Chapter 73
Act 2. Despair Is Tinted Gray
His first memory always began in the same place.
A vast plain turning golden. Wind swept fiercely over it.
As he pushed through the rippling grass, a sky of an oddly deep blue poured down over his head.
Swept up in an intense thrill, Varkas wandered aimlessly between the boundary of gold and blue.
At some point, he could no longer tell where he was heading. He simply ran breathlessly through the wind.
He was free.
He could go anywhere and do anything.
The beautiful world before his eyes seemed to whisper that to him.
His heart pounded as if it would burst.
The heat of the blood flowing through his veins and the coolness of the dry air filling his lungs.
All those sensations told him that he was alive.
He tasted the joy of life.
But that radiant moment did not last long.
Thick gray walls closed in on him from every direction.
A cramped space where he could not even sit, let alone lie down. Trapped inside a sealed room no different from a coffin, he scratched at the walls until his fingernails were crushed.
That futile resistance soon crumbled.
Through the narrow crack in the wall, the eyes of a fanatic looked in at him from time to time. Until all the “evil” dwelling within him was annihilated, the priest would never release him.
In a fathomless despair, he killed all his senses one by one.
The first thing he tore away was pain.
Next, he numbed taste and smell.
At some point, he no longer felt hunger, and the desire to sleep disappeared as well.
He could no longer be called a living creature.
Only after all the contents had evaporated and nothing but an empty shell remained did the door of the tomb open.
With empty eyes, he looked up at the person standing with the light at their back. Instead of cold eyes glittering with a strange heat and a chilling face that seemed cast from steel, he saw a slender face turned pale with shock.
A woman with dark hair and light-colored eyes reached her arms toward him. Thin fingers touched his cracked cheek. But aside from a faint pressure, he could feel nothing.
That hand, which might have been salvation, led him out of the tomb. Cold sunlight poured into his pupils.
An oddly pale scene filled his retina.
He soon realized that everything reflected in his eyes was tinted gray.
A colorless, odorless, faded world.
It seemed as though the whole world would turn to ash and crumble at any moment.
No. Perhaps the one who had turned to ash was himself.
He slowly lifted his eyelids.
For a while, he could not properly recognize where he was.
Only after a few seconds did the ceiling of a tent, covered in dark shadows, enter his sight.
He slowly raised his arm.
What he saw was not the bony hand of a child, but the hand of a man, with bones and tendons standing out.
As he touched it as if checking something, a sound like the cry of a beast came from somewhere.
Varkas mechanically raised his body. Almost at the same time, a soldier rushed into the tent.
“Sir Siarkan! A direwolf has appeared!”
He immediately lowered his feet beneath the bed. As he picked up the halberd standing by his bedside and went outside, the attendants waiting nearby clung to him and wrapped a light breastplate around his body.
Shaking off the obstructive hands, he quickly looked over the chaotic campsite.
The pale dawn light faintly illuminated the orderly rows of tents and the soldiers running frantically between them.
Soon, within that, he was able to spot a pitch-black beast whose body length alone reached nearly eight cubits.
The magical beast seemed to have spotted him as well. The giant wolf lowered its body flat and kicked off the ground with a fierce roar.
He extended his left foot half a step forward and held the halberd diagonally. The heavy axe blade attached to the end of the long spear tilted toward the ground.
At the same moment the black shadow filled his vision, he gripped the shaft tightly and swung it wide on a diagonal.
The crescent-shaped blade pierced through the wolf’s tough hide and severed its dense, packed flesh and thick bone in a single stroke.
Sticky blood spurted like a fountain from the severed surface where its head had fallen away.
Roughly wiping the liquid splashed on his cheek with his sleeve, he turned his head to the side and looked around. Between the conifer trees lined up like a fence, he saw gray beasts swiftly scattering.
Realizing that they were retreating, Varkas lowered his gaze to the heavy body lying on the ground.
It seems this one was the alpha.
When wolves lose their leader, they quickly lose their structure and collapse.
He drove the sharp spear point into the ground and moved toward the place where a tent had fallen in order to check the damage.
Between broken poles and piles of sand-colored fabric, he saw a furry black beast lying collapsed. As he bent down and examined the wolf corpse whose heart had been pierced, a light voice with a frivolous air came from behind him.
“You are holding quite the noisy welcome ceremony from your first day back in your homeland.”
When he turned his head, he saw a man with only one loose coat draped over his bare upper body. He was a warrior of the Barakan clan. The man drove the poleaxe he was holding into the ground and gestured toward the forest with his chin.
“Shall I have my subordinates track them?”
“We cannot divide our forces right now. First, handle the damage and strengthen the perimeter.”
“There is hardly any damage to speak of. They only took one packhorse.”
The man kneaded the nape of his neck with one hand and answered carelessly.
“One half-baked youngster who held his coming-of-age ceremony this year was injured a little, but fortunately, there were no deaths.”
Varkas straightened his body.
The sunlight that had risen brightly at some point illuminated every corner of the ruined campsite.
He calmly looked around to gauge the exact damage, then turned his eyes back toward the man.
“Clean up the campsite. We move before beasts drawn by the smell of blood gather.”
“As you command.”
As the man turned away with relaxed steps, Varkas also moved toward the center of the campsite.
His pupils passed over the soldiers struggling to calm the excited horses and the servants clearing away the broken tents.
He passed them and walked toward the water container placed beside the large tent.
On the clear rainwater collected the day before, a ghostly pale shadow was reflected.
He looked down at it for a moment, then scooped up water with his hands and washed the blood from his face. The lukewarm water gave a faint stimulus to his skin.
Roughly wiping it away, he brought his hand to the tip of his nose and smelled it.
The fishy smell of blood faded, and a faint watery smell rose.
He could not tell which smell was better.
Smell was the first sense he had regained. However, he still could not connect the stimuli delivered to his brain with emotions.
He could distinguish the type and intensity of the stimuli he sensed through his nose, but that did not lead to like or dislike. He merely distinguished what gave others a good impression from what did not through learning.
And according to what he had learned, the smell of blood especially made people feel unpleasant.
He carelessly removed the stained armor, threw it to the ground, and checked his shirt.
Fortunately, no bloodstains were visible. But there might be some other unpleasant smell soaked into it that he could not perceive.
He turned toward his own tent to change clothes.
At that moment, he spotted a quarter-dwarf pacing anxiously in front of the tent located in the center of the campsite.
Varkas approached her without delay.
“What is it?”
It was a rough voice that sounded foreign even to his own ears.
The woman, too, sent him a frightened look as if startled.
“S-since earlier, Young lady has not been seen…”
For an instant, tinnitus rang in his ears.
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