Ryan watched as the giant wolf's mouth grew larger and larger in his vision, but he could not avoid it. Instead, he raised the object in his right hand and threw it into the giant wolf's throat. At the same time, he awkwardly jumped to the left.
The giant wolf bit down, and the sharp clash of its upper and lower teeth echoed loudly. It turned its right eye towards Ryan, now lying on the ground. The wolf realized it could bite him with a slight tilt of its head.
But instead of panic on Ryan's face, a strange smile appeared. Just as the giant wolf was about to finish him off, a sudden pain shot through its chest. A massive hole appeared, and its body seemed to flow away with the hole's passage.
Unable to hold itself together, it collapsed to the ground. Ryan got up, pried open the wolf's mouth with his sword, and threw something inside.
In that final moment, the wolf, which had been in a chaotic state since awakening, regained some clarity. It remembered it had once been human. As the object in its mouth exploded, everything went black, and it lost consciousness completely.
Ryan let out a breath of relief. After seeing the giant wolf's head blown apart, he sat down on the ground and tossed the corroded, pitted sword aside.
He had taken a risk, throwing a jar full of sunshine crystals and cherry bombs into the wolf's throat. He had bet that the wolf's internal defenses were weaker than its outer ones. Fortunately, he had won the gamble. The jar exploded in its esophagus, ripping apart its chest as the wolf swallowed it. The explosion was even more effective than Ryan had hoped, and it paralyzed the giant wolf.
Afterward, Ryan had used his last jar to finish off the monster completely. He had succeeded—barely. Now, with fewer than 100 Sunshine Crystals remaining, if he had hesitated, he could have found himself running out of resources. Indeed, hesitation could cost him dearly.
But now, the question was how to escape this strange place. Ryan sat on the ground, pondering, as the blood-colored mist that had once covered the sky began to dissipate, allowing sunlight to shine through.
Ryan turned to look around. The environment had started to change. No longer did it carry the oppressive feeling of being swallowed by the mist. But as the sunlight illuminated the surroundings, the body of the giant wolf began to change.
The pieces of its body rose and, under the sunlight, turned into golden specks of light that scattered throughout the area. The corpse of the giant wolf slowly vanished.
A huge prize, just gone? Ryan felt a pang of regret. He moved closer to the wolf's body to see how it was disappearing.
To his surprise, the body of the wolf melted like snow in the sun. Even when he dared to risk taking a handful of wolf feathers, they too rapidly transformed into golden light and escaped his grasp. Worse still, these things couldn't fit into any space gear.
"But it's just a dream," Ryan muttered. "It won't let me enjoy the spoils of victory in a dream."
As he thought this, he failed to notice the bloody light in the heart of the wolf that didn't vanish with the rest. Instead, it gradually turned golden, taking the form of something resembling an eyeball.
When the golden object fully transformed, it flew toward Ryan with a swift motion. Ryan felt a chill run down his spine as a burst of golden light exploded in his mind. He found himself in the position of a bystander, watching the life of an ancient Viking wizard unfold in third-person.
The Viking wizard had lived over a thousand years ago, one of the first humans to step foot in Iceland. During that time, wizards coexisted with ordinary people, acting as their leaders and protectors. In those wild days, magical creatures were much more widespread, some of which posed great dangers to humanity. Without wizards, survival in harsh environments was nearly impossible.
In such an unforgiving world, survival was paramount. How to survive, however, was no longer the key issue.
At first, the Viking wizard used natural magic to pacify nature and maintain a peaceful relationship with the local magical creatures. The first altar on the island had also been built during this time. Though called an altar, it functioned more like a mage tower where the wizard could perform ritual magic to amplify the effects of his spells.
For thirty years, the Viking wizard lived in harmony with the surrounding nature. Over these decades, he had gone from a young man to an old man with gray hair.
The tribe had grown significantly during this time due to good weather, which in turn increased the demand for resources. The relationship between humans and magical creatures became strained as a result. Conflicts between the two groups escalated, bringing the island to the brink of war.
Despite the wizard's repeated efforts to mediate, the fragile ecological balance was disrupted, especially after a sudden blizzard. The lack of resources led to widespread conflict.
As magical creatures launched their attacks, the humans—who lacked skilled mages—were losing ground. After witnessing the deaths of many friends, the Viking wizard made a drastic choice: to abandon the balance of nature and fight back.
He summoned resentful souls using magic meant to soothe the undead and used forbidden blood magic to strengthen his people and reanimate the dead.
At first, the Viking wizard maintained his calm, summoning only the undead who were willing to fight for him and strengthening the clansmen who volunteered to sacrifice themselves.
But as the war intensified, his methods grew more extreme. Initially, it was only the unwilling undead that he restrained and threw into the battlefield. But as the conflict escalated, he began to perform large-scale sacrifices, using prisoners, animals, and eventually the elderly, weak, women, and children in the tribe—all to feed his growing power.
Despite his inner turmoil, the brutal war distorted his sense of right and wrong. He transformed into a wizard obsessed with ultimate power.
Even so, the human population of Iceland remained too small, and magical creatures maintained their advantage. The human front kept shrinking day by day.
Eventually, the humans were forced to retreat from the fertile western coastal plains into the central mountainous regions of the island, abandoning the rich fishing grounds and farmlands to survive in the harsh terrain.
Another winter passed, and only about 100 humans remained, struggling with hunger and cold. They were clearly unable to fight back any longer, yet they were surrounded by most of the magical creatures on the island. In their desperate state, they made a bold decision: they would sacrifice everything to drag the magical creatures down to hell with them.
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