Chapter 31
The hellhounds, led by the silver wolf, walked in among the Baitur tribe as smoothly as flowing water.
There was no tension, nor any typical predator-prey dynamic you might expect in nature between the Baitur tribe and the hellhounds.
There was no food chain, no survival instincts at play.
Instead, a few of the tribespeople reached out and touched the hellhounds’ cheeks as if greeting old friends.
Humans and magical beasts.
A relationship that should never coexist, yet there was no resistance between them.
“Ha.”
Isaac let out a dry laugh.
There was no way not to understand.
It was the moment when suspicion turned into certainty.
The final piece of Binfelt’s history, one that had never been recorded, was falling into place.
There was nothing more to confirm here.
The old prophet read the look in Isaac’s eyes.
He understood why the wolves had come here uninvited.
He also understood what Isaac’s bitter laugh meant.
He realized what the cunning young Goethe was aiming for.
And it was a truth that absolutely must not leak to Goethe.
“Kill that kid!”
The prophet shouted, and the hellhounds reacted immediately, charging forward.
The tribespeople quickly formed a blockade to prevent Isaac from escaping.
Everything happened in a split second.
Time seemed to slow down.
But it was only within Isaac’s own perception.
Like oil catching fire, Isaac’s mana circuits ignited.
Five circulation paths activated almost simultaneously, and the flow of mana surged rapidly.
His heart throbbed painfully, and his mind drifted in and out of consciousness.
Isaac closed his eyes.
‘I really didn’t want to use this method.’
The reason Isaac and Zeke von Goethe had such unusual and rare constitutions wasn’t just because of their overwhelming mana reserves or flow speed.
Many throughout history had been born with an abundance of mana, but most of them couldn’t withstand it, and their vessels shattered.
And they never used mana again.
A broken vessel could never be restored—an unspoken law of magical science.
It was practically a truth.
But Isaac and Zeke von Goethe defied that truth.
Even if their vessels shattered, they could recover.
That was why Isaac suffered.
If just one mana explosion had permanently destroyed his vessel—
If he had become unable to hold mana again—
Then no one else would’ve had to be sacrificed, and he wouldn’t have needed to lock himself away out of fear of another explosion.
However, Isaac’s vessel continued to recover, no matter how many times it broke.
Whether that was a curse or a blessing…
It was like a thorny pilgrimage path a pilgrim had to walk.
Endlessly repeated.
‘Balance, balance, balance.’
Isaac repeated the word in his mind.
Even as consciousness slipped away.
That word was the only thing he clung to.
When the vessel shatters, the stabilized mana circuits and circulation paths vanish.
He’d have to start over from scratch.
That was too inefficient, especially with all that he still had to do.
So he pushed himself right to the edge—just before the vessel would break.
Though chips would crack off the vessel and mana might leak out in spots…
He held himself just enough that the vessel’s core shape would not collapse…
It demanded a sense of balance as delicate and precarious as walking on a blade.
One wrong step and he’d lose a foot to the blade he himself had laid down—and if he fell, it could be his head that’s taken.
But Isaac’s curiosity—his intellectual desire—
His will to protect Binfelt and Goethe had long since surpassed mere survival instincts.
‘I saw it.’
As he remembered the final scene of Goethe, littered with corpses, Isaac came to a realization.
Flies laid eggs in the corpses, maggots stirred and devoured the flesh.
Crows and wild dogs ate the maggot-infested, rotting bodies.
The crows laid eggs again, and the wild dogs conceived pups once more.
Nature did not weigh the value of life.
Death merely led to another’s life.
There was no fear or disgust in it.
Only endless repetition.
Isaac, too, was just one part of that cycle.
‘So instead of fearing the disappearance of my world, what matters is where my world is heading.’
Isaac opened his eyes.
A black wolf with its jaws wide open was right before him.
But there was no fear in his gaze.
Without a single misstep—
He achieved the balance he sought.
A vessel that breaks but does not shatter.
A miracle where the raging mana inside swirled and spread outward.
‘I want to protect my world—the worlds I cherish.’
