“If we look at our gains, then our mission was certainly a success. Even three-quarters of that lesser spirit will trade for an enormous amount of contribution points. However, I feel responsible for the two major failures we experienced. Having our spoils stolen and losing Froker…Those things should not have happened. Once we reenter the Elysia, I’m going to submit a letter to the warrior’s society and ask for a leave of absence. I want some time to reflect on my mistakes.”

On their first night of camping after they left Snowdrift, the jotun were still mulling over what Weiss had told them. It was shocking to see their team leader taking things so hard. They had tried to argue, as this put their team in an awkward position, but Weiss wasn’t having any of it.

In Elysia, their kingdom, if one wanted to fight and level up without selling their soul to the army, the best way was to join the warrior’s society. There, they formed teams and fought monsters to meet various material quotas. Alternatively, they could take on missions that the society posted. It was a system similar to a classic adventurer’s guild, but it wasn’t privatized. Throughout the years, this system was so successful that the Federation even ripped it off.

Without Weiss, their only eligible team leader, they would be out of work for a while.

Most of the jotun fell asleep holding this worry in their hearts while Theresa and Weiss stayed awake. Theresa looked at her leader and pursed her lips.

“You said you want to reflect on our team’s losses, but I think you’re focusing on the wrong thing. Why were you so insistent on agitating those villagers? You nearly got us all killed or at the very least beaten horribly.”

“I’m reflecting on that too.”

“Just tell me, what you were trying to do back there?”

“It isn’t relevant to you.”

“Even if it’s no longer relevant to the team, I still want to know. We’re friends, aren’t we?”

Taken aback, Weiss stared at Theresa for a while and then sighed. An immaculate black letter appeared in her hand and she passed it to Theresa.

“We would have likely been beaten, but those mutts couldn’t kill us. I wanted things to escalate so their elders would have a chance to ‘steal’ this letter.”

Opening the letter with care, Theresa looked at the message inside and her blueish face paled.

“This…This isn’t real, right?”

“It’s a forgery. My aunt is a bureaucrat and we both want the same thing.”

“What do you two want? No…” Theresa closed her eyes and calmed down. “You want to cause the death of many exiles. You’ve always hated them, haven’t you?”

“I hate that we give mercy to those who should be killed. However, this letter was written to kill one exile in particular. His name is Tosk and he…” Weiss trailed off as she struggled to hold back her bitter anger.

Theresa nodded knowingly. After seeing Weiss suffer in her dreams so often, she had some idea of what happened.

“Anyways, I was always hesitating about this, but I’ve finally made up my mind. If I leave it up to that village or the Federation, there’s no guarantee he’ll actually die. Rather than gamble, I’m going to make an opportunity to kill him myself.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“I’m going to give him this letter. After that, I’ll definitely have an opportunity.”

Theresa looked down at the snow by their feet. “Then the village…”

“There’s another benefit to handling things like this. I don’t know how, but that black-haired guy is still holding onto the spirit. He doesn’t look possessed, but I know it’s inside him because of my Track Wounded ability. It’s unfortunate that I couldn’t sense it hiding beside his soul until I got close to him, but that might have been a stroke of luck. As long as he stays in the village, I’ll have a nice prize all to myself.”

“It will be much more dangerous like this,” Theresa spoke in a spiritless tone. She knew how difficult it was to change her team leader’s mind when it counted. “Many innocent people will be harmed as well.”

“That’s true,” Weiss sighed. “But I understand this very well. You, the villagers and even me are all small lives. To anyone with real power, we’re insignificant and replaceable. When tiny people like us want something, when we want it so bad that we can’t accept any other outcome, we can only achieve it by discarding everything else.”

The look in Weiss’s eyes deepened as she thought of a recent memory. “That guy is probably close to understanding this.”

“Jayce?”

“Oh, so that was his name.”

Theresa handed the letter back to Weiss, who glanced at it before sealing it back up. The contents were written in long-winded legalese that only Elysia’s bureaucrats could truly understand, but its message was simple.

It was predicted that Life Stealing Pass—the gateway further north and the reason why Snowdrift was built—would reopen in the near future. To gain a foothold in the area while simultaneously weakening the Federation’s influence, Elysia wanted to use Snowdrift’s foundation to build their own town. Capturing the village themselves would have diplomatic repercussions. Therefore, the kingdom was offering a generous reward to any exile camp that could successfully raid Snowdrift village.

