WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Mordor
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Surviving the Frozen Dark Fantasy as a Genius Mage ◈
Chapter 6: Night Visitor
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“Could they be hunters or other villagers?”
“...No way.”
I shook my head at Demi’s words, then quietly woke Elena beside me.
“Elena. Elena.”
“...I hear it. Is it them?”
“Probably.”
As if she had already been on guard, Elena perked up her long ears, narrowed her eyes, and immediately grabbed her club.
Was it because she had the strongest fists in our orphan crew?
Her reaction was on another level.
I assessed my condition.
‘It’s not dawn yet, so I can’t engrave any spells.’
I only had one Ice Spike left.
And even that...
‘Its power is halved against them.’
“Should we wake the others?”
I considered Demi’s question.
They were fourteen.
They might be adults by this world’s standards, but to me, they were still just kids. I couldn’t trust them.
‘If they make a commotion, we’re finished.’
“No. Let’s watch for now.”
They yearn for warmth.
If even the tiniest ember can ease their hunger and drive away the cold, they will seek it out anywhere.
There was a reason the villagers had been so closed off.
The cold and wild beasts were part of it, but those things were the real reason.
‘Someone might freeze to death, but... it can’t be helped.’
I stepped on the campfire and put it out.
‘Please leave. Just leave.’
But the thing, or things, outside were persistent.
Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock.
They kept knocking on the door.
The sudden drop in temperature and the noise eventually woke the others one by one.
“What’s that sound...?”
“Everyone, shh. We have an unwelcome visitor.”
“An unwelcome visitor?”
“It’s them. The Winter-Cursed.”
“...”
Everyone fell silent at those words.
“They knock?”
Mauk whispered the question. As the village chief’s son, he seemed to know more than the others.
“Couldn’t it be a lost hunter or another villager?”
To a veteran player like me, that was laughably weak reasoning.
Some of them were influenced by memories from when they were alive.
More importantly...
“Think about it. It gets colder at night and before dawn.”
Without the aurora, you couldn’t see a thing. Wild beasts were more active, too.
What kind of idiot would knock on the camouflaged cave entrance in the middle of the night, at such a dangerous time?
“If they needed shelter, they would’ve forced their way inside somehow. Or gone somewhere else.”
Knock, knock, knock... knock, knock, knock.
Yet the things outside only kept knocking.
Part of why I’d tried to keep as many people alive as possible was because of the Winter’s Curse.
“If it’s them, we’ll all die.”
There was no back exit in this cave.
We could fight, but we’d probably all die.
...
Perhaps they understood the weight of my words. The kids quietly curled up.
Knock.
In the pitch-dark cave, now without even a fire, the knocking continued.
As if begging to be let in.
Please.
Please.
“...”
The children’s faces gradually turned pale. Eventually, they trembled as they bit down on their forearms, afraid even their breathing would be heard outside.
“Eek.”
“Mom...” A choked sob. “Mom...”
Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock.
No human would keep knocking on a door for over an hour in that freezing cold!
That warm, nightmarish vigil wore on.
Only after the faint warmth of the dying embers had vanished completely did the knocking finally stop.
Still gripping the staff made from an old, withered tree, I let out a breath and let my head fall against the wall as though I might pass out.
Fuck, this difficulty is insane.
‘This really is a fucked-up world!’
* * *
“Ughhh!”
It was better than sleeping outside, but after spending the night awake in a freezing cave where we couldn’t even light a fire, my whole body ached.
“God, I’m dying.”
Maybe the one good thing about the cold was that there were no mosquitoes here.
Unlike the other kids, who were still asleep, I got up at dawn to meditate. I needed to perform Memorize, an essential practice for a mage.
‘A genius mage never neglects his training.’
Electric Spark, Faint Light, and two Ice Spikes.
Even if they were weak-ass spells, spells were still spells!
Seeing the four spell parchments reform within me made me feel much safer.
‘When do I get a new spell?’
My judgment the previous night had saved our lives, but there was bad news too.
“Sam! Sam! Wake up!”
Another person had frozen to death.
And that person was one of Mauk’s group.
“This is your fault...”
The hand stroking Sam’s peacefully sleeping face clenched into a fist.
“It’s because you put out the fire!”
Things had seemed to improve after dinner the night before, but Mauk charged at me in a rage when his friend died.
Thud!
“Argh!”
Of course, Elena struck him before he could reach me.
“Are you crazy? Who are you blaming right now?”
“Fuck. You orphan bastard... ngh.”
Mauk trembled in fear, but anger still showed on his face.
Elena sneered as she reveled in overpowering him through violence.
“Want me to smash your mouth too?”
“Enough.”
Once again, it fell to me, the rational and intelligent modern man, to mediate.
“If I hadn’t put out the fire, we’d all be dead.”
To me, they were both idiots, but Sam had been Mauk’s friend since childhood. I could understand why he was angry.
Anyone would want someone to blame and shift the responsibility onto.
‘But understanding him doesn’t mean I have to put up with it.’
I wasn’t that much of a saint.
“If you don’t like my judgment, leave the party. I won’t stop you.”
“...Fuck.”