A blue haze spread from Isaac’s surroundings like mist.
The hellhounds instinctively sensed danger and hesitated—but by the time they realized it, it was already too late.
Crackkk—
All moisture in the vicinity froze instantly.
If there were a frost-filled hell, this might be what it looked like.
“U-ugh—Aaaah!”
Those whose bodies froze entirely didn’t even recognize their deaths.
But those whose bodies were only half-frozen couldn’t believe what they were experiencing.
Some were frozen from the waist down, some on their left side, some with half their heads frozen.
They flailed desperately with their unfrozen limbs.
Crack!
But the frosty mana, blooming like mist, slowly swallowed their desperation and fear.
People and wolves who once had warm blood flowing through them were turning into ice sculptures.
“Haah… haah… haah…”
Isaac collapsed, unable to hold himself upright.
The ground was so cold it stung, but he didn’t have the strength left to move.
“Young Master! Young Master!”
A familiar voice rang in his ears from the other side of the forest.
It was Hans.
Maybe it was a hallucination born of a desire to hear it.
Whirr—shatter!
A flying axe smashed through the ice like it was nothing.
The shattered ice exposed deep red organs beneath.
There was no blood, as even the insides had frozen solid.
The prophet frowned in the direction the axe had come from.
He muttered something in the tribal tongue.
It was a curse.
“What the hell are you doing!?”
Bessemer ran up to the prophet and grabbed him by the collar without warning.
“Looks like you’re more used to the common tongue than your own tribal language now, cowardly Bessemer.”
In the prophet’s hand was a finely sharpened spear.
He was just about to drive it through the unconscious Isaac’s neck.
“Do you even realize what you’re doing right now? Are you planning to kill us all?”
“Can’t you see this hell with your own eyes? Your kin, your comrades, your brothers were brutally slaughtered.”
Bessemer’s eyes scanned the surroundings.
Just as the old prophet had said.
He saw tribespeople frozen with twisted faces, contorted in agony.
“Whew, weren’t you the ones who tried to kill him first?”
Carlson, who arrived late, whistled as he spoke.
He didn’t seem shocked—more like impressed.
He already knew Isaac was born with exceptional magic talent from the time they expelled the Old Church.
But he didn’t expect it to be on this level.
Before serving as a soldier in Winterband, Carlson had roamed as a mercenary.
But he had never seen a kid this age wield magic of this caliber.
Carlson was thankful he hadn’t made Isaac an enemy.
His reaction, at least, was the calmest.
Hans and Gunter were speechless the moment they saw the frozen lake in the middle of the forest.
Their mouths and eyes widened involuntarily, overwhelmed by the scene before them.
It was clearly spring, yet it felt like the dead of winter, with skin-piercing cold and frost and ice sprouting like thorns all over the foliage.
Hans was the first to come to his senses.
He had spotted the collapsed Isaac.
“Young Master! Young Master!”
Pushing past the hesitant Gunter, Hans rushed to Isaac.
“What the hell did you monsters do!?”
“He’s alive, so take it easy.”
Carlson smacked Hans on the back of the head, who had been glaring at the old man as if ready to kill him.
Meanwhile, the prophet spoke to Bessemer.
“Don’t you understand, Bessemer? This boy is a demon. He must die for the sake of the Baitur. There’s no turning back now. He knows too much.”
Bessemer picked up the axe that had fallen to the ground.
Then he swung it with all his might.
Crash—
A frozen hellhounds shattered into pieces.
“What are you doing!?”
“Just doing what must be done. La tu Balaka sanctum.”
Bessemer cut a piece from the broken body’s innards and placed it in his mouth.
Even as he chewed and swallowed the frozen flesh, not a flicker of emotion crossed his face.
Crash—
“La tu Balaka sanctum.”
Crash—
“La tu Balaka sanctum.”
Bessemer made no distinction between wolves and humans.
“What is he doing?”
Hans asked, disturbed by Bessemer’s bizarre behavior.
“It means something like ‘May you rest in Balaka.’ I still can’t believe it. That kind of catastrophe came from that tiny body…”
Gunter started to answer but went silent upon seeing Isaac and the surrounding landscape.
