Make the Barbarians Great Again

Chapter 32: The Warriors

Hindir slowly looked around with very deliberate movements.

The tangled mess of Charun's children and the Wolves of Parno.

He could already see the figures of some who had grown cold.

They looked just like that day five hundred years ago.

"You... you bastard, Hindir…"

Boom!

The head of the shouting Wolf who had pointed his sword vanished.

Then Hindir shoved aside the one who collapsed without a head and threw a punch at the next opponent beside him.

“W-what?”

The startled Wolf raised his blade to block, but it shattered like a wooden stick, and the fist rushed in.

“Ah…”

With a short gasp, his head was crushed.

"Move! I’ll take him!"

At that moment, the squad leader who had been watching from behind sprang forward and thrust his sword.

“Hindir! If you don’t stop—”

Smash—!

Before he could finish his words, the squad leader’s head disappeared.

“Huh?”

Only then did Parno realize.

Why they had warned to keep the hostages close.

“W-wait, stop! We have hosta—”

Crash!

And he learned something else.

Hindir had no intention of listening to them.

The moment he saw the killing intent in those unwavering eyes, he knew hostages meant nothing.

In that case, they had to fight with everything they had to kill Hindir.

But Hindir had already defeated the family head and singlehandedly slaughtered the Wolves.

Those who had grown complacent in this valley could never truly stand against him.

And Hindir quickly realized these warriors were far weaker than the Wolves he had first faced.

‘Even so, the strength of the descendants is far from enough.’

It was a pitiful level.

But he wasn't disappointed or angry about it.

They had fought on their own.

Though they had remained stuck here for a long time, at the very least, he confirmed they still had the will to fight even at the cost of death.

For now, that was enough.

Rumble—

The booming roar from Hindir’s fists echoed between the cliffs like thunder.

Each time, a Wolf fell, headless, and a few, consumed by fear, finally began to flee.

But Hindir had no intention of letting them escape.

Thud—

With a single leap.

Hindir now blocked the only road out of the village, the very path Parno had always guarded.

And everything ended.

Silence fell over Larka Village.

A bear-like man who had dropped out of the sky suddenly wiped out those fearsome Parno bastards in an instant.

“That’s… they said that guy’s Hindir…”

“Hindir? That’s Hindir?”

He looked far too different from the Hindir the villagers remembered.

His face was somewhat familiar, but his aura was entirely different—no one dared to approach him easily.

“Hindir? Hindir!”

Then a familiar voice cried out from outside the village, behind Hindir.

While the battle raged, Seff and the others had escaped thanks to the Barbarians who secretly made their way to the dungeon.

They had grabbed the weapons Parno left behind and rushed over, only to find the fight already over.

And there, blocking the entrance, stood a man in a red bear pelt.

The moment Seff saw his back, she instinctively knew.

That was her nephew, Hindir!

As Hindir turned his head and looked at her, she flinched.

But soon, she broke into a wide smile and approached him.

“Hindir! It’s really you! Why have you changed so much? Ugh, I thought you were fully grown, but I guess there was still more left to grow?”

She grabbed both his arms and shook them, fussing over him.

Hindir’s feelings grew complicated as he looked at her.

A situation he had never thought about until now.

The moment he saw her, memories he had long forgotten came flooding back.

The woman in front of him was his only blood relative… and the most awkward person in both his past and present lives.

The bodies of the dead were gathered in one place for a funeral.

Even Parno’s remains were collected separately for cremation, though that process caused some dissent.

Some argued there was no need to show such respect to the ones who killed them.

They wanted to toss them off the cliff, just like Parno had done, and let them become food for beasts.

But when Hindir gathered them and lit the fire himself, everyone fell silent.

The changed aura around Hindir was far too overwhelming.

After the funerals were complete, the village leaders gathered in one place.

The one who represented them, the de facto chieftain, was none other than Seff.

The Barbarians gathered around her.

And opposite them sat Hindir.

The seating arrangement, which felt confrontational, only heightened the tension.

Everyone here knew who Hindir was, yet the returning Hindir felt unfamiliar to them. Check latest chapters at novel·fire·net

Only Seff treated him naturally.

“Alright, let’s talk. What happened all this time?”

After much hesitation, Hindir finally opened his mouth.

“I left Seolyong Valley and… there was a clash with the Parno family. Aunt.”

It was a truly difficult decision.

To use an honorific…

When a child was born to the Charun tribe, they returned to the main camp and stayed there until childbirth.

After recovery, the parent would once again set off for the warrior’s life, and the child would be raised collectively by the entire tribe.

Because the concept of a “family” was faint in the Charun tribe, Hindir always felt awkward around Seff.

Perhaps it was a lingering part of Hindir’s old nature buried deep in his subconscious.

“Hmph… So you clashed with Parno? No wonder those guys suddenly started acting strange.”

“What happened here?”

“Well, not much. Except they suddenly brought up your name and took me and a few others hostage. I guess they planned to use us against you once you showed up. I wondered why they’d go through all that trouble… but now I know.”

Seff clicked her tongue as she recalled the headless corpses of Parno’s men.

“Just in case, let me say this—you don’t need to feel guilty about what happened.”

This time, it was Kanar who spoke.

“It was something bound to happen eventually.”

