I Became A Married Man in Another World
Chapter 111
111 The Closer He Got to Home
Since he was looking down from the top of a tree, he could only catch glimpses of the top of its head and part of its torso.
It appeared to have a body that was nearly black. It was quite a distance away, and the trees obscured the full view of its form.
After watching the creature enter a cave, Juhwan quickly climbed down from the tree.
He used his mana to sense the surroundings again. As the wind reached the cave’s location, he was able to estimate the creature’s size. It was larger than he had thought when he saw it from the tree.
It wasn’t just a head taller than his own nearly two-meter height. Based on his Mana Detection, it felt much larger. While not quite double his size, it seemed to be about 1.5 times as big.
And the creature was holding something in its arms. It wasn’t alive. Yet, it wasn’t stiff and hard either. It felt as if it were cradling a dead organism…. For some reason, he had a bad feeling about it.
Juhwan ran quietly along the forest path, tracking the creature’s movements with his mana.
Tall trees were sparsely intermingled with others that looked like tropical palms.
After running beneath them for a while, he arrived near the cave where the creature was.
Juhwan narrowed the range of his detection and began to scan the inside of the cave in detail.
The interior of the cave felt quite spacious. It seemed large enough for several people to move around comfortably.
“….”
Juhwan stared intently at the mouth of the cave.
It was strange. Scattered across the floor of the cave were things that felt similar to what the creature had been holding in its arms.
They didn’t move. It felt as though things were simply lying there.
But they weren’t alive. Nor were they hard objects.
Only one possibility came to mind.
‘Corpses.’
As if to support his grim imagination, a bizarre stench wafted from the cave.
He couldn’t tell if they were animals or humans. However, they were much smaller than the creature that had entered the cave. They might be prey it had hunted. If so, it was a mystery why it hadn’t eaten them.
As Juhwan took a step forward toward the cave, a black silhouette lunged out from within.
Grrrraaaaa!
It let out a menacing roar.
It was the creature that had entered the cave earlier.
Whether it had caught Juhwan’s scent or not, it didn’t look around but ran straight through the trees toward him.
Seeing the creature under the sunlight, Juhwan’s mouth fell open involuntarily.
“What is that?”
Its appearance was strange enough to make him mutter to himself.
The creature’s body was black, just as he had thought.
Even though it was crouched on all fours, its eye level was higher than Juhwan’s. It was an incredibly large beast. He had to look up slightly to see its face.
Two large ears sat atop its head, and a ring of coarse black fur grew around the edges of its face. It felt like a short mane, similar to a lion’s. Its forehead, the bridge of its nose, and the area around its mouth were yellow.
However, unlike a lion, the creature’s face had no fur. It felt more like the fur had all fallen out rather than it being naturally hairless.
There was almost no fur on its body either. Its smooth skin only had sparse patches of black fur that looked like they hadn’t fallen out yet.
The black hide covering its body was wrinkled in places, like paper that had been poorly glued down.
And the creature was cradling a bear cub in its forepaws. At a glance, it looked like it was sleeping, but it was dead. Its limbs hung limp, swaying with every stride the creature took.
‘Is that… a bear?’
Looking at it again with that thought, the traces of a bear remained. Apparently, this is what a bear looks like when all its fur falls out. He wondered if it had become like this because of a disease.
There was no more time to think.
The bear rushed in front of Juhwan in an instant and reared up on its hind legs.
Contorting its hairless face, it let out a bizarre cry and swung its free arm downward.
Juhwan blocked the bear’s paw with an arm shrouded in wind.
With a pop, the wind repelled the bear’s arm.
It seemed surprised that a mere human had blocked it. The bear looked dazed for a moment, but soon its face contorted again.
Clutching the cub’s corpse tightly to its chest, it lunged at Juhwan once more.
But this time, unlike before, an arrow was held in Juhwan’s hand.
He threw the mana-infused arrow into the air. The arrow soared on the wind and flew straight toward the bear’s face.
However, practice and actual combat were a bit different. Controlling the arrow with only his mind while moving his body busily was harder than he had expected. It was difficult to move the arrow as freely as usual. It seemed his concentration was wavering, and his thoughts were being divided.
Juhwan dodged the bear’s attack while simultaneously clutching the air with his hand.
The arrow pivoted sharply as if caught in his grasp.
‘Good. It worked.’
If it was difficult with thought alone, he could use physical motions as well.
Just by moving his hand, his mind clearly captured Juhwan’s intent.
It felt as though he had moved through space and grabbed the arrow with an invisible hand. It was like controlling an avatar in a virtual reality.
He thrust his arm forcefully toward the bear’s eye. The arrow followed his movement and dove straight down.
Zip.
With a sharp whistle of wind, the arrow pierced the bear’s eye.
It had enough force to penetrate wood. The arrow entered through the bear’s eye and exited through the back of its head. With a thud, the blood-stained arrow embedded itself in the ground.
The bear let out a pained scream and covered its eye with one paw. Staggering, it retreated a few steps.
Perhaps it realized Juhwan was stronger than it. The mother bear turned as if to flee. Bleeding profusely, she ran toward the entrance of the cave.
Yet, even then, the bear was still cradling the cub in its arms. The body of the dead cub swayed back and forth over the large mother’s back.
He knew it was a pity. He felt sorry for the mother who couldn’t let go of her dead cub even in her agony. If humans hadn’t been here, she would have continued living her own life, but humans had entered the beasts’ forest and disrupted their lives for no reason.
If he had to choose between the two, Juhwan himself was the villain, not the bear.
But just because he felt sorry didn’t mean he could jeopardize the safety of his family.
Juhwan steeled his heart and raised his axe.
The bear was so massive that it would take time to kill it with arrows.
He wanted to kill it instantly, giving it as little pain as possible. To do that, decapitating it with an axe was the fastest way.