He just couldn’t get used to it.
If he had been caught up in this catastrophe himself…
It felt as if he had fallen into a freezing river—chills ran through every inch of his body.
He trembled.
“I once saw Baitur warriors during my service in Winterband. They believe they must die in battle as warriors to enter the afterlife, which they call Balaka.”
Carlson added.
“Then why eat their innards?”
“To harvest their souls. That way, when Bessemer dies as a warrior, their souls can enter Balaka with him. The Baitur don’t separate soul and body like the Old and New Churches do. They consider them one and the same.”
“Then why do the same to hellhounds? They’re not even people.”
Neither Hans’ question nor Gunter’s could be answered by Carlson.
Because a truth neither wanted to acknowledge nor speak had risen in their minds.
“Hey, old man. Where’s the rest of them? This can’t be everyone.”
“There are no answers for outsiders.”
Carlson asked, but the prophet replied coldly.
“Well, suit yourself. Doesn’t really matter. But how about you put that spear down, yeah?”
Carlson reached for the spear in the old man’s hand.
“If you don’t want to die.”
The prophet glared at Carlson but soon threw the spear aside.
He stared at the collapsing ice under Bessemer’s hand with a mix of rage and sorrow.
With no chief left, the old prophet had been both leader and father to them.
But he had just lost a dozen sons to the spell of one devilish child.
It made his blood boil—he wanted to kill the brat right then and there.
Goethe, Goethe.
That cursed name.
That demonic name.
There was nothing the old man could do in front of it.
Not thirteen years ago.
Not now.
His chance for revenge kept slipping away.
“Let me go, Bessemer.”
“La tu Balaka sanctum.”
“If you are still Baitur.”
“La tu Balaka sanctum.”
“As the last great warrior of the Baitur.”
“La tu Balaka sanctum.”
“Bessemer!”
Having dealt with half the corpses, Bessemer turned toward the old man.
“Virphir.”
He spoke the prophet’s name.
“Where did the Wolf King go?”
“Ran off again?”
“Until a new king is chosen, the Wolf King must not die. If he does, all wolves will be consumed by wild instinct.”
“You mean you’ll lose your pawns.”
“If you hadn’t run from your destiny in fear, the Baitur would’ve already reclaimed their land!”
The old man’s eyes were bloodshot.
“No, if you hadn’t blinded my father with ambition, I wouldn’t have had to eat the flesh of so many of my kin.”
“You never deserved the title of Great Warrior. You’re a traitor. Because of you—urk!”
Bessemer grabbed the old man by the throat and lifted him into the air.
“Do you see, Virphir? I have never forgotten the 237 souls on my shoulders. I’ve never once miscounted them. And the one who kept them from reaching Balaka… was you.”
“You’ve already… become one of them. You’ve sided with those demons… You are not… Baitur.”
Already—
The old man’s face turned red and blue.
Veins popped as he struggled and flailed, trying to pry Bessemer’s hand from his throat.
“You still live in the past. I only want to live in the present with my people, my comrades.”
Bessemer threw the old man to the ground.
“Guh… haah… haah…”
The prophet wheezed, drooling and gasping for air.
“Leave. This is the last mercy I’ll offer you as one of our own. Take it or not.”
Bessemer looked toward Carlson.
“If I had tried to kill that old man, would you have fought me?”
“At least for today, he and I are still kin. I’d fight to the death to protect my people.”
Carlson folded his arms, glancing between Bessemer and the old man.
Isaac still hadn’t regained consciousness.
“I’m not about to fight a losing battle with no gain.”
Carlson nodded.
“Thanks. Now go.”
Bessemer looked at the old man.
“The next time we meet, you’ll be my enemy. You’re no longer a great warrior. You’re nothing.”
The prophet glared at Bessemer with murderous eyes, then turned and vanished into the depths of the black forest.
Bessemer stared blankly in the direction the old man disappeared, then swung his axe at a nearby frozen body.
There were still many rites left to perform.
