Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Novel 2025 - Chapter 533
Chapter 533: Escape Plan (6)
Ba-dump!
Even as my heart began to race, my mind went cold and still.
Corpses.
They were human corpses.
And while showing me this pile of corpses, the chief spoke to me while standing right behind me.
These corpses were the secret of his village.
Ba-dump!
Even as a cold sweat ran down my back, I collected my thoughts as calmly as I could.
The chief could have simply told me he didn’t want to show me, yet he had gone out of his way to bring me here and show me. He probably also wouldn’t do something like tell me since I knew his secret, I needed to die here.
“What are these corpses?” I said coolly.
“You’re calmer than I expected.”
“You should have a reason for showing me this.”
Of course, there was still the possibility that he lured me here to eliminate me.
However, from what I could tell, that wasn’t the case.
“You’re quite intelligent. It’s as you say. I felt that if I showed you this place, I could resolve your misunderstandings a little.”
“Misunderstandings…”
With that, I scanned the basement one more time. It truly was just filled with mountains of corpses.
However, one thing was definitely suspicious.
It felt odd to notice, but somehow, the number didn’t add up. Even killing everyone in the Silver Lion Clan wouldn’t amount to this many corpses.
“So who are these people?”
“I don’t know.”
“…What?” I blinked at him, silently asking him what he was scheming this time.
The chief slowly started to explain himself.
“In truth, you aren’t the first adventurers who came to this island. Some people appeared before you.”
“But why act like we were the first ones you ever encountered?”
“Ah, I should say that first. I wasn’t acting as if you were the first ones.”
Was he playing with semantics here?
I furrowed my brow, and the moment I went to retort his words, the chief said, “You were the first alive adventurers I saw.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s as it sounds. The corpses here were like this when I found them. Their bodies were mangled, and they died with their arms connected to their legs. And no matter how much time passed, they didn’t rot away. It was as if time had stopped for them.”
“So you picked up these corpses during the rainy season?”
“No, that’s not the case. ‘Picked them up’ isn’t the wrong expression, per se…but their falling from the sky was unrelated to the rainy season. The intervals between falls were much longer.”
The chief bent over and picked up the head of one of the corpses on the ground.
He then looked at the half-rotten head and spoke with his emotionless voice.
“Ten to fifteen years when short, and thirty to forty years in between when long.
Corpses like this fell from the sky. And I suspect that it could be related to dimensional collapses.”
“Dimensional collapses?”
“That’s right. The cycles are similar, and one of the journals we were able to recover from one of these bodies had something about a dimensional collapse written down.”
He pulled a notebook out from his clothes and handed it to me, explaining that I only needed to read the last page. That, along with something about the other pages being so damaged that it was difficult to read them.
I opened the notebook to the last page and read what was written there.
The entire world is crumbling and twisting. I think I understand why so many veterans called it a calamity. This wasn’t anything like a disaster.
Mulk died. Illiya died. Sir Swalki died, and Lady Kwiliane died as well. And I… I probably won’t last long either.
No, I’ll definitely survive and return. I have a duty to relay the words they have left behind.
It was the adventuring journal of someone who passed down the words of their resolve before they died.
I understood why the chief chose dimensional collapse as the main culprit. It was quite intriguing that the last record in the notebook was about a dimensional collapse.
Of course, that was that and this was this.
“So why did you put all those corpses in the basement here?” I pressed. “And why did you keep it a secret from us?”
“That part of the story is a little long.” As the chief waved his hand, the monster warriors around us quickly retreated.
I mean, they can’t even speak our language, so why did he send them out?
Despite the burning question, I didn’t ask him.
“These corpses meant a lot to me. With their existence, I could tell that time was flowing in the outside world, and through the records that sometimes appeared, I could hear about the things happening outside as well.”
“So?”
“I began researching. Trying to find if there was even a hint of a clue to escape this damned place. However, my expectations were met with disappointment. I tried everything I could, but these corpses were just regular corpses. Time just didn’t flow for them.”
