I wanted to dive straight into that forest and tear out their throats.
The “instinct of a beast” that wanted to rip out their entrails and build a tower from their bones dominated my entire body.
‘Kill them. Kill them all.’
My heart began pumping as if it would burst.
Veins bulged in the hand gripping my axe.
But.
“Varg… get out of here…!”
The fallen Gorgon grabbed my sleeve and whispered with difficulty.
His eyes.
The eyes of a father who would save me, even at the cost of his own life.
In that moment, a crack formed in my vision, which had been dyed red.
Reason grabbed instinct by the scruff of its neck.
‘No. If I fight here, I might win, but Father dies.’
I gritted my teeth and firmly shut my mouth, which had been about to roar.
And instead of my axe, I stretched my arm toward the fallen Gorgon.
In a flash!
“…What is this?”
Gorgon had no time to be bewildered.
I lifted his massive frame—towering at 230cm—as effortlessly as I had lifted Kara last night, in a princess carry.
“Hold on tight. You’ll bite your tongue.”
“H-Hey! What kind of undignified act is this…!”
“Here we go!”
Instead of charging at them, I turned around and began sprinting across the snowfield.
Boom!
A blizzard kicked up with every stomp of my feet.
The Bloodfang bastards, belatedly grasping the situation, shouted.
“Shoot! Don’t let them get away!”
Shooooosh-!
A rain of arrows poured down behind me.
Stinging pain embroidered my back.
One arrow.
“Kgh!”
Two arrows.
“Varg!”
Ten arrows.
Each time an arrow lodged in my back, flesh was torn away.
But I didn’t stop.
Rather, I became faster.
“Berserker’s Blood.”
The power that had existed since my first memory, the strength that had let a three-year-old body snap a wolf’s neck.
Pain is my sword.
It becomes my shield.
Flowing blood becomes lubricant.
The more arrows pierced me, the harder my leg muscles became like steel, and my speed outpaced the wind.
‘Shoot more, you bastards!’
I ran, biting down hard.
Arrows stuck in my back?
‘It makes my blood boil even more!’
Holding Gorgon, I ran frantically across the snowfield toward the tribe, my body turned into a hedgehog of arrows.
That day, the Winterclaw tribe was turned upside down.
The blood-soaked Varg returned with dozens of arrows lodged in his back, carrying the chieftain in his arms.
But the man himself, with a perfectly unscathed face, set down the chieftain and growled as he pulled out the arrows embedded in his back one by one.
“Out of the way! The chieftain is in critical condition!”
The moment I entered the settlement, my roar sent the Winterclaw tribe into an uproar.
“C-Chieftain!”
“Those are Bloodfang Tribe’s arrows!”
The tribespeople couldn’t hide their shock at the sight of me running in covered in blood while carrying the chieftain.
But I didn’t stop.
I pushed through the crowd’s murmuring and headed straight for Grandma Baba’s tent.
“Grandma! Grandma Baba!”
I threw open the tent flap as if tearing it and went in; Grandma Baba, who had been grinding herbs, opened her eyes wide.
“What in the world happened! And why is your father in such a state!”
“It’s an ambush. The poison of a Frost Viper! Hurry!”
I laid Gorgon on the animal hide.
His face had already turned dark blue, and black foam rose at the corners of his mouth each time he took rough breaths.
“Tsk, you foolish man. You’ve really gone and caused a disaster.”
Grandma Baba clicked her tongue but moved quickly.
She took an antidote from her waist, poured it into Gorgon’s mouth, and applied crushed herbs to the wound.
Only then did my tension release and my legs feel weak.
Thud.
The moment I was about to collapse right there.
“Dad…!”
The tent opened, and silver hair fluttered.
It was Kara.
She ran in with a pale face and knelt at Gorgon’s side.
“Dad! Wake up! Dad!”
“Step back, Kara. He needs to rest now.”
Grandma Baba stopped Kara.
“I’ve stopped the poison. He’s always been tough, so he won’t die.”
“Sob….”
Only then did Kara seem relieved, grabbing her father and bursting into tears.
Then suddenly, her gaze turned to me.
“…Varg?”
Her sky-blue pupils widened.
My condition was miserable.
