When the snow began to fall, Malmari seemed a little cold too.
So Dawi made him a tent stable out of Bighorn hide.
He had heard that there used to be many buffalo on the American continent in the old days,
and it seemed Bighorns were just as common in this region.
Thump! Thump!
Dawi lightly tapped the top of the tent with his shotgun.
Then the snow piled along the slope came pouring down.
Dawi gathered the fallen snow and packed it firmly onto the floor of the dugout he had excavated.
Each time he stepped on it, it made a crisp crunching sound.
He had not yet dug the tunnel large enough to call it a storage room,
and the cold was not severe enough to freeze the lake completely, so his underground freezer was still unfinished.
Grrrrowl—
When his stomach sent him a signal, Dawi headed to the cornfield.
He picked his day’s share of twenty ears of corn and returned.
Crackle. Crackle.
He placed three ears of corn skewered on branches over the campfire,
and stacked the rest neatly beside the house.
The piled-up corn was something Malmari munched on whenever he got hungry,
but since twenty ears were harvested every day, the heap grew quickly.
After turning the corn over once above the campfire, Dawi headed to the lakeshore.
There lay the fish trap he had thrown in.
The bait was a piece of Bighorn meat.
Inside the trap, three fish with glittering silver scales were flopping about.
Those creatures with silver scales were called “silver trout” in this other world.
“Hmm…”
After pondering for a moment, Dawi released all the silver trout back into the water.
“I’ve got plenty of meat, so I’ll let these guys grow bigger.”
Dawi threw the trap back in and, this time, headed for the drying rack woven from branches.
Several chunks of meat, drained of blood, were hanging there, all of them Bighorn meat.
Since he had been trying to obtain hides, he had hunted several Bighorns,
and there was too much meat for him to eat it all.
The days were growing colder, but even so, meat was bound to spoil if left for too long.
Quite a lot had already begun to rot and had been thrown away.
Dawi discarded the spoiled meat a little distance from the lake,
and it seemed the wild animals came and cleaned it up completely around there.
He picked up one chunk of meat, skewered it on a branch,
and began roasting it over the fire.
Sizzle—
Fat dripped down, spreading a savory aroma.
While the meat cooked, Dawi held the roasted corn and chewed it.
To be honest, the corn did not taste very good.
At first, he had eaten it with gratitude, moved that even this was precious food,
but it had almost no sweetness, nor did it have the chewy texture of Korean waxy corn.
It was probably a variety originally used as livestock feed.
Dawi finished the corn and tore into the Bighorn meat.
This time it was the rib meat, but his expression was still not bright.
“Mm…”
When he had first eaten it, he had been impressed by its rich, nutty flavor,
but after eating it every day, it had become greasy to the point of being unpleasant.
The silver trout was the same.
As befitting creatures that lived in cold water, they were rich in fat and overflowing with oil. At first, he had found them savory, but now that taste felt greasy.
“Salt… I need salt…!”
Dawi lamented for no reason, holding the meat in his hand.
“How delicious would this be if I could just sprinkle some salt on it?
Or garlic, chili peppers, or even kimchi…!”
But this was another world.
Its level of development was only about medieval,
and even that had nearly collapsed due to the zombie outbreak.
There was no way for Dawi to obtain salt or seasonings.
If he wanted to find them, he would have to abandon this place and set out on a long journey.
But Dawi could not leave this ranch.
The only crops were twenty stalks of corn,
and the only thing that could be called livestock was Malmari…
But this place was undoubtedly his ranch.
Gulp—
Swallowing the meat, Dawi sprang to his feet.
“All right, let’s go.”
He grabbed his shotgun and shouted.
“It’s bear hunting time!”
.
.
.
Dawi had been roaming the mountains, searching out the caves of brown bears in advance.
The bears had fattened up and grown large, and their movements had slowed just as much.
By now, they would either have entered hibernation or be just about to fall asleep.
“Malmari! Let’s go!”
“Prrr!”
Dawi took Malmari and descended the mountain path.
Soon, in a crevice where two huge boulders overlapped as if interlocking,
there was a cave.
Around it, animal bones lay scattered here and there.
Click—
Dawi broke open the barrel of his shotgun and checked that it was loaded.
Two slug rounds. Perfect.
“Good.”
He slightly drew the rusty axe at his waist,
preparing it so he could pull it out at any time, and left Malmari standing behind him.
As Dawi slowly approached the cave,
a low growl leaked from within.
“Grrrrrr…”
The bear noticed the approaching presence and gave a warning sound.
But Dawi did not back down.
Having spent two months here, he had already faced wolves and snow leopards.
Driving them off with his shotgun, he had completely made the area around this lake his territory.
