Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Novel 2025 - Chapter 537
Chapter 537: Rainbow (4)
Kalheum, the City of Light, was one of the rifts on the eighth floor, and in its final room would appear the Guardian of the Rift-Spearman of the Heavens, Milayel. I had no way of knowing why he appeared on a regular field like this, but to keep it brief, his most unique characteristic was that he used a numbered item even though he was just a monster.
That, and the drop rate of the Verdurous Giant Spear is 3 percent.
Although he dropped other numbered items as well, he dropped the single-digit Verdurous Giant Spear at a pretty high rate. It was the very reason why I had so many memories of killing this guy when I was growing my spear barbarian. In most cases, that weapon was the best spear to be used in a spear final build.
It didn’t hurt that his essence was pretty good as well.
Anyway, the real problem is why that guy is here.
As stated before, we were guaranteed to get a reward if we could kill him. It would be incredible if he dropped an essence, and the spear would be amazing as well.
However, the problem was in our current condition.
We can’t kill him.
I wasted no time coming to a conclusion. It wouldn’t be impossible for our full force to defeat him, but as it stood, the situation weighed too heavily against us.
I need to consider that our priests are already spent up…
Not to mention, our main damage source, Erwen, was also out of commission.
No, that wasn’t even all. Very luckily for us, we didn’t have any casualties in our group yet, but everyone was exhausted.
“Woof! Woof! Bark!”
“Gruaaaaaaah!”
Honestly, with that and monsters still roaming around us, we needed to be worrying about our survival rather than the potential rewards.
“Yandel, what are we going to do?” Amelia asked with a serious expression.
It wasn’t even a decision at this point. “We will charge toward the beach now.”
“Beach…? Ah, so we’re going to run—”
“We’re going to charge toward the beach.”
There was only one choice left to us.
But before that, we need to take something.
Even if we were going to run away, I had to decide what to do with that. I couldn’t just leave behind a rank 2 essence on the ground.
There’s no chance we’re getting it in a magic vial.
My desire to bottle it away was strong, but it was too dangerous no matter how I thought about it. Getting an essence into a magic vial took too long. The risk was too high that an accident might occur in the meantime.
We needed to put it into someone’s body, and then we needed to run.
But who do I feed it to?
It was a decision best made after thinking it over, but we didn’t have the luxury of time.
Bang!
I faced off against Milayel, blocking his spear with my shield, and shouted to the crowd behind me, “Myul Armin!”
Myul Armin-the captain of the Armin Adventurer Group, the leader of his clan, and a special adventurer who had the necromancer class which specialized in debuffs and curses. To be honest, leaving such a precious essence to someone who was practically a stranger to me felt like a waste.
“You will take the Man-Faced Bird’s essence.”
However, this guy was the best fit for it. Since he also seemed to have leveled up recently, he should have an essence slot as well.
There was a long, dazed pause. “…Pardon?” Myul Armin then asked, apparently thinking he misheard me.
“Did you not hear me? Hurry up! We don’t have time!”
“U-understood!” He quickly gathered his wits again and ran forward. Amelia ran alongside him, protecting him so he could get there safely. “I-is this really okay…?” he called. “I’m not even one of your clan members…”
Ah, what was this guy talking about now? I couldn’t even focus because the guy in front of me was trying to impale me with a spear.
“It doesn’t matter! Hurry!”
“A-alright!”
As I hurried him up, Myul Armin reached forward and absorbed the essence.
Alright, then we got everything we needed to…
After glancing to check that the essence was absorbed, I pushed Milayel as hard as I could to create some distance, then turned to give a new order to the group members. “What are you doing?! Assume the movement formation!”
There was no response.
“We’re charging head-on toward the beach right now!”
“What…?”
Really, were these guys not awake?
“Run!” I commanded.
“Ah, yes…! Everyone, assume the movement formation! We’re running away right now!”
Tsk, some respect for this barbarian baron.
***
Huff, huff…
I let out hot breaths as I ran.
Ah, of course, I wasn’t at the front this time but rather at the very back. When being chased by something, the back was the most dangerous place to be.
“I will not let you go, mortal.”
Just like in the game, this guy spoke like a real person. The issue was that he only said that one sentence and kept repeating it like a parrot.
Wow, how many times have I heard it at this point?
I had tested the limits a few times by running around while talking to it, but I was never able to get it to say anything new. Honestly, I couldn’t even tell if it even had any intelligence or not.
The monsters in the chief’s village definitely felt like they were self-aware.
