Chapter 95

Foreshadowing (1)

Nothing in this world lasts forever.

The same goes for countries that seem as though they could never fall.

Countless nations have been founded and destroyed throughout history, and it is common for later generations either to inherit their legacies or erase them entirely.

As long as people exist, conflicts large and small are inevitable, and once those cracks begin to widen, collapse will eventually follow.

This world was no different.

Countless kingdoms and empires had existed here before disappearing.

I’d never been particularly interested in history, but since this was another world, I couldn’t help developing at least a little curiosity about it.

└ Wild Grylls: I’m here. What does the writing say?

└ Allfather: Oh! You’re here! Mr. Grylls, you’ve discovered an extraordinary record!

└ Wild Grylls: Is it really that significant?

└ Allfather: I’ve only managed to decipher half of that page so far, but this is a record from the Balkan Kingdom! Do you have any idea how incredible that is?

└ Wild Grylls: No.

└ Hey. You said you can do arithmetic, right? Doesn’t that mean you’ve had a basic education?

└ You received a basic education and don’t know about the Balkan Kingdom?

└ Wild Grylls: I keep telling you, I’m from another world.

Even if I’d received an education, the only countries from the past I knew much about were Joseon, Goryeo, Goguryeo, Silla, and Baekje.

If I broadened the scope a little, there were the Mongol Empire, Nazi Germany, Britain, and so on.

Going even further back, I suppose there was Rome, but that was about it.

I’d never been particularly interested in history.

Even the things I did know were mostly things I’d stumbled across while browsing the internet.

Some countries had an unusual number of memes associated with them.

Britain was a prime example.

There was a meme that whenever something happened somewhere in the world, you could blame Britain and you’d probably be right—the "Perfidious Albion" meme.

Britain really had committed all sorts of atrocities, but there was one country that made even the title of "Perfidious Albion" look trivial.

Nazi Germany.

A country that turned massacre into an industry.

The absolute pinnacle of madness.

That was about the extent of my knowledge.

I knew absolutely nothing about this world’s history.

└ Wild Grylls: So I guess the Balkan Kingdom was some insanely awesome kingdom?

└ Allfather: Hoho. I suddenly feel like dropping a Meteor on you.

└ Wild Grylls: Huh?

└ Allfather: It wasn’t merely some "insanely awesome kingdom." It was a kingdom that had reached the pinnacle of magic—particularly necromancy.

└ And it was the kingdom where the Immortal King was born.

└ All the related records disappeared when the kingdom fell, and now one just happens to be sitting in the Forest of Four Seasons. Lmaooo.

└ But why did he go to the Forest of Four Seasons? I’m curious.

People who loved history began leaving comments one after another.

As someone who knew absolutely nothing about it, I couldn’t make heads or tails of what they were saying.

I considered searching for the information myself, but I couldn’t do that without risking missing the conversation.

’I don’t even know who the Immortal King is.’

As far as I remembered, the only thing I knew was that the Wizard King, Kadir, had defeated him.

Other than that, I knew nothing.

I’d never felt any particular need to know, either.

└ Wild Grylls: I have no idea what any of you are talking about. So basically, there was a powerful country a long time ago, and it was destroyed because of the Immortal King, right?

└ Allfather: More or less.

└ Wild Grylls: And the Wizard King defeated the Immortal King.

└ Allfather: That’s also correct.

└ Wild Grylls: Then when did the Balkan Kingdom fall?

└ Allfather: Chronologically speaking, it fell about thirty years ago.

└ Things were absolute chaos back then. People were evacuating everywhere.

└ My dad was a paladin. We received notice that he’d been killed in action.

└ Stay strong.

└ Wasn’t the previous Hero involved too?

└ As far as I know, the previous Hero died a heroic death, which allowed Kadir to defeat him.

Thirty years ago wasn’t all that long ago.

The effects of something like that were bound to linger.

Even World War II had only ended about a hundred years ago.

And the Korean War, the worst war in Korean history, had been even more recent—less than eighty years ago.

In other words, people of the current generation had personally suffered because of the Immortal King.

To them, the Immortal King must still represent an enormous source of fear.

└ Allfather: He turned every citizen of his kingdom into an undead. It was one of the worst incidents in history, one that nearly swallowed the entire world.

└ That one incident made the Holy Kingdom strictly prohibit necromancy.

└ Didn’t they go beyond banning it and classify it outright as heresy?

└ Rather than heresy, they basically classified necromancers as evildoers. It’s kind of a shame, though. Necromancy was genuinely useful as a substitute for manual labor.

└ It was controversial from the beginning. The Central Plains banned necromancy from the start because they considered it disrespectful to the dead.

