Chapter 136

Disaster (1)

Title: I’m fucked.

(A photo of the cave entrance completely blocked by snow)

It appears that I’m fucked.

That is the conclusion I reached after careful consideration.

I’m fucked.

└ Heavenly Demon: Is all of that snow?

└ Wild Grylls: Yes. It’s hardened from the cold, so I’m digging through it with a pickaxe.

└ Heavenly Demon: Would it not be easy to excavate with sword energy?

└ Wild Grylls: I can, but no matter how much I dig, more snow keeps falling from above. I have no idea how much has accumulated.

└ SwordMaster: Isn’t that dangerous? What if you run out of oxygen?

└ Wild Grylls: I’m surviving thanks to the chimney I opened yesterday. It looks like the fast sloth kept adding firewood, so all the snow around it melted.

└ SwordMaster: It feels like the fast sloth has saved your life several times now.

└ Why do those sentences sound so literary?

└ Just three sentences perfectly convey how fucked he is. LOL

└ There’s profanity in it, but it somehow doesn’t even feel like swearing. LOL

└ Can snow really pile up that high? Is this another effect of the Forest of Four Seasons?

└ No. Places with heavy snowfall are often like that. Apparently, the snow frequently piles up as high as the doors.

└ Just look at northern Messiah. I heard the people there shovel snow every day. LOL

└ I’m from the north, and clearing snow is more irritating than subjugating monsters. It really is garbage falling from the sky.

└ All-Father: Even so, that is an abnormal amount of snowfall. It should be difficult for that much to accumulate overnight.

└ Wild Grylls: No matter how much I dig, more snow keeps pouring down from above.

└ All-Father: A word of advice: why not spend the time you are using on the Gallery digging through the snow instead? This appears dangerous.

└ Wild Grylls: I’m still digging while posting.

Though "mining" with a pickaxe would be more accurate than digging with a shovel, I was working hard.

The problem was that I had no idea how much snow had accumulated above me. Every time I dug some out, more came cascading down to fill the space again.

If the fast sloth had not added firewood throughout the night, the chimney would have become blocked too.

If the chimney—my only source of oxygen—had been buried as well...

I did not even want to imagine it.

The fast sloth was an enormous help not only in combat, but in everyday life as well.

But if it snows this much, can the other animals even survive?

And not just the animals.

I had to wonder whether the plants could survive either.

Nothing should have been able to grow properly beneath this much snow.

Yet countless trees stood tall enough to form an entire forest.

Either they possessed enough vitality to withstand the snow, or there was some other explanation.

If winter in the forest is already this awful, how fucked up must the other environments be?

The forest supposedly had a relatively "ordinary" climate, yet it had become like this.

The snowy mountains and desert could only be worse.

The rainforest where the gorillas lived was probably no different.

It made no sense for only my territory to be this extreme.

I’ll never finish if I just keep digging blindly.

I briefly considered climbing out through the chimney, but quickly abandoned the idea.

The chimney was not especially wide. If I became wedged inside, it would be a disaster.

I was better off seeing this through and excavating the snow blocking the entrance.

I have to clear the entrance before it snows again.

If another snowfall came now, I might be trapped inside this cave for the rest of my life.

Even the chimney was no guarantee of safety.

Actually, forget the chimney. I was worried about the cave itself.

Once snow accumulated, its weight became tremendous.

Could this cave withstand the weight of all that snow?

Especially after I had slightly modified it to install the chimney?

I could not simply sit around doing nothing.

"Fortunately, I have plenty of firewood."

I removed the curtain that had covered the entrance and lit another campfire.

The snow had frozen solid, so I decided to melt it with fire.

Of course, I was not going to sit around and wait. Once the snow had melted to a certain point, I would resume digging.

Crack! Thud!

As time passed, the snow softened and became easier to excavate.

I remained cautious, since melting snow could flow down and extinguish the campfire.

Who knew how much time had passed?

Eventually, the cavity no longer refilled whenever I removed more snow.

At last, the end was in sight.

"Whew!"

After all that labor with the pickaxe and shovel, I could finally see the result.

I had somehow managed to remove all the snow filling the cave entrance.

But that only applied to the entrance itself.

The surrounding area was another matter entirely.

Even directly outside the cave, the snow stood far above my head. Elsewhere, it had accumulated even higher.

People in Russia and Canada live in places like this?

How did they manage?

I was genuinely curious.

As I stared at the space I had cleared around the cave entrance, I suddenly remembered my time in the military.

I remembered shoveling whenever it snowed and scattering calcium chloride to prevent the ground from freezing.

