That I had gone back to the past.
Naturally, it made no sense.
It was my own thought, and it was a genuinely ridiculous one.
But if going back to the past were truly a fact?
Then everything could be explained.
The absence of the scars I got on the battlefield.
Hands white and clean like a nobleman's son.
My level being Level 1.
My stats all buried at zero.
If I were not the allied forces' Predator right now but the wastrel of the Count's house, then every piece of that puzzle fit together perfectly.
"Even so, that's just—"
GRAAAAAGH—!!!
The Ice Troll's roar smashed my thoughts apart.
Perhaps it took my standing there blankly for fear, because the Ice Troll came at me grinning, the way you approach prey you've already caught.
I still don't know what happened or how, but......
'Questions later.'
Right now the Ice Troll in front of me comes first.
An Ice Troll is by no means an easy monster.
Its regeneration is one thing, but the strength that comes out of that massive frame is destructive.
It's an opponent that some wastrel who spent years sunk in gambling and pleasure could never beat.
But......
TAP!
I kicked off the snow of the Snowy Mountain and charged forward.
Perhaps it never expected the man it had written off as terrified to suddenly charge.
GROOH?!
The Ice Troll flinched, thrown off.
The distance between us closed fast.
Even if I had gone back to the past, my memories were intact.
The experience of crossing countless battlefields and countless death lines remained with me whole.
Whenever anyone asked me who my master was, I answered like this.
My master is the 'battlefield.'
I set my hand into a blade.
The thing still hadn't recovered from its confusion.
The Ice Troll is a monster that reigns in the position of predator on this Snowy Mountain.
Which is why it could never easily imagine itself becoming the prey.
I drove my sharpened hand straight into the Ice Troll's chest.
THWACK—!
And yet it failed to pierce the Ice Troll's hide?
'Damn it!'
A mistake.
The me of right now is not the allied forces' Predator.
Every ability I gained through Predation is gone.
What's more, this body is not the body I forged in my allied forces days.
The steel body tempered by crossing battlefield after battlefield isn't here.
Right now this is the body of the Count's wastrel who lived sunk in gambling and pleasure.
With a body this feeble I couldn't so much as scratch the hide, let alone tear out an Ice Troll's heart.
'Son of a bitch.'
I pulled my hand back fast and swept it along my waist.
The me of the past had at least hung a thin slender sword at his waist, calling it a self-defence weapon.
The typical slender sword a noble house's son carries for show.
It had not one damn bit of practical use, but a blade is still a blade.
GRAAAAAGH!!
The Ice Troll's roar hammered brutally against my eardrums.
Having finally gathered itself, the Ice Troll's eyes tracked me.
My head spun fast.
The instinct for survival stabbed through my mind.
I can't back off here. I have to see this through.
The foot I had turned backward, I planted forward again.
Among the monsters that walk on two legs, the one called the apex predator is unquestionably the Ogre.
The Ice Troll is nothing to compare to an Ogre.
But it is a vicious monster in a position you could well call 'predator.'
And a monster like that was baring its hunger at me.
That savage killing intent.
The very gaze it looked at me with was full of seething violence.
I read the violence and the killing intent held in that gaze.
'Now!'
FWOOSH!
The Ice Troll's brutish fist grazed past my side by a hair.
Yes — it definitely grazed me.
"!!"
A shock of agony that felt like it tore my whole body apart rang through my mind.
My mouth fell open on its own and a soundless scream came out of it.
Astonishing destructive force.
...But I endure. I have to endure.
I ground my teeth.
I forced my blurring mind to hold on.
Through sheer stubbornness I forced my eyes wide.
Now it's my turn.
Honing my senses to an edge, I drove the sword into the troll's chest.
SHUNK!
The slender sword bit into the Ice Troll's hide.
It was a sword picked for show, but the me of the past had at least brought along a blade of decent quality.
GRAAAGH—!
The thing shrieked in agony and swung its hand at me again.
I opened my eyes wide and focused on the movement.
If it catches me, I die.
But I don't back off.
I dropped my stance as low as it would go and slipped under the swinging hand. Cutting inward, I put still more strength into the hand gripping the slender sword.
SHUNK!
The slender sword buried itself deeper into the Ice Troll's chest.
And still the thing did not go down.
What could you expect from a slender sword made purely for show?
I hadn't expected to bring it down in a single blow anyway.
'Found it!'
Through the tip of the sword I could feel the Ice Troll's pounding heart.
The troll's peerless ability, regeneration.
The core of that regeneration lay in its Blood.
If the heart is destroyed it can't supply blood, so the regeneration weakens dramatically as well.
In other words, the heart is a troll's weak point.
GROOH—!!
The Ice Troll cried out in alarm.
It swung its hand again to try to restrain me, but I ran the heart through first.
SPLURRRT!!!
The heart was pierced, and blood sprayed out like a fountain.
When I pulled back quickly, the Ice Troll's flailing hand lost its strength in an instant and pawed at empty air.
The huge body tilted and fell, and a small tremor went up with a THUD!
◆You have slain an Ice Troll!
◆You have gained 120 combat experience!
◆Your level has risen!
◆Your level has risen!
◆Your level has risen!
Messages surfaced across my whole field of view.
My head tilted to the side without my meaning it to.
"That killed it?"
Honestly, it threw me.
Of course the heart was a troll's weak point.
But it wasn't something that would die from being run through by a mere slender sword.
You'd have to hack the heart apart with a bastard sword loaded with Aura before it died.
And this was an Ice Troll on top of that.
A variant of the troll, a mutation with its regeneration pushed to the extreme.
