself up.

Ouch.

Just touching the ground briefly made his hands, joints, and various parts of his body scream out in pain, as if threatening him to lie back down immediately.

“It’s not the time to stay down.”

Thankfully, unlike after the previous Darkin subjugation, he hadn’t lost his weapon.

Praising himself for instinctively pocketing his equipment, Khan coughed up blood.

“Ugh, damn. Got sand in my mouth.”

“Feels like I chewed on some rocks, too.”

Lucky the barbarian has sturdy teeth. In a world without dentists, losing a tooth could be a disaster.

With a feeble joke, Khan headed towards where he presumed the wyvern’s corpse would be.

He wasn’t going to confirm its death. The experience points received had already confirmed the wyvern’s demise.

“It’d be nice to retrieve the corpse.”

The wyvern’s body was a rare material that could fetch a high price anywhere.

If one had connections with a skilled blacksmith, crafting high-grade equipment was possible, and if one knew mages from the mage’s tower, requesting magical tool crafting or selling it at an incredibly high price was feasible.

To be honest, crafting just one axe from the wyvern’s bone would have been enough. If Jerome could inscribe it with a spell, and if somehow he could convince the Goddess of Justice to bless it again…

“It would have been nice…”

Khan, estimating the location where the wyvern was buried, dropped his gaze.

The ground, sunken in from the impact of the collision with the tower, was in no state for him to find anything.

“It’s going to be a nightmare trying to find it.”

Since he couldn’t muster the courage to start in his current state, Khan had no choice but to turn back, clicking his tongue.

“Guess I’ll have to try finding it later.”

It was essentially an admission of defeat.

For now, the fact that he had leveled up was encouraging enough. More importantly, the immediate task was to investigate the hidden entity behind the appearance of this wyvern and the basilisk.

There were clues.

The guy who was the guard captain in Al-Ranzas. Digging into him could yield some leads. Even if that mess had killed him, questioning Perran, the baron and mayor of Al-Ranzas, should do.

If he installed that suspicious man in the position of guard captain, he must know something.

“…First, I have to return to Al-Ranzas.”

The thought of trekking back to Al-Ranzas with a body in tatters forced Khan to swallow a rising sigh and turn his head.”Boss…! Are you alright?! If you are, answer me…!”

“Warrior─! If you’re dead, at least let us know─!”

“That damned mage son of a…”

Khan found himself pondering how to punish this psychopath, but without realizing, he suddenly slumped to the ground. His fading vision blurred, but he could vaguely see his companions rushing towards him in a panic.

‘Ah, it’s been a while since this happened.’

Seeing the faces of his companions, did he feel relieved? He couldn’t resist the overwhelming fatigue any longer. Though he tried to fight it, Khan didn’t bother holding on.

“Boss! Boss…!”

And then, everything went black.

* * *

“In Midland, trust no one,” was a phrase he used to repeat like a mantra. It was unimagusnable back then.

The thought hit him as soon as he opened his eyes.

‘I’ve gotten too lenient.’

It seemed laughable now, the notion of considering everyone merely as travel companions.

Despite being exhausted, the mere sight of his companions had him sprawling out immediately. Khan wondered if something had gone wrong with his brain as he slowly propped himself up.

‘I need to be more careful next time.’

If he were to be taken by surprise in this state, there’d be no returning to Earth or anything else.

It was an exception for Khan, who never truly rested unless he was sure of his safety or there was no one around, and at the same time, a mistake that made him chastise himself.

Was it the aftermath of using his indomitable will, or because he had exerted himself while dazed and rolled around…?

‘It seems like my condition is nearly perfect, but…’

Something felt off in his body. He could move, but his joints and muscles felt stiff.

Leaning against the bed’s headboard and checking his condition, Khan squinted at the unexpected weight he felt.

“Why is this one here…?”

He had been wondering why his lower body felt heavy, only to find curly dark brown hair sprawled beside his legs.

It was Elena, the girl destined to become the Goddess’s Scale.

‘What’s with this situation?’

Was she sent to watch over him on behalf of the Goddess? The half-dazed thought was as far as he got.

Khan was about to shake Elena awake but then retracted his hand.

Instead, he just moved his head to inspect the room he had fallen asleep in, noticing its familiar structure and appearance.

‘This is the Al-Ranzas convent.’

Given its striking resemblance to Berta’s room he had seen before, it was surely no coincidence.

The question was how he ended up here.

Considering that he had last passed out in Al-Rasdel, he must have been unconscious and slept straight through for several days…

“Shit, I can’t do this a second time.”

Khan experienced firsthand the backlash of using an A-grade skill while in the state of indomitable will. The excessive physical stats were part of the issue too.

“…Ah.”

“What, are you awake?”

“Ah… You’re awake!”

At Khan’s muttering, Elena stirred a few times before waking up.

Her face was far too radiant to believe she was a girl from a remote convent, albeit it looked quite haggard at the moment. Khan felt an indescribable discomfort and scratched the back of his head.

