SWNOVELXO Ch. 6
Chapter 6: The Life of a Warrior (4)
The valley looked like a lake of blood because the snow had absorbed blood, corpses, and the red smoke that Artez had created.
Standing amidst that savage scene, Hindir turned his head at Duar’s shout from afar.
“Lord Hindir! How long am I supposed to keep waiting here?”
Hindir had detected the trap in advance and had stationed Duar on guard.
As Duar had hoped, there was no fight to be had.
Duar stood on the opposite side, stopped, scanned the surroundings, spotted an incongruous stone tomb propped on one side, and kicked it.
Pas‑s‑s—
The mana of nature that had been artificially bound was released again, and the trap disappeared.
“Cross over.”
“…Is it really safe?”
“Yes.”
Still looking doubtful, Duar dragged himself forward one step at a time, groping along the ground.
Hindir folded his arms and watched Duar’s miserable fumbling as if it were eternity, without saying a word.
“Ahem……”
Only halfway across, when he was finally certain it was safe, Duar hurried over panting to Hindir.
“Is it still valid to call me a warrior?”
“Let’s just say you’re manly.”
“Heh‑heh, well, isn’t that better than being a woman?”
At that remark Hindir gave a wry smile.
“Man or woman is the same. It only refers to male and female. But a warrior is beyond such distinctions. There is only the warrior.”
“…So was calling me ‘manly’ not a compliment?”
“You seem to think so yourself. Since you said that even after I said it was just a label.”
“…Damn.”
Duar looked at Hindir and then back at the path they had walked past, his eyes full of grievance.
“Were there never any traps from the beginning? Did you just want to tease me?”
Hindir shrugged and turned back inside.
Duar followed, held his nose at the horrific sight, and stuck out his tongue.
It had been gruesome even from afar, but up close he now understood how cruel Hindir’s fist truly was.
Following such a person while babbling nonsense, he felt, was just as insane.
“Why? Do you feel some pity for those who died late?”
“No, it’s just… the Snow Fiends clan’s evil reputation was well known anyway.”
Then Duar added:
“But seeing them so brutally killed… I suddenly wonder if what I knew was actually true.”
“You think I carried out such a massacre based only on your words?”
“Yes… isn’t that so?”
Hindir stared silently at Duar.
He was exasperated by how Duar so nonchalantly overestimated himself.
Could Hindir have acted purely on Duar’s words?
Of course Hindir had acted on evidence he gained through his own senses.
“Shave your beard.”
“What are you saying all of a sudden?”
“You have no right to hold such a seasoned-looking beard.”
“Excuse me?”
“Follow me.”
In any case, to dispel Duar’s delusion, Hindir began walking again.
Rather than explain each detail bit by bit, it would be better to show it.
Standing in front of a large warehouse inside their stronghold, Hindir gestured for Duar to open the door.
“Open it.”
“Is there a trap… no, there isn’t.”
Still this time he moved faster than before.
“Ugh… why is this latch so tight… gasp?”
As Duar struggled to open the door and peered inside, he inhaled sharply.
A dozen or so people huddled in a corner in horrifying condition.
But what startled Duar was not them.
It was corpses hanging from the warehouse ceiling like meat in a slaughterhouse.
“This is insane……”
Hindir, standing behind Duar, also looked inside—but it was exactly what he had expected.
“Wh‑what is this?”
“It must’ve been the Snow Fiends’s food storehouse.”
“You already knew it?”
Hindir nodded.
Artez had attempted to cast magic again using these people’s lives, and Hindir had acted quickly to stop it.
Hindir strode inside and removed each corpse.
He carried them outside and placed them neatly to one side, and Duar followed him out and asked again.
“What are you going to do?”
“You can’t leave them as they are.”
“Aren’t you going to check on the people inside first?”
“Should I grab them and say now it’s safe, that we’re good people, or something?”
“Uh… but I should at least tell them that they’re not cannibals like the Snow Fiends bastards.”
At Duar’s remark, Hindir nodded.
“That’s true.”
“Right?”
“Yes. You go and do that. I’ll continue what I was doing.”
Duar took a deep breath and turned around.
He thought that while his tongue was quick when mocking him, he couldn’t actually handle this.
But when he went back inside and continued offering comfort in various ways—saying things like “it’s now safe, the ones outside are all dead” or “come out and get some sun and fresh air”—Duar suddenly felt something odd.
“‘Am I not being heard?’”
They certainly glanced at him from time to time, but no matter how much he shouted, there was no reaction.
They’d been held in such a horrific place that it would take time to mentally recover, or they might have fear of strangers.
But even after he kept saying it was safe, none of them thought of coming out…
Eventually giving up, Duar approached Hindir, who had by then begun gathering firewood in one spot.
“It seems like they’ve all gone deaf.”
“They’re probably in a similar state.”
“Did that mage mess something up again earlier?”
“I don’t know. But I do know that someone who’s had such an unreal experience can’t recover just by knowing that their captor is dead.”
“Then what about those people? Should we just leave them?”
Hindir found it striking that this guy had been part of the Snowlit Crimson army.
No matter how one looked at it, that meddlesome personality didn’t fit with being a bandit.
“We just do what we can as humans, then leave. We don’t need to announce anything to them.”
“But they’ll freeze to death, won’t they?”
“That’s their decision to make too.”
“……”
Duar stared at Hindir’s face.
He was physically fierce beyond measure, but Hindir’s face looked like he was only about twenty.
Yet after two days witnessing his words and actions, it was impossible to think that was his age.