And so, with this final attempt of trying to get these corpses out of the labyrinth to make his existence known to the outside world failed, the chief stopped his research. He then gathered all the corpses and stored them underground.
He had given up because he lost his motivation, but he held onto them just in case he could one day find a use for them.
“And then, you all came to the island. After having given up everything, you were my final hope.”
“So you decided to hide the fact about the corpses here?”
“You were wary of us because of our monstrous appearance to begin with. If I showed you the corpses as well, I thought you would be overtaken by your misconceptions. Even if I had been the one to bring it up in the future, I would’ve done so as carefully as possible.”
However, Amelia ended up infiltrating this place and saw the things here, and he ended up having to tell me the whole truth.
That was the story in summary.
“Did that answer your question?”
“Who knows.”
It wasn’t totally unbelievable. However, I also couldn’t deny that there were a few parts that I wasn’t satisfied with. The fact that he wasn’t surprised when I talked to him about the outside world, the fact that he knew time flowed, and so on.
If this story was true, then most of the questions I had about him would be resolved right here…
But it feels like the pieces were forced in just well enough to barely make sense.
Come to think of it, there was a fundamental principle true to all worlds: The best way to hide the full truth was to tell only a select few truths.
His response also didn’t answer my biggest initial question either.
“Then do you have nothing to do with the Silver Lion Clan’s disappearance?”
“That’s right. From the start, what reason would we have to harm them?”
Hmm…what could I do now?
It would’ve been so much easier if he just backstabbed me and I could respond with “I knew it” and fight him to the death.
The situation had become quite complicated.
Do I just trust him, or not?
I thought for a short moment, but the answer came to me quickly.
There’s no way I can trust him.
There wasn’t anyone in the world you could trust except your allies.
Alright, well, that’s done then.
What I needed to do in the future was clear to me as well.
“Since this is also something we hid from you, I won’t ask you to take responsibility for your ally going against the rules of the village or the ‘mistake’ you made because of that. How about it?”
Hearing the chief trying to mend this over nicely, I responded with a loud laugh.
No, to be precise-
“What a relief. I’m glad we could sort everything out.”
“Yes. For your misunderstanding to be… Huh?”
While smiling, I swung down with my hammer.
Bang!
An intense impact resonated through my hand as the hammer struck him on his head.
The wound created from this made him bleed all over the place.
At long last, the chief showed emotion for the first time.
“…Why?”
He was too calm for me to call this rage, but he was too lively for me to call this sadness either.
He looked at me with eyes filled with questions, and I responded.
The fact that there were many parts of the story that I couldn’t trust or the fact that it felt like he was wasting time here.
I got an intense feeling that if I gave him more time, he would end up stabbing me in the back in the end.
There was no reason to say such illogical things to him, though.
Just this one phrase was enough.
“I don’t like how you look, that’s why I hit you. You got a problem with that?”
A barbarian didn’t need another reason.
***
Was the chief an ally or an enemy?
If he was an enemy, what was he scheming?
What was the truth and what were the lies among the things he told me?
Whatever the case, there was no need to consider those complicated questions.
With one swing of the hammer, that complicated story became a single clear one.
The chief and I now had a relationship that we couldn’t turn back from.
That was why I would kill him right here, and if I failed in killing him…
I’ll escape from this village with my allies.
What a clean solution.
However, the chief still asked me as if he couldn’t understand, “There isn’t a reason for you to make such an extreme decision.”
“Oh! Really?”
“You care for your allies dearly. However, putting them in danger with this action, it isn’t like you.”
I didn’t know on what basis he was speaking when he didn’t even know me for long, but I wasn’t planning on hearing him out.
“Behell—aaaaaaaaah!” I shouted my battle cry and swung down with my hammer one more time.
Boom!
