Before he knew it, day and night had turned seven times over.
The terrible giant snake the late chieftain had spoken of still had not appeared, and the whole woodland lay quiet and serene.
It was almost as though all that talk of a giant snake had been nothing but a dying hallucination of the late chieftain's last moments.
This left Lightbringer, the Nineteenth chieftain, more and more at a loss. He had set out swearing he would avenge his father, yet now, after waiting a full seven days and nights, even he had begun to fall into self-doubt.
"That giant snake—does it really exist? Or rather, can a snake really grow that big?"
More and more doubts welled up in Lightbringer's heart.
Where there are doubts, one naturally has to think how to resolve them. But the Lightbringer of this moment could scarcely manage even the most basic ordinary thought.
For one simple reason: just now, he was far, far too hungry.
He had sent his men away, true—but in his hunger for revenge at the time, he had forgotten the one thing of leaving more food and water behind.
A single small oversight had dropped Lightbringer straight into a plight unlike any he'd known.
In the first few days of waiting, Lightbringer hadn't yet realized there would be a problem like this. Back then he'd had not only a hide-bag brimming with clean water, but even a few strips of wind-dried bison to stave off hunger—these tightly pressed jerky strips were rich in salt and chewy besides; one strip alone was enough to last a whole day. They were the portable rations issued specially to the mages.
But as the strongest mage of the Ignivas family, Lightbringer had a rather staggering appetite as well.
The water in his hide-bag had run dry four days ago—and that was with him rationing it to the bone. As for food, of the few strips of wind-dried bison he'd kept as emergency stores, all that remained now was a scrap the size of a fingernail.
That little scrap of jerky—he had rolled it over and over on his tongue, yet didn't dare swallow it down.
Only because he still needed the taste of that scrap to make himself eat grass.
True, as the Nineteenth chieftain he had overwhelming strength: with a single clap of his palms, a man of such surpassing skill could hunt down even a mammoth, huge as it was, with ease.
But that depended on there being a mammoth to be seen.
And just now, forget mammoths—there wasn't so much as a rabbit anywhere around. However great his skill, with no prey, there could be nothing to eat.
"Too many people when we built the altar—the beasts were all scared off......"
Lightbringer realized at once where the trouble lay.
So, with the wind-dried meat on him all but gone, Lightbringer could only do as the antelope and rabbits did: pull up the foxtail grass and beardgrass underfoot and stuff it into his own mouth.
The truly sensible choice now would be to leave, go back to the village, and eat a proper meal—or at least range a little farther afield to find some prey, or even just some berries to fill his belly. Yet perhaps out of sheer stubbornness, or perhaps because hunger had muddled his head, Lightbringer showed not the faintest intention of leaving.
"If I leave now, then haven't I starved these past days for nothing?"
Thinking this, Lightbringer gritted his teeth and held on.
He treated the matter as a battle—a battle against hunger—and the mightier his foe, the higher his fighting spirit rose. He believed he could conquer this plight by sheer will, and conquer that giant snake by his wits.
But the truth proved that Lightbringer had rather overestimated himself. He might be able to conquer hardship by will, and conquer fierce beasts by wits.
What he could not conquer was his own stomach.
The hungrier he grew, the more his reason blurred; with no nourishment to fuel it, his brain ran slower and slower. He could go on holding out a while longer, true—but at this point all that was left to him was the holding out itself.
And on grass alone, he truly could not hold out any longer.
"Is there anything else around here that's edible?"
Dizzy and bleary with hunger, Lightbringer turned his head without thinking.
And it seemed—there really was.
There was the mountain of mammoth meat, the offering meant to be presented to that Snake God. But after seven days and nights had turned, this once-fresh meat had long since begun to give off a foul stench.
"But...... it should be all right, shouldn't it?"
Lightbringer swallowed instinctively.
"Just cut away the parts that can't be eaten...... so which parts were the ones you can't eat, again?"
It was only then that Lightbringer remembered: he had poisoned all this meat himself. But under the goad of hunger, he still felt certain there had to be some part of it that hadn't rotted and hadn't been tainted by the deadly poison.
"Just one bite is all I need—even a chunk the size of my fist...... even a slice the size of my palm, and I can keep holding on, I can keep holding on......"
His mind was still wavering, but his body had already drawn the small bone knife at his waist on its own.
"Even if I cut into some of the spoiled parts, it doesn't matter. Roast it through and it should be fine."
Thinking this, Lightbringer clapped his palms together.
A great fireball blasted out of thin air, lighting the long-dead bonfire in an instant. And that little bone knife had already cut, all too eagerly, into the mammoth meat before him.
***
"Hm? Why do I smell roast meat?"
Far off in the deep mountains, Du Yi suddenly lifted his head, flicking his tongue, taking in the faint odor drifting his way.
The smell was very faint—so faint as to be nearly imperceptible—yet Du Yi could still tell it was roast meat, no mistake. As a veteran roasting expert, he could even tell from this thin whiff alone that whoever was doing the roasting was an utter beginner.
The quality of the meat, the control of the heat—both were a little off.
And it was missing the most important components besides.
"No salt, no sugar...... and far too little fat, too."
Deep in the mountains, Du Yi shook his head again and again.
More spices were a matter of luck, true, but salt and sugar—those two were the most basic of basics. Salt went without saying; it was the most fundamental of seasonings, the one thing that drew out the savory richness of the meat's juices. As for sugar, whether honey or crowberry jam, it could effectively heighten the flavor of the juices, so that the roast brought a great rush of happiness the instant it touched the tongue.
And the most important of all, of course, was fat. Over an open flame, you absolutely had to roast the lean and the fatty together.
"Otherwise, dry-roasting it like that, sure, the meat cooks—but the juices get roasted dry too. The meat turns tough and stringy, and it catches in your throat going down."
Du Yi had real experience on this point; back when he'd first started learning to roast, he'd suffered for it himself.
It left him itching to go and offer a few pointers.
For a good while now he'd been gathering spices and collecting firewood in the deep mountains, digesting his last two big meals on the side, and he hadn't lit a fire to cook in some time. This roast-meat smell drifting in from afar gave him a sudden urge to show off his skills a little.
"Let's go take a look."
Thinking this, Du Yi set down the few great trees he'd just snapped off and went winding away toward the source.
For one of Du Yi's vast bulk, the distance was nothing much; in mere moments he had caught sight of an altar that was plainly man-made.
But just now, Du Yi had no mind to spare for the altar itself—because the hide-clad savage upon it had already rolled his eyes back to the whites and was foaming at the mouth, looking for all the world as though he wouldn't last much longer.
And by the savage's hand, a half-roasted piece of mammoth meat was still giving off wave after wave of foul odor.
Roast meat so awful you couldn't choke it down—Du Yi had turned out his share of that in his day. But to roast meat and kill yourself eating it—that was a first, even for Du Yi.
Luckily, the man still seemed to have breath in him, and Du Yi had no small experience with food poisoning. So after a moment's thought, he decided to bring this fellow back from the brink.
To save a life would make for very good ground to start talking on.