Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Episode 836

Ups and Downs 2

Vwoong!

Explorers poured out of the rippling portal.

“Ugh… Ow…”

First came the four passengers from Barbarian Tank Mode, the ones I had found not long after getting separated from my clan.

“Oh! Just as the Viscount said, my soul power has increased!”

Then the six survivors we had run into while Saturnus was dragging us away.

“…Viscount? Who are those people…?”

And even the eight members of the Armin Explorer Group.

“Their insignia… They’re from the Sawtooth Clan.”

“More importantly, they’re pointing their swords at us.”

“…Are they enemies?”

As the explorers on my side came through the portal and immediately formed ranks, the Sawtooth Clan’s earlier confidence vanished, replaced by confusion and fear.

It was only natural. Even setting aside how suddenly everyone had appeared, they all understood what kind of situation they were in now.

“We’re fucked…”

The captain, whose name I still didn’t know, muttered loudly enough for everyone to hear.

“C-Captain?” the vice-captain called out, probably asking for orders.

From my perspective, it was pointless.

Eighteen elite explorers had come through the portal.

Then there was me.

And although injured, Aynar as well.

Twenty people in total.

Their only advantage had been numbers, and that had just been overturned in an instant.

Their fate was already—

“Calm down!”

“…Huh?”

“How pathetic are you all going to look?”

Surprisingly, the captain didn’t lose his nerve or try to run. Instead, he snapped at his clan members.

Then…

He walked toward me through the silence.

Even as I watched him with my own eyes, I could hardly believe it.

What is he planning?

Was this his way of accepting death? Or was he secretly much stronger than he looked?

Otherwise, none of this made sense.

After closing a fair distance, he stopped and stared straight at me. The situation was overwhelmingly in our favor. He was also close enough that if I used Giantization, I could smash him with my hammer.

And yet, something about his posture told me I might be the one misunderstanding things.

In the silent standoff that followed, an unknown pressure seemed to weigh down on me.

At last, in a raspy voice rough like scraping iron, he spoke:

“Viscount Jandel, are you aware of where we are?”

“Yeah. I know.”

His confidence was so irrationally overwhelming that I found myself stumbling over my words.

“Heh. Then this will be simple.”

He looked me dead in the eye.

“Lay down your weapon.”

Did he know some hidden secret about the Larkaz maze that I didn’t?

Was that why he was acting so confident?

“I won’t call this a misunderstanding, but for everyone’s sake, let’s end it here. No one needs to shed blood.”

“…What?”

It took me a moment to fully process what he was saying.

But that brief pause only seemed to make him even more confident.

“The moment our weapons clash, blood will be spilled!” he shouted even louder. “Is that truly what you want, Viscount?”

I stayed silent.

“We’re in the middle of a catastrophe! A dimensional collapse! If we fight now, we’ll only exhaust ourselves and die here!”

“Haah… Tch.”

I never expected him to try this angle.

I really thought he had something up his sleeve.

“So, let us put this unfortunate encounter behind us and—”

Crunch!

The moment I used Giantization and swung my hammer, his skull crunched like dry leaves.

Then…

Clatter!

I looked away from the fallen body and turned to the vice-captain.

On a battlefield, when a high-ranking officer was taken out, the next in command took his place. So if I could just convince—

‘Ah, it’s too annoying to say something long.’

I said only one thing.

I summarized it as briefly as possible.

“If you want to fight, fight. If not, throw away your weapons and kneel.”

It was a simple choice.

Anyone incapable of making it didn’t deserve to live.

The vice-captain hesitated, unable to answer.

I’d even kindly provided him with options.

***

The vice-captain seemed overwhelmed and stayed silent for a moment.

Even though I had gone out of my way to make it easy for him…

No wonder this clan is trash if this is their vice-captain.

Did he want to fight?

Then the moment he heard my offer, he should have shouted and rallied his clan members against me.

Did he want to surrender?

Then he should have dropped his weapon and knelt immediately.

But…

The vice-captain chose to do nothing.

Only his eyes moved.

As the silence dragged on and their leader continued to hesitate, the clan members began making their own choices.

“I-I was trying to stop him from the start!”

“M-me too!”

One by one, they lowered their weapons and knelt, and soon the rest followed.

Being the first to surrender would not have changed the outcome anyway.

