Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Novel 2025 - Chapter 534
Chapter 534: Rainbow (1)
We ran with all our might along the main path from the chief’s house to the entrance.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
With Giantization still active, each step shook the earth like we were in a construction zone, but I didn’t really care about what the residents thought. Now wasn’t the time for that.
“(F-fire…!)”
“(Bring water here!)”
They were too busy trying to put out the fires anyway. There wasn’t a single person here who would care about a barbarian stomping along the way.
Oh, I guess they weren’t people?
Just as I was about to slip into the same thought I had multiple times at this point, a question interrupted me.
“Will this be okay?” Versyl asked as she sat atop the traditional wizard-exclusive vehicle, Ainar.
“What do you mean?”
I couldn’t understand what she was talking about, but Versyl only looked behind her. Flames had erupted from the center of the village and the smoke from it was consuming everything.
“There were many residents of the village who weren’t warriors…”
Ah, she was more soft-hearted than I thought. She was still looking at those fishhead monsters with sympathy.
“So?”
Once my tone gave off clear “I’m busy, don’t talk to me anymore” vibes, Versyl shut her mouth.
“Um…”
Yet for some reason, Missha took up the baton.
“Why did you do that, Bjorn…? This isn’t like you…”
Not like me?
It was already my second time hearing that today.
“Yeah! I’m curious too! What did you see down there to make you do this?”
Ainar joined in on Missha’s question. Even with lowered Aggression, maybe she still had the barbarian’s curiosity.
Human corpses.
If I answered with that, that was technically everything I saw down there.
The chief had shown me those corpses while explaining to me how he ended up with them, and he wanted to resolve my misunderstandings with that. There wasn’t a problem up to that point.
However…
“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?”
He told me that he would overlook Amelia’s trespassing and how I broke
Nuiachichi’s head as well.
Wasn’t that a little weird?
Hans A, my first night companion, had said something like that.
“Fortunately, we didn’t have any problems while you were sleeping, so I’ll leave it as it is.”
In any case, the lesson I learned back then was engraved in my bones.
If someone that I didn’t know showed kindness to me, it was because they had something they could drain from me in return.
And there was another lesson I learned through experience.
“Why?! Why did you harm Lady Elisa?! What did we do to you?!”
While smacking the Karui Priest Elisa whom I met in the labyrinth, who was acting like an ordinary priest, upside the head, I learned something new: The answer to dealing with suspicious people was to crush their head first.
However, I didn’t feel the need to explain all this to my allies, though it wouldn’t be impossible for me to give my logical reasoning to explain my points.
“Please tell us. What did you see down there that you’re doing this?”
I replied, “Nothing much.” Just like how I did with the chief back then, just saying this one thing was enough. “I just wanted to.”
It was a phrase without any proof to back it up.
Hearing that, Missha quietly mumbled, “A feeling…was it?”
A gut feeling, that subconscious calculation that takes into account all the experiences I had ever had.
“A feeling!” Ainar seemed satisfied with that answer and nodded. “Oh, then it can’t be helped!”
Erwen also smirked and agreed. “You’re pretty spot on for things like this, Mister.
We’ve survived more than a handful of times specifically thanks to your feelings.”
“Well…there’s probably a reason you got that gut feeling. Honestly, I was a little wary of the chief as well,” Versyl said, adding one more thing.
Wyatt Hektz and Myul Armin, who were running beside us and listening in, also gave their opinions. Well, it wasn’t like these guys were with me for long, but still.
“Hearing you say that makes me at ease.”
“You are quite famous for your beastly instinct, Baron Yandel.”
They seemed to trust my judgment. After all, most adventurers didn’t care about many things if the result was fine, and adventurers were weak to superstition like everyone else.
“Something was off with all these guys.”
“Honestly, this makes me feel better. I wasn’t able to sleep a wink because I was so on edge.”
“Also, when you have a feeling like that, it feels even worse to ignore it when it could be a premonition. What if you are right?!”