---

Visions of a fungus dog covered in terrifying glowing eyes faded into a scene of Kulve squashing Jayce like a worthless ant. Jayce weathered these ever-changing nightmares like a tiny boat in a storm. At some point, he felt something squeeze his hand. This small comfort caused his erratic breathing to slow. When he managed to open his eyes, he saw that there was no one by his side. Confused, he sat up and looked around.

Jayce turned towards the kitchen and saw Marin making some food. She appeared to be focused on her cooking, but Jayce knew that she had seen him wake up because she wasn’t humming.

“Did something happen in the Frozen Expanse?” she asked without turning around. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

“You’re talking about my nightmares? Those are from something else.”

“You’re brave then, since you don’t seem to be afraid of falling asleep.”

‘Why do you know how I fall asleep!?’ Jayce shouted in his head. He realized that she really had been spying on him during his first visit.

“Recently I learned that being able to sleep on your own terms is a luxury. I don’t want to give it up.”

There was a period of silence while Marin cooked and Jayce sat there, thinking about something.

“Hey Marin, why do the villagers treat you differently? You also don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

“I’m not brave, so I won’t say,” Marin shook her head and her fox ears drooped. “It will be easy for you to find out, but I don’t want to tell you.”

“Then, what about Froker? Why did he suddenly go berserk?”

“Oh, that’s easy. All jotun men are like that. At every level of their society, from the grand queen to the heads of households, the jotun are led by women. Even though the males have higher life orders, they are constantly battling against their own violent urges. When they surrender and go berserk, they can only be stopped by force. Males that go berserk once will likely do so again, but there’s an old law that takes pity on them. That law is why exiles exist, and why there are so many bandits around here.”

“That’s…terrible.”

Imagining a society where half the population were latent psychos, Jayce wasn’t sure what he could say.

“It is what it is. Some races are inherently…terrible.”

Their conversation ended there. After washing up, Jayce sat at a small table and ate with Marin. He immediately noticed that this breakfast was even heavier than the last one. When he saw that only his portion had been increased, Jayce realized Marin must have noticed his starved appearance yesterday. Despite her guarded attitude, she really was just as kind as her parents.

“Say,” Jayce started. “I get why they exile men, but setting them free to become bandits seems kind of…”

“Exile camps aren’t simple bandit groups. For us, they may as well be, but their role in society is more complicated. The Federation uses slave races for a similar purpose.”

Jayce hurriedly opened his mouth to ask for details but after a few seconds, he shut it without saying anything.

‘Even if I know, what can I do about it? No, that’s an excuse. I just don’t want to hear it.’

As he ate, Jayce continued to chat with Marin while reviewing his priorities. There were a lot of things he wanted to do. Visiting the library and getting some general information was near the top of the list. Jayce also needed to exchange some of his talismans for currency and rent a place to stay. Visiting the bi-daily training sessions held by the village and finding someone to teach him refining were also on his agenda. Finally, he wanted to use whatever talismans and mana cores he didn’t sell as materials for Soul-Guided Forging.

Still, there was one thing that took priority over all of that.

“Marin, where is the village’s graveyard?”

Blinking in surprise, Marin gave him directions. “But why would you…Never mind, it’s none of my business. When you go out, could you see if there’s anything left on the counter? If there is, please bring it up to me. Moving with this cast is a pain. My senses are dull, so I need to be careful not to reinjure myself.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to at least visit a doctor?”

“I could, and I could use medicine to heal faster,” Marin shook her head. “But in my case, there are benefits to letting this body heal naturally.”

Jayce scratched his head. “Alright. I’ll check the counter. If you need help with anything else, just ask.”

“One more thing…” while resting her chin on one hand, Marin showed Jayce a bright smile that was nothing like the fake ones she used before saying something troublesome. “Congratulations on your advancement.”

“Thanks,” Jayce was going to leave his reaction at that, but he ended up giving her a thumbs up to dispel some of his giddiness.