Of course, a few tried to flee deeper into the labyrinth.

But…

“Argh!”

“Fufu, I knew a few of you would try that!”

Once their escape routes were cut off, there was nothing left to do.

The Sawtooth Clan collapsed like a line of dominoes.

And then—

“We were wrong. Please spare us…”

“Have mercy…”

With no one left standing beside him, the scene ended with the vice-captain sinking to his knees, his face blank.

It was fortunate that this hadn’t turned into an all-out fight, but still…

The ending felt anticlimactic.

Honestly, I couldn’t believe James Calla had once been these people’s vice-captain.

Ah, was he pushed out because they were all this stupid?

Well, that would make sense. Stupid people were good at scheming behind each other’s backs while never openly showing their dissatisfaction.

“…They didn’t do anything wrong.”

While my temporary allies tied up the ones kneeling on the ground, the vice-captain unexpectedly spoke up.

“Punish the captain and me however you wish. Just please, let your anger end with us. I beg you.”

Hmm, that was worth considering.

If I had to give him points, he had just earned ten.

Of course, since he had started at minus one hundred, he was still trash in my eyes.

“Please…”

Seeing him lower his head even further, it seemed his care for his clan was genuine.

But I couldn’t decide yet.

I needed to hear from the person who had suffered the most.

“Aynar, are you alright?”

“A-ah… Yeah! I-I’m fine…!”

Even though some time had passed, Ainar still looked stunned. It had become pretty rare to see her like this these days.

“Calm down. We’re not in a hurry.”

I let the priests heal her slowly and waited for her to fully come back to herself.

“Bjorn! What on earth happened? You suddenly opened a portal and appeared out of thin air!”

Okay.

The fact that she was asking questions meant she had finally recovered mentally.

“Ah. It just kind of happened.”

Rather than explaining the Ninth Floor or the Spirit Gate, I summed it up in a single sentence.

After all, this was Aynar.

“Ah, so it just kind of happened…! I completely understand!”

“Oh? You do?”

“Yeah! It was because of the dimensional collapse!”

“That’s right!”

Well, she wasn’t wrong.

Now that I had answered Aynar’s question, it was my turn.

“Then what happened to you?” I asked.

“Ah! That! About that, I also—”

“Give me the detailed version.”

“Hmm… Okay! Since you asked, Bjorn!”

And so, Aynar’s detailed explanation began, allowing me to piece together a rough picture of what had happened.

When Amelia carried Kaislan to the rear, the Red Dragon had bitten me and lifted me outside the boundary.

The moment Aynar saw that, she immediately chased after me.

“And when I woke up, I was somewhere completely different! Even when I tried to go back, I only found strange places! I really thought I was done for this time!”

Her situation was similar to mine.

She had become a dimensional wanderer, running around aimlessly until she found a group of survivors and joined them.

Hmm… Then again, maybe they were the ones who tagged along with her because of her strength.

Either way.

“It was them…!”

Meeting another group in the middle of a dimensional collapse had been a stroke of luck.

Unfortunately, the people she met turned out to be anything but.

Once the waves subsided and the safe period began, the Sawtooth Clan finally showed their true colors.

“Ah! Grey Hair! That grey-haired warrior helped me!”

The person who saved Aynar at that moment was someone she only referred to as “Grey Hair.”

From her description, he didn’t seem to be a member of the Sawtooth Clan. Rather, he sounded like another survivor who had joined their group during the dimensional collapse, just as Aynar had.

“Ah! He said he knew you, Bjorn! He said you’d helped him before!”

“Me? What’s his name?” I asked.

“Th-that… I don’t know!”

A grey-haired warrior…

No one immediately came to mind.

Could he have been one of the warriors from the battle against Berserk?

No. If that were the case, Aynar should have recognized him as well.

“…Anyway, what happened after that?”

“I got away because of Grey Hair! But… he got attacked instead… Ah! W-we need to go! We have to find him and recover his body! He should still be somewhere in the labyrinth—”

“Don’t worry. I think I know where he is.”

“Oh… Really?!”

Before entering the Spirit Gate, I had seen a corpse lying nearby.

At the time, I assumed it was just one of the Sawtooth Clan members Aynar had killed while escaping.

Now that I knew he was someone who had saved her life, the least I could do was give him a proper burial.