“Ah…I understand that feeling. Every time something like this happens and you ignore your gut feeling, you always end up in a worse position.”
It seemed everyone had sensed something amiss with the monsters as well.
Still, it wasn’t like I answered like that while expecting such a response.
“Let’s go!”
“Those damned monsters! Burn them all!”
For some reason, everyone was motivated and our morale improved. They seemed to truly believe that this was the right choice, almost as if that one thing I said erased everyone’s doubts.
Even though I still wasn’t completely sure myself.
“…You guys are funny.”
I ended up saying that without realizing but they seemed to have heard me.
“You’re the funny one, Yandel. You convinced everyone with something that wasn’t even funny.”
Uh, what?
This voice…
“Now that I think about it, you were always like this. You had a talent for it. To make everyone believe that the way you were going was the answer…”
“Emily?” When I quickly looked back, Amelia was looking back at me while being carried on Auyen’s back. “You should’ve said something if you were awake. When did you wake up?”
“Just now.”
“How are you feeling? Are you alright?”
“I’m fine.” Amelia immediately got down from Auyen’s back and started running herself. “I got the gist of the situation. We’re trying to escape from this village, right?”
“Yeah.”
She sighed. “You caused quite the incident while I was asleep. Tell me in detail.
What happened?”
Since this wasn’t a conversation we could take time on while sipping tea, I gave her a brief summary of the important parts.
“The chief showed me what was under the house, but I felt like he was scheming something, so I hit him over the head. And while running away, we set fire to the village. The chief is probably chasing after us through the fire.”
I relayed everything I needed to about the situation.
Amelia went speechless for a moment before finally speaking. “…That’s just like you.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. Now that I thought about it, this was probably the first time today that I heard that I acted like myself.
“Anyway,” I said with a laugh still in my voice, “it’s now your turn. What happened to you?”
“I tried to go down into the basement but ended up getting discovered and captured. I was interrogated, and it ended with that.”
Hmm, was that so? I wanted to ask her just in case, but she didn’t give me any additional information. Not that any additional information would change our current situation.
“Mister, we’re almost there!”
The real challenge would begin here.
Just like Noark, this village was built underground. The only way to get into the village was through the entrance gate.
“What do we do now?”
The door was closed, so all we could see was a stone wall. Only the chief could open or close the door.
Well, officially, that was.
“Step back.”
As I approached the wall with my hammer, our wizard Versyl asked, “Will that… even work?”
This was why academics weren’t cut out for jobs like this.
“I’ll know if I try.”
I swung my hammer against the wall as hard as I could.
[You have cast Swing.]
Boom!
The shock was enough to kick up all the dust covering the area around me.
However, the wall looked completely fine.
“…I don’t think that worked.”
Yeah, so that wasn’t enough. An embarrassment for a barbarian.
“Don’t worry. I have a way,” I assured.
“A way?”
“Yeah.”
Whether it be magic, skills, or any other nonsense, there was nothing in the world that couldn’t physically be broken. And if something didn’t break, it was because you were weak.
With that, I initiated Plan B.
“Erwen!”
Time to hit it even harder.
[Erwen Fornacci di Tersia has summoned the Elemental Ruler of Darkness, Dicloe.]
Bang, bang, bang!
Hundreds of balls of darkness slammed into the wall. However, the wall was still fine.
Ok, so this wasn’t enough as well?
Looks like Swing won’t be able to do anything.
Every time a ball of darkness struck the wall, it was chipped and dented a little, but its regenerative property seemed pretty significant, as the stone wall immediately recovered itself. It looked like something that needed to be hit with one big attack rather than many small ones.
“Erwen.”
There was no need for me to give out a long order. Once I called her name, light began to gather around Erwen’s arrow.
Yeah, nothing’s better for a one-shot attack than Concentrated Fire.
The downside was that it would take quite a long time for her to fully charge it up.