The very thing the Emperor rounded up wholesale and turned into potions.
To an Ice Troll, a slender sword made purely for show is worth less than a toothpick.
With this you'd have to punch dozens of holes in it before it barely died or didn't — so what was this?
"Was it a weakened specimen."
It seemed that was it.
Looking at it now, it was considerably emaciated.
It seemed like a specimen that had starved for close to a month.
Since the core of its regeneration lies in the blood, the regeneration changes according to its 'nutritional state.'
Compared to other monsters, starvation is lethal to an Ice Troll.
"No wonder."
I'd thought the blow that grazed me was fairly bearable.
If I'd met a healthy specimen I'd have been in serious trouble.
In all likelihood the one dying would have been me.
There was no way to describe this except as considerably lucky.
"Then again, the me of the past met this Ice Troll too."
And survived.
More precisely, managed to run away.
Seeing that I could escape this Ice Troll even with garbage stamina, it certainly wasn't a healthy specimen.
Still, an Ice Troll is an Ice Troll.
As the tension drained out of me, the spot it had grazed earlier began to hurt tremendously.
"Feels like a few ribs are gone— ugh!"
When I felt along it with my fingertips, a pain like bone crumbling came through.
It amounted to nothing more than a graze, and this is the state I'm in.
If this were the body forged as the allied forces' Predator, it would be unthinkable.
But the body the Count's wastrel owned was far too feeble.
In this state, moving my body and even breathing were difficult.
◆You have cleared the tutorial quest [What on earth is going on?!]!
◆As your reward, the [Inventory] is unlocked!
◆You have gained 200 quest experience!
◆Your level has risen!
◆Your level has risen!
◆You did not flee from the Ice Troll but stood and fought and seized victory!
◆Astonishing! Truly astonishing!!
◆As an additional reward, [Stat +1] is granted!
Messages poured down across my whole field of view.
From all the talk of leveling up and stats, it seemed some change had occurred in the [Player Information] I saw earlier.
But checking comes later.
Right now getting my body under control came first.
"Feels like I need treatment immediately..."
However you looked at it, the landscape of the Snowy Mountain was not an environment where you could receive treatment.
In that case there's exactly one method.
"The Ice Troll is an ability I failed to devour back then, isn't it."
Predation.
The Ice Troll was a monster that inhabited my hometown, yet I never actually devoured an Ice Troll's ability.
Part of it was that I realised my Predation ability late, and by the time I did realise it, the Emperor had already driven the Ice Trolls to extinction.
"An Ice Troll's regenerative ability, then..."
I carefully drew the heart out of the fallen Ice Troll.
Befitting that heavy frame, the heart was nearly the size of my own head.
A warm heat came off it, proof that it had died only moments ago.
"Hoo...!"
I took one deep breath and brought the heart to my mouth.
Crunch.
The tough muscle of the heart was crushed, and THUMP!
My heart beat violently.
My breath choked as though someone were strangling me, and the whole world turned red.
My reason seemed to be dyed crimson, and my mind cut in and out.
...It's a side effect of Predation.
My Predation ability had several 'restrictions' and 'side effects.'
First among the 'restrictions' was that no ability can be gained from a heart that has completely lost its life force.
In other words, only by eating a 'living heart' 'directly' could that ability be gained.
The shortcut of eating the heart of a dead corpse did not work.
But that was, at the end of the day, only a restriction.
It was hard to see it as a drawback of Predation.
Which is why the most fatal drawback of the Predation ability could be called its 'side effect.'
Using the Predation ability wraps you in 'Madness.'
For a moment, however brief, your reason vanishes and you become no different from a monster.
Unfortunately, not even the Saintess's miracles could remove Predation's side effect.
In the end, because of this, I could not use the Predation ability carelessly.
Later, with Ian's help, it became controllable to a degree, but growing infinitely stronger was impossible.
And sure enough, even having gone back to the past, the side effect was still there.
I had only grown younger; I hadn't changed as a person, so it was only natural.
I wasn't unaware of that.
But right now there's nothing to be done.
An environment with no suitable treatment.
To recover ribs that had been wrecked, this was the only method.
Above all, having an Ice Troll's recovery ability right in front of me and not devouring it would be idiotic.
HAAAAAA—!
A dark red mist reached toward me as if to overrun the inside of my head.
Before long I will lose my reason.
And I'll end up in a state no different from a monster.
It's only fortunate that there are no people nearby.
That was when it happened.
—There are footprints leading this way!
A great shout came out of nowhere.
When I turned my head to look, armed soldiers were pushing through the snow toward me.
"Over here! We've found Lord Adrian!"
At one soldier's words the whole area grew busy.
Soon someone who had been behind the soldiers rushed urgently to the front.
Dreamlike silver hair that seemed to have drunk its fill of moonlight.
Her silver hair, falling below her shoulders, scattered in the snow-wind and fell elegantly back.
Her skin was white and clean like snow banked deep on the Snowy Mountain.
Her large, glittering eyes, as though rubies had been set into them, and the face carved with soft shadow made her beauty stand out all the more.
Eyelashes lifted faintly.
Lips as red as a well-ripened apple.
That woman with a beauty as pure as a thin flower petal was—
"Brother!"
My sister, Seraphia.
"You're safe!"
Seraphia cried out, her face a mix of relief and gladness.
But I was not.
I wasn't glad in the slightest.
Seraphia. The Monarch of Frost.
The allied forces' greatest enemy.
The witch who took the Hero Ian's left arm.
THUMP!
My heart lurched violently, and the madness of Predation surged up explosively.