From Today, I'm a Player

Chapter 77: Fenrir Pt. 2

Since they didn’t have close ties with the villagers of Heaven Lake, their farewells went quickly. But, of course, that didn’t mean it didn’t have any gloominess.

Jeong In-Chang was wailing loudly as if he had become quite close with the villagers at the festival.

“Sob…”

He really was a man of many feelings and emotions.

“We will return,” Lee Jun-Kyeong comforted him.

“Really?”

The color of Jeong In-Chang’s face instantly changed. The Hunter still didn’t know the purpose or the plans of their trip. Lee Jun-Kyeong wondered if Jeong In-Chang had that much blind faith in him.

‘Is he just stupid? Seriously…’

However, Lee Jun-Kyeong already knew what Jeong In-Chang was wondering, so he clarified, “Don’t we have to pass by here after we go to China? We’ll be coming back to Heaven Lake Village then.”

“Ah…”

Jeong In-Chang tilted his head with a questioning expression.

“But aren’t we going to end the gateization of China, Mr. Lee? If that’s the case, then whether it’s through a plane or a portal… wouldn’t there be easier ways for us to go back once the gate has been cleared?”

Thump.

At that comment, the deer Lee Jun-Kyeong was riding stopped in place.

"Me?"

Jeong In-Chang was bewildered by Lee Jun-Kyeong's sudden question.

“Is that not the case?”

“...”

Lee Jun-Kyeong held his forehead for a moment.

Jeong In-Chang asked, “Don’t you always take care of things? Not only did you take down Heracles, but also…”

“Grrr.”

“Also, Fenrir as well… Didn’t you win against them all? So isn’t the reason we are going to China to prevent the gateization too?”

“But all I said was that I was going to go find someone,” Lee Jun-Kyeong responded.

“Yeah, so we can do more than one…”

Jeong In-Chang stopped once he realized that Lee Jun-Kyeong was being completely serious about his intentions.

Lee Jun-Kyeong thought that he should at least clear up the misunderstandings at this point. “It’s not possible.”

“Pardon?”

“Gateization isn’t something that I can stop,” he emphasized.

"…”

None of what Lee Jun-Kyeong said was something to be taken lightly, as almost everything he had asserted had come true.

“Not only is my strength not enough… But no one in the world would have the power to stop China from completely turning into a gate.”

“...”

“This is…”

Lee Jun-Kyeong’s deer started walking again.

“...an unstoppable torrent.”

***

The cataclysm wasn’t something that could have been prevented. In order to prevent something, one had to know the exact cause behind it. Even Lee Jun-Kyeong didn’t know the precise reason behind the changes.

He knew that the gate’s successive breaks had spewed out mana and slowly caused the gateization of the ground, but that wasn’t the root cause behind the phenomenon.

The root cause most likely lay with the sky that he was looking at.

“How cold.”

The place where everyone thought they would reside.

‘The Sponsors.’

“I know, right… Mt. Baekdu was nice and warm…” Jeong In-Chang said as he trembled again from the cold climate. Still, the situation was better than before. They had taken the hides of the monsters they had slaughtered at the Seal and made warm clothes from them.

“Whew. I feel alive now,” Jeong In-Chang said.

In addition, Lee Jun-Kyeong would sometimes put his hands on Jeong In-Chang, leaving him trembling as if he had just peed. It was Reign of Fire, the Authority that had now transformed into the Monarch of Fire.

It had evolved to become something completely different from before, leading to an unparalleled increase in efficiency and ability.

Lee Jun-Kyeong was now able to maintain the power of fire at all times without consuming large amounts of mana.

"But, by the way…" Jeong In-Chang said as he looked ahead, now that he was feeling a little better.

In front of him was a plain where nothing existed, just an endless field of ice. It felt as though this was a place with no end in sight, like a desert formed entirely out of ice.

“What will we ride now?” Jeong In-Chang asked.

As soon as they had descended Mt. Baedu with the deer, the deer fled back to the place they had come from. Any beasts transformed by mana preferred not to leave the areas they resided in, so it would have been unreasonable to think about riding them all the way to China in the first place.

"Goongje!" said the princess with both hands raised, having changed into a warm suit made of fire troll leather.

Jeong In-Chang asked, “You want me to ride you…?”

“Goongje!” the princess responded while nodding in affirmation.

“Well…”

Jeong In-Chang mused over it for a little while.

Of course, as long as the princess changed back to its original appearance, there would be no problem riding it as it was bigger than an average ogre. The huge, powerful princess could run fast for a long time with the strength it possessed.

Thinking about it, even if you tried to look at it from this and that perspective, the princess would definitely be a good…

“You almost made me think I should ride you! No, princess!”

