Chapter 228: [228] The Boss Monster

"So you are looking for one of the mighty beasts," the chief thoughtfully said, as he clasped his hands in his lap.

Olivia furrowed her brows. "Mighty beast?"

"Mighty beasts appeared shortly after the eclipse," he explained. "They are monsters as old as the eclipse itself, creatures that we consider impossible to kill."

"Impossible..." Olivia crossed her legs. "And who says they are impossible to kill? Do they not bleed like the others?"

"No one knows... But I believe they can be killed." Yrsa had a certain look in her eyes as she spoke. "For starters, they were only termed impossible to kill because no one had ever succeeded in doing it. It is not necessarily true."

Olivia nodded with approval, just before Ark turned his attention to the chief and asked, "You said Great Beasts, that means there is more than one?"

"Indeed there are." The village chief got up and began searching through his cabin. "We have the great serpent, god of the seas in the south..."

"The desert centipede in the west..."

He finally found the book he was looking for and picked it up with shaky hands, before hurrying back to the table and placing it in front of them.

It was an old leather book with thick paper. It was clear that the book had gone through several generations, but it had been well cared for.

"Finally..." The village chief had some sort of reverence in his tone, almost as though he was about to speak of a god.

He flipped through the book and arrived at a certain page. The text seemed to have been written in red ink, and there was a diagram, albeit a senseless one.

All Ark could see were smudges of ink—as though the artist tried to replicate the fog. There was something else, something within that fog.

"Heart of Winter." The village chief stared intently at the book.

"Why is the drawing so crude?" Ragnar asked, staring down at the paper with narrowed eyes.

"It is because no one had seen the Heart of Winter up close," Harold answered. "Those who dared to wander near its territory were reduced to a block of smoking ice..."

Ragnar gave him an annoyed look. "So how do we know it really exists?"

"Oh, it most certainly does," the village chief interjected. "The first pioneer, a mighty sunborn, was there to witness the winter beast himself. He set out to kill it a long time ago, believing it was the cause of the storm. Well..." He shrugged. "In part."

’So someone already tried to kill the Heart of Winter before me?’ Ark mused. ’Was the goal of the game to have them repeat his actions in the past?’

"And what happened to them?" Ark asked.

The room grew silent.

"They all died."

Everyone turned their attention to Yrsa.

"The first pioneer, along with the strongest sunborns ever recorded in history, the firemancers..."

"They all met their end at the hands of the winter beast." She paused briefly and shrugged. "Or so the legend says."

Yrsa allowed her words to settle in, before she turned her attention to Ark, staring into his flaming orbs.

She could not see fear in them. His face was expressionless, impossible to read.

"Do you still wish to find it? Do you still want to hunt the Heart of Winter—"

"Of course," Ark replied in a dry tone. "Did you think your story about the first pioneer would be enough to scare me—?"

"Pardon my intrusion, Sir Ark." The chief frowned. "Why do you want to fight this monster so much? Is it really worth risking your life over?"

"Yes. I must kill the Heart of Winter soon, let’s just say it is a job I cannot refuse."

The village chief, Yrsa and Harold exchanged looks, and then the village chief sighed. "If you say so..."

Ark picked up the book and read through the first pioneer’s notes. It was written in an unfamiliar language, but as usual, the system translated everything in his head.

It was mostly a small travel log with little to no information. Ark glanced at the chief from above the book. "So where can I find this Heart of Winter?"

"North. But as to its exact location, it will need time to go through our ancestral texts."

"How much time?"

"A day at most. Two days if you want me to draw you a map."

’Two whole days?’ Two days was much more than Ark had planned to stay in the village, but having a map could reduce the time they would spend aimlessly wandering through the snow, so he agreed anyway.

"Alright then, I guess we will be staying with you for the next two days. Now we have discussed what I need, what can I help you with?"

There was certainly a very long list of things that were wrong in the village, but Ark could not possibly attend to every single one of them.

He was not a god, and his goal in this dungeon was in no way to help the people. But since he was passing by, there was no reason to withhold help when it was well within his power.

Even though these people were either long dead or fabrications who had never been alive in the first place... it felt wrong to leave them like that.

The village chief adjusted his position, sitting at the edge of his couch.

"There are two main problems plaguing our village right now. The first is food. We have long run out of rations, and hunting has become increasingly difficult..."

"And why is that?" Ragnar stared intently at the old man. "You have lived here for generations, are you saying you can’t even catch a single monster?"

The village chief frowned slightly as he sensed the hostility in his tone. "We used to have a team of sunborns, but now, only Yrsa is left."

Ragnar glanced at her, as though adding the woman to his list of potential threats. "What happened to the rest?"

"They joined Haakon," Yrsa replied in a flat tone, her voice laced with anger. "Those bastards abandoned our village to side with the warmonger."

"I see." Ragnar nodded, before averting his gaze and growing silent once more.

Thalia stared at him for a few seconds, before turning to face the chief. "So, food is your main issue, what other problems do you have?"

"Heat." Harold was the one who spoke this time, but the village chief acknowledged his statement with a nod.

"You saw that mechanism on our way?" Harold asked.

"Which one?" Ark tried to remember if there had been anything that stood out. "Oh, the large hunk of steel?"

Harold nodded slowly. "It was built by our ancestors to distribute heat throughout the village."

’Oh, so that’s what those pipes were for...’ Ark remembered there were many vein-like pipes leaving it and connecting to several houses.

"So what is wrong with it? Is it broken or...?"

"On the contrary, the machine should be in perfect state," Harold grunted. "But we no longer have the ores we used to run it."

"And why is that?"

"Because a monster made the mine its home." Yrsa breathed out slowly, her brows creasing from just the thought of it. "An Arctic Spider..."