The bear, too, recognized Dawi as the same kind of “apex predator.”
As Dawi slowly approached despite the bear’s growl,
the bear finally burst out of the cave.
“Gwooooooo!!”
The brown bear roared, kicking up snow.
It raised its forepaws high, but it had grown too fat to hold the posture for long.
Soon, it lowered itself, panting for breath.
Dawi took aim with his shotgun, watching the bear’s movement.
Bang!
“Gwooo!”
Because the bear charged in with a roar, the slug round grazed its head and lodged in its shoulder.
Thud!
If it had been a person, the impact would have sent them flying,
but the bear paid it no mind and charged straight in.
Dawi rolled his body to avoid the bear’s claws,
then fired the second slug round toward the bear’s side.
Bang!
“Grrooo!”
The bear’s side burst open and blood flowed, but it was not over yet.
Clack!
Dawi quickly broke open the barrel,
and summoned two slug rounds between the fingers of his left hand.
The two rounds were sucked into the two muzzles as if drawn by magnets.
Over the past two months, Dawi had trained hard in shooting.
In particular, “quick reloading” was his killer technique.
To overcome the weakness of a two-shot double-barreled shotgun,
that was what he needed most.
And now, the results of that training shone.
He closed the barrel and raised it again.
Clack!
In an instant, the reload was complete.
The moment reloading ended, the bear made its final charge.
“Gwooooo!”
Dawi calmly pulled the two triggers in succession.
Bang! Baaang—!
The two slug rounds pierced the bear’s skull.
The bear’s massive body collapsed to the ground.
Thud—
“Phew…”
Dawi caught his breath, feeling the pain pressing down on his shoulder.
“As expected, firing them one after another puts a bit of strain on the shoulder…”
The recoil from firing slug rounds in succession was beyond imagination.
Still, it was better than when he had once fired both barrels at the same time.
Dawi cautiously approached the bear
and took out the rusty axe.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
Dawi skinned it with practiced hands.
By now, it was something he had become completely used to.
A few days later,
Dawi’s outfit had been upgraded another level.
A shaggy beard,
a bearskin vest that also served as a cloak,
wolfskin arm guards and leg guards,
a scarf made from a snow leopard’s tail.
And still, on his head, a single cowboy hat that did not match the outfit at all.
A wild man by a small lakeside halfway up the Allos Mountains.
That was Dawi.
***
Crunch. Crunch.
With the sound of stepping on snow, five knights were climbing the mountain.
“What thunder are they even talking about?”
“Dwarves are always like that. Spirits, druids… they believe in all sorts of nonsense.”
They were on their way to confirm the “source of the thunder” the dwarves had spoken of, under the baroness’s orders.
The knights were bundled in Bighorn hide clothing to ward off the cold.
If they wore something like full plate armor in winter, they would be perfectly suited to freezing to death.
Of course, Bighorn hide clothing was also quite precious.
After all, it could only be obtained by hunting strong and ferocious Bighorns.
“This isn’t even marching training. What a pain…”
Someone grumbled.
As they rested for a moment and looked down beneath the snow,
the Snowhill territory was visible between the branches of the mountain range.
“It’s our territory, but its location really is strange.”
A small basin located between the mountain ridges that split in the shape of the Korean letter ㅅ.
“Exactly. The river’s short and the current’s fast, but there’s a river anyway… With the North Sea in front and the Allos Mountains behind, it’s an ideal fortress for defense.”
“No one covets our territory in the first place, so what defense… If anything, our territory is trapped between the mountains and the sea.”
“Still, that’s why we survived.
If the mountain range hadn’t been there, zombies would have poured in from the southern plains.”
“That’s true…”
“Now, let’s move diligently. We still have a long way to go.”
The knights urged their steps onward again.
It was impossible to climb the stone mountain where the dwarves lived directly.
It was a mountain so high that its summit was covered in perennial snow.
So to reach the rear of the stone mountain, they had to climb along the mountain range and go around the stone mountain in a wide circle.
However, almost no one knew the terrain behind the stone mountain properly. Because of the beasts filling the mountains and the ruggedness of the path, no one had ever bothered to go behind the stone mountain.
The knights thought the rear of the stone mountain would also be full of stone… but in truth, the back side of that stone mountain had the shape of an ordinary mountain covered in conifers, and halfway up that mountain was a small lake. And at that lake lived the very cause of the thunder.
“Right. Let’s walk quickly. Ah, and everyone stay alert. You never know when wolves or snow leopards might leap out.”
At the senior knight’s words, the knights took up their swords and rose.
Crunch—
The sound of stepping on snow continued along their footprints.