Once again, I couldn’t help but feel struck by how unique the village chief’s village was. Honestly, most monsters were like this one behind me, even the Vampire Duke Kealunus in the Bloody Citadel. The Knight of the End I met in the White Temple also spoke like a person, but I wasn’t able to hold a conversation—
[Spearman of the Heavens, Milayel, has cast Return.]
Excuse you, I was still thinking here.
Fwoosh!
Hearing that dangerous whooshing sound from behind me, I turned around to block it with my shield.
Bang!
That damn spear. Every time I blocked it, I could feel my shield cracking in real-time, and since the weapon skill of the single-digit numbered item also applied here, the force of it was excruciating.
Well, I guess it’s not that bad since it’s only using one skill at a time.
To begin with, this situation had arisen because Milayel had the Guardian trait.
Guardians of the Rift had a set pattern to their attacks as well as specific triggers, such as taking damage or someone using equipment near them. As long as you didn’t set them off, they always repeated the same set of actions.
If it was a regular Titanus, I wouldn’t even be able to run away like this.
That didn’t mean that it was an easier opponent, however. That skill it was using in its first phase was nothing to scoff at.
[Spearman of the Heavens, Milayel, has cast Return.]
Return was a simple throwing skill that amplified damage dealt and guaranteed a hit with target lock-on. However, on top of those two traits was one that was more troublesome.
[Spearman of the Heavens, Milayel, has retrieved the Verdurous Giant Spear.]
After using the skill, no matter how far the projectile thrown was, it always returned to the caster’s hand.
[Until the end of combat, the strength of Return slightly increases.]
That, and it was a sort of stacking skill in a way, becoming stronger and stronger the more the caster used the skill.
Clang!
Because of that, my shield, which had blocked even the chief’s sword, was starting to be punctured.
Hah, and it was difficult to mend it here as well.
I only took a short moment to sigh while looking at the messed-up shield, then checked to see how the front of the group was doing. Although I was following from the very back, thanks to Giantization, it wasn’t too difficult to look over everyone, so I was able to see in front of them.
They’re moving pretty well.
I wasn’t expecting the formation to break nor for problems carving a path forward just because I wasn’t at the front. Rather, I was expecting them to do well, just like they were doing now.
But what was this feeling of loss I was feeling right now?
Whatever… I need to focus on what I need to do.
Ignoring whether anyone was appreciating my work or not was the way of the warrior.
And so, I continued to keep Milayel in check while repeatedly getting hit with the spear from the back.
“It’s the ocean!”
From between the dense trees, the cliff appeared, and as we jumped below it, we saw the beach we saw when we first came to the island.
[Spearman of the Heavens, Milayel, has cast Return.]
Wow, this guy wasn’t giving up at all.
The spear embedded itself into my shield and immediately disappeared into particles of light, then flew right back at me at a frightening speed.
Stab!
For some reason, however, I felt a surge of pain from my shoulder.
I thought I had raised my shield enough to block it…
“Agh—!”
But the shield already had so many holes that it had just flown straight through.
“B-Bjorn!”
“Yandel! Are you alright?!”
Missha and Amelia, who had been at the front, rushed back to me in shock. Versyl also tagged in for the priest who had bottomed out on divine power and took out a potion.
However, I refused everyone’s worry. “Later. We need to get the boat onto the water first.”
“But…”
There was still some time before the spear was fully retrieved, so I rushed through the people onto the beach first.
“Uh…”
“Ummm…”
“Are you…okay?”
The adventurers who had been carving the path in front of me looked surprised at my condition.
Well, it was less weird than watching a barbarian with a huge spear in his shoulder running past them.
Splash!
After quickly summoning the boat, I maintained my Giantization and scooped up the adventurers with my hand onto the deck.
After everyone got on the boat, I also returned to my normal size to get on, and we began to move as fast as we could by dumping our mana stones into the mana propulsion system.
[Spearman of the Heavens, Milayel, has cast Return.]
The spear flew in a final time and struck me in my abdomen.
“M-Mr. Yandel…!”
“Baron!”
Ouch, what the—
Even while clutching my stomach and bending over, I looked at the guy standing on the beach.
Yeah, I’ll remember your face…
“I’ll see you later.”
A barbarian never lets go of their grudge.
***
Swoosh!
We cut through the silver waves.
The boat was cramped with so many people on it, but no one complained. Just being able to sit down and rest was such a relief right now. Everyone was satisfied as they sat down to relax. Though a few of the adventurers had a dark shadow over their faces.
“One person died…”
During our escape off the island, one of the warriors from the Hektz Clan had died.
I sighed. Warriors were always the ones who died in times like this. It couldn’t be helped that I always felt a bitter taste in my mouth as a fellow warrior.