At his words, Seff nodded as well.

“We were already preparing. Parno kept demanding more and more Ice Crystals, yet instead of increasing our rations, they were cutting them down. We were already feeling that we were reaching our limit, and then your news became the spark.”

Although, with Hindir's arrival, things had ended far more easily than they’d prepared for.

“So don’t go thinking that if you’d come a little earlier… things would have been different.”

Seff and Kanar tried to ease any guilt Hindir might be feeling, but he was thinking something entirely different.

“Then what was the reason you endured for so long?”

He understood the overwhelming difference in strength.

He also understood that the years of repeated, grueling labor had caused them to forget how to fight.

Hindir, too, retained the memories and knew well how poor the conditions here had become.

But why only now?

Why had they endured for all those centuries?

“Watch your mouth, Hindir.”

Eventually, one of them expressed displeasure.

“What would a runaway like you know to question us like that?”

Hindir silently stared at him.

For a moment, the man seemed to shrink under his gaze, but then exaggeratedly squared his shoulders and raised his voice again.

“And just what have you been doing all this time? What made Parno respond so aggressively all of a sudden?”

Trying to bring back a subject already laid to rest to lighten Hindir’s burden, Seff frowned.

“Baltan!”

She looked at her nephew with concern…

“I killed Parno’s Family Head.”

A brief silence followed.

“…What?”

Baltan, who barely managed to speak, soon began to laugh.

“The Family Head is dead? That all-mighty head of Parno’s family, killed by a Barbarian brat of all people?”

It was a strange remark.

But it didn’t mean he was taking Parno’s side.

It was more of a cynical expression born of the long years with Parno as their overlord.

That made Hindir's chest ache once again.

“Fine, let’s say something happened to you and you gained strength. But aren’t you pushing the joke too far? You killed the Family Head? The Parno Family Head, who’s said to freeze a man solid just by making eye contact? You?”

“You don’t have to believe it.”

“What?”

It was always the same.

Hindir was never one to talk on and on to persuade others.

He didn’t bother twisting things into excuses either.

He just conveyed the facts and proved them.

“Parno won’t be making any big moves for the time being. They’ll know something’s wrong since news from here’s been cut off, and they’ll probably suspect I’ve appeared. I doubt they’ll take any risks.”

Hindir spoke while looking at Seff.

They may have been freed from Parno, but they weren’t truly free.

This Ice Crystal mine was one of Parno’s main sources of wealth, and the Charun were cheap and effective labor. There was no way Parno would willingly let that go.

Still, for tonight at least, they were safe.

Despite having no real evidence, everyone who heard Hindir's words felt a sense of relief for some reason.

They didn’t yet realize they were instinctively beginning to see Hindir as something enormous.

“I’ll ask again. Why did you only act now, and what were you planning?”

“…As you already know, the biggest issue in Larka Village is food,”

Seff slowly began to speak.

“If you look at the amount of food we receive, it’s not much, but it’s enough for us to get by. But haven’t you found it strange? The oldest person in this village is this idiot Kanar here. Isn’t that a little too young?”

“…You don’t have to put it like that…”

“That’s something even the kids know.”

Ignoring Kanar’s grumbling, Seff continued.

“You, us, even the adults all grew up hearing the same story. That once you turn sixty, Parno will guarantee you a peaceful life. That there’s a new home for us in the outside world. Of course, it’s nonsense. You realize it naturally as you grow up.”

Though the topic had suddenly shifted from food, Hindir listened quietly, thinking.

It was something he vaguely remembered hearing.

“Still, we went along with it. Even if we were still treated like slaves, at least it would be better and warmer than this cliff-hugging village. But… around ten years ago, a few of the elders who had supposedly left were caught sneaking back into the village. They were killed by Parno, but just before their deaths, they revealed the truth.”

It wasn’t hard to guess what that truth was.

Death.

After hearing that much, Hindir understood why she had brought up the food issue.

“There are people who didn’t leave the village but hid.”

“That’s right. We discovered a pretty large cave below the cliff behind the village, and those who reached that age faked their deaths and hid there. Parno must have thought it strange. All those turning sixty supposedly committing suicide.”

And yet, Parno did nothing, showing just how indifferent they were toward Larka Village.

“In time, once you became an adult, you’d have learned the truth too. For the record, escape is nearly impossible. We’ve been searching for another path out the back for a long time, but unlike Parno, this godforsaken valley doesn’t leave even a single crack to slip through. Just discovering a place for the elders to hide was seen as a mercy.”

That was why food shortages arose, and why they couldn’t hold out anymore.

On top of that, with the news of Hindir, Parno pushed them even harder…

If they waited any longer, they would have lost even the little strength they had left—so they finally carried out the plan they had long prepared and resolved to see through.

They couldn’t abandon the ones hiding below with their own hands.

So instead, they chose to die together.

In other words, Larka Village had never planned to escape.

They were prepared to die—all of them.

Regardless of age or gender, everyone had steeled themselves. One could only imagine how desperate their hearts must have been.

The feeling of setting your own body ablaze to light your final moment…

‘I know it well.’

Yet even so, a faint smile tugged at Hindir’s lips.

‘They haven’t changed.’

He was glad, and relieved.

Because he had confirmed—they were still warriors.