Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Novel - Chapter 561
Chapter 561: Destination (1)
The goddess had given an oracle in the form of a prophetic dream. It detailed how I would die in the near future and at the hands of the expedition group whom I was starting to believe I could trust.
Ba-dump!
The heart of the warrior drummed a loud beat in my chest, sensing danger.
However, I calmly verified one thing first. “Are you sure?”
“…Pardon?”
“Are you sure that you saw me die? In that dream.”
This was quite the cliché in modern media. You know, things like this happened pretty often. They would show the actor getting shot in the trailer, but the movie would then show them wearing a bulletproof vest and the story would end happily.
“I’m not sure.” In this situation, where certainty was of utmost importance, he still responded carefully. “But no matter how many potions were used on your body, the potion didn’t have any effect.”
The potion didn’t work… Hmm, that was going to be troublesome.
Am I…really going to die…?
To be honest, I still couldn’t believe it. My mind merely fell into chaos.
What do I do?
There was one method I thought of immediately. Just like how I fooled Amelia’s older sister, how about I fool this guy as well? However, a question also arose in my mind.
If the prophecy could be avoided that easily…would it have been given to him as an oracle?
No, but how would a situation like that even come to pass? Wasn’t it the mission of the expedition group to take me back alive? Damn, why did I have to hear about this so early in the morning?
“…Lord Baron!”
While I was furiously going through my options, Parav quickly shook me.
“Didn’t you hear me? Now’s not the time to do this. You need to run away, quickly.”
“Run away…?”
“The goddess also told me this. She said your destiny is not yet written in stone. It is up to us to determine what our future holds.”
To put it simply, it was a future I could avoid depending on what effort I put in.
“Why…are you telling me that only now…?”
“Uh…? I-I don’t know…?”
Hah, you should’ve said that first.
Now I could understand why other people abused this guy so much.
In any case, not being written in stone yet probably means it’s something related to the Records Stone…
I quickly wrapped up my assessment of the situation. Reatlas was one of the three main gods of this world. If such a goddess was saying that I could change the future, then it must be true. That changed the story a little.
What the-this wasn’t serious at all.
So in a way, I just had a temporary red light on how my fate progressed, or something like that. I understood that misfortune might come my way, but if my fortune could be changed, it could be avoided.
“Thank you for telling me that. However, I will remain here,” I sternly refused Parav’s suggestion of running away immediately. It was for quite a simple reason. “I will deal with this problem myself, so you can just keep talking. Everything you saw in that dream, tell me in detail.”
Nothing ever got fixed by running away.
***
When I returned to my allies, Amelia came to talk to me.
“You looked pretty serious during that. Was it an important conversation?”
“Not really. It wasn’t much.”
As I brushed her off, Amelia didn’t ask anything more, instead just quietly shutting her mouth and glaring at me before she whipped around.
…Was she angry at me? I was trying to be nice and not make her worry before I had thought through everything in my mind.
In the end, I couldn’t help but tell her about this as well, but I still said it in a roundabout way, uncharacteristic of a barbarian.
“Emily, if I suddenly am in danger of being executed by the commander, what will you do?”
She looked at me like I was spouting some nonsense at first before her jaw clenched. “Are those guys…scheming something like that?”
“I’m not sure yet. So, what’s your answer?”
Amelia responded as if I was asking something obvious. “I’ll stop them. Even if I had to give my everything.”
“Even though they have more than a hundred people?”
“Didn’t you hear me? I’ll stop it with everything I have.”
I could hear the deep sense of determination in her voice.
Yeah, so that is your answer…
Although I was thankful, it left an undeniable bitter taste in my mouth. This problem wouldn’t end with just my death. If such a situation came to pass, all the people around me would get swept up in it.
…Should I have just run away?
That thought intruded on my mind, but I quickly shook it away. Running away here might even cause things to go even more awry.
Let’s just watch the situation for now. I still have time until that happens.
I had two pieces of proof that I still had some time left derived from everything Parav had told me about what he saw in that dream.
One: The location was an island.
From the description, I figured it would take place on the chief’s island. Since we weren’t there, it wouldn’t happen yet.
Two: It wasn’t during the rainy season.
In other words, my safety was guaranteed for at least the next few days.
Three: For some reason, Erwen had short hair.
I would be able to anticipate when this would happen by paying attention to that.
Also, it wouldn’t be too late to run away after I thought more about this.
“Embark!”
Afterward, the expedition group left Library Island and got on the boats. Squad 4 didn’t board our usual boat and was instead distributed among the three military vessels, as that would give us a much better chance of surviving the rainy season at its heaviest.
It’s pretty intense since it’s only the third day.
Sure enough, monsters were falling from the sky. The ships themselves had defensive magic circles inscribed on them being supplied with mana by dozens of wizards, of course, so the monsters weren’t impacting the vessels at all.
Boom! Crunch! Thud!
The monsters collided with the barrier and fell into the ocean and their blood dripped down the sides of the barrier.
“It’s not as tricky as we expected. Ebost! What is our mana usage? Is it as expected?”
“Yes! We currently have no problems!”
The three ships cut through the silver waters and sailed forward.
