At this point, it didn't really matter if I was ready. All I knew was that I had to do this. The tight feeling in my chest slid into my stomach, and I noticed how hungry I was. I stood and walked to the boar, then stopped. There was no door, no opening. I turned to Midori. She got it immediately, raised her hand and a small gap opened.

  I slipped through it, grabbed whatever food and drink I could from the boar’s back, and came back. She shut the gap immediately. The boar smelled awful and the stink had soaked into the food, but it was better than starving.

  After eating a bit, exhaustion and sleep slid over us. We leaned against the wooden wall, legs stretched, staring ahead with blank eyes. We were both tense and a little excited, knowing tomorrow was going to be rough.

  “Uh, about that spider boss,” I said, talking nonsense just to kill the silence. “Why didn’t it talk at all? I mean, it looked pretty smart to me.”

  “Why would it even talk?"

  “I don’t know. You talk, so I just assume all bosses talk.”

  “That’s because I’m special,” she said, puffing herself up.

  I just gave her a tired look, uneasy and not impressed.

  “Joking aside,” Midori said, turning serious. “That thing was probably S-tier. Only SSS-tier bosses are smart enough to actually talk.”

  “That… means you’re—”

  “Don’t tell me you only figured it out now,” she said, lifting a brow, that judging look already on her face.

  “How would I even know?”

  “Oh right,” she said with an annoying grin. “Sometimes I forget you aren’t from this world. And how dumb you can be...”

  I scrunched up my face, really annoyed, but I needed answers. Not a stupid argument that would go nowhere.

  “Fine,” I said. “So how do you tell someone’s tier?”

  “No one walks around with their power written on their forehead,” she said. “You just get a feel for it with time and experience.”

  In other words, I wouldn’t figure it out anytime soon. My face sank. Then the thing on the mountain came to mind. Maybe, I guessed.

  “What about the one up there?” I said, "If it's another SSS-tier like you, can we just talk to it and maybe somehow convince it?”

  “Convince it for what?” she asked. Then, without waiting for my clever answer, she added, “Not every boss is friendly. Honestly, if I look at my own past, I wasn’t exactly one either.”

  “Like you’re all different now or something…” I said under my breath, staring the other way.

  “Haa?!” Midori snapped, and I almost felt a punch coming from her glare.

  “I-I mean,” I stammered, cold sweat running down my back, “I still say we try talking first… Besides, my contract with the goddess forbids unnecessary bloodshed, and I don’t want to find out what happens if I break it.”

  “I guess that wouldn’t count as unnecessary bloodshed,” Midori said, thinking it over. “But if you say so, fine. We can try. I'm not dying for another fight either.”

  I had just relaxed, ready to close my eyes and sleep, when Midori’s voice snapped me back.

  “But…” she said, louder this time. “That’s not why we’re going there. We avoid trouble and get the flower to heal the old man.” She raised a brow, not trusting me. “Right?”

  “All right, all right,” I said, brushing it off. “I thought you were about to say something important.” I closed my eyes. “Even if we run into the monster, after that spider mess, I’m not eager to fight anymore.”

  “What?” she said, bumping my shoulder, clearly warming up for another teasing. “What happened to that brave hero in town? All those war cries about fighting to the last drop of blood… and here you are, folding at the first drop.” She laughed, annoyingly.

  I squinted one eye at her, giving a fed up glare, “Can you please shut up?”

  I was just about to close my eyes again and sleep when Midori rested her head on my shoulder. She sounded tired, but gentle this time, like it came straight from her heart.

  “Don’t do something stupid there and die, okay?” she mumbled.

  “I’ll try,” I said. Sleep had already won, and my eyes closed on their own.

  I woke up to a sharp, awful stench. Midori was already up, fiddling with the stuff on the boar’s back under the wooden dome we’d made. Realizing the smell came from the boar, I sat up.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “What are you—”

  She tossed me a sandwich, and I barely caught it. “Eat first,” she said.

  While chewing, I got up and walked toward her. She looked a little lost.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m figuring out how we carry all this with us.”

  “The boar’s for that, isn’t it?”

  “We can’t take it.”

  “Why not?”

  “I can only take one more thing with me,” she said, then looked between me and the boar, like she was seriously weighing her options.

  “Maybe,” I said, stepping closer. “I can help.”

  I grabbed the cloth bags and dumped them out. I ripped one open, burned holes in the other, then tied and threaded them together. It looked ugly and very poorly made. But still, I managed something like a backpack with straps.

  “I think this works.” I said.

  Midori stared at me in silence, like she never expected this much brain power from me. Then she snapped out of it and stuffed a couple days of supplies into it, and I helped her strap it on. She gave my back a light smack.

  “All right, let’s go,” she said, then turned to the boar. “But first…”

  She smacked the boar’s rear hard. “Go. Back to town!”

  “Does this even work?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, grinning awkwardly. “At worst, it’ll make a new family in the wild. Either way, we don’t need it with us anymore.”

  I shot her a look full of regret, wondering how I’d ended up with this life and lord title. We’d just killed one town boar and kicked the other into the wild. So far, our only contribution had been some chaos and unnecessary mess.

