Chapter 19

Pursuit

The northern continent was divided into tundra, snowfields, and snowy mountains. Close to the central region, the tundra had a relatively warm climate where vegetation such as conifers grew naturally.

But it was only “relatively” warm. It could hardly be called warm at all. Average temperatures normally hovered around four to five degrees below zero, dropping to minus fifteen when the season of bitter cold arrived.

And that season was just beginning. Anyone sleeping outdoors would freeze to death, and even water was hard to find, let alone food. Under these conditions, merely surviving in the north was a constant struggle.

That was why—

“I'll take the soldiers and go look for Brother right away.”

They needed to find Adrian as quickly as possible.

Seraphia pulled her thick fur clothing tightly closed. Even so, the cold seeping through was murderous. Each time she felt it, she could not shake the dread that kept welling up in her chest.

Adrian had been missing for two weeks. After two weeks in this bitter cold, they had to assume he had frozen to death. Without any supplies or protection, there was effectively no chance he was still alive.

“Sir Kai, please take some soldiers and look for Brother as well.”

“...”

Perhaps that was why Kai did not answer. His lips were pressed tightly together, but his face was visibly troubled. He seemed to have something he wanted to say.

At last, he slowly spoke.

“... I do not understand why we must find Lord Adrian.”

Adrian had disappeared of his own accord. Kai could not have asked for a better situation. There was no need to find him, nor any reason to.

Kai had confessed his honest feelings, and Seraphia answered with a single word that explained everything.

“Family.”

A bond formed the moment one entered the world. A bond through which people healed one another.

Yet it was also a bond that could not be severed, and so a bond through which they hurt one another. Because they were so close, the wounds they inflicted on each other were more irreparable than those left by any other relationship.

Perhaps that was an illness called family. In such cases, that illness had to be cured.

That was why the former count had cast Adrian out. He had resolutely severed the blood tie between parent and child.

And yet Seraphia and Adrian were not even related by blood, were they?

“I would have done the same for you, Sir Kai.”

But the same was true of Kai. He and Seraphia were not bound by blood either—

“We're family.”

Family.

“Understood.”

Kai nodded. But that did not mean he had accepted Adrian. This was merely his loyalty and his chivalry.

And his loyalty and chivalry were directed toward one person.

Seraphia.

Her, and her alone.

“I will search the snowy mountains this time.”

“Then I'll search the snowfields and tundra.”

Seraphia gave him a small, grateful smile.

Then she left immediately, as though there were no time to spare. Her silver hair swayed from side to side with every step. Kai watched her for a moment before slowly setting off himself.

* * *

Metal armor steeped in the mountain cold touched Kai's skin. Shielding his body with aura, he trudged up through the snow with the soldiers.

How long had they been climbing? They had reached roughly halfway up the mountain when a shout rang out.

“Over there! There's something!”

Kai turned toward the soldiers' cries. Something was buried in the snow. They hurried over and dug it out, revealing a massive, four-meter body.

“It's an Alacron carcass.”

The Alacron was a monster native to the snowy mountains. Judging by the frozen carcass, it seemed to have been dead for at least a day.

And its condition was disturbing. Chunks of flesh had been savagely torn away, as though something had fed on it.

“So that's why we haven't seen many monsters in the mountains lately...”

“It seems the mountain monsters have been competing for territory.”

The soldiers reached their conclusion in an instant. They believed the carcass was the result of a fight between monsters. It was understandable: the flesh torn away here and there was clear evidence that something had eaten it.

And only one kind of creature would do that.

A monster.

Humans could never eat monster flesh.

“It appears Lord Adrian isn't in the mountains after all.”

It was a perfectly reasonable inference. But Kai thought otherwise.

He examined the Alacron's carcass closely. The marks where flesh had been bitten off were somewhat different from those a monster would leave. They looked more like the work of human teeth. Some parts even had clean edges, as though they had been sliced off with a blade.

Kai quickly reached his conclusion.

'Another monster...'

These were Adrian's leftovers.

The soldiers had never imagined that Adrian might eat a monster. More accurately, they could not imagine it.

No matter how hungry a person was, eating a monster would drive them insane. Choosing to eat monster meat was no different from choosing suicide. That was an age-old law of the continent, a matter of common knowledge.

But once again, Kai thought differently.

... Because he had seen it.

He had seen Adrian tearing into the Dermexus's heart. Kai himself had witnessed it clearly with his own eyes. There was no denying it.

Adrian had been all right then, though. After devouring the Dermexus's heart, he had briefly succumbed to Madness, only to quickly return to normal. At the time, Kai had wondered how that was possible.

But sure enough, it had turned out exactly as expected.

'So Madness has finally consumed him.'

Adrian had been driven insane by Madness. In truth, it was a perfectly natural, inevitable outcome.

Thinking back, Adrian had disappeared after eating the Dermexus's heart.

'So that's why...'

Kai immediately understood why Adrian had not shown himself for two weeks.

It was not that he had chosen not to appear.

He had been unable to.