Most of the monsters smashed into the barrier and fell into the ocean, but not all of them. A few ocean monsters persistently chased after us, and the flying monsters obstructed us from the air.
“Graaaaaah!”
We even had a case of a Hipramajent appearing from below the water to grasp the boat.
“It’s a Mobilus!”
We also encountered a super-large type rank 2 ocean monster. However, none of them caused any trouble for us since the ship was made for combat.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The dozens of mana cannons installed on the ship resounded repeatedly to cut the way forward. These ships also had a mana propulsion system of an entirely different level from our boat, so it was always on at maximum capacity to accelerate the vessels forward.
“Emaze lula kini pitia!”
The wizards used the magic circles inscribed on the boat itself to fire attack magic.
Crack! Creak! Creak!
The ice crusher installed at the helm to traverse through frozen oceans simultaneously activated to grind up all the small monsters getting in our way.
…How much would a boat like this cost?
It was completely different from the military vessel I had boarded for the Dark Continent expedition, though I supposed the ship’s purpose was different from the start. That was a boat created to transport as many individuals as possible, but this ship was made solely for naval combat.
Six hours, twelve hours, eighteen hours…
And so, it was around a day’s travel since we left Library Island.
“Commander! We can see our destination!”
Our destination revealed itself.
***
On the hundred-and-eighteenth day since we entered the labyrinth, we crossed through the heaviest part of the rainy season and arrived at Chief Island, all without a single casualty.
With that, there was only one decision we had to make.
“Count Saintred, what shall we do now? Are we going to disembark and enter the island?”
We still had three days left until the rainy season was over. I could tell that the peak had already passed and the strongest monsters weren’t dropping as often anymore either.
“No. Until the moment the rainy season is over, we will wait here.”
Jerome decided we should stay on the boats. After experiencing the rainy season firsthand, he apparently concluded that going out onto land at this point was dangerous.
You know, you should’ve just trusted me from the start.
“So wouldn’t it have been better if we came out after the rainy season like I suggested?”
“There is no guarantee we will be able to leave this place soon. If we have to someday cross through the rainy season as we had just done, I reasoned that experiencing it first when we are most ready for it is better.”
Well, if he said it like that, I couldn’t retort. He had experienced it now, so he would be able to make the correct decisions even in an emergency.
“Also, one of the missions of our expedition group was to investigate this floor. We need to experience as many things as possible to relay the records to the palace.
Including everything that happens during and after the rainy season.”
So he said, yet I couldn’t help but feel this was suffering for nothing. Still, I figured a soldier’s perspective was different from most’s. This expedition group even had a separate knight who was in charge of recording all our battles.
Then I guess we’ll weather the storm until the rainy season is over…
Because of that, Erwen became an important factor. If her hair remained the same even after the rainy season, it would mean that the prophetic dream wouldn’t come to pass yet.
“Erwen, are you planning on cutting your hair short any time soon?”
“Pardon? I like how it looks right now…but if that’s what you want, M-Mister, I’ll—”
“What are you talking about?! I like long hair! Don’t even think about cutting it! Got it?”
“Eh…? Ah…okay! I’ll never cut it!”
Alright, with that, she probably wouldn’t cut it of her own volition. Even if my hair burned off and I had to become bald, I needed to keep her hair safe.
“Oh!” I heard Ainar shout. “Bjorn, so you’re that kind of guy?”
What was she talking about?
I smirked at her nonsense, but Amelia was looking at me with a serious expression for some reason.
“Hmm, I didn’t think you would be the type, Yandel.”
…Did I need to explain myself here?
I didn’t know, but when I met eyes with Raven, she let out a dry cough before twiddling her curly hair that extended down to her chest.
“Mhm…!”
Ah, whatever.
They could think whatever they wanted to. It wasn’t that important, anyway.
I had a lot of things I needed to be thinking about as well, so I didn’t want to waste my attention on something like this.
“I’m going to sleep for a bit, so don’t disturb me unless a rotation order is given.”
With that, I returned to the quarters to not be disturbed and reclined on the bed with my eyes closed to think.
From what I can tell, they didn’t come here under an order to kill me…so why would I suddenly get executed?
Just how could something like that happen?
I think it’s probably related to the village chief…
I didn’t have any proof, but that was the possibility that came to mind first. I was still suspicious of the chief, a sneaking suspicion that he had a method of stealing the body of another person like an evil spirit could.
If he has an ability like that…something like that happening is definitely possible.
There were even two paths to getting to that scene: Either Commander Jerome Saintred gets his body taken, or…
My body gets taken.
Both of those situations could lead to the expedition group executing me, which meant there was one thing that I needed to do.
How do I stop a situation like that from arising?
I assumed the worldview that my hypotheses were correct to try and find an answer.
He said that Erwen had short hair…
So what if I just shaved her head? Then would that scene not happen?
…That’s probably not how that works.
I had already heard that the goddess said the future could be changed. I was sure that the difference in hair length would indicate some major turn of events.
Something.
Yeah, something…
Something that could cause a bigger change.
Flash!
Suddenly, my head thundered from the brainstorm as I realized that in a certain light, I could be making this more complicated than it needed to be.
In the prophetic dream Goblin had, Jerome Saintred was the one who killed me…
So wouldn’t everything be fine if I just got rid of him?
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