Surviving as a Broken Hero

“You’re just lucky the dragon isn’t still here! What the hell have I gotten myself into?!” the dwarf’s raised voice echoed through the room as he gripped his head and looked at the ceiling in frustration.

“Even better, you’re in a position to help these people! You say that we’re lucky the dragon isn’t here, but you leaving them to die is no better than anything the dragon would have done!” Velle said.

“She’s right, you know. Do you have no compassion for others? We all went through the Merge, albeit at different times. Shouldn’t you lend a hand?” Bernard asked, holding a hand to his chin as he looked down at the dwarf.

If I didn’t know much better, I would have said that it looked like Bernard was trying to intimidate him.

The dwarf glared up at Bernard, unfazed.

“Help them how? Feed them so they can freeze to death when the storms start again? Provide them with our limited supply of warmth stones so that everyone eventually freezes? Try to jam everyone into the city to the point that we have riots in the streets?”

The two of them were dressed much the same, though I noticed that Bernard’s leather armor covered his body more thoroughly and was so thick that it looked almost like plate armor.

Something he had found in a dungeon, maybe?

I took that moment to step in, “Don’t we just have to get them to the wider human cities?”

The dwarf whipped his head around so he could look at me.

“And have them tell everyone about our city so we can have Awakeners flooding here from everywhere?”

The dwarf was just being difficult for the sake of being difficult at that point. There was no way he was actually prepared to let hundreds of people die just to keep the city comfortably hidden away from civilization at large.

Besides, there was no telling how many had perished while exploring the frozen mountains who would have otherwise survived if they had a destination in mind or knew of the city.

Having word spread about the city was only a good thing in my eyes. The city could grow and those adventurers who braved the area would have a place to rest, bringing more business and goods to the city.

That way, we could even properly establish ourselves with the Association and have a quest system as well.

We still hadn’t found the hinted-at source of the winter’s cold, and the city might have still been restorable as well, so we could kill two birds with one stone by having a steady stream of newcomers interested in completing quests.

‘I need to get back to the central human cities anyway to warn them.’

It had been left to Alikr before, but he had proven to be a traitor to his own species and civilization at large.

“Think about the business a fresh stream of Awakeners could bring. We could even use them to help restore the city, and they would provide a sense of security as well.”

I hadn’t even told him about the demons in the mountains yet, which I was sure would be a problem in the future. Or maybe the demons would withdraw because they had been discovered?

Other than the plan to subjugate every city they could find that the demons were attempting as a whole, I still wasn’t sure of the specific motive behind that camp we had found in the mountains.

“Hmph…”

The dwarf seemed to think about it for a few moments, scratching his head.

While the dwarf was distracted by his thoughts, Bernard looked over at me and gave me a sly thumbs up and a wink, and Velle gave me a short nod.

“All you would need to provide us with are some warmth stones and food for the journey. Do you really want to deal with hundreds of corpses when the storms return? Even with warmth stones, they aren’t Awakened. They don’t have stats that can help them endure the storm.”

“Haa…” the dwarf finally let out a short sigh and threw his hands up into the air as he gave in.

“Fine. Figure out how much you need and provide me with the list, we’ll get it done.”

Velle bowed to the dwarf.

“On behalf of the hundreds you’ll be saving, thank you.”

The dwarf looked away, trying to hide the hint of a smile quivering on the edges of his lips.

After that, the dwarf left us to our devices in the meeting room, and I had a few questions for the two of them.

“It’s great to see you two again, but where did all of those people come from, anyway?” I asked, gesturing over my shoulder to indicate the general area outside the city.

“It’s a long story, but after we lost you, we continued into the mountains and came upon one of the biggest dungeons we’d ever seen. Thankfully, while the dungeon was massive, it was still a lower-rank one, and we were able to just barely clear it with the two of us,” Bernard replied.

I nodded my head in understanding. “So I take it that the dungeon had all of those people trapped in stasis since the Merge?”

“Yes… Them and a few other Awakeners,” Velle curtly said.

‘So it was pointless when I was searching for them in the city before…’

“What about you, Aizen? How did you come to be here, and who’s this?”

“Koise, Scout division commander of the Lion Guild.”

Bernard furrowed his brow. “How did a ranking member of the Lion guild end up here?”

“Well…”

I told them everything that happened from my misunderstanding with the Lion guild, to Koise’s dogged attempt to chase me over the mountains while he lost the rest of his scouting team, to meeting Lein, to the encounter with relic boss and how I saved Koise, and everything up until that moment.

It took some time, and we all made ourselves comfortable as I told the story that connected all of them.

“Damn…” Lein finally said during the long silence after my story was done. “And all I ever wanted was to complete a Relic dungeon. You have a way of dragging people into things.”

“At least we agree on something,” Koise said. “Though, this is a good opportunity to finally get back to the Lion Guild. They might assume the worst if too much time passes without contact.”

It looked like almost all of us, save for Lein, had a reason for going back to the main human cities anyway. I was also looking forward to being able to walk outside and not be cold.

Then, as if in answer to us coming to an agreement…

[Quest

Guide the unawakened through the mountains to the safety of the inner cities while keeping them safe from monster attacks, the cold, and starvation.

Failure Condition: More than half of the unawakened pass away on the journey.

Rewards: Rewards are given on a contribution basis.]

We all received the same System message, which brought further complications to our plans.

The cold and hunger were already things we were prepared to discuss, the problem was how we were going to defend so many people from monster attacks with just the few of us.

“…It looks like we’re going to have to recruit more people,” Lein said, reading over the System message.

Following that, we discussed the best distribution for food and warmth stones, as we were going to need to cycle the warmth stones as they expired amongst people who wouldn’t be able to use mana to open Inventory Bags.

It all depended on how many people we could get to join the quest, but the list of potential rewards looked enticing, and I didn’t see us having much of a problem on that front.

[Quest Rewards

1. A rare gift box and 10000 Experience.

2. An uncommon gift box and 7500 Experience.

3. A common gift box and 5000 Experience.]

After that, the quest looked like it only gave experience rewards that went down every 10 places until, all the way down at 100, it still gave 1000 Experience.

If you included the experience that killing the monsters that would be assaulting us provided, it would be a good boost to anyone who decided to join. Only high-rank Awakeners might find the effort-experience ratio lacking.

Notably, the gift boxes would lure in even high-rank Awakeners, if any could be found in the city.

Rather than being the usual gift boxes you might see in a video game that contained completely random rewards, the gift boxes presented by the System were guaranteed to provide a piece of equipment that the person who opened the gift box would use.

That could be anything from a piece of light armor for a mobile Awakener to a piece of heavy armor for a more durable-type Awakener to a weapon that the Awakener favored.

Though the box said ‘common’, even the common rewards were all enchanted with any number of possibly beneficial effects. It was a common System reward, after all, and not a simple common item.

The only other way to get common System rewards was through larger dungeon clears and unique quests, so it wouldn’t be a surprise if almost everyone in the city volunteered after seeing the rewards.