"Mmh......"
When I cracked my eyes open, the sight of a snowy mountain buried under fresh white snow stabbed into them.
...No wonder I was cold.
The biting cold snapped me awake fast.
All around me the world was packed with nothing but white snow, as if the whole of it had frozen over.
There weren't many regions on the continent where you could see a frozen landscape like this.
"The northern Snowy Mountain?"
The northern region of the continent, where a brutal winter runs through every season of the year.
"Why am I here?"
But why would I be in the north?
Until a moment ago I had been in a jungle in the southern part of the continent.
And I died there.
Which would mean I crossed the continent after I died......
"Did the Emperor bury me here?"
The northern Snowy Mountain is the home I grew up in.
He was an enemy, but he was admirable...... As if there was any chance he'd bury me in my hometown out of courtesy to a fallen enemy commander.
"...There's no way."
The Emperor would never show that kind of mercy.
What mercy is a slaughter-crazed lunatic supposed to have?
More than that, I was the Imperial Army's highest-priority kill target.
The Imperial Army ground their teeth to nothing every time they laid eyes on me.
From all the grinding, that is.
In a sense, the Imperial Army was warier of me than of the Hero and the heroes.
Attached to the special task force under the allied forces' operations command.
Covert Operations Captain of the Special Warfare Corps.
As Covert Operations Captain I carried out a great many missions, and I ruined the Imperial Army's plans in the process — no, I smashed them to pieces.
They'd want to dig up my corpse and put it to the sword again, and I'm supposed to believe they gave me an enemy commander's courtesy?
Absurd.
"Did they dump my body here?"
That, at least, would make sense.
Except then I'd have come back to life instead of staying dead.
"There's no way."
But this didn't add up either.
For one thing, the Emperor would never go to that much trouble.
If he was going to dump my body, dumping it in the south would have been enough.
Was he going to cross the whole continent to throw it away in the north?
Above all, there's no way I'd come back to life with my heart run through.
"Then what the hell happened."
I couldn't make sense of the situation at all.
I ran a hand down my face to pull myself together, and......
"Hm?"
Something was strange.
It was the scar carved into my left eye.
"It's gone?"
Gone.
More precisely, my fingertips couldn't feel the scar at all.
Was I imagining it?
But it was strange for something I was imagining.
Because it wasn't only the scar on my left eye that was missing.
"The scar on the back of my hand is gone too?"
The scar on my right arm, carved there fighting a Legion Commander of the Imperial Army.
That one was gone as well.
I could see this one plainly with my own eyes, so it wasn't my imagination either.
Looking closer, it wasn't only the scars that were missing.
"And why are my hands this clean?"
The calluses built up crossing battlefield after battlefield were nowhere to be found.
Right now my hands were white and smooth, like a nobleman's son raised in comfort.
As though I had become another person entirely......
That was when it happened.
◆Unique Perk inheritance complete!
A translucent message rose abruptly before my eyes.
After it, more messages I couldn't make sense of surfaced in my vision again.
=="Player Information"==
[NAME] = Adrian White Wolf
[LEVEL] = Level 1
[HP] = 71
[MP] = 0
[STATS] = Strength: 0 Agility: 0 Stamina: 0 Mana: 0
[EXP] = 0%
The messages glittered across my whole field of view, like the holograms of magical communication.
I can swear to it.
"...What is this?"
This was the first time I'd seen it.
Of course, I'd seen the holograms of magical communication countless times.
They were the main means of communication the allied forces used.
But a magical-communication hologram is not a spell you can cast easily.
It took several communication mages, and a dedicated communication room with a great many magic circles drawn into it.
Meaning it is not a spell you can cast on a snowy mountain packed with nothing but white snow.
Above all, the contents inside the messages.
"Player...?"
These were things I had never once seen in my entire life.
I looked over the contents of the messages before me one by one.
Player, name, level.
HP, MP, stats, experience.
"Does 'Player' mean me?"
Judging from the fact that what was written in the [NAME] field was my name, it seemed so.
In other words, it wasn't that I had become someone else.
"Level 1?"
If a level meant what I understood a level to mean, I supposed it was my own standing put into a number.
Which would mean my current standing is [Level 1]...
"That's it?"
Granted, compared to the Hero Ian's standing, I didn't come close to the tips of his toes.
And I can't deny that I fell short compared to the heroes too.
But that was only because Ian and the heroes were monsters.
It was never the case that I was weak.
I was a core force of the allied forces who stayed at Ian's side to the very end.
I'm the one who clawed his way through alive while the allied forces and the heroes all died.
There was a reason the Imperial Army called me "the Predator of Madness."
And I'm Level 1?
"And what's wrong with my stats?"
Now that I looked, the stats were the worst of it.
Strength, Agility, Stamina, Mana.
Every one of them was scraping the floor.
"Why are they all zero?"
Granted, I had no way of knowing how much force one point of a stat actually produced.
But a value of zero.
However you look at it, that isn't a number you could call normal.
"And what's this experience underneath...?"
Just as I was wondering how any of this worked, it happened.
◆Displaying the Player's possessed skills.
Another message surfaced abruptly.
Then my vision shifted and new messages filled it completely.
=="Possessed Skills"==
◆Solo Level Up [EX]
: The Player can accumulate experience to raise their level. Each time the level rises, the Player gains 1 stat point.
◆Player's Will [EX]
: The Player gains immunity to all effects that exceed the Player's mental fortitude (curses, illusions, brainwashing, hypnosis, suggestion, and so on).
◆Predation [S+]
: Devour a living creature's heart to absorb that creature's abilities and convert them into skills. However, mental fortitude is consumed.
"And what is this...?"
Just as the question surfaced, it happened.
◆A quest has arrived.
A single message filled my entire field of view.
At the same time, its contents unfolded before my eyes.
