Surviving The Game As A Barbarian [EN]: Chapter 672

How long has it been since I’ve seen a Hans?

That’s what I thought as I faced him after so long…

It’s Hans.

‘The last one was K…’

Hans Kaiser.

He’s the guy I ran into by chance in the Dark Continent when I was going by the name Richen Schweitz.

And…

‘The Noark bastards’ ambush started less than two hours after we met.’

In the end, we got through it without any major losses, but things could have gone very wrong.

If Raven hadn’t changed his mind in the middle, my journey that day could have ended trapped in the ‘Cage of Silence’ [a type of inescapable prison or trap].

Anyway, that’s not the point…

‘Hans L.’

That’s the code of the Hans I’ve encountered this time.

Well, I’m a little doubtful whether a guy who turned into a monster and died is still considered ‘Hans’.

Still, there’s no harm in being careful.

Thump-!

I decided to follow the beat of my heart, which had started racing like crazy, and shouted loudly.

“Prepare to move!!!”

Of course, the others didn’t understand my reaction.

“…Huh? All of a sudden?”

“There are no signs of monsters at all, though…”

Baekho Lee and the archer looked at me with expressions of confusion.

However, they must have clearly recognized the urgency in my face, because they immediately got into position and prepared to move.

“It’s an emergency. We need to get as far away from here as possible right now.”

“No, but why do we have to—”

In an emergency, actions speak louder than words.

I brushed aside their questions and started running first, and everyone followed me without knowing why.

It wasn’t just because of herd mentality; they had a strong belief that there must be a reason for my actions.

“…Let’s go for now! There must be a reason why Baron Yandel is acting like this!”

And so began our unexpected escape.

But even as they followed me, the group kept asking questions.

“Hey, Baron! What is it! Tell us already. We need to know what we’re running from!”

It was a natural question, but I had no answer for them.

Because I didn’t know either.

What we were going to have to run away from.

“…You’ll find out soon enough.”

That was all I could say, so I just vaguely brushed it off.

“Man, this Baron is really frustrating!”

Baekho Lee reacted as if he was about to die of frustration, but he didn’t suddenly stop walking or anything.

And how much time had passed like that?

“…People?”

A human figure appeared at the edge of our vision.

“They’re not people, they’re Bayons.”

Monsters with dark, mottled skin and black spiders crawling on their faces.

Surprisingly, there wasn’t just one.

“…There are quite a few of them.”

Starting with the one in the lead, five Bayons appeared from behind, where they had been hidden by the dark vision.

“Hey, Baron! What are we going to do now!”

“Eliminate them as quickly as possible and move on again.”

“Okay. Everyone heard that?”

As soon as I gave the order, the group, which had been in a moving formation, switched to combat mode and engaged the Bayons.

The battle itself wasn’t too difficult.

Since there were quite a few enemies, Baekho Lee didn’t rush in recklessly like before, and even though they were a bit fast, he carefully assessed the ‘Bayons’ as he fought.

“What the hell is this guy! Why is he using all his skills?”

“…It’s the essence of the guardian!”

“What? This weakling has the essence of Pianil?”

In the case of the Bayons we encountered this time, the level of essence they possessed was much higher than expected, so the battle itself took quite a while.

’15 minutes, huh…’

In fact, taking down six level 3 monsters was incredibly fast, but for me, who had become anxious about Hans L, even that time felt long.

‘Anyway, no one got hurt, so I guess it’s okay…’

I wanted to resume moving immediately after the battle was over, but unfortunately, my leadership didn’t extend that far.

“Hey, are we just going to leave all this behind? Wait a minute. Let’s just loot everything and go.”

Baekho Lee completely ignored my words about hurrying and started looting.

Even when I told him there was no time, he just replied by asking why I was in such a hurry if that was the case.

“Haa…”

I was a little frustrated too.

It was like I wanted to tell them, but I couldn’t.

‘If I said it was because of the name Hans… they’d just laugh.’

Unless they had seen, heard, and felt it for themselves.

No matter how many examples I gave, they would surely dismiss it as superstition.

And after that, they wouldn’t even humor my stubbornness.

That’s why I had no choice but to watch them loot.

“Six Bayons… that’s a bit unusual.”

“That’s right. Maybe in the Land of Immortality, but they’re not that common here.”

The two mages exchanged opinions.

As they said, it was clearly an anomaly for so many Bayons to appear like this.

However…

‘This can’t be the end, right?’

It was hard to believe that the Hans effect was over with just this.

After all, it wasn’t like I hadn’t been through a lot.

“Okay, looting is done!”

Anyway, Baekho Lee quickly finished looting, and with that, we were ready to move again.

But then, someone else stopped me in my tracks.

“Wait a minute! Wait a minute, everyone!”

Reck Aures, the tank of Baekho Lee’s team.

He shouted as if he had discovered something, and I was about to ignore him again, thinking he was going to say something silly, but…

“These guys! Their faces look familiar too!”

I couldn’t ignore what he said.

***

“Bryatt! Take a look at this! These guys… aren’t they our explorers?”

“…What do you mean?”

At Aures’s request, the archer approached and checked the corpse of the Bayon, whose face was no longer covered by a spider.

And…

“That’s right. Not all of them, but there are a few familiar faces mixed in.”

The archer, Bryatt, agreed with Aures.

Upon hearing that, the GM cautiously voiced a hypothesis.

