Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Episode 812

Hidden Story 4

The guild master had lost all his hair. It hadn’t gradually receded or thinned into bald patches. One moment it was there. The next, it was gone.

It had been ‘lost’ so cleanly that his scalp was completely smooth and even shiny.

Well, that worked out.

I deliberately looked away and tried to focus on the positive.

I mean, think about it.

Some would call a cup half-full, while others would call it half-empty.

In the long run, the latter mindset is better for life. And honestly, “worked out” really was the right word for what had just happened.

It didn’t exactly suit him… but still, he was lucky that hair was all he lost.

The authority could have taken his equipment, or even the skills and stats from his essence. Compared to that, losing his hair was a minor penalty. He could always grow it back.

However, since I had no intention of going bald like him, I let out a roar and charged forward.

“Bethel—rAAAAAAA!”

Neither I nor my allies could hear my scream, but the beast certainly could. It even roared back, as if answering my battle cry.

Not that I could hear it.

Ugh, it’s spitting on me…

Honestly, being covered in spit felt way worse than having blood on my skin. But I didn’t have time to wipe my face, so I kept charging forward as the spit ran down my skin and blocked another one of its gigantic attacks.

Bang!

[The character has activated Aegis Dragon Armour.]

Then I activated the armor’s special effect,
the one I had obtained outside the Labyrinth outside the city walls.

—!!

The monster’s pupils instantly widened.

Well, of course it was shocked. A Viking warrior, even larger than itself, had suddenly appeared out of nowhere and slammed his greatsword straight down onto its head.

Hope you like it.

The spirit warrior reflected all the damage I had taken over the past eighteen minutes.

[Reflecting all accumulated damage.]

I was just returning what I had received.

***

It didn’t take very long for the Beast raid to come to an end.

After we poured all our firepower into the Beast for three minutes, already pushed into a critical state by the reflected damage from the Dragon Armor, it finally lost its strength and collapsed to the ground.

As for a few noteworthy things that happened…

[Ancient Beast has cast Authority of Change.]

Right before we killed it, the Beast managed to use one final authority. Unlike the first skill, this one chose its target at random. Yet, somehow, the target was once again the guild master.

What the hell?

Getting hit twice was already unbelievable, but the effect itself was even more absurd.

…He became a woman.

The guild master’s shiny bald frame became slimmer, and every physical characteristic of the female sex was applied to him.

The guild master’s shiny, bald body grew slimmer, and every physical trait of a woman was applied to him.

Simply put, he had become Ms. Ilya Adnus.

I watched him gesture frantically, growing more and more curious about what he was saying. When I signaled with my hand, Raven understood what I meant and released the spell on the group.

“Wh-what is this?!” he shrieked. “F-first my hair, and n-now… Why is my chest…?!”

“That’s not the only thing that changed.”

He pulled out a mirror and began to panic, but I didn’t have time to waste comforting him.

“Calm down. Your hair will grow back.”

“That’s not the issue!”

“Then are you discriminating against women?”

“No, this has nothing to do with discrimination—!”

“Don’t worry. You’ll return to normal after a while.”

He finally froze. “Is that true?”

“Yes. I swear it on my warrior’s honor.”

I considered pretending not to know and teasing him a little, but then he would probably grumble for the rest of the expedition. So I just told him the truth. We still had things to do.

“Oh, I can finally hear again!”

“But is it really over?”

“It doesn’t seem to be moving…”

“More importantly, the guild master…”

“Don’t talk about it. He’ll hear you…”

The members began murmuring among themselves as they looked at the collapsed Beast. A few of them were naturally still worried.

“You can lower your guard. It’s all over.”

“But why… isn’t the corpse disappearing…?”

Oh, that? I’m not sure of the exact reason, but this ‘Beast’ belongs to the unranked monster category. Even in the game, it didn’t give any experience, and its corpse wouldn’t disappear whether distortion magic was used on it or not—unless it dropped an essence, of course.

When I explained that to Missha, she bit her lip in disappointment.

“Ah… So it won’t give us an essence this time…”

I understood why she was disappointed. The Beast’s essence would have been one of Misha’s graduation essences.

If it had dropped this time, I could have just given it to her.

That didn’t mean we would keep returning to this island again and again to redo the raid and farm for the essence.

It would take too long, and since the Ice Double Swordmaster was a key part of my late-game strategy, I had several builds planned for her. Using the Beast’s essence was the A-build, but there was also a B-build that used a different essence as its core.

There was even a C-build, but its ceiling was a little low, so I wanted to avoid that route if possible…

Given how low the drop rate for essence was in this game, I had to prepare multiple builds and level up the characters flexibly if I wanted to reach the Gate of the Abyss.

