Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Novel - Chapter 600
Chapter 600: Third Record (3)
How could I describe the current situation? For now, I was sure that it wasn’t something like Terror or Frenzy. However, I wasn’t in a normal state of mind either.
Ba-dump!
My heart felt constrained for some reason.
“Wh-what?! Are you thinking of hitting us with that-?!”
“Gahuin, shut up. I’m trying to think.”
It felt as if a filter had been removed from my mind. Intrusive thoughts continued to bombard me, escaping my mouth in the form of words before I could contain them.
“Sorry, Erwen,” I said gently. “I wasn’t trying to scare you.”
“I-it’s fine! I didn’t get scared.”
“…Sure.”
The moment I thought I should apologize, the words tumbled out before I made the conscious decision to speak. Why was this happening?
It’s probably a field effect.
While there was no telling what exactly we had been affected with, it was highly likely that it was a type of mental debuff.
“And it’s going to get stronger as time passes.”
Hmm, that was probably it.
I was fine when I first came here. My mental state had since degraded during the time we spent talking at the start point.
“And this grandpa is the same as well,” I said again to myself.
Gahuin did a double take. “G-grandpa?”
“Ah, sorry. I wasn’t supposed to say that out loud.”
“Just what’s going on inside your head? Why did you suddenly slam your head into your own hammer? And these things you keep saying—”
Ah, so annoying. “I’ll tell you, so be quiet.”
I resisted the urge to hit him over the head with the hammer before we continued, but I barely held back, using all my patience.
“Something is wrong with my head,” I explained. “I constantly get impulses, and they become stronger as time passes.”
“By impulses…what do you mean?”
“They keep changing.”
“You could at least tell us an example—”
“I feel like I want to beat you over the head right now.”
Gahuin immediately grew frightened and took a few steps back, stopping as he seemed to realize something. “Then the reason you smashed your head onto the hammer…!”
“That’s right. I felt that maybe it’d get better.” Honestly, the method worked. My mind blanked from the shock, and it gave me a moment to look back at myself.
“But it looks like you have a problem with your head as well.”
“…Are you talking about me?”
Gahuin reacted as if he was completely innocent, but I was nearly certain he had a problem as well.
Although he was a bit of a hard-headed old man, he wasn’t someone who would keep crossing the line like this. Even when we had that disagreement in the past, he came to a logical, decent conclusion on his own, and then went to me to apologize.
“Erwen, looks like you’re pretty normal…” I observed aloud. “So you tell me. Does that grandpa look normal to you right now?”
“No… Something’s off.”
“There you go, like she said.”
Erwen hesitated, then added, “To be precise, I think there’s been a change to his emotional state somehow.”
With Erwen backing my opinion, Gahuin couldn’t do anything but accept the assessment. Even then, he protested, “But it’s not to the point that I would cause problems. I’m not getting any impulses to hit people like the baron is!”
Well, that was good to hear. But if he continued to react like that and raise his voice, he wasn’t going to be helpful at all.
“In any case, we can be sure that at least two of us here have a problem.” I turned to the other party members. “Count, archbishop. How about you two?”
They confirmed that while it would be difficult to say they were normal, their condition wasn’t so bad that they would outwardly show it.
“Hmm, then is it just simply a difference of spirit ability?” I mused.
The village chief was a monster who had lived for thousands of years, and the archbishop was a devout member of the clergy. It wouldn’t be odd if their spirit ability was higher than mine.
Or maybe the strength of the debuff differs by role.
The evidence backing that hypothesis was Erwen. As the one who had received the role of Witch, she was the only one not being affected by the debuff.
Talking to myself, I said, “We’ll need to move quickly.”
“Quickly?” Gahuin interjected again for some reason. “Are you saying we shouldn’t try to fix this problem and just move on?”
“Yeah.” It wasn’t like we had something else we could be doing. Since it wouldn’t get better just by taking a rest, getting our move on would be the”I really can’t believe you! What are you going to do if we continue on and one of us loses it and attacks someone?!”
“Don’t worry. I have a solution for that.” I didn’t even need to test my theory.
“Wait…why are you picking up your hammer…?”
Ah, that?
“Since you’re raising your voice, it looks like the problem with your head is getting worse… Oh, you’re quiet again. I guess your mind did return.”
The hammer could control the people.
***
One day, two days, three days, four days…
We continued down the path into the canyon. Unlike the Great Demon Realm of the fifth floor, the monsters here were at least rank four or above, but the battles themselves weren’t too difficult. If we got even a bit injured, our unlimited reserve of divine power could heal us.
Crunch!
My strikes as a mercenary were lethal even to high-ranking monsters.
Slash!
There was nothing that needed to be said about the village chief’s fancy aura usage either.
Piling Gahuin’s ancient magic on top of that along with Erwen’s ability to charm monsters into becoming her servants, the battles were pretty easy.
Well, that only went for the battles.
[Control decreases.]
As we continued down the canyon path into what looked like purgatory, we didn’t say a single word. It was a rule we had established yesterday. We were forbidden from talking about anything that wasn’t directly related to clearing the chapter.
There was a saying that “every word you speak is a seed.” To put it another way, if no words were spoken, there would be no opportunity for troubles to sprout.
“How long are we going to keep up this charade?”
