The Snow Mountain Yeti was an apex predator in the Northland snow mountains. With a size so massive that even the biggest Greenskins look like children in comparison, and the ability to turn the harsh snowy environment to its advantage, these Yetis typically lived in groups. Only someone as battle-crazed as a barbarian warrior would dare engage with them lightly.
In the past, when Khan was heading to the Midland continent after passing the warrior’s trial, encountering a Snow Mountain Yeti led him to a desperate flight.
‘I remember running non-stop for almost a whole day back then,’ Khan thought. Although the nature of the snow mountains made it hard to track time, there was no doubt that he had fled with all his might to avoid a confrontation.
“Roarrr!”
“You’re noisy.”
Thinking back to those days, Khan found his current situation quite touching. Now, he was attempting a one-on-one battle with the leader of a Snow Mountain Yeti pack and was managing to hold his own.
In less than a decade, an ordinary office worker had become a formidable human weapon.
“Haha! You’re incredibly strong!” Ashuk, who had been struck by the Yeti, promptly got back on his feet and charged once more. Khan couldn’t help but chuckle at their sheer bullheadedness.
“Aarghhhh─!”
Perhaps taking Khan’s laugh as a taunt, the Yeti leader pounded its chest and leapt high into the air. The sight of such a massive creature, equal to a five or six-story building, floating in the sky was surreal, yet Khan wasn’t fazed.
If it had been the Khan of old, encountering a Yeti for the first time, he might have wet his pants in fear—but not anymore.
『Leap』
‘Not anymore.’
Khan launched himself into the air, countering the attack. With his war hammer ‘Giant Slayer’, he struck the Yeti’s leg. The satisfying sound of bones breaking echoed as the Yeti let out a chilling howl, whether from pain or rage, as it swiped at Khan.
The enormous hand covered Khan’s entire form, obscuring him from view. In mid-air, Khan couldn’t evade the massive hand. As the Yeti squeezed, its hand engulfed him, attempting to crush him to death.
“Roar!”
The Snow Mountain Yeti leader was one of the rulers of the Northland snow mountains for over a decade. Naturally, it had plenty of experience fighting barbarian. Contrary to the green bipedal creatures, the gray ones were smaller and weaker but highly resistant, making them the toughest to hunt. The one trapped in its grasp was undoubtedly the leader of the gray creatures.
The Snow Mountain Yeti leader intended to finish off its prey here. Despite how troublesome these gray creatures were, they couldn’t match its strength.
“Urgh?”
But no matter how hard it squeezed, there were no satisfying sounds or sensations of crushing from the gray creature. Puzzled, the Yeti looked down at its hand.
What it saw was astonishing. The prey, which should have been dead by now, was holding its arms out, resisting the pressure. Then something even more incredible happened.
“This is just ballooned muscle.”
Crack!
“Ow!”
With almost no resistance, Khan forced the Yeti’s grip open. Despite the Yeti leader’s desperate effort to apply full strength, it made no difference.
Swoosh!
Khan freed himself from the restraint and struck the Yeti’s wrist with his war hammer, then twisted in mid-air, mimicking the ‘throw’ skill he lost upon acquiring the Dragon Fang. His war hammer struck the Yeti’s exposed chest with full force.
“Let’s see if that thick hide is just for show.”
Like drawing back the string of a bow, Khan pulled back his right arm. All his muscle power, reaching superhuman levels, concentrated into a single point. The surrounding snowfield seemed to distort around him.
At the moment when fear first dawned in the Yeti’s red eyes,
Boom!
The sound was like thunder.
The impact from Khan’s punch was so powerful it dispersed the blizzard momentarily, causing minor avalanches from the accumulated snow. The Yeti who had leaped at Khan fell from the sky like a comet. There was no need to check the result.
『You’re becoming more of a monster day by day.』
‘And you’re becoming more of a chatterbox.’
Khan rebuked the spirit that unnecessarily commented as he landed on the dead Yeti leader’s abdomen. While the effect of the Leap skill cushioned his landing, to a bystander, it looked as though he defied gravity.
『Do you think you look like a normal human being? Look at those shocked eyes.』
Khan frowned as he looked down from the Yeti’s corpse and saw the large, round eyes of the Three Idiots staring at him in awe.
“Oh, Karyan…”
“A new Great Warrior is born!”
“You fool, Amal. The Great Warrior is still alive!”
The reactions weren’t limited to the Three Idiots. The blizzard had briefly cleared from the impact of Khan’s strike, and even Maya, who had just finished slaying a Snow Mountain Yeti after a hard-fought battle, was staring at him, dumbfounded.
The snowstorm quickly resumed, blocking visibility again, but it did nothing to ease Khan’s discomfort.
『One who soars alone must bear solitude. Given your unnatural growth, how many of your current companions will stay by your side?』
The words from the spirit sounded like a mixture of a jeer and advice, prompting Khan to snort.
‘So what.’
He wasn’t inclined to probe into why the spirit was spouting nonsense. He figured it right—it must be recovering forgotten memories, becoming slightly unstable.
『Well, time will tell.』
Ignoring the spirit’s ominous smirk, Khan retrieved the Giant Slayer embedded in the Yeti’s chest.
With two of the Three Idiots taking down two Yetis, Maya handling one, and Khan himself defeating the leader, the battle concluded. The commotion was likely enough to scare off any other monsters in the vicinity.
‘They seem pretty exhausted too.’
Khan noticed Maya’s and the others’ worn-out appearances. Deciding it was best to set up camp right there, he started preparing for the night.