“Goongje?”

“My title was sponsored by <The Prince on a White Horse>. How could I go around riding a princess!" Jeong In-Chang concluded. Lee Jun-Kyeong let out a long sigh as he watched his companion worrying all by himself and suffering under the brunt of a concern—namely, a ridiculously useless concern at that.

“Whew…”

Then, he brought up their original intentions again.

“Didn’t I tell you we were going to obtain a ride?”

“Pardon?” Jeong In-Chang blinked.

“I told you we came to Mt. Baekdu to find something to ride.”

Jeong In-Chang paused for a moment. That was right.

'For now, let's start by looking for a mount.'

When Lee Jun-Kyeong had directed them toward Mt. Baekdu, he had said they were going to go find something to ride.

"But didn’t the deer already leave?” Jeong In-Chang asked, confused. It seemed as though the steeds that Lee Jun-Kyeong had talked about had refused to leave Mt. Baekdu. Furthemore, the deer didn’t have good enough stats to go forward.

It would be possible for them to make the deer leave the mountain forcefully, but it would be inefficient in many ways.

Lee Jun-Kyeong shook his head.

“When did I say we were going to ride the deer…? Fenrir.”

He called out to Fenrir, who was diligently following them.

“Ye-ah,” Fenrir sounded out as he had begun to learn words little by little, although there was the issue that most of the words were still only half-finished.

‘It’ll probably get better gradually.’

Lee Jun-Kyeong gave Fenrir an order while stroking his head.

“Take us for a ride.”

“Pardon?” Jeong In-Chang said, shocked at Lee Jun-Kyeong’s words.

That little child, that scrawny child…

“Ah!”

It then dawned on him. He had gotten used to seeing Fenrir in his small white-haired boy form, so he had forgotten what he truly was.

That boy…that boy was a wolf.

“Okay!”

Fenrir radiated light, and soon, in his place, stood a giant white wolf.

“Growl.”

It was a noble and gigantic wolf. Lee Jun-Kyeong grabbed onto the wolf’s fur, which could even be described as sacred, with one hand and vaulted on top of the wolf’s back.

“Get on.”

For a moment, Jeong In-Chang stood perplexed and looked back and forth between Fenrir and Lee Jun-Kyeong. It felt like something was strange and wrong with the situation.

“If you don’t get on, I’m just going to leave you here,” Lee Jun-Kyeong threatened.

Jeong In-Chang had no choice but to ride on Fenrir’s back. Fortunately, Fenrir didn’t reject him.

Lee Jun-Kyeong gave an order once the party had all gotten situated on the back of the giant wolf.

“Now run.”

“Growl?” Fenrir asked inquisitively.

“Haven’t you not been able to run for quite some time? You were wounded and trapped within the Seal. You must have wanted to run, right?”

-Hooowwwwlllll!

Fenrir responded in a somewhat terrifying manner. A howl that seemed to resonate throughout space had erupted from his jaws. Jeong In-Chang had to cover his ears at the deafening resonance.

Boom!

Soon, he was left with no choice but to latch onto Fenrir’s fur as if his life depended on it.

***

“Eughk!”

Jeong In-Chang covered his mouth.

“Hmm…”

Lee Jun-Kyeong looked over playfully at the visibly nauseous Jeong In-Chang, the corners of his mouth slightly rising.

“If you vomit on Fenrir’s back… it might be difficult for even me to placate him,” Lee Jun-Kyeong said jokingly.

“Eughk!!”

On the other hand, Jeong In-Chang wasn’t in a joking mood. Instead, he covered his mouth with both hands and shook his head back and forth.

Eventually, there was a sound that shouldn’t have been heard.

Gulp.

Jeong In-Chang’s face turned bright red, and Lee Jun-Kyeong quietly put down the hand that was about to reach into his inventory to pull out a paper bag.

“...”

Lee Jun-Kyeong quietly thought to himself, ‘I shouldn't have said that…’

The fact that he had bags in his inventory would be a secret from this moment on to Jeong In-Chang.

The group sprinted across the continent.

Ta da dak! Ta da dak!

Fenrir's speed was beyond imagination.

Although Jeong In-Chang was someone who was prone to motion sickness, at this speed, his reaction was fully warranted.

Fenrir was similar to a high-speed racer, sprinting across the continent at incredible speed, and nothing could stop him from racing faster and faster.

“Eughk!!”

He would jump over wreckages of frozen buildings as if it was natural. For anything that proved too challenging to vault, he would bulldoze through it, smashing buildings into pieces in his wake.

BOOM!

He was like a gale, a speeding bullet.