Broken arrowheads were embedded in my back like a hedgehog, and my whole body was soaked red, mixed with my blood and Gorgon’s.
“You… your body….”
Kara’s gaze swept over my entire body.
Clearly fatal injuries.
A state where an ordinary person would have already collapsed from shock.
Even Dad Gorgon was poisoned by a single arrow.
But from my body, a bizarrely fierce vitality was surging out instead.
Kara’s eyes trembled.
She remembered.
The past, the day the two of us went hunting and were cornered by a snow bear.
Even then, he had slaughtered the snow bear alone.
The savagery that grew more ferocious the more he bled, burning stronger the closer he came to death.
The current Varg was exactly the same as then.
A life that should clearly be in danger, yet a savagery that burned even brighter.
‘He’s exactly the same as then.’
But if there was a difference….
Rustle.
Instead of words, Kara pulled me into an embrace.
My wounds stung where they touched, but no scream came out.
Through our touching bodies, the vibration inside me was conveyed intact.
An uncontrollable rage that wanted me to turn around right now and tear the Bloodfang bastards apart.
But the moment Kara held me tight.
Like a lie, the red fog lifted.
Instinct subsided, and reason found its place.
“You idiot… why go this far….”
“I promised… didn’t I.”
I spat out blood-mixed saliva and grinned.
“I said I’d protect my family.”
“……You are family too, you know….”
Only then did tears burst from Kara’s eyes in a flood.
“Thank you… thank you so much, Varg. For saving Dad… for not coming back alone….”
Kara’s hot tears soaked my shoulder.
I patted her trembling back and felt relief.
I protected it.
My future.
And my bride.
But there was no time to indulge in sentiment.
“Tear the Winterclaw bastards apart and kill them!”
The roars of the Bloodfang bastards were heard from outside the tribe fence.
They had ridden their momentum and invaded all the way to our main camp.
“They… dare to come here!”
Kara wiped her tears and stood up.
Her sky-blue gaze had already shifted from grief to cold killing intent.
“Varg. Can you fight?”
“Of course.”
I answered as I pulled out an arrow lodged in my back with a crunch.
“I’ve been bursting to let loose.”
We nodded at each other.
Now that Gorgon had fallen, only the two of us could protect the tribe.
“Everyone, combat stance!”
At Kara’s shout, the Winterclaw warriors raised their weapons.
The snowfield became a scene of carnage in an instant.
“In the name of Lady Sandra! Execute the traitors!”
The Bloodfang bastards were filled with madness.
They denounced us, who sought to interact with the Empire, as “corrupted traitors” and charged.
Chaeng!
Kang!
Axes clashed, and fresh blood splattered across the snowy field.
I swung my axe and traversed the battlefield.
My body’s condition wasn’t normal, but rage made me forget the pain.
Puaak!
“Kuaaack!”
Their heads burst like watermelons from my axe.
But throughout the fight, a sense of déjà vu revolved in my head.
‘This isn’t a simple rampage of fanatics.’
That ambush I felt in the forest earlier.
And the poison arrow precisely aimed at Gorgon.
This wasn’t a strategy they were capable of with their intelligence.
Suddenly, the red illusion that had flashed when Gorgon fell struck my mind again.
A déjà vu, as if I had stolen a glimpse of the future, or as if I were reliving something I had once experienced.
In that future within the illusion, I didn’t exist.
The world that should have originally flowed, without the variable called me.
In the first red illusion I saw, Gorgon had gone hunting alone and been miserably assassinated.
And the red illusion that now flashed before my eyes was not Norheim swept by a blizzard.
A strange city with cold gray bricks stacked in layers.
There, Kara as an adult was muttering to someone with empty eyes.
『The mastermind who killed Father and drove the tribe to destruction…』
『The ruler of the North, the Grand Duke of Norsgard.』
Kara moved her blood-stained lips and spat out the truth in a voice full of resentment.
『The one who tried to make us his slaves by granting us the name “Wintersword”…』
『He orchestrated this. If it weren’t for you, our tribe would be by now…』
Flash.
The eyes holding the illusion overlapped with the sunset of reality.
The puzzle pieces clicked into place.
