Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Novel 2025 - Chapter 665
Chapter 665: Companion (4)
Our uneasy companionship began outside the walls. Nevertheless, it brought with it distinct benefits. After all, before we even began our travels, a piece of golden information had just been given to me.
“Where this place is… Hmm, do you want to look at the map we made for now?”
Baekho had been outside the walls much earlier than I had. Unfortunately, the map he made wasn’t that good. It was like the maps created before the American continent was discovered.
Well, I could make a map any better than he could. But anyway.
“…What’s with this border here? It looks familiar somehow.” Drawn on the work-in-progress map was an unmarked border, similar to the borders between countries on the world map.
“Ah, that’s to note the area that lines up with the Dark Continent on the seventh floor.”
So that was why it seemed familiar. It was the shape of the Dark Continent.
“It’s interesting, right?” Baekho asked, eyeing my expression. “Usually, you can’t go over this line in the labyrinth because it’s the shore, but here, it just leads to more land.”
The map was so eye-opening that I couldn’t even retort. Clown had said the outside world looked like the Dark Continent, but that seemed to only be a portion of the whole truth. The Dark Continent was situated in the southeastern area of this continent while the north and west were still shrouded in mystery.
“What’s this round thing you marked here?”
“Oh, that? It’s an island.”
“An island…?”
“You know that island on the sixth floor? That island where there’s that weird headstone at the center of it.”
“Are you talking about Starnels Island?”
“Oh, yep. That one. This area looks very similar to that island. The monsters that appear match up too.”
“I see…”
Something was bugging me. Writing it off as “just a strange coincidence” didn’t sit right with me. An island that should be in the middle of the ocean was landlocked here. Was this related to the truth of the world that I hadn’t yet figured out?
I didn’t know, but my knowledge grew regardless.
“Then we should be east of the Great Forest.”
Baekho annoyingly added, “To be precise, we’re southeast of the Great Forest,” but I just let it flow into one ear and out the other.
“So, where are we trying to go now?”
“Here,” he said, pointing somewhere on the map. It was a mystery area outside the Dark Continent. “Most of the materials that were mentioned should be found here.”
“How long will it take?”
“About half a year if we walk?”
“…What?” It would take us a year to walk there and back at that rate. What was the point of all this, then?
Baekho let out a joking laugh as I frowned and glared at him. “Don’t worry. We’ll take a portal when we’re partway there. It’ll probably only take a month to get there.”
“A portal…?” What was this now?
“It’s similar to those military platforms in Rafdonia. It connects two specific points.”
This truly was a new world. Hearing these stories of the outside world made me feel like a newbie again. It felt like I was playing a whole new game.
“Alright, then let’s get going. We’re going to move to try and reach the portal by nightfall, so make sure to keep up.”
It felt like I was getting carried.
***
Time was very important in Dungeon and Stone, as each floor of the labyrinth had a set time when its fields would close. If someone couldn’t use their time effectively, they would naturally not be able to climb to the higher floors.
Fwoong!
As such, dex-based characters had the advantage in that regard.
All adventurers, regardless of their position, needed to round out their “movement mechanics,” and dex-based characters were naturally adept at doing so.
Unlike strength-based characters.
Hah… It’s just me.
Boom! Boom!
As I continued to stomp through the forest, I kept getting moments of self-reflection. This was because I hadn’t been able to figure out my own movement. Well, thanks to my high endurance and energy stats, I didn’t get exhausted easily, but still…
Boom! Boom!
My movement speed was still lacking compared to other classes.
Vwoong!
Neigh!
Our wizard, the GM, was able to use float magic combined with many other spells to fly quickly, and the healer named Jaina was able to summon a mount to travel without hassle.
…It’s embarrassing for some reason.
I was just barely keeping up at the back, and I got the feeling that they were traveling a bit slower than their max travel speed on purpose just to match me. I was receiving tacit consideration.
“Hahaha! This is amazing! It’s been a long time since I’ve seen someone slower than me!”
Damn it.
Why was this tank perfect at his movement already? He could’ve used that time to get hardier.
Tsk.
Though I clicked my tongue internally, I glanced at the woman sitting comfortably on top of her mount in front of me.
A contract monster… So she was a priest of Karui.
Although I could figure out her class from her mount, it didn’t mean much. She probably showed it to me this way because she herself realized it would be difficult to hide her class forever.
“Hah, looks like we still got here before sunrise.”
Only after crossing through the deep night were we able to reach our destination, and only then did we have some rest.
“We’ll rest here for today. We have less time to recover our mana than expected…”
“We don’t have to alter our schedule. We have Sir Havellion with us now.”
“Oh, that’s good to hear.”
“Sir Havellion, could you come here for a moment? I think it may be safer for us to align our mana waves.”
“Pardon? Ah, yes…!”
While everyone was taking alone time to rest, the GM was called over by the Fallen Scholar and they synced up in a way that I found hard to understand.
“Can we talk for a moment?”
Baekho approached me silently, and then led me away to a quiet place.
“Isn’t this fate? I never thought I would be able to walk around like this, bro… Ah, you don’t have to worry about any sound leaking out!”
After taking a look at my surroundings, I let out a sigh and glared at Baekho. I had a lot of things I wanted to say to him, first and foremost to do with how he’d told me the wrong way of going outside the walls, but I decided to hold back for now.
