I Became the Wrong Race

6 – Crash (6)

Isla slowly mulled over what had happened to her.

She had lost consciousness. Considering the height from which she had fallen, this was to be expected.

Falling was unexpected. She hadn’t anticipated the footstool being so unstable.

If only the footstool had been intact, she could have pulled that heavy monster up and saved it.

On the other hand, she had thought that. If they had managed to pull it up from there, would they have been victorious?

They were cornered.

They had been driven in a manhunt. They had somehow accounted for the blizzard that had been lowered them and the uncertainty of the difficult terrain and pushed her and the monster into it.

Was there a way to escape from this? Isla was already to some extent resigned to her fate.

Having fallen while trying to save the monster and giving up on everything–that was why.

She had lived a long time. She had weathered a long time.

Even when she first came here, she had known she wouldn’t last long.

Revenge, resentment, goals.

It was the moment when all these had been let down and renounced.

The monster pulled her in.

She exhaled deeply, hugging her with a sense of resignation in her eyes.

They rolled down the cliff just like that.

Just in case she got hurt, she adhered her body as close as possible, protectively curling her body into a ball.

A shudder.Even in the midst of her consciousness fading due to a concussion, she knew.

If this monster hadn’t held onto her just now, she would have died.

It was evident by the condition of the monster’s body.

When they reached the ground, she saw him through her shaky vision and the dizziness that was creeping in.

“Are you okay?”

What kind of expression is this?

The monster spoke with a smile that seemed to express relieve, or perhaps gratitude.

His mouth was red with spilt blood, and whether he was injured during their descent or not, he was covered in blood.

His arm was broken to the point that the bone could be seen, and his face quickly turned pale.

Those were injuries that a human couldn’t survive. This man is definitely a monster.

To her surprise, she realized something she had known when he had first regenerated from lumps of flesh into a human.

Somehow, she thought of this monster as a human.

Her consciousness was severed around that time. The murmuring voices were fading, the footsteps were growing distant, and she could no longer feel the slight presence of others.

She was left alone in the darkness for a long time.

Slowly, the darkness receded and light began to filter in.

Isela slowly opened her eyes.

It had been a long time since she had been under a roof.

She scanned the area before she could fully register the realization that it had been a long time since she had slept in a place with a ceiling.

“You’re awake.”

But someone else spoke first.

“No, it’s a monster.”

It was a man leaning against the wall.

He looked like an ordinary human.

His eyes were gray, mineral-like, yet somehow soft.

He was silently gazing.

His hair was black and curly, with thick eyebrows.

He was a big man, apt for the expression “giant.”

His face was handsome. It was a dignified face, like those of royalty or nobility.

Did he take care of himself somehow? She didn’t know much about monsters, but she thought he might be a monster created for that purpose.

“You seem to still be dizzy.”

But that thought didn’t last long.

The monster, Ruwellin, spoke. Isela stared blankly at Ruwellin and flicked her tail.

“I didn’t realize you were calling me because you didn’t call me sister.”

*

A hollow laugh came out. I thought he was too obsessed with the term sister, even though he was definitely older than me.

Isela was, in outward appearance, a woman living in this new continent. Regardless of the circumstances that brought her to this land, her life wouldn’t have been very easy.

Betrayals from others were probably more common than meals, and there were likely many nights where she couldn’t sleep because of fear and vigilance.

Perhaps there were times when she betrayed herself.

But she shamelessly called herself my sister, and wanted me to call her sister.

I wouldn’t say she was desperate, but still.

There must have been something about it.

Like losing a sibling, or having a sibling killed, experiencing familial love while the family is being destroyed.

Even though I was younger and insisted on calling her sister, if I had been older than Isela, wouldn’t I have claimed her as my younger sister?

If our ages were significantly different, we might have been father and daughter, or uncle and niece.

But, I didn’t accept her request.

I might have considered a different title, but the word “sister” was special to me in its own right.

I only have one sister in my lifetime, even if she may no longer exist.

She was my only family member who raised me and was there for me. My sister who, in her brief life, sacrificed herself to save me.

I have pride. So, the place of “sister” should remain vacant forever.

For such reasons, no matter how desperate Isela might want me to call her sister, I couldn’t.

She’s probably not that desperate, either.

As expected, Isela didn’t seem to care one way or the other about this. She expressionlessly got up.

She walked around silently barefoot, but then suddenly flung herself onto the floor.

Well, “flung” may be an overstatement. While her upper body was on the floor, her lower body remained elevated.

What on earth-?

It felt strange.He stretched out his body for a moment, still wet from dew. A behavior one often witnessed in cats or dogs. Having said that…

It was an exceedingly awkward posture to adopt as a human.

I was staring obliquely at the ground with a dejected face, unable to turn my head forward.

Suddenly, I didn’t understand why I was acting like this. I didn’t really want to know, honestly. It would have been good if I’d adjusted behavior based on the timing and the situation.

I was thinking about this when she finished stretching. She, the one called Dew, looked back at me.

“How much time has passed?”

At the edge of my sight, a translucent screen appeared.

[Play Time: 8,799 hours]

“About a day.”