Now that Madness had swallowed him, Adrian was no longer human.

Even now, Adrian was probably wandering the mountains, bereft of reason. He would be slaughtering the monsters there, tearing into their flesh and continually accumulating Madness.

Before long, he would turn into a monster himself.

If that was the case, Kai could not leave him be. Adrian, wandering the snowy mountains out of his mind, had to be killed.

“What should we do?”

Kai answered the soldiers' question without hesitation.

From this moment on, this was no longer a mission to “search” for Adrian.

“Keep tracking him.”

It was a mission to “track down” and “kill” him.

There was a very high chance that Adrian was in the snowy mountains. Though the bitter cold made it impossible to survive even a day, let alone two weeks, Kai did not believe Adrian was dead.

Adrian was undoubtedly alive.

But today, he would die.

Following the trail, Kai led the soldiers higher into the mountains.

And then it happened.

BOOOOM!!

A massive explosion suddenly erupted on one side of the mountain.

* * *

The unidentified creature that had ambushed me.

At last, the flurry of snow settled completely—

And within it, fragments of emotion welled up: hatred, along with joy and elation.

A brute shrouded in pitch-black hatred and madness, a beast fashioned from blind murderous intent. Its low roar erupted with madness that seemed wrung from every vein.

An endless thirst for blood. The craving of hunger.

They felt as though they would tear me apart at any moment.

“A Gelu Drake...”

The Gelu Drake.

A mutation of the monster known as a drake, it bore the prefix “gelu-,” meaning ice. Translated literally, its name simply meant “ice drake.”

In other words, the Gelu Drake belonged to the same species as the drake. Taxonomically, it was a “subspecies,” and the two could interbreed. They simply did not do so in nature because they lived in different habitats.

Thus, whether it was a Gelu Drake or an ordinary drake, all drakes shared a common ancestor.

The dragon.

The name “drake” itself was derived from “dragon.” It was not simply because they looked alike. It denoted a creature similar to a dragon, yet different.

Drakes had branched off from dragons in the unimaginably distant past. In other words, drakes belonged to the dragon family.

Tigers and cats belonged to the same feline family. Dragons and drakes differed to roughly the same extent as tigers and cats. In other words, the difference was stark.

The problem was that dragons were such absurdly formidable creatures to begin with.

Dragons.

The mightiest creatures on the continent, and a great calamity.

They were called “the pinnacle of biological evolution.”

A living creature could adapt perfectly to a particular environment. After all, life existed even in the bitterly cold mountains, where temperatures fell as low as minus seventy degrees.

But perfect adaptation to a particular environment was a double-edged sword. If that environment collapsed, the species would helplessly go extinct. Throw a mountain monster into the scorching heat of the south, and it would cook to death within a day.

Adapting to a particular environment was possible. Adapting to every environment was not.

With just one exception.

Dragons.

Dragons could adapt and survive in any environment on the continent. In freezing winters, in blazing heat, beneath the salty sea, in arid deserts, amid dense vegetation.

In countless natural environments, dragons could thrive.

And in every one of those environments, they reigned as apex predators. They were so powerful that history recorded a single dragon burning down an entire kingdom without suffering a scratch.

Dragons were living creatures that approached invincibility.

Drakes were a species that had branched off from those dragons. Though the difference was as stark as that between a tiger and a cat, they remained powerful creatures.

Hence the name: master of the snowy mountains.

True to its distant dragon ancestry, the Gelu Drake stood at the very apex of this mountain ecosystem.

You could tell simply by looking at the color of its hide. Most monsters living in the snowy mountains were white, camouflaged to protect themselves from predators.

But not the Gelu Drake.

Its hide was a vivid reddish-brown.

With no need for camouflage, its very existence proclaimed it the “master of the snowy mountains.”

As it branched off from dragons, its wings had degenerated. In their place, it gained the agility to run swiftly over the ground. Its muscular tail not only maintained its balance but also served as a powerful bludgeoning weapon.

Despite its appearance, however, it was a largely herbivorous monster. Strictly speaking, it was an omnivore, but the Gelu Drake had evolved that way.

Food was scarce in the snowy mountains. It used its hard claws to dig through the snow, feeding primarily on the moss and grasses growing beneath it. For that reason, it lived at the mountain summit and rarely came down.

'Then why the hell...?'

Along with that question came the fear of death. My instincts sounded an unceasing alarm, urging me to flee at once.

Yet my entire body refused to move, as though it had frozen solid. I felt like an ice statue. It was fear, not cold, that had done this to me.

But at the same time—

I could not suppress the electrifying exhilaration coursing through my body.

Drakes had split off from dragons unimaginably long ago, but they were still classified as members of the same “dragon family.” In other words, “dragon genetic material” was imprinted within them.

I had never managed to devour a dragon, even in my previous life. The strongest living creature on the continent, something even I, the allied army's Predator, had never dared to consider devouring.

And that supreme genetic material was right before my eyes.

GRRRR!

How could my whole body not tingle with excitement?