└ Who gives a damn about the dead? The living still have to live;;

└ Fuck, you try farming with nothing but your bare hands. You have any idea how convenient it was whenever a village had a necromancer?

└ Necromancers are creepy as hell, so who knows what they might do.

└ That’s prejudice. Using magic on a corpse to determine the cause of death was also a form of necromancy.

└ Wild Grylls: W-Wait, that’s possible?

└ Allfather: It remains an unsolved problem even today. However, we may be able to find the answer in the books you’ve discovered, Mr. Grylls.

└ Wild Grylls: Did the Immortal King destroy me or something?

I still didn’t really get it.

It sounded like a story about some completely unrelated country.

Maybe being stuck in the Forest of Four Seasons for so long had dulled my sense of reality.

Or perhaps it was because I was hearing all of this through the gallery.

Either way, none of it really hit home.

The Balkan Kingdom, the Immortal King, or whatever else—they meant nothing to me.

└ Wild Grylls: I’ll photograph every page of the books and upload them. Can you translate them? Rather than the historical stuff, please focus on how this person survived in the forest.

└ Allfather: Good heavens! Thank you so much! I don’t know how I could possibly repay you for this honor...!

└ Wild Grylls: Just tell me the parts related to survival. That’s all I need.

As I’d said before, survival was the most important thing.

I turned the pages and photographed them one by one.

Uploading all of this to the gallery would take time.

That was precisely why I’d hurried back.

’Should I just give them to Allfather?’

I wondered how long it would take to upload everything, but ultimately decided to post all of it.

Even if Allfather was intelligent, he might still have trouble deciphering parts of the text.

If I made everything public like this, I’d have a better chance of getting objective information.

If someone provided significant help, I was even willing to give them a fully grown mandrake.

’I’ll ignore what the anons say.’

Of course, since all kinds of people gathered in the gallery, I planned to ignore the anons’ interpretations whenever possible.

Someone might deliberately mistranslate something and confuse everyone.

’Still, I’ll give the books to Allfather.’

Regardless of uploading them to the gallery, I intended to give the physical books to Allfather.

They were useless in my hands, and Allfather was the person I trusted most with them.

Whatever their academic value might be, information related to survival took priority for me.

’This person was pretty incredible too. They somehow kept surviving and even managed to keep a journal.’

While photographing the pages, I turned my head toward the sack containing the bones.

What kind of person had managed to keep surviving in this hellish forest and even write a journal while doing it?

Hoping the journal contained some useful survival tips, I carefully photographed every single page.

Considering how old the books were, they had been preserved remarkably well, so there were almost no illegible characters.

’Oh. What kind of plant is this?’

At first, most of the pages had been filled entirely with writing, but as I moved on to the other books, illustrations began appearing as well.

Some of them looked like they could be useful for my survival.

There were drawings of various plants and animals, as well as illustrations of specific locations.

These were exactly the kinds of things I needed right now, so I took extra care when photographing them.

"Ugh. My neck."

I spent most of the afternoon doing nothing but photographing the books.

Even so, it took comparatively little time because I didn’t have to hold something in one hand and take pictures like I would with a camera.

All I had to do was turn the pages and take pictures with my eyes.

The image quality was excellent too, so there was no risk of the writing becoming blurry.

My eyesight determined the image quality.

And I had good eyes.

Therefore, high resolution.

"Now I just have to upload all of these to the gallery."

I uploaded everything I’d photographed from the books to the gallery.

Why go through all this trouble? Wouldn’t it be easier just to leave everything to Allfather?

I could say it was for the sake of getting objective interpretations, but people who didn’t understand probably still wouldn’t understand.

I simply had a strange feeling that this was what I should do.

’I’ll upload each book separately so they’re easier to distinguish.’

There was no limit to the number of photos that could be uploaded to the gallery.

However, the gallery wasn’t completely free to use in terms of mana, so there was a practical limit.

Every upload consumed a tiny amount of mana.

The more photos there were, and the longer a video was, the more mana it consumed.

Title) First book I found

Wild Grylls

(Photos of the book’s contents)

(Photos of the book’s contents)

(Photos of the book’s contents)

(Photo of the final page)

I’m just uploading the entire book.

I’ll give one fully grown mandrake to whoever deciphers information related to survival.

For the record, I’m only going to trust registered users. I’ll upload the rest of the books later.

I posted exactly that and then uploaded all the other books as well.

It was nothing but repetitive manual work, yet after finishing it all, I felt oddly accomplished.

Once I’d gone through everything, I initiated a trade with Allfather.

Less than three seconds after I sent the request, he accepted.

[Wild Grylls: Hello, Allfather. Did you see the posts I uploaded?]

[Allfather: I’m reading them right now with my lower half standing at full attention.]