“How old are you, anyway?”
Unable to hold back, Duar asked.
“I’m probably over sixty.”
“…Ugh. Fine.”
Duar finally shook his head and joined Hindir in gathering the firewood.
“Jeez… I feel like I’ve been under some spell since yesterday.”
Back when that fool Chaaju led him on patrol, he could never have imagined being in this situation.
“By the way, did that Chaaju bastard manage to escape? If you think about it, he’d know the way even less than I would.”
A while later, Duar discovered among Hindir’s gathered corpses a headless figure whose body nonetheless felt strangely familiar.
“…Poor bastard. Still, thank God he ran off alone.”
They constructed a wide, tall platform from neatly stacked firewood.
After placing the bodies in an orderly manner in front of it, Hindir and Duar turned to leave the place again.
It fell to the survivors to cremate the dead and send them off.
Duar had secretly worried they might think he intended to roast people, so he was relieved.
“There shouldn’t be any Snow Fiends left, right?”
“Even the one who ran off earlier was found dead, so it’s safe.”
Loin was found cold inside, possibly from blood loss.
All other Snow Fiends had been killed by Artez, and Hindir’s senses detected no one escaping outside.
“So, there wouldn’t be anyone mixed among the people in the warehouse…”
Duar, who’d tried desperately to persuade them, quickly realized that couldn’t be.
He recalled the eyes of the people he had seen in person.
“Really… it’s disgustingly unsettling.”
At Duar’s mutter, Hindir scoffed.
“They may have given up being human, but aren’t those who kill people without a second thought common enough in the world?”
“You mean the Snowlit Crimson army?”
“The Snowlit Crimson army is child’s play. Based on what I’ve encountered so far.”
“…There were only two, weren’t there?”
Hindir moved on without a word.
Once they had moved far enough to be no longer visible, black smoke rose from the blood-soaked valley.
Hindir and Duar found a rocky crevice sheltered from the wind and made a fire to spend the night.
In truth, having consumed the core-formation of Blood Bear, Hindir wouldn’t freeze to death even if he camped anywhere.
The only reason he went through this troublesome act was entirely because of Duar.
“But Master Hindir, aren’t you cold?”
From Duar’s perspective, even with a fire going, he couldn’t understand why Hindir was walking around shirtless.
That frost could not possibly be tolerated if it was just posturing.
“More or less I’m fine.”
Then he looked quietly, and Duar sheepishly tossed more wood into the campfire.
“Are you going back to the Snowlit Crimson army?”
“Huh?”
A sudden question caught Duar off guard.
“You don’t seem to fit in with banditry.”
“I’m telling you, Snowlit Crimson Army aren’t bandits. Well… I admit we’re not good people. Still, we do some useful things. We solve problems for the Parno clan that they’re too lazy to handle themselves.”
“Who is only good and never bad? Everything is relative. And what I’m saying to you isn’t about good or evil. You’re simply not someone who lives swinging a blade.”
“…We only met yesterday, you know?”
“Then do you think you’re a blade‑wielding man? Are you always prepared to die? Ready to kill someone?”
“……”
In fact, Duar had never wielded a blade against a person.
He had tried to threaten someone before…but not actually use a sword.
So the massacre Hindir carried out today had been quite shocking.
What surprised him most was how quickly he accepted the situation and how resilient his stomach proved to be.
So he even thought that maybe he had unexpected guts and that learning to fight properly wouldn’t be a bad idea.
Cautiously, he brought the thought up.
“Just because I haven’t learned swordsmanship properly, if I trained seriously, wouldn’t I be somewhat useful? You said I was manly… no, I felt like a warrior for a moment?”
Hindir shook his head.
“A warrior isn’t someone who becomes one only after fighting someone and drawing blood.”
“Is that so?”
“Throw yourself into your life with all your strength and fight. That—that is the life of a warrior.”
“Uh… honestly, given Hindir’s physique and what he showed today, I can’t really relate to that.”
In Duar’s eyes, Hindir looked every bit like the ultimate warrior.
“That’s just how I had to live.”
“Oh… that’s kind of cool.”
At Duar’s thumbs‑up, Hindir let out a hollow laugh and shook his head.
How could Duar possibly understand what Hindir felt inside?
“Ahem…”
With a fake cough, Duar continued.
“Actually, I’m from one of the small tribes scattered across the Great Snowfields, and many of the young guys aim to join the Snowlit Crimson Army.”
“You want to be a bandit?”
“I said we’re not bandits. Anyway… if you join the Snowlit Crimson Army, you rarely go hungry, and guys like me hardly ever have to sword people. They said we’d be fighting Snow Fiends, but actually that’s done by headquarter troops. So isn’t it pretty decent overall?”
“What if a situation arises where you have to die in the name of the Snowlit Crimson Army?”
“Then I’d run away.”
Hindir burst into laughter at the immediate response.
He didn’t like it, but he had to admit it was a reasonable choice to live decently in this harsh land.
People not eating other people for survival is something to respect.
“You’re not a complete fool, then.”
“No… isn’t that obvious? I came to survive, not rush into death. Who’d care if I did?”
“That’s right. Nothing emptier than a death nobody remembers.”
Hindir tilted his body sideways and closed his eyes.
“Are you sleeping?”
“Yes.”
“Aren’t you pretending to sleep to keep watch?”
“If you want to run away, go ahead.”
“Yes.”
With the crackling of burning wood, the night deepened.
And Duar did not run away.
He regarded that decision as resistance, as fighting back in his life.