As he descended the stairs, Jayce realized that he hadn’t settled on a way to contact Marin. He quickly decided to just visit her the old-fashioned way. While they were eating, Jayce learned that the thick cast she wore was enhanced by runes that supported her leg and cushioned the impact from her footsteps. Despite all of that, it was still inconvenient for her to move around. Jayce guessed that Marin was normally self-sufficient and didn’t need a helper, so he wanted to take this chance to repay some of his debt.

Outside, the sun shone brightly, and its glare reflected off the newly fallen snow. Despite being forced to squint, Jayce found the glittering silver sand walls of Snowdrift’s buildings and the pristine white snow to be a beautiful sight. As he wove through the town, many people stopped to stare at him. Some looked at him with pity because they assumed he was a mutant who was cursed with black hair. Others recognized him as that haggard figure who had escaped from the dungeon on his own. None of them called out to him, and he didn’t try to greet them. Jayce’s impression of this village had dropped after he saw how they treated Marin. If Soest and the elders were included, then his evaluation fell even lower.

Jayce wanted to lower his guard and enjoy this beautiful morning, but it was difficult. He found himself observing everyone and everything around him with suspicious eyes. Jayce had always treated his observational abilities as a point of pride, and they had only become stronger in the Upper Bound as his paranoia grew.

In this manner, Jayce eventually arrived at the graveyard. It was a quiet place that was blocked off by sturdy metal fencing. Looking at the graves, Jayce saw that the blue-furred race’s tombstones were totems carved from wood. These totems took the shape of various animals and had small metal plaques in front of them. Walking beside the fence, Jayce found an open entrance with a sand-walled shed beside it. Soon afterwards, he learned that this place was managed by a grave keeper who also sold burial totems. Jayce declined to have a totem made but he borrowed a shovel from the keeper.

Jayce picked a decent spot and spent a good portion of the day digging. Dirt that was connected to the earth couldn’t be easily stored in Star Girdle, which prevented him from abusing the artifact to open a hole. He needed to separate the dirt from the rest of the ground first. Digging with a shovel was a tedious process, but Jayce had plenty of stamina.

When the sun was high in the sky, Jayce wiped sweat from his brow and observed his handiwork. It wasn’t a particularly beautiful hole in the ground, but it was a workable grave. At the bottom of the grave, Jayce opened a particular container in Star Girdle that had been modified to preserve a corpse. The body of the masked man appeared before Jayce’s eyes. This was the man he had been forced to kill inside the Fragmented Ruins.

Jayce also retrieved his Ice-Gathering Charm and placed it on the man’s chest after charging it with mana. This was the first artifact Jayce had ever made, and it would slowly cover the man’s body in a coffin of ice.

Filling up the hole was much easier thanks to Star Girdle. Once he collected the dirt, he could dump it as he pleased.

“I’ll make a totem myself later, and a plaque as well. I think it would be better to have them made by human hands,” standing in front of his amateurly dug grave, Jayce felt compelled to speak. “It didn’t take me long to get over killing you. Maybe that was because I haven’t had much time to dwell on it, or maybe it’s because I did it in self-defense. To be honest, there was a question that was bothering me more than your death. Why was I so lucky? Someone like you was scarred and tortured by his master, while I somehow managed to become a free man. I might even be the only free human in the Upper Bound.”

Jayce paused. That notion was something he had wanted to avoid thinking about.

“Even though I was lucky, I still suffered a lot. But it’s strange…How do I even put this? When I was on Earth, I was just a college student who hadn’t picked his major. I enjoyed myself, made friends and even found a girlfriend, but I always felt like I couldn’t see where my life was headed. Or, it felt like the tracks that I’d been riding on my whole life were coming to an abrupt end. It was scary to think about.”

While he spoke, Jayce subconsciously clenched his fists.

“But now, things are different. I feel like I’ve found something that I need to do. It’s not something I’m doing for fun and I’m more than willing to risk my life to pursue it. I don’t know your name, and when I killed you, I was just a terrified slave whose name didn’t matter. Someday though, I’ll become a god.”

Jayce brought one of his fists up to shoulder height and stared at it. He slowly allowed his fingers to uncurl and watched as they trembled slightly. Several seconds passed but the tremors didn’t stop until he closed his fist again.

“I’m not going to end up as fuel. Someday, no one else will be able to control my fate.”