[Wild Grylls: ;;]

He was always like this, so I decided to ignore it.

If I got awkward about it, I’d probably end up being the weird one.

[Wild Grylls: Anyway, I was thinking of donating the books I found? Well, giving them to you, at least.]

[Allfather: What! Those precious books...! Are you truly sure you want to give them to me?]

[Wild Grylls: I can’t properly preserve them, and I can’t decipher them either. In return, if you find anything related to survival, tell me immediately.]

[Allfather: That much is easy. Aren’t you curious about the Balkan Kingdom or the Immortal King?]

[Wild Grylls: He was basically a king who raised an army of skeletons and started a war, right?]

[Allfather: Hoho. That summary is so perfect that you’ve left me with nothing to say. You’re simply not interested, are you?]

[Wild Grylls: I’ve got enough problems of my own.]

[Allfather: I see. Very well. I’ll tell you how this man managed to survive.]

[Wild Grylls: Thank you. Ah, before that, may I ask you one more thing?]

[Allfather: Go ahead.]

[Wild Grylls: I’d like to know this man’s name.]

At least I wanted to know his name.

There was a big difference between burying someone whose name you knew and someone whose name you didn’t.

Fortunately, his name must have been written on the first page, because Allfather answered immediately.

[Allfather: The last scribe of the Balkan Kingdom, Rice Kraone. His name was Rice Kraone.]

[Wild Grylls: Rice Kraone. Understood.]

Now that I’d handed the books over to Allfather, there was only one thing left to do.

Bury the skeleton from the sack somewhere sunny.

I took a shovel, a hammer, and the sack containing the skeleton and headed outside.

’A cross... no. Better not. I’ll just use a stone.’

Mixing a cross with a Korean-style memorial rite would be one bizarre combination.

It would be better to find a reasonably flat stone and use that instead.

Thud! Thud!

I began digging with the shovel.

I made the grave long enough for the entire skeleton to fit.

All that remained was to place the skeleton inside and cover it up.

’Strangely enough, all the bones are still connected.’

The skeleton had continued to hold its shape like one of those models you’d see in a science classroom.

Normally the bones should have separated, but instead they remained connected and retained their form.

I didn’t know enough about the subject to tell whether that was normal, but it wasn’t a problem.

I gently laid the skeleton in the grave and covered it with soil.

Thud! Clack! Clack! Clack!

Then I planted a broad, flat stone at the head of the grave.

I hammered it into place so it wouldn’t move.

Everything was ready.

I bought a reasonably priced bottle of liquor from the auction house.

For reference, it was liquor from the Central Plains.

At least it had an East Asian feel to it, so it was familiar to me.

Pouring beer over a grave just didn’t feel right.

Glug, glug, glug—

I poured the liquor over the grave and stone marker, soothing the spirit as best I could.

Then I bowed twice.

It was a little crude, but it should be enough to show respect.

What mattered wasn’t formality.

It was sincerity.

At least, that was what I believed.

’Ah. Right. His name.’

I’d forgotten to put his name on the stone.

That had almost been a serious mistake.

I laid the stone marker flat again.

Then I bought some ink and a brush from the auction house and carefully wrote on it.

Naturally, I wrote in Hangul.

It was the only script I knew.

[Rice Kraone, the last scribe of the Balkan Kingdom, rests here.]

That should be enough.

I waited until the ink dried, then fixed the stone back into place over the grave.

I’d finished paying my respects to the dead.

Normally, the last thing to add would be a keepsake or personal belonging... but there was no need.

I hadn’t touched the pendant the skeleton had worn around its neck until the very end.

I’d buried it together with him.

In other words, the somewhat peculiar funeral was finally over.

Just as I turned around to head back toward the cave—

[Grazaas.]

A voice, eerily sinister, sounded from behind me.

At the same time, an icy chill swept over me, enough to make every hair on my body stand on end.

I flinched violently and spun back toward the grave.

And then—

"..."

There was nothing there.

So little, in fact, that I almost wondered whether I’d imagined the voice.

Only the silent surroundings and the grave where I’d just performed the memorial rite remained.

’Am I seriously starting to hear things now?’

I rubbed my face and headed back to the cave.

I’d even eaten eel, but somehow it felt as though my energy had already been drained again.

’I’ll take a nap.’

For some reason, exhaustion had suddenly piled up throughout my entire body.

While Grylls was taking his nap—

└ Hey. If I deciphered that correctly, this is going to cause a massive uproar.

└ What’s in it?

└ It says the Holy Kingdom massacred the citizens of the Balkan Kingdom in an attempt to create the Immortal King;;

└ ???

└ What the fuck are you talking about??

└ The Holy Kingdom did? Why the hell would they do that?

An unexpected revelation was beginning to unfold.