Juhwan’s large frame dashed toward the bear.
Sensing this, the bear’s pace quickened. It was moving at the speed of a car. It was fast, despite its massive size.
Juhwan kicked off the ground, shrouding his legs in wind. His body leaped high into the air.
At the same time, Juhwan spread his mana around the bear’s body. It might be difficult to maintain for long, but he could control the flow of air for a brief moment.
The trick was similar to when he killed the bandits. Only this time, the range was somewhat wider.
As if caught in an invisible net, the bear struggled, frozen in place.
As Juhwan dropped onto the bear’s back, he swung his axe with all his might.
With his arm infused with wind mana, the axe bit into the bear’s neck in a single stroke. The axe buried itself deep into the thick flesh, half-severing the neck bone. The bear’s head tilted to the side.
A sorrowful scream echoed through the air.
One more time.
Juhwan raised his axe high again.
But at that moment, the mana suppressing the bear was breached.
“!”
It felt as if something sharp had emerged from the bear’s body and torn the mana net Juhwan had cast.
As the bear suddenly thrashed and moved, its body fell to the ground.
The bear shook its wobbling head and dove into the cave.
‘That thing is no ordinary bear.’
Could it be a Magic Beast? No, it had to be. Running along just fine with its neck half-severed was impossible for anything other than a Magic Beast.
‘But that cub earlier was definitely just a regular bear.’
He had thought the loss of the bear’s fur was due to disease. But perhaps it wasn’t. Maybe it was the process of an animal turning into a Magic Beast.
‘I thought Magic Beasts were born as Magic Beasts, but maybe not. An animal turning into a Magic Beast….’
No, no, seeing as two-headed Orthos or Unicorns existed as Magic Beasts, there must be those born as Magic Beasts from the start. That was likely the case for most of them.
However, it seemed there were also cases where ordinary animals became Magic Beasts.
It was strange. For a living thing to turn into a different entity. He wondered if Magic Beasts elsewhere were like that, or if this place was special.
He entered the cave where the bear had fled. Upon entering, the stench he had smelled earlier grew even worse. It was enough to make breathing difficult.
The cave was dim because the entrance was half-blocked by tree branches. Light only reached a short distance from the entrance.
Juhwan produced a small flame in his hand. The faint light from his palm illuminated the cave.
“My god. What in the world…”
The inside of the cave was filled with the rotting corpses of small animals. Bear cubs, rabbits, wolves—some were nearly reduced to bone. Among them was even a human child. Every single one of them was a youngling.
Juhwan’s gaze turned toward the corner.
The mother bear stood at the back of the cave, growling at Juhwan. Her head was tilted slightly, and her half-severed neck bone was visible beneath the torn skin.
The mother was still cradling the bear cub.
He had thought it was her own cub, but looking at the corpses in the cave, that didn’t seem to be the case. It looked like she had stolen younglings from wherever she could find them.
She must have lost her cub somehow.
It might have died of disease or been killed by another beast.
Whether she became a Magic Beast in that state or simply went mad, she might have continued to wander in search of a cub, not realizing her own was dead.
When the cub she held rotted away, she would realize it wasn’t her cub—or perhaps think it was her already-dead cub and leave it here to find a new one….
Juhwan wrapped the mother bear in wind and dragged her outside.
He flipped the dragged bear over in the sunlight.
There had to be a Mana Stone somewhere.
With that thought, he summoned all his strength and pinned down the struggling bear.
One of the bear’s claws, thrashing in the air, glinted in the sunlight.
‘Is that it?’
He took out an arrow and aimed for the bear’s paw. The arrow soon pierced the paw that had been rendered immobile by his mana.
A small, sparkling stone shattered and fell to the ground.
Juhwan’s axe swung through the air and fell upon the bear’s neck.
Almost simultaneously, the bear let out a mournful cry toward the sky. A breath like escaping air followed. It felt as if its soul was leaving through its mouth.
As he leaned over the bear, whose movements were gradually slowing, to inspect its paw, he found a Mana Stone in the area connecting the claw and the pad.
And from the pad to the ankle, a small, circular snail-shell pattern was drawn. It was a Zentangle.
It was the same on the bear’s other paws.
While there was only one Mana Stone, Zentangles were drawn on all four paws.
Something was strange. He wondered if Yeonhwa had done this. Then, he suddenly remembered the shape of the strange vine he had seen climbing the tree.
That, too, had been in the shape of a coiled snail.
He examined the bear’s body further, but there were no more patterns or Mana Stones.
The cub she had been holding was just an ordinary animal.
Juhwan flipped the mother bear over and tied her to a tree with a rope. It was time to drain the blood.
If it had a Mana Stone, it was undeniably a Magic Beast. Though he felt pity, he had no intention of throwing away an expensive Magic Beast hide.
Using the wind, he could lift the bear’s body into the air without much trouble. The task was even easier than processing a rabbit.
While the blood drained from the bear Magic Beast, Juhwan placed the corpse of the dead cub into the cave and gathered dry leaves and twigs.
He sprinkled the resin powder he always carried inside the cave and lit it.
Adding a bit of mana to it, the corpses inside the cave were incinerated in an instant.
The fire burned everything inside the cave and went out much later, leaving only black soot and ash.
On the way back with the hide and meat of the bear Magic Beast, Juhwan carefully inspected the trees to see how many of those strange, coiled vines there were.
The Zentangle-patterned vines, which he had seen quite often nearby, were not here.
As he continued walking and drew closer to home, he saw that the parasitic vines climbing the trees were forming Zentangle patterns.
The number of vines coiled into Zentangle patterns gradually increased.
‘What is this?’
While heading home in a wide circle to check, Juhwan realized that, strangely, there were many such vines in the vicinity of his house.