“This isn’t the right time to say it, I know…but it’s a miracle. It’s miraculous that only one person died.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” I conceded. “What’s the name of the one who died?”
“Shellyan Emerton.”
I remembered her face as soon as I heard her name. Although I hadn’t talked with her much in casual contexts, she caught my eye since it was rare to have a female warrior around.
She had always been smiling brightly.
“And her body?”
“We were able to retrieve it.”
“That’s good to hear…”
With that, I gathered the other adventurers and had a funeral for the dead adventurer. Although everyone was exhausted, no one opposed it.
Fwoosh!
Of course, a funeral inside the labyrinth, and on top of a boat nonetheless, was very simple. We laid her body on a cloth that didn’t burn and burned her. We then put her ashes in an urn.
Boom! Crunch! Thud!
Even after the funeral ended, monsters continued to fall periodically from the sky.
Well, since we had a barrier around the boat, they just slid off and fell into the ocean.
Drip.
Just like looking through a window on a rainy day, the blood that was on the barrier pooled into droplets and dripped down the sides.
“Rest easy.”
“Haha, don’t feel too jealous. We don’t know when we’ll follow her.”
“Tsk, don’t you know that words are like seeds?”
Even in a solemn mood, adventurers could make light of dark circumstances. We were people already so close to death, after all. No one chastised them for their jokes because of it.
Everyone knew that people coped with loss in different ways.
“It’s over,” I said. “Take a rest. And good work, everyone.”
After the funeral was over, everyone went back to freely resting.
The wizards weren’t able to fully rest since they had to maintain the barrier, but it was much better than when they had to maintain it on the island. They were able to rig the mana propulsion system to connect to their mana circuits after we got out into open waters.
We have enough mana stones now, and fewer monsters are falling from the sky than expected. If nothing goes terribly wrong, I think we can hold on pretty well until the rainy season ends…
Could I now really relax?
Even so, waves of interleaving thoughts pushed and pulled at my attention as I leaned against the wall.
In the end, I just looked through the subspace for a temporary shield and took it out. As a rank 3 shield, it was naturally much worse than the shield I had been using. Back when I got it, I didn’t even have the money, and I had even doubted if a day would ever come when I would need to use it.
But that day really did come.
As I slightly smiled to myself, someone approached me.
“Lord Baron,” greeted Myul, the captain of the Armin Adventurer Group.
“What is it? And why aren’t you resting?”
“I apologize for interrupting your rest. But…I wish to ask you something.”
“Go on.”
Even after receiving my permission, Myul hesitated for a while before speaking. “Why did you do that?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…Man-Faced Bird essence. Why did you give it to me?”
Ah, so he was still curious about that. The answer was actually pretty simple.
First of all, Ainar, Amelia, Erwen, and Missha weren’t among the contenders. The essences they would absorb were already decided. Since Versyl was a wizard, she couldn’t take one either.
I guess Auyen could’ve been a choice…
Yet it honestly wasn’t an essence that suited Auyen either. He could use Mimicry to copy the skills of the monsters we were fighting to change up the battlefield, but that was pretty much it. It would be the same as wasting the passives that were the core of the Man-Faced Bird.
And so, in the end, I decided on Myul to have it.
“You’re the best one to use the essence.”
“Is that… Is that all?”
In truth, that wasn’t all.
The Armin Adventurer Group had their share of the loot. Since they had taken a rank 2 essence here, I could use that to strong-arm them when we took our next one.
But there’s no need to say that to him here.
So I just shrugged. “Yeah, that’s all.”
“But! In the end, we’re just strangers—”
“How are you strangers to me? We’re already allies.”
“We’re-We’re allies…?”
“Yeah, you got a problem with that?”
Myul Armin didn’t answer my innocent question for a long while.
“Lord Baron, you…” He seemed to want to say something in a quiet tone, but he just shook his head. “No. I’ll be going now. Please take your rest.”
I didn’t know for sure, but it seemed he had come to a firm decision.
***
It was six days after the rainy season began.
After escaping from the island, our sailing was pretty smooth.
We killed the monsters that continued to climb our ship at every moment, and monsters continued to fall from the sky as well, but compared to what we had to go through to escape that island, it was nothing.
In any case, as the peaceful times continued, I finally had the time to reorganize and look over our plan.
Alright, I’ve decided.
I took out one well-kept pendant from the subspace, and Missha’s eyes sparkled next to me as I did.
“Uh, Bjorn? That’s… Are you…giving that to m-me…?”
What was she talking about? You should desire what you should desire.
Seeing that greed in her eyes, I quickly put the pendant back into the subspace.
No. 7777, Garphas’ Necklace.
It was about time to use this.