“Euuughk!!”

Eventually, Jeong In-Chang emptied his stomach.

“Bleghhhh!!!”

In an attempt to look at the bright side, Lee Jun-Kyeong consoled himself by thinking that at least the only thing Jeong In-Chang had eaten were potatoes.

In the end, Lee Jun-Kyeong still had to turn his head. It was never a good thing to see the insides of someone’s stomach. Jeong In-Chang couldn’t stop now that he had started, and the princess, who had been in his arms, suddenly backed away to Lee Jun-Kyeong’s side.

“Goongj…”

Quietly, Lee Jun-Kyeong covered the princess’ eyes and comforted the doll.

Pat pat.

Suddenly, perhaps due to the fiasco, Fenrir finally stopped running.

Jeong In-Chang reacted even more violently due to the sudden pause in movement.

After a while, the hapless Hunter had finally come to his senses.

“I… I’m sorry…” he weakly said.

Having remembered Lee Jun-Kyeong’s earlier words, the Hunter sincerely apologized to Fenrir. However, although the situation was a bit frightening, Jeong In-Chang realized that the situation wasn’t exactly what he had envisioned.

“Mr. Lee…?”

Lee Jun-Kyeong was looking at something.

Then, he felt it as well.

‘Enemies.’

There were monsters.

Hundreds of monsters were swarming over. Orcs and trolls were slaughtering each other to death.

That was why Fenrir had stopped.

“Growl,” Fenrir said to Lee Jun-Kyeong.

Jeong In-Chang and the princess couldn’t understand the wolf, but Lee Jun-Kyeong seemed as though he was able to.

“Hmm.”

Lee Jun-Kyeong pondered for a while. Then, he said, “Eat them and clean them up.”

“...?”

BOOM!

The halted Fenrir barreled forward again. He had been starving because he had been locked in a Seal. Even if he had found any food, he had been so riddled with wounds that all he could do was wander without being able to digest anything properly.

It would be prudent that they didn’t forget.

Fenrir wasn’t human.

He was a monster.

Tear!

“GRAAH!”

“Chwiiik!!”

A pure white wolf broke through the horde of trolls and ogres that were fighting with their lives on the line to destroy each other.

Tear! Chomp! Crack!

They were bewildered by the interruption, and they began to fall, accompanied by a cacophony of sound effects.

“...”

It all happened in an instant. The horde of monsters had been taken care of faster than it had taken Jeong In-Chang to clean his dirty mouth.

It would be prudent that they didn’t forget.

“What a monster…” Jeong In-Chang murmured.

He was strong.

The wolf started eating. Fenrir had been starving for quite some time, so he let out noises of contentment as he finally began to eat after a long dry spell.

Jeong In-Chang turned his head away in disgust, but this was the normal appearance of the familiar.

“We should also rest,” Lee Jun-Kyeong said as he jumped off Fenrir's back.

He had no intention of disturbing the wolf, who could finally eat after a long time. Furthermore, they also had to take a look around at the surrounding terrain and figure out where their current location was.

‘It looks like we’ll reach Qingdao soon.’

Qingdao had also been known as the city of beer, but now, it was a land of ice and darkness where no life could be found. Their current location seemed to be roughly between Tianjin and Qingdao, and it looked like they still had a long way to go before they reached their destination.

“Eat well and gain some strength,” Lee Jun-Kyeong said.

“Growl.”

It seemed as though Fenrir would have to suffer some more. Then, Lee Jun-Kyeong called Jeong In-Chang over.

“Mr. Jeong.”

The enemies they had to deal with from this point on were different from what the Hunter was used to. They were enemies that were as smart as humans and stronger than monsters. In order to deal with them, and for them to be able to reach their destination, their group would have to grow further.

“I have something I’ll be teaching you from this day forward,” Lee Jun-Kyeong said.

Jeong In-Chang looked over at Lee Jun-Kyeong with a slightly improved complexion. He asked a question while looking into Lee Jun-Kyeong’s eyes, who looked back at him with a calm gaze, “Is it that?”

He thought he had an idea as to what Lee Jun-Kyeong was talking about, his ridiculous strength and incredible growth rate. Furthermore, there was something else as well, something he couldn’t help but notice.

Jeong In-Chang had known about it, but he didn’t ask Lee Jun-Kyeong anything about it or ask him to teach it to him. He had just assumed that when the time came, that Lee Jun-Kyeong would bring it up first.

“That thing… what is it called?”

Now that Lee Jun-Kyeong had brought it up first, Jeong In-Chang had asked the question he had been curious about until this point.

“It’s a mana stream,” Lee Jun-Kyeong said with a smile.