Chapter 305:
Hata, the executive director, did not object to Lotfiout’s decision.
He had seen how great the chairman was by his side, and he believed that there was a reason for whatever he did.
In fact, if he thought about it for a while, he could understand why he made such a choice that others would find strange.
The chairman always had a plan.
But Hata thought this time was different.
“Didn’t you want to give him a chance?”
“Executive director Hata. What do you mean by that?”
“I’m talking about Deputy Director Kang Yu-hyun.”
“Oh, right.”
As if he had forgotten his own verdict, Lotfiout made it harder for Hata to read his intentions.
“So, what’s your question?”
“You said you wanted to give him a chance, but I don’t understand why you sent him to that notorious exile. It’s not a chance, it’s practically sending him to die.”
“Is that what worries you? You don’t think my judgment was fair?”
“To be honest, yes.”
“Well. I guess it might look that way to others.”
Lotfiout answered that it was possible, even though Hata questioned him.
Lotfiout stroked his long beard with his hand and then shrugged his shoulders.
Hata’s wrinkled face was full of doubt.
The chairman Lotfiout was smiling as if he couldn’t contain his joy.
“Chairman?”
“Heh. Ah, sorry. I just remembered what happened then and couldn’t help but feel happy.”
“Happy?”
“Why did I send Deputy Director Kang Yu-hyun there?”
Lotfiout waved his hand as if it was nothing.
“He wanted it.”
“What?”
“Deputy Director Kang Yu-hyun. His eyes told me. He wanted to go there. That’s all. He had such young blood that wanted a chance, how could I, an old man, refuse him?”
“What do you mean…”
Hata, the executive director, had many questions, but Lotfiout firmly refused to say anything more.
As the executive director who knew the chairman’s personality better than anyone else, he had no choice but to nod and suppress his curiosity.
‘The chairman is expecting something.’
Who?
Isn’t it obvious?
Lotfiout was waiting for Deputy Director Kang Yu-hyun, who had left for exile, to succeed and return.
‘But even if he is the chairman, he might be wrong this time.’
He didn’t know how many tellers had been exiled so far.
Was there no one among them who was called talented?
Even the tellers who were once praised as great talents never came back after being dragged to exile.
That cursed world was where everything was frozen and even stories didn’t move.
No matter how genius Deputy Director Kang Yu-hyun was, Hata thought he couldn’t come back once he went to exile.
***
“This is something.”
Even Yu-hyun, who didn’t usually talk to himself, couldn’t help but say that in this situation.
He knew that he would be given a body and some stories that matched it.
But who would have guessed that it would be a woman?
He couldn’t see what he looked like in this snow-covered place, but he thought he could tell by his voice that he was a beautiful woman.
‘It feels alien.’
Was it because he had a body of a different gender, and one whose face he didn’t even know?
Everything from his balance to his breathing felt very different from usual.
Yu-hyun clenched his hand and checked his body condition by jumping lightly or bouncing on the spot.
He needed to adapt to his body first.
‘Well, the body specs themselves don’t seem bad.’
He had a slender body, but he was strong. His arms felt like they had no muscles, but they were powerful.
She was also resilient.
That meant she had strong bones by nature.
Yu-hyun checked her clothes and belongings.
She wore clothes made of animal fur that looked like ancient Nordic people wore, and on her belt around her waist there was a sharp sword and some food that he could eat in an emergency.
‘I won’t starve to death right away, and I have a weapon for self-defense.’
He didn’t feel the weight of the sword. It wasn’t because the sword was light, but because his physical ability was strong.
‘Well, her physical ability itself is much stronger than an ordinary person. No, at this level, she might be able to compete with some of the awakened collectors.’
It was surprising that her innate physical ability was comparable to that of a mid-level collector.
He didn’t know what kind of race she was, but he was sure she wasn’t ordinary.
‘She has a very high resistance to cold.’
He couldn’t completely block the cold by wearing thick fur.
Her skin would have frozen in an instant in this blizzard, even her hands that were exposed.