But with how large the world was, there was bound to be at least one person who was dissatisfied with the arrangement-not that it was that big of a problem to deal with.
“Lord Baron! I don’t think doing something like this is—”
I sucked in a sharp, whistling breath as I raised my hammer with a furrowed brow, and the wizard regained his senses as if he’d finally come to.
“S-sorry. I overreacted due to this damn curse… I’m truly sorry. I won’t do it again—”
“This will be your final warning.”
That clammed him up for a second. “Understood. I’ll be careful.”
Maybe because of the beating I gave him yesterday, the rate at which his mind returned to him was faster now. However, aggressive words ended up slipping out of my mouth too.
“Don’t just be careful—do it right. Is it that difficult to just shut up and walk?”
“Um… Mister…?”
After a moment, I said, “I overreacted as well. I’ll close my mouth now.”
Hah, this was why we banned talking. With how impulsive and sensitive everyone was at this point, removing all stimuli was our utmost priority.
I’m gonna lose it.
It was driving me nuts.
My Aggression would leak out if I lost focus for even a moment. It made me wonder how the village chief and the archbishop could be so calm. Even if I could understand the village chief being able to, the archbishop didn’t seem like a mentally stable individual either.
“Mister! It’s that flower!”
“It was my turn this time, right?”
The moment Erwen pointed to a place, I quickly ran over and picked the flower blooming at the edge of the cliff and put it in my mouth.
The reason was simple.
[Control increases slightly.]
Consuming this flower helped ease the mental debuff we were experiencing.
Also, I was the one who discovered this fact. I found it suspicious how I kept seeing it every so often, so I fed it to Gahuin.
“Mister, are you okay?”
“Thanks for your words,” I said, deliberately taking it slow, “but try not to talk to me right now. I can’t take anything positively in my current state.”
“Ah…sorry.”
Thinking about it, Erwen was pretty amazing as well. Before she erased her last essence, this would have been how she felt at every waking moment”Uh? Everyone, wait a second!” Gahuin shouted and stopped us. “Below! Can you hear that below us?”
“Now you’re hallucinating as well…” I let out a sigh.
However, the village chief stopped me. “Lord Baron, lower your hammer for a moment. Sir Versilus is speaking the truth.”
What the— Did he actually hear something?
I glanced at Erwen to get her confirmation, but she only shook her head. It seemed that she wasn’t able to hear anything due to her stats being decreased so much.
“Focus. You should be able to hear it as well, Your Lordship.”
Listening to the village chief, I closed my eyes and focused, and there was indeed a faint sound drifting in the wind.
[This way…]
Something was calling to me as if whispering.
“We finally found something.”
It might have frightened off someone else, but to me, this was very welcoming. I had suffered far too many days here already. I wanted to clear this chapter now and get out of here.
“What should we do?”
“It’s obvious,” I stated. “We should go check what it is.”
Gahuin didn’t oppose this time. That grandpa was probably also wishing this chapter would end as quickly as possible.
“Follow me.”
As I increased the pace, the sound coming from below grew clearer.
[Good…]
[Come here…]
[What a pretty soul you have.]
I didn’t like that we needed to keep moving forward as if possessed, listening to those spooky words, but it couldn’t be helped. If that were a sub-boss or the actual boss, we would need to defeat it to do anything else-
“By the way, Lord Baron…”
At that moment, someone called for me.
“Have you ever thought about serving something else other than the spirit of your ancestors?”
Surprisingly enough, it was the archbishop who spoke this time, not Gahuin.
I couldn’t help but laugh. I was wondering how he was able to hold on so well until now, but it looked like this old man was reaching his limit as well.
“Trying to evangelize to a barbarian—you understand how rude that is, right?” When he didn’t respond, I added, “But given the circumstances, you don’t have to make any excuses. I didn’t get that mad either.”
Since he was doing well until now, I tried to brush this off without giving him much trouble. Yet even as I did, the archbishop only stared at me, his smile taunting.
Maybe that was why…
I was a step too late in noticing the change.
My voice…
I couldn’t speak. It felt as if something was halfway in my mouth and blocking the sound from coming out.
When I looked around to check on the others, I noticed that I wasn’t the only one having this problem.
The surroundings went quiet. Too quiet.
Not just because the group couldn’t talk anymore. No, even the sound of breathing, the sound of footsteps. Even the winds that had been blowing all this time.
[This way…]
It was a complete silence except for that unknown voice.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The instant I realized this fact, a quiet chanting began to accompany the thumping I could hear under my feet. The vibrations coming up from below the cliff grew stronger and stronger.
The other party members stood frozen, speechless as their mouths gaped open and closed without sound. They appeared to be saying something, but I couldn’t hear them.
Turning, I approached the edge of the cliff and looked down.
Boom!
An endless darkness extended into the beyond. I couldn’t see anything yet.
Boom!
But soon enough, that appeared from the darkness, looking up at me with its frightening eyes as it climbed up the cliff face.
Uh…
As soon as I met my eyes with it, my body froze like stone. I couldn’t understand.
Boom!
Before we entered this place…
Boom!
The wizards who investigated the portal said that a rift would be beyond the portal…
[You have entered the area of Nullification. All essence skills are sealed.]
[Giantization is canceled.]
So why was a Lord of the Floor here?
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