She lightly bounced on her two feet as I cautiously answered.

“Should we leave?”

The woman didn’t ask for my opinion, she read the situation. It was the kind of thing I’d expect from her.

From the beginning, the cannibals had been attacking me persistently. It meant that they had a reason to keep her alive and take her.

There was no way she did not know where she was standing. She may have had a vague idea why I was alive.

“We can leave.”

I was in the room of the cannibals.

Being the monster who had killed some of them, I was their guest.

So I wasn’t going to die immediately. As long as I had no special purpose.

But it didn’t mean there was no need to escape.

I didn’t have a weapon at my side. I had been disarmed completely of the poleaxe, the mace, the logging axe, and the short sword I had managed to pick up.

I wasn’t stripped of my clothes, but the ones I’m currently wearing might as well be non-existent.

Clothing riddled with holes and not even fitting properly.

Sticky due to being soaked in blood.

If it hadn’t been for the fact I was used to wearing the same clothes for a year, I would have longed for a shower and a change for a long time.

The only means I had to resist was that one.

[Mourning 1/1]

I have only one chance. I shook my head at the snow leopard flicking its tail, waiting for my response.

“There’s no need for that. At least for now.”

“Correct.”

Dew looked back at the door in surprise. The door that was there had slowly disappeared, like fog lifting.

Traces of high-level magic. It was revealed as middle-aged man.

He was a middle-aged man dressed in a colorful noble costume with a cloak. He was smiling under his well-kept beard.

“You can do whatever you want later.”

His polite tone only hinting at his self-assured confidence.

But it was also the kind of sagacity and good-naturedness that could blend into any place without awkwardness.

Dew looked alarmed at the sight of him.

Puffing up her tail, raising it high and slightly spreading her legs in preparation to move at any time.

A worthy reaction. Even though I couldn’t feel it, almost every being in this world could feel and use magic.

Practically all the skills needed magic power which Dew would be sensitive to and feeling.

How formidable the wizard in front of her is.

“The Lord is waiting.”

The red spear that could track me and Dew, a magic weapon that could only be used at high levels in the game.

The magic that made up the door that could be broken at any time by the structuralist’s magic.

And underneath his cloak, the glimpse of a well-honed physicality.

This middle-aged man was as versatile as a wizard.

That’s why he could hunt in a snowstorm, and see through my trickery and suppress it.

Dew seemed to realize this. Looking at her twisted face, the wizard kindly led the way.

Leaving the room, and beyond the sight of the door disappearing and reappearing at will, I started to see things that only my eyes could see.

The structure of the wall, the form of the floor constructing the hallway.

Occasionally, you can see something like a pipe, showing a closed but efficient structure that clearly was underground.

It was a structure reminiscent of a research lab or aerial fortress I’d never seen before, but only in the movies or just a few hours ago.It couldn’t have been otherwise. It was a laboratory created by the three tribes, who were the villains of this world for some specific experiment, or purpose.

The fortress where I found myself was undoubtedly of the same design, radiating a similar vibe of a research facility.

People referred to such places as,

Dungeons.

Cannibal tribes used these dungeons as their dwelling places.

As such, a faint but tangible scent of blood and nauseating stench of death wafted through the passing landscapes.

Such a smell I could never have imagined experiencing in my life, yet I couldn’t show the discomfort I felt as my senses gradually started adjusting to it.

All I had done was come face to face with the one looking down at me in a huge room I had eventually arrived in.

Golden hair, golden eyes. Small stature covered in ill-fitting clothes.

I was not like her. My face, reflected in a well-polished piece of metal, did not resemble the person standing in front of me, neither the color of the hair nor the eyes.

But I knew just by looking that we were of the same tribe. I had a feeling. A vague sense of affinity or tribal aversion, I’m not sure which.

It was instinctual.

So to speak instinctively,

She was my kin, and also my kindred spirit.

But not entirely a kindred spirit. An individual with something I did not possess.

The girl tearing apart and devouring a human head with relish in her hand looked up at me and smiled delightfully.

The innocent smile of a child. Still, the blood smeared on the corner of her mouth made me sick.

The door behind us closed unnoticed, and Isla stands next to me, scanning the surroundings sharply.

I glanced at her casually,

And remembered our conversation.

“So it’s because there are too many of them.”

I thought the increase of cannibals resulted simply from the absence of law and order, but it wasn’t the case.

If there were other powers in this new continent, the increase of cannibals wouldn’t please them either. That’s why in the game the rating of a cannibal tribe was low. They all despised cannibals, and tried to exterminate them.

“But that’s not all,” Isla had said.

“About half.”

Merely half was due to the lack of law enforcement, she claimed.

The growth of the cannibal tribes, and even acquiring a powerful wizard-like individual were for different reasons.

I also realized the reason she had not told me.

Because their leader was a monster of a very famous species.

The murderer of the five Grand Dukes, the cause of the most horrifying civil war.

The Homunculus.

The same grotesque creature of dark fantasy as myself.

I witnessed the monstrosity stretching a head towards me with a smile.

It was truly repugnant, but I felt a sense of relief deep inside.

Because it wasn’t my sister.