Does this world even have a term for calcium chloride?

This world used alchemy rather than chemistry.

Historically, chemistry had developed from alchemy.

But considering how effective elixirs were, alchemy here was probably every bit as advanced as chemistry.

Wouldn’t producing calcium chloride be relatively simple?

If that isn’t possible, I can always use salt.

I had once heard that ordinary salt could be scattered in place of calcium chloride.

Something about it being more beneficial despite concerns over environmental damage.

I’ll ask about it after I finish working. For now, let’s spread some salt.

Salt was available through the auction house.

It was expensive, but it was an essential survival resource with plenty of demand, so it was never out of stock.

I proceeded section by section, scattering salt over the ground exposed by my shovel before clearing the next area.

Fortunately, it did not begin snowing again, allowing me to set up additional campfires along the way.

Still, I had to figure out how to keep this path clear and secure enough space to move around.

At this rate, I’ll need to build an emergency exit, not just a chimney.

It seemed I would soon need to borrow the wisdom of people who lived in cold regions.

I did not know how long this winter would last, but it did not seem likely to end anytime soon.

It was nearly lunchtime by the time I finished clearing the area around my shelter.

This isn’t a barren snowy mountain. There are definitely plants here...

I pondered the mystery while removing the snow covering the oven and furnace.

As I had already noted, animals and plants should not have been able to survive under this much snow.

The place should have been as barren as a snowy mountain.

There was no way these conditions would remain unchanged forever.

Perhaps everything would return to normal as early as tomorrow.

I had not been here long, and so many dramatic things had happened that I could not help forming all sorts of theories.

If the season could abruptly change to winter, perhaps it could just as suddenly become summer.

Imagining this immense amount of snow melting away offered me some comfort.

But imagination was imagination, and reality was reality.

It might snow again, so I should move everything I can into the cave.

The iron drum filled with frozen fish, the bellows, and all my assorted tools—everything that could be moved.

I could not relocate the makeshift oven or furnace, so I had no choice but to leave them outside.

They were unlikely to collapse under the snow, and even if they did, I could always rebuild them.

Or so I reassured myself.

With that, my winter preparations and precautions against isolation were nearly complete.

I had finally found a moment to rest and was about to open the Gallery when—

Ruuuuumble—

An ominous sound reached my ears, and the ground trembled faintly.

The moment I felt the noise and vibration, I rushed into the cave without hesitation.

Then, keeping my composure, I picked up my sword and shield.

My objective was not to take shelter, but to prepare myself. It was a lesson I had learned during my time here.

It was better to prepare like this than sit around waiting for whatever fate had in store for me.

Rustle—

Just before I left, the fast sloth reached out to me.

Did he want to come along?

But the fast sloth had to watch over the hibernating Wonmo.

I deliberately ignored his outstretched hand and stepped outside the cave.

Ruuuuumble!

The noise and vibrations had grown even stronger.

What in the world was coming?

Judging from its momentum, it had to be moving quickly.

That made me even more tense. I had no idea what might suddenly appear.

Just in case, I began circulating my mana and even manifested my aura.

After concentrating on the noise and vibrations for some time, I finally realized where they were coming from.

Behind... the cave?

It was coming from the exact opposite direction of the entrance.

The instant I realized that, I whipped my head around.

It was strange that the disturbance was coming from behind the cave rather than the forest, but this was the Forest of Four Seasons.

Nothing that appeared here could truly be considered strange.

Even if it was—

Rrrrrumble!

—not a living creature, but a natural disaster.

"Oh, fu—"

At the sight of the avalanche surging from behind the cave like a tidal wave, I experienced the illusion that time had slowed.

In that brief moment, I glanced down and saw the fast sloth looking up at me from inside the cave.

His expression seemed to say, This is why you should have listened to me instead of going out alone, you idiot.

When he had reached out earlier, he had not been asking to come with me.

He had been trying to stop me.

Roooooar!!

"Gah! Urgh! Uwaaagh!"

No matter how powerful an animal might be, it was helpless before the forces of nature.

The same applied to me.

I hurriedly drove my sword into the ground, but it was useless.

The Heavenly Demon’s sword was simply too effective.

Rather than anchoring me, it sliced straight through the ground as the avalanche swept me away.

Its effectiveness had backfired at the worst possible moment.

W-wasn’t I being swept toward the river?

Even amid the confusion of being carried away by the avalanche, I forced myself to remember the direction.

This avalanche was heading toward the river.

And the space beyond the river changed constantly.

This was dangerous.