“Could it be… that they are part of Hans Daylan’s group?”

“…Huh?”

“You know, I heard that at first, there were over a hundred people traveling around the outside world together… I was wondering if they might be them…”

“Huh? But didn’t they say that they scattered in the middle?”

Aures expressed his doubt, but I thought it was quite possible.

The best place to hide a lie is next to the truth.

‘The truth is that hundreds of people remained outside the wall.’

However, the fact that they scattered was a lie, and perhaps they were caught up in some kind of incident.

In fact, evidence of that was being discovered.

“…In my opinion, it seems that these people turned into monsters at least a few months ago.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know much about Bayons, but look at this one with a cut on its neck. It’s highly likely that this injury led to death and then ‘monsterization’ [the process of turning into a monster].”

“…And?”

“But the bloodstains on the neck of this top are at least a few months old.”

A logical deduction from a mage who was used to experiments.

The Old Man of Destruction nodded as if he agreed.

“Hmm… then that friend Hans Daylan might actually have died a few months ago—”

I cut him off in the middle.

“Daylan.”

“…?”

“Just call him Daylan, not by his name.”

Every time I heard the word ‘Hans,’ my body would flinch as if it was a conditioned reflex.

“You’re worried about the strangest things.”

After looking at me strangely for interrupting him, the Old Man of Destruction continued.

“Anyway, if that friend Daylan also died a few months ago and ‘monsterization’ occurred, then things get complicated.”

“Yes. It means that the ‘Daylan’ we met is not ‘Daylan’.”

“Huh? What are you two talking about? I don’t understand any of it!”

“Aures… to put it simply, it means that someone is pretending to be ‘Daylan’ and led us here.”

“…So! We’ve fallen into a trap!”

Reck Aures, who was greatly surprised by Jaina’s explanation, let out a loud scream.

It was a familiar occurrence, so the two mages continued their conversation as if they hadn’t heard anything.

“If our hypothesis is correct, then this might not be the end of the Bayons.”

“Yes… I don’t know how much of it is true, but if it’s true that over a hundred people had some kind of accident here…”

“Then there might be a lot of Bayons wandering around this area.”

That was the moment when the two of them came to a conclusion while going back and forth.

“The approach of monsters has been detected!”

The archer Bryatt, who was in the scout position, shouted loudly.

“The number is five… no, six… seven, ten, fifteen…? It keeps increasing!”

Bryatt was reporting the numbers in real time.

The number, which was five at first, didn’t take long to exceed thirty.

“A monster surge! This is definitely a monster surge!”

A monster surge was an exploration term that referred to the phenomenon of monsters suddenly swarming…

“Wow, a monster wave all of a sudden?”

Players also called it a monster wave.

“Bryatt, where did the monster surge start?”

“There’s no specific location, they’re swarming from all directions. It’s as if they’re targeting us!”

It was a clear anomaly.

Bayons, which had been hard to find while we were wandering around, were suddenly gathering in groups of dozens.

‘……Did killing one trigger something?’

I didn’t know the details, but it was time to act rather than worry.

“Even with this team, dozens of them might be a bit tough.”

“If other monsters appear or a meteor falls in the middle, we’ll be in big trouble.”

“The northeast direction has the fewest numbers.”

“Lead the way. I’ll try to avoid combat as much as possible.”

“Yes.”

After that, we assigned the archer, who had the widest detection range among us, to be our guide and followed him.

But was it because he was a top-class scout?

“This way!”

The archer used his wide senses to skillfully avoid encountering the Bayons as much as possible.

“How is it? Isn’t our archer’s guidance pretty good?”

The archer smiled awkwardly at Baekho Lee’s boast about his teammate.

“Baekho, it was only possible this time because there was an opening. …If we had stayed in that spot earlier and realized it late, combat would have been unavoidable.”

“Huh? What do you mean by that?”

“I was a bit unsure at first, but now I’m certain. If we had been in that spot when we first killed the Bayon, we would have already been completely surrounded when we sensed their presence.”

Aures started making a fuss at Bryatt’s humble words.

“Oh, is that true?! Amazing, Baron! You suddenly said we had to get out of here!”

“…I’m curious too. How did the Baron know, anyway?”

Even the archer agreed, and Baekho Lee’s eyes turned sly.

“Hee… does our Baron have a skill like that? Let’s see, what kind of skill would a tank have that could do that…”

Baekho Lee, who genuinely believed that I had a detection skill, started shadow boxing.

“Hmm, [Hypersensitive Muscles] doesn’t have that kind of detection effect, and [Clock Hand of Regret] is definitely not it, and ‘Fate Tracker’ didn’t seem to react either… What is it, then?”

I didn’t say anything as I watched Baekho Lee, who was testing my reaction by throwing out words one by one.

Because how could I explain it?

That it wasn’t a skill, but ‘Hans’.

They wouldn’t believe me even if I told them, and it was more beneficial for me to make them believe that I had another skill.

With that in mind, I kept my mouth shut and focused on escaping the ‘Bayons’ encirclement.

And how much more time had passed?

「The character has entered a special area.」

We had left the Old Rock Prairie and entered a new field.

「Field Effect – Poisonous Lava Zone is applied.」

「The character’s poison resistance is fixed at 0.」

「Soul Power recovery speed is reduced by 99%.」

「Warning: Be careful of explosions!」