MTM 1

Whoooo.

A cold wind blew fiercely from the north. While autumn had reached its end, the cold winter wind started to blow down the mountain slopes.

Harto crouched down and he tightened the string of the cloak around his body. He had once lost it because he walked without thinking that the cloak was too light and the wind blew it away. It was not made of leather or fur, but only a thin piece of fabric with white fluff rising from its surface.

“Phew. I’m hungry. I don’t know what, but when I go home, I’ll put it in the leftover stew from yesterday and eat it.”

Gulp.

Harto slipped his hand into the pouch that held the red berries and flowers he had picked up by the stream, and he fidgeted with it. It had been a long time since he had eaten stew that had solid ingredients, so the mere thought of it made his mouth fill with saliva.

“…Hm?”

It happened while he was walking with small, quick steps as he thought about filling his empty stomach. A smell he had not sensed in a long time drifted from somewhere. He first thought it was the smell of burning wood from the village beyond the mountain, but it was not that.

Harto hesitated for a moment at the fork in the path that led to the cabin, and then he followed the smell into the forest.

Tap, tap.

He reached the mouth of a cave where wanderers sometimes camped or animals used as a resting place. It was the source of the smell.

Sniff, sniff.

“…A delicious smell.”

He was certain. He had not realized it when it was subtle, but now that it grew stronger, it was the smell of meat. In Harto’s mind, the stew filled with unknown berries changed into a stew full of meat.

Harto did not hesitate, and he walked into the cave. The day had already grown dim, so he could not see well inside.

Whoosh.

Harto conjured a small flame on the tip of his little finger. The tiny spark lit up the large cave. Unlike outside, the air inside the cave was damp.

“…Should I just go?”

Something felt wrong. It was strange for the smell of meat to come from such a cave, and he had not seen human footprints anywhere in the forest recently. No beast or spirit cooked meat, so Harto considered turning back.

It was then.

“Ugh…”

……!

A groan came from somewhere. Harto stopped and walked toward where the sound came from.

“Ah!”

He screamed without thinking. Behind a large rock lay a huge man covered in blood. Both his hands were burning with black flames. That was the source of the smell.

“Hey, your hands are burning! Ah!”

Crackle, crackle.

Panicked, Harto took off his cloak and covered the man’s burning hands, patting to put out the fire.

Ssshhh.

When the flame went out, white smoke slowly rose. It coiled like a snake, then vanished outside the cave.

“What…? The smoke looked like it was alive.”

He had seen many strange things since he came here, but this was the first of its kind. Harto stood blankly for a moment, then he examined the man’s condition.

“Hey! Are you okay?! Ah… is he dead…?”

The man had groaned before, but no matter how loudly Harto called, there was no answer. Thinking he might still be alive, Harto made the flame on his finger larger and brought it close to the man’s face.

Sweat trickled down his face, and his features from his forehead to his brows and his high nose bridge appeared clear.

“Wow… he’s really handsome…”

Flash.

A brilliant golden light suddenly glinted before his eyes. Shocked, Harto stepped back and fell on his backside.

“Ugh…”

While he sat on the ground rubbing his sore back, the man opened his eyes and coughed up bright red blood.

“Ah! Blood…!”

Harto rushed to him. Then a blackened hand pierced through the cloak and reached out.

“This… this, ngh, must… be eaten…”

“T-this? What do you have to eat?”

Between the folds of his burned clothes, a red ruby necklace came into view. Harto grabbed the ruby-shaped pendant in his hand and pressed it. With a clicking sound, a small round pill came out from the lid.

“This… this is medicine, right?”

Without waiting for an answer, Harto hurriedly tried to put it into the man’s mouth.

Cough.

But he couldn’t do that because the man was coughing out blood again.

“He can’t swallow… because of the blood…ah. Right!”

Harto thought of a good idea, and he raised his hand that held the flame. He created a small spray of water on his ring finger. He sprinkled the water gently into the man’s mouth to wash the pill down so he could swallow it properly.