One wrong move, and I might never be able to return to my shelter.

Not the sword—the shield...!

I flailed with my shield instead of the Heavenly Demon’s sword, hoping it would catch on a branch or anything else.

With most of my body already buried beneath the snow, it was closer to a desperate struggle than a calculated maneuver.

Still, I had to do something.

When it came to survival, you had to try whatever you could.

Jerk!

The result of my desperate effort came quickly.

I did not know which tree I had caught on, but I could clearly feel my clothes snagging against something.

I had been prepared to abandon the Heavenly Demon’s sword if necessary, but fortunately, I stopped at just the right moment.

"Mmmphhh!!"

Of course, that did not change the fact that the avalanche continued battering my entire body.

I endured and endured, waiting for it to end.

"Pwah!"

After what felt like an eternity, the avalanche finally passed.

Ordinarily, an avalanche would leave snow piled everywhere, but strangely, this one had swept all of it away.

Thanks to that, I was not buried beneath a snowdrift and could breathe normally.

"Cough! Cough!"

I coughed and looked around.

The avalanche seemed to have carried away all the accumulated snow, exposing the bare earth beneath it.

Before anything else, I needed to figure out where I was.

If I had crossed the river, it would be the worst possible outcome.

I’m not across the river.

Apparently, I had snagged on a tree near the river.

I could see the frozen river from where I was, confirming it.

On the other side was terrain utterly different from this place—a pure white, snow-covered mountain.

An immense amount of snow covered the mountain as well.

The avalanche that had just passed had clearly gone in that direction.

Had the snow moved on its own?

Or had the forest expelled it?

I could not tell.

Was the terrain around here even capable of producing an avalanche in the first place?

Was there a mountain nearby?

This was confusing.

Perhaps the forest was literally alive and had cleansed itself.

With weather this awful, no plants would remain if the forest could not purify itself somehow.

It would have become just like the snowy mountain across the river.

It was a highly plausible theory.

If even the forest is like this, what the hell is happening in the other regions?

I was becoming increasingly frightened.

I quickly gathered myself and returned to the cave.

"...Ah."

There, I was greeted by the devastated remains of my shelter’s yard.

Not only had the barricade been swept away, but so had the makeshift furnace and oven.

I could rebuild the furnace and oven, but the barricade was a serious problem.

So this is why there’s no civilization here.

Civilization could never develop when everything was regularly swept away.

While Grylls was filming a disaster movie all by himself—

Whoooooosh!!

—another disaster was unfolding in the grasslands of the Forest of Four Seasons.

The region naturally had distinct wet and dry seasons, so heavy rain during the wet season was to be expected.

But what would happen if far too much rain fell?

It was still a grassland, so wouldn’t the earth absorb it all?

"Blub! Blub!"

"Groooan! Grooan!"

It did not.

An actual flood had struck the grasslands, harming countless animals.

Those who suffered the most were the animals unable to find shelter—particularly the young.

Still small and weak, they were simply swept away.

"Hmm."

There was someone observing the scene in real time.

It was Ludwig.

He was still wearing his heavy armor to preserve his defenses.

"So that is why this animal has such long legs."

"..."

He was currently sitting atop a giraffe, using it to escape the disaster.

Giraffes were ordinarily known for having foul tempers, but this one did not attack Ludwig.

The bumps on its head had given it enough intelligence to judge him harmless.

I would have been in serious trouble without this animal.

Sitting on the giraffe’s back, Ludwig looked up at its face.

The giraffe stood calmly even amid the flooded grasslands.

It had merely moved beneath a massive tree to escape the rain for a while, remaining steadfast and composed.

Boom! Thud! Thud!

Then a thunderous noise reached Ludwig’s ears, accompanied by vibrations that shook the ground.

When he turned toward the source, he witnessed a sight that was difficult to believe.

Thud! Boom! Thud!

It was a turtle.

Not a sea turtle, but a tortoise.

Instead of an ordinary shell, it carried an enormous mountain upon its back.

Naturally, a creature capable of carrying a mountain was itself terrifyingly immense.

As the rain poured down heavily enough to flood the grasslands, animals climbed onto the tortoise’s back.

Had Grylls seen it, he would have called it a living Noah’s Ark.

"..."

Ludwig silently watched the tortoise lumber onward before turning his head away.

People can actually survive in a place like this?

Ludwig was becoming increasingly curious about Grylls.

The irony was that Grylls’s entire yard had just been swept away.

I should find shelter on higher ground. I have an excellent steed, so it should be manageable.

It was a giraffe, not a horse.

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