  She stood up, and I followed. We faced the mountain in silence. Midori tapped my back, and in a blink, we were there. The moment we arrived, a crushing weight slammed into us. The air felt thick. My chest tightened, and my breaths turned short and fast.

  “Damn it,” I gasped, “what is this?”

  I looked at Midori, she was as affected as I was. We knelt, heads bowed, side by side. After what felt like an eternity, maybe five or ten endless minutes of gasping, we finally managed to adjust to the heavy air, but even then, it felt like we were under some sort of mana attack.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, turning to Midori.

  “I… guess,” she said, using my shoulder to stand. “Just got dizzy when it hit all at once.”

  She tried to look fine, but it was obvious she was also shaken. I forced myself up too. What we felt was close to the first time I used my domain. This was weaker, but we both knew it would get worse higher up the mountain.

  “Okay,” I said, exhaling. “This edelmiss thing… I forgot the name. What does it even look like?”

  “Edelweiss,” Midori corrected, trying to focus. “Kind of like a daisy, but with multiple yellow heads. It has six or nine white petals underneath. It smells sweet, like sugar.”

  “...What?” I said, lost. “I can't even imagine it.”

  She sighed. “Just call me if you see a white flower that looks like a star. Nothing else grows at that height anyway. If you see a flower where there are no flowers, that’s it.”

  “Fine,” I said. At least I had one clear clue now.

  A flower that grows where no flowers grow. That didn’t sound too hard to find. We moved on together, slow and careful, barely seeing a thing. Then Midori’s foot caught on something. She stumbled, and I grabbed her just in time.

  “Agh, we won’t reach it like this,” she said, stopping to think. Then she looked at me. “Maybe…” she hesitated. “You should use your domain to clear some of it.”

  

  A terrifying sound crashed down on us from the mountain peak, heavy and hair-raising. We both flinched and turned toward it, but the mana was too thick. We couldn’t see a thing.

  “W-what was that?!” I stammered, panic rising.

  “I think… that was the creepy dragon roar the general mentioned,” she said.

  “All right,” I said, releasing my domain. “We need to at least see what’s in front of us…”

  I activated my mana vision next, then shut it right away. It only turned the fog into a thicker gray. So I focused on draining the mana around us instead, carving space through it. After a moment, a clear sphere opened around us and we could finally see.

  “Seems like it works, but if I pull too much, I’ll lose control again,” I said, turning to Midori.

  “You’re right,” she said after a short pause, then looked at me. “You probably need to burn it at the same time…”

  “Burn it… how? Like, literally?”

  “Literally or not, it doesn’t matter. Once it rises a level you can’t control, it’s over.”

  “Okay…” I said, forming a dome of fire around us to keep my mana in check.

  But even though the dome was holding back an equal amount of mana for now, it had a side effect. The snow beneath us was melting like floodwater, rushing under our feet. So I split it in two, making flames only behind us. The water flowing from where we already passed wasn’t important anyway.

  “Is it working?” Midori asked, glancing back at the half-dome of fire behind us.

  “Yeah. For now,” I said. “And we won’t freeze to death.”

  For a moment, I felt like a rocket engine. I swept the mana in front of us to clear the path, spraying fire behind me. But it worked, and that was all that mattered. We kept moving up the mountain. The ground was rough. We struggled over uneven paths, and more than once I slipped on the ice, barely saving my ass from a very stupid fall.

  

  From time to time, that terrifying roar shook the sky, reminding us that danger was not so far. As we climbed, the mana grew thicker, making everything harder. Just when I felt like I might pass out, Midori touched my shoulder, pushed herself to the side, and dropped to sit.

  “Let’s… rest a bit,” she said, breathing hard.

  I moved to sit next to her, pulling the flames I’d been leaving behind in front of me. That’s when I realized my mana was way more than I thought. I tried to strengthen my flames and keep the flow balanced. Like adjusting hot and cold water while taking a shower, too hot and I’d burn us with my own flames, too cold and I’d freeze from mana overload.

  “Do you think we can make it to the peak like this?” I asked, barely believing my own words.

  “Probably not the peak,” she said, “but what we’re looking for could be found near it. Let’s just hope we get lucky.”

  If this was up to luck, we were already doomed, luck had never been on my side. Midori got up as she got used to the heaviness, and I just hoped she wouldn’t try to look stronger than she felt. I stood and followed. Behind us, the flames danced, ahead was the snowy mountain path barely visible. We kept moving, climbing higher, and with every step, our hope sank a little more.

  We were worn out, and our stomachs were screaming. It had to be past noon, maybe even evening. I had no clue anymore. The fog just kept getting thicker. Then we spotted something like a mountain pass and went inside to rest. I prayed there wouldn't be any spiders this time. But what we found was much worse.

  “No way,” Midori shouted. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

  As I followed her, my foot struck something hard and metallic. I looked down only to see an iron helmet, a skull still inside, roll away and vanish into the hole in front of us.

  “What the hell happened here?” I muttered, my jaw hanging open.