He had orchestrated this political assassination to use our tribe as chess pieces amid the chaos, to control us with bestowed favors in the absence of a chieftain.
But could I be sure?
Was it merely a hallucination born from my boiling blood?
‘No…’
There was no evidence.
There was no physical evidence either.
Only my instinct bore witness to a future that never came to pass.
‘How dare… he think to use us as mere tools?’
My teeth ground together.
The price for touching my family would be severe.
“Varg! Watch out!”
Then, Kara’s scream reached me.
I snapped to attention.
Amid the melee, a hidden killing intent was felt behind Kara.
It was different from the Bloodfang bastards.
One who approached like a shadow without even making a sound.
An assassin.
‘That bastard!’
There was no evidence for this either.
There was no time to think.
I threw the axe in my hand.
Shuuuung-!
The axe cut through the air and flew behind Kara.
And.
Kwajik!
“……!”
The head of the dagger-wielding bastard aiming for Kara’s neck was split exactly in half.
Blood and brain matter scattered behind her back.
Kara looked back with surprised eyes.
And she saw me standing beyond him.
I shouted, heaving for breath.
“Don’t let your guard down, Kara! Exterminate their seed!”
“……Understood!”
Kara gripped her sword properly again.
“So they can never lay a hand on our family again!”
With her shout, the Winterclaw warriors charged ferociously.
That day, the snowfield was dyed red.
The Bloodfang Tribe suffered a blow close to annihilation and fled in defeat.
Our crushing victory.
In the middle of the snowfield, a man was kneeling with his hands bound.
The chieftain of the Bloodfang Tribe, Dred.
Kara stood before him.
In that instant, my vision flickered red once more.
The tiresome illusion.
Kara within the illusion was covered in blood.
In one hand was Gorgon’s severed head, and the sword in her other hand was aimed at Dred’s heart.
『Speak. Why did you kill my father?』
Kara, with dead eyes, was asking as if screaming.
But.
“Speak. Why did you try to assassinate my father?”
The real Kara asked coldly.
She held neither her father’s severed head nor a blood-stained sword.
And above all.
“……”
Behind Kara and me, Gorgon stood with his arms crossed, silently watching his daughter and son carry out the execution.
Father, standing on his own two feet having overcome the poison.
A reliable pillar watching over his children, the future chieftains.
The illusion shattered, and reality returned.
Kara grabbed Dred by the scruff and shook him.
“Speak! Who ordered this!”
“Kekeke… I merely tried to execute Gorgon, who betrayed Lady Sandra and tried to leech off the Empire!”
Dred cackled with bloodshot eyes.
“The spirit of the great snowfield wolf, Lady Sandra, commanded it! Destroy the corrupted Winterclaw!”
I looked down at him from the side with my arms crossed.
I listened carefully in case the name of the Grand Duke of Norsgard came out, but only fanatical nonsense came from the bastard’s mouth.
‘He doesn’t seem to know.’
It probably wasn’t a cover-up.
That stupid bastard really didn’t know.
Not even the fact that they were being used as the Empire’s chess pieces.
“Lady Sandra… Lady Sandra…!”
Kara let go of the bastard’s scruff as if disgusted.
“Fanatics like you aren’t worth talking to anymore.”
She looked down at Dred coldly and snapped.
“Where was that great Lady Sandra when the Gate opened and the demons poured out?”
“Wh-what…?”
“In the end, it wasn’t a god who protected this land, our homeland. It was your ancestors and ours, humans who bled to protect it.”
At Kara’s sharp rebuke, Dred’s eyes rolled back.
He foamed at the mouth and screamed as if having a seizure.
“Shut up! You blasphemous bitch! Imperial whore! Lady Sandra will send divine punishment upon you…!”
“There’s no need to ask more.”
Kara turned her back on him without a shred of regret.
And she gave me a brief look.
“Varg.”
That was enough.
I silently raised my axe.
“Go to the great Lady Sandra’s side.”
Sruk-!
With a dull sound, Dred’s head rolled across the snowy field.
A long trail of red bloodstains was smeared across the snow-covered snowfield.
It became the signal flare heralding the beginning of a long war.
For the two years that followed.
The Winterclaw tribe entered into total war with the Bloodfang Tribe.