One second, two seconds, three seconds…
As time passed, the color of the arrow became ever deeper and fiercer.
“Yandel.”
“You don’t need to tell me. I can see it as well.”
From the direction of the fiery and smoke-filled village, something was quickly approaching us. At first, it looked like a small dot, but as it became larger, it didn’t take long for us to see its complete form.
…So you aren’t going to just let us go, huh?
Well, he was still here later than I expected, so I wasn’t going to complain.
“Ready for battle!” I roared as I went up to meet him.
Clang!
The moment I lunged behind the shield that was covering my upper body, that
“something” that had been charging toward us made contact with me.
Fwoosh!
Dust was blown off to the side as if a bomb had gone off.
At that moment, our ranged attackers began to fire their attacks—debuffs, wind spears, fireballs, arrows, energy blasts, and so on. Since they were cast by experienced adventurers, the projectiles flew in a straight line toward their target.
Unfortunately, however, none of the attacks landed.
Flash.
The spells disappeared in a flash of light before they even hit his body. In a sense, it looked similar to the Nullification used by Orcules’s captain, but there was a big difference.
I could use my skills while fighting him before.
So if it isn’t the essence of silence…
There was only one skill that had a similar function.
Tol-Lapupa.
It was the skill of the rank one monster Tol-Lapupa: Cosmic Protection. It was one of the cheat skills that completely negated all ranged attacks. On top of that, since Cosmic Protection was a passive skill, I wouldn’t know how many active skills from the Tol-Lapupa the chief had.
I didn’t expect him to have a rank 1 essence.
Even as the pressure against my shoulders grew heavier, I first gave the order to stop the ranged attacks. Any more attacks would only decrease our MP.
…His MP should decrease relative to the damage negated as well.
Still, since this wasn’t a fight I wanted to drag out, there was no point trying to drain his MP. Even more so when thinking about how we were the ones who needed to fight through all those monsters after getting out of the village.
“You were later than I expected, village chief.”
So I started talking. Being able to buy even one second for free would be for our benefit.
“Someone needs to clean up after all of you.” Oh, I didn’t actually expect him to reply. Still, it seemed the chief wasn’t going to give me any more free time. “It’s raining outside, so where are you going off to in such a hurry?”
“Ah, well, it’s too stuffy just staying in the village the whole time.”
“Stop now. I’m saying this for your own good.”
“For my own good?” I replied with a smirk.
The chief dropped his reply as if giving us his final warning. “It’s not too late. If you stop now, I will overlook everything that happened today.”
Those words would’ve been oh-so-sweet to hear if I were a rat who had been driven into a corner. However, his answer only gave me confidence.
I was honestly worried that I’d made the wrong decision.
But I wasn’t wrong.
He was here telling me, the guy who had smacked his head in with a hammer and burned down his village, that he was going to forgive me.
There was no way that someone like that would be normal.
It was so out of the ordinary, in fact, that if I didn’t decide to run away today, it wouldn’t be odd if something were to mysteriously happen to me in the future.
“Could I take a moment to think?” I tried to buy more time while acting like I was contemplating the option.
However, the chief also seemed to have caught onto my act. “Do you…take me for a fool?”
Uh… “A little?”
“…I will count down from three. Decide within that time.”
“Three is too short. Go with four.”
The chief didn’t reply and just began counting.
“…Three.”
Well, I guess I still bought some time with that. I wasn’t going to let him count down all the way anyway, so it didn’t mean much.
“Two.”
Dash.
Just as the chief was about to shout one, I charged forward. There was still quite some time left until Erwen’s skill was fully charged, and if a fight was unavoidable…
Let’s try it.
I wanted to give it my best shot and see it from the viewpoint of a veteran who had played this game for nine years and had experimented with all sorts of combinations. I wanted to see how strong this character that I invested so much time into was.
“Behell—aaaaaaaaah!”
And what its weaknesses were.