“Anyway, nothing much happened after that! They caught me in the end, and I got beaten up while they surrounded me! I-I really thought I was going to meet the ancestral god this time…!”

“I see.”

“It was all because of this stupid maze! If I wasn’t so exhausted, they never would’ve landed that many hits!”

That brought Aynar’s story to an end.

With the victim’s testimony settled, the verdict was practically decided.

“Someone heal him.”

I had one of the priests treat the unconscious captain.

For all my talk about a warrior’s heart, I was still a barbarian raised with modern sensibilities.

“Urgh… M-My head…”

Before passing judgment, it was only fair to hear a final defense.

***

“Y-you ambushed me while we were talking! And you call yourself the city’s hero…!”

SMACK!

“I-I was only thinking logically! I was trying to reduce the amount of bloodshed!”

SMACK!

“To think that someone incapable of even that level of rational judgment would be called a hero during a disaster like this—”

SMACK!

Ah.

Maybe I hit him a little too hard that time.

At least I now understood how this idiot had managed to walk up to me with such confidence.

But one important question remained.

“Priest, can you pray for him one more time?”

“Sure…”

Divine power flowed into him. His cracked skull slowly reformed, and he woke up again like a zombie.

“U-ugh…”

I lowered my voice and asked, “Why?”

It wasn’t a question I asked often.

Most of the time, it was pointless. Once someone had already acted, their reason didn’t really matter.

But…

“Why did you try to kill Aynar?”

This time, the reason mattered.

Of course, I had a few guesses.

But was their grudge really so deep that they would try something like this in the middle of a dimensional collapse?

It made too little sense to me.

There had to be another reason.

But then…

“…Pfft.”

He stayed silent for a while, as if thinking over my question, before suddenly letting out a laugh.

Then…

“Why did we try to kill her? Do you really not know?”

His eyes filled with rage as he glared straight back at me.

It was better than watching him grovel and beg for his life, but that didn’t mean I liked it.

“You ruined the Riakis Raid we had spent so long preparing for! Do you have any idea how much damage you caused us?!”

What?

So these guys really had summoned Riakis back then.

From what I remembered, they had tried so hard to deny it was them.

…Not that it mattered right now.

“Hehehe… Fine, we could have let that go! But after that, you even stole Count Alminus’ sponsorship from us!”

“Huh?”

I stole their sponsor?

I didn’t remember receiving any sponsorship.

My relationship with Count Alminus was purely business.

“You ruined our long-planned raid and took Count Alminus’ sponsorship from us! Do you have any idea how far we fell after that?!”

Apparently they’d lost their backing after that incident.

“Judging by your expression, you didn’t even know. Of course not. You never cared. All you ever did was trample others beneath your feet!”

“Fine. What else?”

“…You even took our vice-captain and recruited him into your clan!”

What nonsense.

He was the one who had been trying to abandon the man in the first place.

“And then? That’s not all, is it?” I pressed.

“What more do we need?!” he shouted.

I looked at him flatly.

“Is that really all?”

There was no way that was everything.

“…Are you making fun of me?!”

Well, I could understand his reaction.

Even in modern-day South Korea, there were people who got through life by blaming others for every failure. Gamers, in particular, seemed especially prone to it.

“But why Aynar and not me? If you’re that angry, shouldn’t your grudge be directed at me?” I asked one final question before passing judgment.

“Don’t act so righteous. Do you really think you’re any different?”

For some reason, those words struck a nerve.

Even though he was only lashing out, I couldn’t immediately deny it.

“Well…”

I wasn’t that different.

My hatred was aimed at Baekho Lee, but if one of his companions happened to stand in front of me, I wouldn’t hesitate to kill them either.

“You’re… not wrong.”

I admitted it.

But that didn’t change anything.

If the circumstances suddenly shifted, would I sit down and negotiate peace with those bastards?

So that was the extent of his grudge…

No, at this point, calling it a grudge wasn’t even accurate.

Jealousy or envy would be a better description.

“What will you do?”

At the priestess’s question, I pondered for a moment before making my decision.

Continue reading more chapters at henprogressive.com

Please join here, I need supporters to help me continue translating Surviving game as a barbarian and Lee Gwak
If it doesn’t work support me here buymeacoffee.com/hennoveltranslations. There are advanced chapters for supporters as well.