But her hand only felt slightly numb, nothing else.
Even though the temperature felt like minus 50 degrees, her skin was fine.
‘An innate physical ability and resistance to cold. He felt like a Highlander from legend, or an ancient Viking.’
He knew that this body was similar to a human’s, but a superior species.
The important thing was what came next.
‘He had adapted to the body and finished checking his condition. The next problem was this frozen world.’
Dark and murky clouds covered the sky and endlessly spat out snow.
He couldn’t see the distant scenery clearly because of the blizzard that raged with the wind, but he thought that it was covered with endless snow and ice as well.
The landscape he saw with his eyes was blue and white from the cold.
It wasn’t just a white world where snow fell, but it piled up and froze into perennial ice that emitted a blue light. There were no trees, rocks, or soil, only a world of snow and ice.
Yu-hyun felt like he understood why they said even stories froze here.
On top of that, Yu-hyun had a time limit.
‘Even if he got this body, he was still a teller. A teller would perish if he didn’t consume text for survival.’
Yu-hyun had no text now. He had given up all his ownership when he came to this exile.
He didn’t know the exact number, but he felt that he had about two weeks left.
He had to succeed in his mission or get more text before then.
‘First of all, he had to move.’
Even though his body was resistant to cold, it wasn’t immune. If he stood still like this, he could freeze to death even with this body.
‘But where should he go?’
First of all, it was impossible to estimate the direction. He had no compass, and the sky was full of clouds so he couldn’t tell where the sun rose or set. It was dangerous to move without thinking.
This place called exile was still a world where survivors existed.
He had to find at least some traces to meet them.
‘Tsk. He felt like he knew why the tellers who came here before never returned.’
If they faced such difficulties from the start, it would feel like the world collapsed for the tellers who had been protected and only watched in safe places.
Yu-hyun grabbed a handful of snow on the ground and threw it away to check the wind direction.
‘The blizzard and the wind direction have been constant since a while ago.’
In a place where blizzards raged like this, the wind direction should change in real time. But here, it seemed like it was set on one path as the wind blew from one direction.
Yu-hyun wondered if the wind direction would change if he waited, but it stayed the same even after 30 minutes and an hour passed.
‘It’s not a natural phenomenon. It’s more like an artificial one caused by something. Is there something in that direction?’
Yu-hyun looked at the direction where the wind blew.
Usually, he had to move in the opposite direction in this case, but Yu-hyun was different.
‘Anyway, if he wanted to show his story in this world, he had to find out the source of what was happening in this world. It would be better to move towards where the wind blew.’
That place would surely be dangerous, but there was a story he had to show in such a place.
Yu-hyun headed towards where the wind blew. He didn’t know if it was north, west, east, or south.
As he headed towards where the wind blew, he felt the temperature drop more and more.
‘No, it’s not an illusion. It really got colder.’
The white steam that came out every time he breathed was torn by the blizzard and disappeared.
Yu-hyun stopped for a moment and looked back at the way he came.
The world behind him was also white.
The footprints he made every time he stepped were erased in an instant, making it hard to tell how far he had come.
‘The weather is getting worse.’
The blizzard that had been raging became stronger and now he couldn’t even see an inch ahead.
To make matters worse, the surrounding scenery became darker. It was time to call it night.
‘Is there a place to spend the night nearby?’
Yu-hyun looked around in the blizzard.
Whooong.
Between the storm’s howls that sounded like they would tear his ears off, Yu-hyun heard a faint sound.
‘What is it?’
He focused his senses on his ears and turned up his hearing. He heard a sound of something trampling on the snow not far from here. It was the sound of something crushing the snow.
‘An animal? No, the footsteps are regular. It’s a survivor.’
Yu-hyun headed straight for the source of the sound. The wind noise was so loud that he had to stop and chase the sound in between, but this excellent body caught the sound even in this storm.
How long did he walk?
Yu-hyun saw a shadow that was faint but close to human in front of him.