“Are we really sleeping here?”
Alejandro’s face turned pale as he heard Khan’s decision. Sleeping in the open, surrounded by nothing but snow and a raging blizzard was more than he could take.
“We’re not just going to sleep in the snow. Watch.”
Even Khan had no intention of enduring unnecessary hardships on this hellish march.
While Maya, Eson, and Alejandro watched him with puzzled eyes, wondering what he was up to, Ludmilla, still under a magical invisibility spell, stepped forward and snapped her fingers.
“Whoa!”
Eson stumbled back as a chunk of ice suddenly erupted from the ground. But it wasn’t over yet. In an instant, a circular wall of ice rose around them, closing off with a ceiling, plunging them into darkness.
Ludmilla snapped her fingers again.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
In the next moment, several small lights flared up from the ground. These were the first appearance of the ‘hand warmers,’ small magic stones purchased in bulk from the Georges Principality and personally inscribed with spells by Ludmilla.
“It’s warm.”
Maya remarked, touching one of the hand warmers with her fingertips, eyes wide with astonishment.
The heat radiating from the small red stones wasn’t overly intense, but holding one felt pleasantly warm. With a dozen or so scattered around, the interior started to feel comfortably warm.
“Bring out the Hydra hides.”
Everyone except the Three Idiots handed their allotted Hydra hides to Khan, who laid them out over the ground cleared of snow, placing the hand warmers beneath. This created a makeshift yet very effective insulated bed.
With the hand warmers exuding gentle heat and the well-insulated hides, the makeshift shelter quickly turned into a surprisingly cozy and warm environment, a stark contrast to the raging blizzard outside.
“Now we rest here. Get some sleep and regain your strength. Tomorrow will be just as harsh, if not harsher.”
The group settled in, grateful for the respite, and drifted into an unexpectedly restful sleep amidst the blizzard, readying themselves for the challenges that awaited them the next day.
Despite their efforts, the blankets weren’t enough to completely cover the ground, so they used the ones acquired from the port city to fill in the gaps.
“Wow, this is amazing. It’s actually pretty warm.”
Alejandro remarked.
“When camping, laying down hot packs is part of common sense.”
As always, the others paid little mind to Khan’s cryptic comments and found their spots. When Khan opened Aecharis’s pocket and handed out thick sleeping bags, they accepted them with grateful eyes.
The problem wasn’t just preserving supplies; lugging all those items around in this extreme environment would quickly wear them out. In this context, Khan’s ability to store items in a subspace bordered on cheating.
They newly appreciated it.
“Get as much rest as possible, and when we move, it’ll be in forced marches. Ludmilla has agreed to allocate her mana to this, so manage yourselves well if you want to keep enjoying nights like these.”
“You got it, boss! We’ll fight our hardest!”
Alejandro responded enthusiastically, snuggling into his sleeping bag. The residual chill tickled his face, but soon the heat from the ground climbed steadily, creating a comforting warmth. It felt even cozier than sleeping in a mansion in the city.
‘This is awesome….’
Such an experience was a stark contrast to the hardship they expected, making it all the more precious.-Alejandro quickly grew drowsy from the chill brushing his face and the warmth enveloping his body.
And he made a firm resolution. Never again would he attempt the foolish task of climbing the snow mountain without Khan and Ludmilla.
***
A crimson carpet stretched over the snow-covered mountains of Northland.
Everywhere, bodies lay in a macabre display, blood pooling and splattering the pristine snow. The most disturbing detail was the eerily uniform cuts on the corpses.
“Goddamn it…”
The one responsible for turning the white snowfield into a slaughterhouse, Leniyar, disciple of the Swordmaster, muttered curses hundreds of times under her breath.
“If I catch him, he’s dead. For real this time…”
Grinding her teeth, she turned her frustrated gaze on the hunters of Eiwass.
“Hey! Can’t you block the wind properly? Do you want to end up cut to pieces like these?!”
“…The power of spirits isn’t limitless. Now that we’re far from Paradise, using it recklessly means we won’t have enough when we actually need it—”
“You think you’ll be fighting? I’m the one who’ll slice them all up. Shut up and do as I say.”
The venomous rebuke carried such lethal intent that the elf who had spoken up to Leniyar flinched. He reluctantly summoned a wind spirit to control the surrounding gusts.
“Finally, it’s bearable…”
At last, Leniyar’s anger subsided, and she slumped onto a corpse. The burns sustained during her fall stung continuously, and the biting cold of the snow mountain felt like it was scorching her face. Just when she thought the pain couldn’t get worse, swarms of monsters kept attacking, triggering an explosion of her repressed rage.
“Well… we’re all stuck in this hellish environment anyway.”
Her fury didn’t last long. Despite her volatile nature, her swordmaster’s discipline helped her quickly regain composure.
‘Actually, this might be an advantage.’
Even though the barbarian group had a mage, most mages were more concerned with powerful spells and often relied on magical tools for minor inconveniences. Even if they knew such spells, they’d probably run out of mana first.
In contrast, they could use spirit magic to efficiently control the surrounding environment. Although the biting cold persisted, it was at least bearable with the spirits’ aid.
So…
“Let’s see who can last longer, you damned bastards…”
With a sense of grim determination, Leniyar swallowed her anger, convinced that the enemy would suffer just as much.
***
“Ahh─! Now that was a real good night’s sleep! Thanks to the boss, I feel completely refreshed!”
TL’s Corner:
Poor Leniyar, well, ignorance is a bliss.