Unfortunately, the chief wasn’t caught off guard and blocked my hammer with his sword. However, perhaps my intentions of not talking to him were relayed to him, as he responded with a low and cold voice, “You’ll pay for your wrong decision.”
Well, even saying that, he didn’t look cool with that fish head of his. Maybe he needed to take a look in the mirror.
While I couldn’t speak for him in that, I pouted my lips like a fish and mimicked him in a nasal tone. “Wah, you’ll pay for your wrong decision.”
For some reason, his response was a beat late. “…You have lost your mind.”
Hmm, I had no intention of going easy on him just because he praised me.
Clench.
After gripping my hammer with both my hands, I put more strength into my swing, and the chief’s sword started to be pushed back.
Since he’s being pushed back when we’re both using two hands, he loses to me in strength.
Perhaps coming to the same conclusion himself, the chief ended the strength standoff and tilted his sword to deflect my attack to the side.
Bang!
The hammer fell to the ground and slammed it with a bang.
Simultaneously, the chief’s sword started to glow with bright white light.
Vwoong!
This was the attack that killed the Hipramajent in one attack. From what I could tell, it was similar to aura.
But there are too many skills in the labyrinth just like this one.
Due to that, I couldn’t know for sure what the skill was, but that wasn’t my main concern right now.
[You have cast Iron Fortress. Evolving Shell’s effect has increased by 1.5X.]
[You gained 75% resistance to bladed weapons.]
It was still just a bladed weapon in the end, right?
Clang!
The sword that had cut through the Hipramajent’s head like tofu was blocked by my shield and was deflected.
I guess there’s a small dent now?
Yeah, as always, there wasn’t an opponent as scary as your imagination.
After experiencing his attack firsthand, it was pretty manageable.
Well, of course, it wasn’t like there were no problems.
Vwoong!
His Agility stat seemed much higher than mine as none of my attacks except for my first one landed on him.
[You have cast Eye of the Storm.]
Even while using Eye of the Storm, which was more effective in a smaller space, I only had a 30% chance of landing a hit.
Boom!
Even if I did hit him, he didn’t take that much damage.
I think his Resistance is pretty low… Looks like his Regeneration is pretty good, though.
The biggest wound I gave to him with that first attack had already completely healed itself.
Noticing that, I quickly changed my assessment of the battle.
I can’t kill him here one-on-one.
I gave up trying to kill the chief alone. With that, my course of action changed.
“Chief, do you know the two ways to make someone else angry?”
I first asked an unrelated question to disrupt his flow of thought. He looked at me in question.
Shatter!
When he began to consider my question, I pulled out the fire bottle from my subspace and threw it on the pile of corpses.
Fwoosh. Dash.
Then, I left the flaming pile behind and used all my strength to run up the stairs.
“Behell—aaaaaaaaah!”
It seemed everything was soundproofed nicely as there wasn’t a single monster warrior on the stairs, and I broke the ceiling behind me while running up the stairs to stop the chief from following after me.
Rumble, rumble!
They didn’t seem too proficient with architecture in this town. When I destroyed a few small parts, the entire underground chamber began to collapse like dominoes.
Boom!
I just shook off the debris and rocks that fell on me and continued to climb the stairs.
Bang!
Thirty seconds or so later, I broke through the trapdoor and escaped to the outside.
In the living room on the first floor, my allies and the monster warriors were on standby and had been waiting for me to appear.
“Something must’ve happened down there! We need to quickly go down—”
“(We need to check if the chief is okay—)”
The two groups stopped talking with their mouths gaping open as soon as they noticed me. The one who recovered their senses and spoke first was Versyl.
“Uh…Mr. Yandel? What is the situation right now—?”
Hey, can’t you tell just by looking?
I wanted to destroy everything, but I was sure the chief would be up here at any moment, so I didn’t even have the time to explain.
Anyone with a functioning brain cell could understand what was going on.
Crunch!
I shattered the head of the nearest monster warrior in front of me with my hammer as I shouted, “We’re escaping from this village right now!”