“How long was I unconscious?”

“You came back to Al-Ranzas last night… Given it’s daytime now, you’ve been asleep for roughly four days straight. Actually, it’s a miracle. Your initial condition… you looked like a troll had pummeled and discarded you.”

“That’s quite the interesting comparison.”

“I’m not joking, this is serious. Your stamina was severely weakened to the point where there was no way to treat it. It was a big problem.”

Before Elena, who was explaining just how terrible her physical condition was with an ostensibly angry expression, Khan could only grimace, barely nodding.

“Still, your physique is remarkable. Like a knight who has strengthened their body with aura, or a paladin who has transformed their body with holy power. In some ways, it’s even superior.”

Strength was indeed overwhelmingly impressive. Swallowing those words, Khan, having fully risen from his bed, stretched himself out and said,

“Let’s discuss what’s wrong with my body later… I’d like to know more about the situation.”

“Um… If I were to only tell you about the recent events, Al-Ranzas was caught in turmoil as well. Suddenly, monsters attacked, and the western wall has completely collapsed…”

It seems monsters that broke free from control upon a wyvern’s death had run rampant. With this analysis in mind, Khan attentively listened to Elena’s continued explanation.

“The guard captain. His body disappeared?”

“It’s uncertain whether it really disappeared or if it was trampled by monsters to the point of being unrecognizable. After you headed towards the wyvern and Al-Rasdel, I knocked him out and followed.”

“…It’s safe to assume he’s dead, then.”

Although a nagging discomfort lingered, the circumstances left no room for other conclusions.

How could a human, knocked unconscious, survive and escape in the midst of an advancing army of over a hundred monsters?

It would be reasonable to assume that the body was either completely crushed underfoot by the monsters or devoured by them in their hunger.

“Since Maya said she’d request the Count Perran to search for him, we should have some conclusion. After all, it was he who insisted on assigning the guard captain to our party, so he’ll search thoroughly, won’t he?”

“Dealing with the aftermath of the monster attack and searching for the traitor. That man’s got his work cut out for him.”

“Hmph. It’s all his own fault! What if he had tried to harm me?”

‘To overpower him so easily and have the audacity to say that…’

Nonetheless, this spirited young woman wasn’t entirely wrong.

After all, it was the Count himself who had coerced the guard captain into their party, serving as a guide and watchdog.

Moreover, if Khan had not hunted the wyvern, Al-Ranzas would have either been in ruins or engulfed in flames.

Naturally, taking care of this tiresome matter was rightly his duty.

“Alright. Let’s not talk about whether that guy died or somehow managed to escape. Rather, it’s about the wyvern.”

As seriousness seeped into Khan’s tone, even the chatty Elena calmly waited for what was to come.

“That wyvern. It was somewhat different from the wyverns I know of. As if its intelligence was awkwardly enhanced…”

“Well, of course. It wasn’t a regular monster, but a bizarre being, something shoved into an empty shell.”

Empty shell. The word from Elena’s mouth sparked interest in Khan. Draupnir, currently in the Aecheris’ Pouch, had said the same thing upon seeing the wyvern.

“About this ’empty shell.’ What exactly do you mean?”

“Exactly as I said. It lacked something that all living beings inherently possess. Or perhaps it’s better to say, it was replaced by something else….”

“Replaced? By what.”

“The soul.”

The answer exceeded Khan’s imagination. The soul?

“After the wyvern appeared, the goddess bestowed upon me her power. You’ve seen Aries’s power, right? The sense of smell that can track the traces of dark magic. In my case, it’s the ‘eyes’ that can peer into souls. When I used these eyes on the wyvern, I saw something utterly bizarre. Hmm… How should I put it.”

Carefully selecting her words, Elena then clapped her hands.

“Something made by kneading a soul like clay… Would that make it easier to understand?”

It was a very perplexing expression, but Khan roughly grasped the context.

‘They were messing around with such nonsense. Followers of Truth….’

They were extracting souls from ‘living corpses’ and conducting some sort of experiment.

But to directly manipulate a soul, insert it into a dragon, and control that dragon?

Even in the game, the Followers of Truth had never handled such a bizarre spell. This was undeniably a variable introduced by Khan’s and Tilly’s involvement in the official history.

And replicating magic swords that wielded powers similar to Draupnir as part of the experiment was also part of their plan.

It was impossible to imagine what end result these experiments would yield.

However, Khan felt a surge of motivation.

A bizarre spell that extracts an already residing soul and inserts a different one.

Doesn’t it closely relate to someone who was a completely normal modern person before possessing a barbarian of Midland?

‘I must see what sort of absurdity they’re up to.’

TL’s Corner:

To clarify, Ron calls hyung in the raw out of respect. But I translated it to boss to make it sound more western.

Who the fuck is Tilly? Is she also a transmigrator?

We know she betrayed Khan, but what is their relationship?

I think it was mentioned that she was the dark mage of Loren or something. Maybe I’m wrong.