“What did you say?”
The guard’s voice dropped, rumbling out from behind the slit of his iron visor like grinding stones.
The air around the mounted soldier turned instantly venomous.
Sunny didn’t flinch.
He adjusted his stance on the frozen dirt, letting his dark blue eyes meet the shadowy gaze hidden behind the metal helm.
His throat felt like it was coated in dried lime, but his voice remained flat, void of any deference or fear.
“I said, give me water to drink.”
“You bastard slave!”
The guard roared, his leather saddle creaking violently as he reined his horse back, hand dropping toward the hilt of his sword.
Before the blade could clear its sheath, a second horse trotted up from the head of the column.
The rider—a senior officer wearing a tarnished, battle-worn cuirass etched with faded sigils—looked down at the commotion with cold irritation.
“What’s the issue here?” the senior officer demanded.
“Sir! This trash is demanding water from our supplies!” the junior guard snapped, pointing a steel-clad finger down at Sunny.
The senior officer’s eyes narrowed behind his visor.
“What?! Such impudence from a bound dog?!”
Sunny tilted his head slightly, his expression remaining completely unbothered.
“I want water. And I want it now.”
The junior guard’s patience shattered completely.
“You suicidal fool!”
In a flash of movement, the soldier unbuckled a heavy leather whip—a cruel, weighted hunting thong—from his saddle hook and swung it downward with full, brutal force.
WHACK!
The leather cracked sharply against Sunny’s back.
The thin, threadbare burlap of his slave tunic tore instantly, exposing his pale skin to the biting frost as a crimson streak bloomed across his shoulder blades.
The force of the strike nearly knocked him off his feet, sending a scorching shockwave of agony straight up his spine.
Yet, Sunny’s facial expression didn’t change at all.
He didn’t scream.
He didn’t cringe.
He merely absorbed the blow, his posture re-aligning as if he were nothing more than a stone wall receiving rain.
He looked straight into the guard’s visor and spoke each word with deliberate, icy clarity:
“Give. Me. Water.”
“You little—!”
The guard raised his arm to strike a second time, intention clear in his posture to lash the insolent boy until his ribs showed through his flesh.
But before the whip could descend, the short, blonde-haired slave chained directly in front of Sunny scrambled backward, throwing his hands up in panic.
“S-Sir! Forgive him!” the blonde slave stuttered out frantically, bowing his head toward the snow until his nose nearly touched the horse’s hooves.
“He’s out of his mind from the cold! He doesn’t know what he’s saying! Please, don’t waste your energy on this fool—I’ll handle him, I promise!”
The blonde slave yanked hard on the iron chain connecting their wrists, pulling Sunny back into the ranks of the shivering line.
The senior officer held up a heavy gauntlet, halting the junior guard’s arm mid-swing.
“Enough,” the officer sneered, looking down at Sunny as if he were a stepping on a corpse.
“Leave the brat. Mark his name down on the executioner’s list for when we reach the mountain pass. I won’t have us wasting good water on cattle that demand things from their betters.”
“Understood, sir,” the junior guard growled, stowing his whip back onto his belt with a disappointed curse.
As the horses trotted forward, the blonde-haired slave leaned close to Sunny, his heart beating like a frantic drum.
He was a shifty-looking man in his early thirties, his eyes darting back and forth across the trail to ensure no other soldier was watching them.
“Calm down, brother!” the man whispered urgently, tugging at Sunny’s tunic.
“They’re guards from the upper class, and we’re just dirt under their boots. It’s suicide to talk back to ego-filled bastards like them!”
Sunny stared coldly at the receding backs of the armored guards.
His inner thoughts, usually calm and calculating, burned with a pure, concentrated venom.
Upper class?
Lower class?
Sunny thought, a sinister calm washing over his mind.
It’s always the same.
Whether in the high-tech spires of Sector 25 or in a medieval mountain pass… the ones with power treat everyone else like insects.
“If I get even a single opportunity,” Sunny muttered aloud, his dark voice barely audible above the howling wind, “I will cut those bastards’ throats.”
The blonde slave flinched, looking at Sunny with a mixture of terror and awe.
“O-Okay, brother… whatever you say. Just keep your head down for now. Look, the caravan is starting to move again. We’re setting up camp soon because dusk is falling.”