====
Y@u, wh% op*ne$ your ey@s in a str&nge pl%ce!
You o#en your eyes and hu§h?
Some%ow ev○◎ything is ▲iffer*nt from the w♠rld you li**d in?
You r&b your ey@s and lo♧k aro♡nd and — hu?!
You r▲aliz▲ you h▲ve been dro♠ped into ano▲her wo●ld!
Ano§her wor♧d! Ano§her wor♧d!
What in the world is this pr▒post◈rous thing you are hea◈ing!
Wh♧ on ea♧th, and w♡y, would do a th♧ng like ♡his to you!
What cr▒me did y@u ever com▒it!
All y@u did was ■■, and that is the whole of your g■ilt!
You do not kn▧w wh◈t has happen▧d or h◈w, but y@u do kn%w what you must do※★.
For now, in this stra◈ge pl@ce
Fin$ a v%llage.
====
"...What is it saying?"
I genuinely couldn't understand a word of it.
The only thing I could make out was the [quest] that had surfaced first.
Normally a quest meant a "search mission" entrusted to a knight, or a long-term "expedition."
At least, that was how the word was used on the continent.
If it was being used in the same sense here, then this too seemed to mean the contents of some mission...
"What is it supposed to say?"
I couldn't understand a word of what it was getting at.
I wondered for a moment whether it was an allied forces cipher, but—
"No, it isn't."
If it were, there'd be no way I wouldn't know it, because I am the "Covert Operations Captain of the Special Warfare Corps."
Under the allied forces' operations command I carried out special-warfare missions, and also intelligence and espionage work — collecting, compiling, and distributing information.
Naturally I know every cipher the allied forces use inside out.
So I can state it flatly: this was absolutely not something that could be read as an allied forces cipher.
"Then don't tell me it's a cipher the Empire uses—"
—no, it wouldn't be.
Just as the question surfaced, it happened.
◆Error: The Player and the quest contents are in conflict.
◆Error: The Player's information has been altered.
◆Assigning a new quest.
◆Loading......
"And now what?"
It was beating its own drum and dancing to it, the whole racket.
Still, from the [Loading], it seemed something was in progress.
Had I waited about five minutes?
◆The quest has been updated.
A message surfaced saying the quest had been updated, and its contents unfolded.
====
You, who opened your eyes in a strange place!
But — huh?
Is it just your imagination that this place somehow doesn't feel strange at all?
You rub your eyes and gather your wits and — eugh?!
You realise that this place is the "northern Snowy Mountain"!
But the northern Snowy Mountain?!
You were in a jungle in the south, so how did you end up in the northern Snowy Mountain!!
Did the Emperor grant you a courtesy?
Did the Emperor toss you out onto the Snowy Mountain?
No, more importantly, you are supposed to be dead!!
Your head is a jumbled, tangled mess!
You have turned into a fool!
Why, you ask?
Because you do not even realise that there is something eyeing your life this very moment!
What happened and how is not important right now!!
For now, you must survive!
====
"And what is this...?"
I couldn't understand what kind of situation this was at all.
The feeling of having turned into a fool, exactly as the quest said.
But the quest paid no attention whatsoever to how I felt, and simply surfaced another message.
◆Beginning tutorial quest [What on earth is going on?!].
==[What on earth is going on?!]==
[OBJECTIVE] - Survive
[REWARD] - Inventory unlocked
[ON FAILURE] - Death
Just as the messages were surfacing at their own whim, it happened.
GRAAAGH—!
An enormous roar slammed into my eardrums from one side.
***
Along with the tremendous shriek came heavy footsteps, THUD, THUD.
Where I looked, an enormous living thing about two metres tall was approaching me.
And the thing drooling as it looked at me was...
"An Ice Troll?"
A mutation of the troll that inhabits the northern region, the Ice Troll.
Being a troll mutation, its numbers were few and it was a monster you rarely saw.
And it was also a monster you could no longer find anywhere.
"The Emperor should have rounded up every last Ice Troll, shouldn't he?"
Trolls were monsters with outstanding regenerative ability.
Because of it, troll blood carried a considerable price as a material for all kinds of potions.
And the Ice Troll possesses a full "five times" the regenerative ability of an ordinary troll.
In trying to survive in the brutal cold, its regeneration naturally evolved.
The potency of potions made from Ice Troll blood was likewise five times over.
The Emperor rounded up every Ice Troll, made potions of them, and supplied them to the Imperial Army.
He then drove the wild Ice Trolls to extinction so the allied forces could never make use of them.
And so no wild Ice Troll exists on the continent.
There are only the Ice Trolls bred in the underground laboratory of the imperial palace.
Even I, born and raised in the northern region, had seen an Ice Troll exactly once......
"Hold on, don't tell me."
A single memory surfaced abruptly in my head.
The memory of the first and last time I saw an Ice Troll.
It was about fifteen years ago.
The head of House White Wolf and my father had passed away.
The funeral ended and my father's will was opened, and my father left everything of the house not to me but to my sister.
I protested, but not one person took my side.
The opinion was that my capable sister was the fitting one to be head of the house and Lord of the county, rather than a wastrel who lived sunk in gambling and pleasure.
In an instant I became a borrowed sack of barley propped in a corner, and when I couldn't stand it any longer I stormed out of the house.
Then, after wandering the Snowy Mountain for days on end, right now.
GRAAAGH—!
I meet an Ice Troll.
This was the memory of the first and last time I ever saw an Ice Troll.
It was a thing from over fifteen years ago, and still I remember it clearly.
Because from this point on, my life turned a full one hundred and eighty degrees.
So if this place really is the northern Snowy Mountain where House White Wolf sits.
If that thing drooling at me really is an Ice Troll.
"I've gone back to the past?"
That's the conclusion I arrive at.