Mauk punched the wall.
There was resentment in that blow, resentment toward his own helplessness.
While everyone watched us cautiously, Dize made a suggestion.
“Can’t we just live in here...?”
He didn’t seem to have the courage to leave this cozy cave and fight through the snowfields again.
“It’ll be hard, but we still have to keep moving.”
I shook my head.
Eventually, the food would run out.
Besides, those things might come back, and dead Sam could return under the Winter’s Curse.
“We could... cut him up, or... in the worst case, eat him...”
Dize said it hesitantly.
Coincidentally, it was also a method I’d used in the game.
The so-called Fresh Meat Strategy.
Thud!
“Ghk.”
“Have you lost your mind?!”
Naturally, Mauk, Sam’s friend, hit him.
Dize was the oldest among us, but he shrank back without saying a word.
“S-sorry...”
“Ian.”
“Yeah?”
“Can we open the door now? I want to prepare breakfast.”
“Ah, yeah. It’s fine now.”
“Okay... Aaaah!”
Daisy, who had headed for the entrance to collect snow in a pot for breakfast, screamed.
Sunlight and wind seeped through the cave entrance.
The ice barrier that had sealed the entrance, apparently broken open by Daisy, was covered in countless handprints.
They had pressed against it with relentless persistence.
“...Fuck.”
A little more knocking and it would have broken.
That meant my judgment had been right.
“L-let’s get out of here. Let’s hurry to Labyrinth City!”
Dize freaked out now that he understood even the cave wasn’t safe.
After we lit a fire and filled our stomachs with warm stew and water, we set out again.
Huff, huff.
“How much farther do we have to go?”
The game started in Labyrinth City, so even I didn’t know that.
Still, I could tell the tower that had looked faint in the distance was gradually becoming clearer.
“We’re almost there.”
Not everything was going well, though.
Thud.
Another person died during the climb.
It was Demi, the freckle-faced kid who had woken me the day before.
I lost a friend I’d grown up with and gained some old clothes, a potato, and a little firewood.
Of the eleven people who had started out, only seven remained.
To make matters worse, night was falling.
What was even worse was that we couldn’t find anywhere like a cave to sleep in.
‘We were lucky yesterday.’
Just as I thought that, Elena stretched out an arm and pointed somewhere.
“Over there. Isn’t that a village?”
It wasn’t an intact village. It had already fallen into ruin.
Most of it was nothing but wrecked buildings, though a few wooden and brick houses still stood.
“Houses!”
“Looks like an abandoned village.”
“At least we can get out of the snow!”
Everyone excitedly tried to head inside, but I stopped them.
“No. We shouldn’t go there.”
“Why?”
“Anywhere that looks like people could live has those things.”
It was a universal rule.
The Tower of the Frozen Labyrinth.
The Dungeon of Death always placed harsher situations along the easier path. Ironically, the painful path held a way out.
“...”
Remembering the nightmare from the night before, everyone’s expressions hardened.
Elena asked me, “The hunters never told us anything like that... How do you know?”
“Because I’m a genius mage.”
Normally, Elena would have cursed me out or scolded me, but perhaps because of everything I’d done so far, she accepted it.
Then Elena called out to Mauk.
“Hey, didn’t you hear Ian?”
Mauk and his group were heading toward the ruined village.
“We can just shut the door and hold out like last night.”
Besides...
“I’d rather fight them than freeze to death without doing anything.”
It seemed Mauk didn’t want to freeze to death like Sam had that morning.
Or maybe he just hated being around Elena, who he had problems with.
Either way, it was courage accompanied by fear.
“It’s not that easy. If you make a mistake, you’ll really die.”
I tried to stop them.
Fuck, if you leave, there’ll be less food and I’ll have to take more night watches!
“You said it yourself yesterday. If we didn’t like your way, we could leave. You said we should split up.”
Mauk was firm.
I sighed and waved him off.
“...Fine. Go.”
Maybe he hated the contemptuous way I looked at him, as though I knew exactly what he and his group were thinking.
Mauk spat out one last remark.
“You obnoxious bastard.”
I turned away and asked the other two, besides Elena, who stood next to me.
“You aren’t going?”
“...No.”
“Whatever.”
Dize and Daisy stayed with us.
The remaining person followed Mauk.
I gave Mauk’s group some advice as they grew farther away.
“Never light a fire. They’re slow, so run if they appear. If you can’t, aim for the head.”
There was no answer.
I scratched my head and led the remaining kids away.
“Let’s go. We don’t have much time if we’re going to build an igloo.”
“An igloo?”
“There’s such a thing.”
Those who had never seen those things for themselves didn’t know.
There were deaths and suffering in this world worse than freezing to death.
Well, I had only seen them through a monitor myself.
‘They chose the place where they’ll die. Sigh.’
‘I did my best as an adult and party leader.’
I’d done enough to earn the staff the village chief had given me, too.
If Mauk died, I should recover his food bag and clothes.
Just as I expected, a faint scream rang out through the blizzard before long.
“Aaah!”
‘If your brain doesn’t work, it’s not your body that suffers here. You just die.’
Footnotes:
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