‘Is he alone? He might be a wanderer, but it’s lucky to find him.’
He brushed his long hair that fluttered in the blizzard with his hand and walked slowly.
His skin, which had been strong against the cold for a long time in this harsh environment, began to sting slightly.
It was a stroke of luck to meet a survivor.
‘But.’
Yu-hyun’s forehead wrinkled as he continued walking.
‘Something seems strange.’
He thought he was close enough as he walked, but he saw no sign of getting closer to the owner of the shadow.
Even if his sense of distance was distorted by the white snow and the blizzard that swept over everything, he couldn’t have mistaken something so far away.
That thing, which looked like a person from afar.
Soon, it grew so huge that Yu-hyun had to look up at it.
‘That’s not… a human.’
Soon after, the black shadow in the blizzard turned its head towards him.
The moment he met its blue eyes that glowed faintly in the harsh wind, Yu-hyun felt a chill run down his spine.
Yu-hyun hid behind a slightly sloped hill of snow, throwing himself into the air.
‘That thing was huge.’
His current body was not that small either, but the creature he had just seen was at least 7m tall.
He had thought it was a normal person even though it was very far away in his distorted sense of distance.
The thing he saw up close was much bigger than he expected.
‘If it looked human in that strange sense of distance, then it’s practically a giant.’
Yu-hyun clenched and unclenched his fist.
He had fought giants before in the world of Don Quixote. But back then, he had the power of Kang Yu-hyun, while now he had lost most of his stories.
And this body, though physically capable, felt inadequate to face such a monster.
‘I don’t have to fight to know. That monster is dangerous.’
He thought he had found a survivor, but it was a giant with a human shape. And the eyes he had glimpsed just now were not rational enough to communicate.
He would die as soon as he met it.
Yu-hyun realized that and lowered his body as much as possible, watching its movements.
‘Damn. I think our eyes met just now. I hope it was my imagination.’
Yu-hyun wished that to himself, but reality was cruel.
Thud.
He heard a sound of stepping on hard snow. He wondered why he could hear footsteps from afar, but it made sense since such a giant was moving.
Yu-hyun bit his lip as he observed the unidentified giant slowly approaching him.
He couldn’t see its appearance clearly, only its vague shape, but that made him feel more pressured.
‘I have to run.’
The thing didn’t know exactly where Yu-hyun was hiding, but it had narrowed down the direction and was coming closer. If he stayed still, it was only a matter of time before he was discovered.
Yu-hyun got up from his spot and ran like an arrow.
Roar!!
The giant roared as it saw Yu-hyun running away. As soon as he heard that sound, Yu-hyun knew that his decision not to try to talk to it was right.
That monster had no reason. And that giant was very ferocious.
He would be killed if he was caught.
‘I can’t die here.’
Yu-hyun ran desperately through the blizzard, racking his brain.
The flat land with nothing on it was dangerous. Even if the weather was dark and the visibility was low, there was no guarantee that the thing would be the same. Maybe it could see better in the dark snow.
Yu-hyun aimed for a large mound that he saw in the distance and moved his legs without stopping.
Was it thanks to the power of this body? He could run fast on the snow that should have been deep and soft.
But still, the sign of being chased from behind did not seem to get farther away.
‘It’s getting closer!’
He didn’t dare look back.
Thump thump sounds came from behind him.
Yu-hyun sped up his running pace. He didn’t like the feeling of cold air filling his lungs.
That’s how Yu-hyun arrived at an endless ice mountain that he had to look up at.
He looked around and soon found a gap in the huge ice mountain.
It was an entrance that only one person could fit in, so Yu-hyun threw himself in right away.
‘Is it not following me?’
The entrance was narrow, but the interior space was larger than expected.
Yu-hyun entered the ice mountain and quickly scanned the smooth and translucent ice cave inside and watched the entrance.
The giant that had been chasing him hard seemed to have lost him somehow.
‘Phew. That’s a relief.’
Just as he was about to sigh in relief, a rough hand grabbed his mouth from behind him.
“…!”
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