Sunny didn’t offer a reply.
He simply resumed his rhythmic, mechanical stride across the frozen snow, letting the heavy iron chains pull him along as the column marched deeper into the mountains.
As the sun dipped below the jagged mountain peaks, the caravan finally halted near a high, windswept ridge overlooking a steep precipice.
Sunny paused, his eyes narrowing as he surveyed the terrain.
The rocky ledge, the frozen pond nearby, the sheer cliff face dropping into dark oblivion below… it was identical to the desolate summit where he had first seen the pile of chained skeletons when time had rolled backward.
So this is the spot,Sunny realized, his mind piecing the puzzle together.
This isn’t just a random camping site.
This is the exact location where this entire caravan gets annihilated.
“Set up camp!” the senior officer’s command boomed across the ridge.
“Roger!” several soldiers called back, dismounting from their armored steeds.
The camp was nestled slightly below the highest point of the cliff, shielding the soldiers from the full brunt of the gale.
Still, the mountain breeze was harsh enough to drive a chill straight into the marrow of a person’s bones.
The soldiers quickly dragged dry logs from the forest edge, building a roaring bonfire at the center of the clearing.
The senior officers sat in a privileged circle directly around the dancing flames, soaking in the warmth.
Near them, the lower-ranking soldiers and quartermasters gathered in an outer ring, laughing loudly as they roasted strips of fat, juicy meat over the open fire.
The smell of rendered fat and charred spices filled the air, mocking the starving captives.
The slaves, however, were forced to stay far away from the light and warmth.
They were herded into the deep shadows near the edge of the cliff, huddled together against the freezing dirt where the fire’s heat could not reach.
Night descended completely, swallowing the mountain in blackness.
The moon offered a sliver of pale light, but a thick, unnatural fog began to roll up from the abyss below the cliff, clinging to the ground like a damp, suffocating shroud.
For the other slaves, the darkness was absolute, terrifying, and vast.
But as Sunny sat against a cold boulder, he blinked in mild surprise.
His vision hadn’t degraded in the dark at all.
While everything around him should have been pitch black, his eyes effortlessly mapped out the surroundings in sharp, grayscale clarity.
He could see every line on the soldiers’ armors, every ripple in the fog, and every shiver running through the dying men chained beside him.
I can see in the dark…
Sunny noted quietly.
Is this part of the Spell’s modification to my body, or a passive trait of this world?
Before he could dwell on it, a couple of low-ranking supply workers walked over to the shadow perimeter, carrying wooden crates.
Without a word, they threw stale, hard crusts of bread into the lap of each slave.
The bread was terrible—hard as stone and speckled with thick patches of blueish mold.
Over by the fire, the guards were laughing loudly, tearing into succulent slabs of meat and downing hornfuls of ale.
“Oh, gods…” the priest-like slave chained behind Sunny groaned, staring down at the moldy piece of dough in his trembling hands.
“These monsters have no humanity left! In all my years as a servant, I have eaten poor food, but this… this is rot!”
In a fit of quiet, dignified rage, the handsome young man tossed the moldy bread into the snow.
“Hey! Don’t throw it!” the shifty blonde slave whispered urgently, reaching over to pick up his own piece.
“It’s moldy, sure, but it’s the only thing keeping us alive! If you don’t eat, you freeze!”
Across the perimeter, the rest of the starving slaves didn’t hesitate.
Like feral animals, they shoved the foul, fungi-covered bread into their mouths, choking down the stale crusts just to fill their aching stomachs.
Sunny looked down at his own portion.
He didn’t care about the mold, nor did he care about the indignity of it.
In the outer sectors of the real world, he had eaten things far worse than spoiled dough just to live to see another morning.
Food was merely fuel.
However, his attention was not on the bread, but on the environment around them.
Sunny lifted his head, closing his eyes for a moment as he inhaled deeply through his nose.
The freezing mountain air washed over his senses—crisp, clean, and carrying the faint, metallic scent of snow and pine.
Ah… what fresh air, Sunny thought, letting out a long, quiet exhale.
He opened his eyes and glanced toward the edge of the cliff, where the heavy white fog was growing thicker by the second, slowly creeping toward the camp like a silent, hungry beast.