“But bro, I have something I’ve wanted to check for a while now. The GM doesn’t know that you’re a player, right?”
“No. He doesn’t know, so just let it be for now.”
“Wow. I bet the face he’ll make when he figures it out will be priceless.”
Hmm, I was curious what expression he would make as well, but I couldn’t really confirm it. Pass.
“I want to ask you something too,” I said.
“Alright, hit me.”
At Baekho’s confirmation, I asked him point-blank, “The reason the Noarkans came back to the city. You said that they did it so they could survive.”
“Yeah?”
“What exactly did you mean by that?”
“Ah, that…”
“I’m outside the walls just as you are, so be honest, alright? Is it related to the gray world?”
Baekho noticed my frustration and thought for a moment before nodding. “The gray world… That’s a pretty poetic but perfect expression for it.”
“I don’t care about what you think, so just answer me, Hmm?”
“Honestly, that’s pretty unrelated to this. And it’s not that big of a danger either.”
“…It’s not that dangerous?”
“In any case, ignoring that… There’s another reason the Noark group risked their lives by going back into the city.”
At that, Baekho paused for a moment before looking directly at me. Hmm, just what was he going to say that he was taking so long—?
“There is a monster.”
“…Hmm?”
“A really scary monster.”
Emphasis or not, I couldn’t really follow.
I shot him a look to explain himself, but Baekho only shrugged. “I don’t think it has a set habitat. No matter where you go, it appears in the end. And every time it appears, thousands of people die without being able to do anything, but…”
“But…?”
“That’s the only thing we’ve found out. The more people there are and the longer they’ve stayed outside the walls, the higher the chance that the monster appears.”
I sensed that something was off immediately. It was an annoying feeling where it felt like I was just on the boundary of knowing what it was.
While I was struggling to figure out why, Baekho struggled to ask me, “But bro, isn’t this kinda similar…? The fact that it appears after a few conditions are fulfilled. It’s similar to a lord of the floor.”
Ah, yeah.
That was the reason.
***
“Then are we in danger as well?”
“Well, it is a possibility. But what can we do? Our path back home is blocked. We only have a few people here, and it hasn’t been long since we left the city. We’ll just have to trust that.”
I sighed. Even so, my uneasiness refused to go away. Leaving things up to chance was what I hated the most. Zero and one were completely different numbers, after all. As long as the probability wasn’t down to zero, it lost any meaning to me. It would happen if it was bound to happen anyway.
Maybe I would’ve felt calmer if I didn’t hear it in the first place…
Despite that thought, I still believed that knowing about it was better than being ignorant of it.
After that, I asked incessantly about the monster, and I ended up hearing something that I could’ve never expected.
“Honestly, it’s not that strong or oppressive…”
“But?”
“It doesn’t take any damage. Nothing.”
“…Huh?”
“It’s like it sounds. Doesn’t matter if you use mana, aura, or skills—none of them work.”
For a moment, all I could think was that he was talking nonsense. Forget hard to defeat, this was a monster that was just plain impossible to damage?
“That’s why it’s called the Death God.”
From the description, the nickname fit pretty well. Especially the part where mortals couldn’t oppose it.
“So…?”
“How’s that? Did you get spooked?”
Hmm, who knows?
How could I say it?
There was definitely fear, no doubt, but my curiosity began to bubble up in kind. It was an instinct I couldn’t help but have as a gamer.
Hmm, there definitely should be a way to counter it…
I mean, it only made sense. It didn’t matter that a monster with said mechanic existed and was impossible to defeat because of it. If we just kept trying and thinking about it, we would definitely figure out a way. Too bad we couldn’t just brute for it since we were in reality.
Even so, it was only natural that those thoughts led to the next.
“Will it drop something if we defeat it…?” I mumbled that without realizing it.
Baekho tilted his head a little before his jaw dropped. “Wow… You’re pretty nuts yourself, big bro.”
What was this guy talking about? Where else was a more sane and healthy barbarian like me?
“Whatever. So what about the other thing?”
“What do you mean?”
I changed the topic and asked a new question. “You said there would be an event a year from then.”
“Oh… That…?”
“We might not be able to return home before then, so can’t you just tell me?”
“No. We might be able to return before then.” Baekho was quick to cut off my additional question. However, I was able to realize something from his response.
So this was why he was so mad.
When the magic circle was destroyed, Baekho was infuriated and tried to quickly find a way to return to the city. It was probably related to this “event.”
He doesn’t want me to know the details.
He thought that if I knew what was going to happen, I would somehow get in the way of his plans.
To put it simply, there was a good chance that this event would be bad news for me.
“Then, I’ll be going!”
And maybe as expected, as soon as the conversation got uncomfortable for him, Baekho immediately ran away.
“Oh, it looked like you and that old man were up to something. Is that all done?”
“Yes. Aligning our mana waves doesn’t take that long.”
“I see.”
After finishing what he had to do, the GM returned and asked for a quiet talk with me. “Could you give me a bit of your time?”
Right, so it’s this guy’s turn now.
I followed after him while acting clueless, and the GM stopped in a dark and quiet place, put up the voice control magic, and began talking.
“Well, this may be an overstepping on my part…”
“It’s fine. Just ask me.”
“What is your relationship with Baekho Lee…?”
I sighed. How could I explain it?