It was disappointing, but it wasn’t a total loss.

The Beast’s corpse, while not as valuable as its essence, would still sell for a high price.

“What are you all doing? Skin it already!”

Its hide, for example, was as effective as drake leather, a Level 4 material.

“D-drake leather? You mean that famously expensive stuff…?”

“I heard only the leather on a drake’s back can be used. Are you saying this monster’s entire body is covered in that kind of leather…?”

“Then how much is all this worth?”

Well, if we sold everything, we could probably make enough to buy one or two rank 3 essences. Still, it was too early to celebrate.

“Be careful with the leather on its head. That part is close to ogre leather in quality.”

“What?! You mean it’s a Level 5 material?”

“And handle its bones carefully too, especially the skull. If you make swords out of them, they’ll be as sturdy as adamantium.”

“This thing was more of a treasure chest than I thought.”

It was an enormous monster, far too big for just one or two people to butcher. But with all of us being skilled explorers, it didn’t take long to strip the entire corpse of anything valuable: the skull, the leather, organs like the heart for Raven’s research, and much more.

Once we had taken everything we could, I noticed Arta standing there, blinking.

Oh, right. Him.

He had a strange look on his face, so I walked over and spoke to him.

“Is something wrong?”

After a brief pause, he said, “This is strange.”

“What is?”

“If this beast was truly the cause of the end… then all of you should have died here. No, even if you survived, you should have failed. That was why I followed you. I wanted to observe the process of the world ending and find a clue for how to stop it.”

What the—? So he had just been standing there expecting us to die?

“What are you trying to say?” I asked.

“It’s just… too strange! My research calculated the flow of time and pinpointed the coordinates along its course. The experiment succeeded, and I arrived here today, on the final day.”

“I get it, so get to the point.”

“If you won the battle… then how can today still be the world’s last day?”

Then Arta answered his own question, not with doubt, but with certainty.

“I’m sorry, but that Beast you just defeated… is not the cause of the End.”

Hmm, that was interesting. At the secret base across the ocean, Machine Monster Arta had told us the Beast was the cause. But now, this different Arta was saying it wasn’t.

“Then what is the cause?” I asked.

“That’s what we need to find out now.”

“How?”

“Those powerful waves of mana I mentioned earlier… I thought they were coming from the Beast you spoke of, but I was wrong. Even now, after the Beast has been defeated, I can still feel them.”

“So you want to head toward the source of those waves?”

“Yes, exactly. I don’t have much time left—”

“Got it. Let’s go.”

I didn’t need to think it over. I had already expected something to happen after we defeated the Beast, and from the sound of it, he already had a destination in mind.

“How much time do you have left?” I asked first.

Apparently, we had even less time than I expected.

“Well… for some reason, the time I had left dropped sharply after that Beast appeared.”

Oh, because of Song of the End. Should I send him farther away next time we do this raid?

That thought briefly crossed my mind, but I also wondered if I would ever use this hidden piece again.

Honestly, I still didn’t know the exact conditions for him to appear, or how Final Day had been cast in the first place.

“Everyone, I know you’re tired, but endure just a little longer. We’ll move at full speed from here.”

After gathering all the loot we could, we swiftly headed in the direction Arta indicated.

“Here…?”

“Yes. I can feel powerful waves of mana coming from inside. Let’s go in!”

Surprisingly, the place we arrived at was the cave with the portal.

I don’t think there’s anything hidden here…

I was genuinely curious. Back when I played the game, I had searched this cave from top to bottom, and I was confident that—

“It’s here! We’re approaching it quickly!” Arta soon cried.

I tilted my head in confusion. “Are we?”

Was there some hidden space here that even I didn’t know about? But just as I suspected, we ended up right back where the portal was.

“Let’s hurry inside!”

Since we were already here, we moved toward the portal with Arta.

Vwoong!

Before long, the ominous dark-red portal came into view. The moment Arta saw it, he let out a bewildered cry.

“Huh? A… portal? Why is there a portal here? How? Wh-what went wrong? No, that can’t be…”

He sank deeper and deeper into confusion. No, confusion wasn’t quite right. It was more like he was panicking as he muttered to himself.

“W-wait…”

He stepped backward like a frightened man, and I figured this was as good a time as any to cut in.

“What’s the problem? Isn’t it just a portal?”

At my confusion, his expression twisted strangely before his eyes widened in realization.

“Let me ask you one thing,” Arta said, his voice lower than ever. “Am I… inside the Labyrinth?”

I was left speechless by his question.

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