Gulp.

The man finally swallowed the medicine, and his eyes closed softly.

“Phew… he’s not dead, right?”

Harto wiped the sweat that ran down his forehead while he prayed it would be so.

“Hm…”

This time, the problem was moving the man out of the cave. Harto tied the man’s body with his cloak and he placed both his palms on the ground. A faint tremor passed, and the dirt fragments scattered around the cave began to gather near Harto’s hands.

“What should I do. The ground is wet, so I can’t move him easily.”

He planned to use earth to carry the man to the cabin, but it seemed it would take a long time. But he couldn’t leave an injured person behind. He had to return before the night grew completely dark and the dangerous beasts started to roam.

Scrape. Scrape.

“Haa. Even after dying, living still isn’t easy.”

Harto muttered that as he held the man’s legs with both hands while he dragged his upper body with the power of earth and pulled him out of the cave.

Harto wasn’t human in this world. He was a monster that looked like a human, which meant his soul didn’t belong to this world.

His soul had originally belonged to a man born in a country called Korea. His name had been Yoon Yibin, and he had suffered from leukemia since he was a child. He died as soon as he turned twenty. Because he had spent most of his life in a hospital, his life had never been ordinary.

Before he took his last breath, there was a fantasy novel he had read. It was a story titled Chronicle of Fate, about the world’s events up to three months before destruction.

After Yibin died, he possessed the body of a time-limited villain who destroyed that world. He became a miserable monster cursed from birth, who suffered for a long three hundred years. Then he finally turned dark and tried to destroy the world, but he was killed by the protagonist.

Of all things, even after death, he possessed a time-limited villain. And worse, it wasn’t even a human but a monster. He felt wronged, but Yibin soon changed his mind.

‘This monster can eat delicious things and walk on two feet, right?’

Besides, he could control the elements of fire, water, and earth.

Because of that, he decided to leave behind the pain and scars of his old world, and he gave himself a new name, Harto, to start a new life. He stayed in an abandoned cabin deep in the forest before the Oracle of Destruction came, and he decided to make a clean exit on the fated day.

Growl.

“…Ugh.”

However, he didn’t know how to do anything, so he had spent most of his time starving.

“But today, I even saved a person’s life. Good job, Harto.”

Harto praised himself and wiped the sweat on his forehead. It was a very special day for him.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

Crackle, crackle.

Flames rose from the small fireplace inside the cabin. The sound of dry firewood burning filled the room, and Harto handwashed the man’s clothes and laid them on the carpet.

The injured man lay across the sofa Harto used. The man was about three times larger than Harto, and his long legs stuck out past the edge of the sofa. Harto had wrapped his blackened, burned hands with the cloth he used as a towel. It was the cleanest piece of fabric in the house, so he used it as a temporary measure.

Since the man had taken the medicine, he slept as if he were dead. Harto first thought he might really be dead, but fortunately he was breathing and his heart was beating. In his previous life, when he took medicine, he would fall into a deathlike sleep and wake up after more than two days. Maybe the man was in a similar state. He might not wake up for a while. He looked like he had suffered a lot.

“I’m hungry…”

His energy was gone. He had gone all the way to the stream to find berries, and he had used all his strength to bring the man back to the cabin. He could have just tossed the berries into the stew he had prepared earlier and eaten it, but Harto’s eyes were focused elsewhere.

A large leather bag sat under the sofa. After placing the man in the cabin, he had gone back to the cave, thinking it might be the man’s belongings, and brought it.

Inside the bag were an old book, some clothes, and large pieces of bread and cheese, along with small cookie fragments.

‘That bread is huge… if I take just a little and put it in the stew, it should be fine, right…? I saved him, so if I say I ate some crumbs as payment for saving his life, that’s fair, right…? It won’t even show, so maybe I don’t need to say anything…?’

While Harto thought that, he inched closer to the bag.

Flash.

“…Eek!”

The man opened his eyes wide as if he had been waiting for that moment.