Not a barbarian warrior.

It had been almost three years since Kim Woo-jin, once a 30-year-old South Korean man, was called by his new name, Eugene.

This also meant that it had been over three years since he was possessed into the game the moment he pressed the start button.

The place he was possessed into after leaving Earth was, to put it simply, a hellhole.

Man-eating beasts were commonplace, and monsters or evil spirits could pop out from anywhere.

Even small villages built palisades of stone and wood, and wherever people gathered in large numbers, they invariably built castles.

This world was what you’d call ‘always dangerous outside the blanket’.

Eugene, possessed in this world, wanted to stay inside the safe village boundaries, but he couldn’t. Due to his appearance, he wasn’t particularly welcome anywhere.

The character Eugene was possessed into had black hair and eyes, a face with thick features, a large build, and clearly defined, bulky muscles.

This appearance was enough to make people mistake him for a barbarian from the Northern Continent.

The perception of barbarians was rock bottom.

They were seen as uneducated, belligerent, unable to resist women and alcohol, hot-tempered, difficult to communicate with, and prone to causing trouble with weapons at the slightest provocation – in short, a race of madmen.

Eugene was from a 21st-century Earth civilization with established laws and morals, but people didn’t know that.

Here, he was just a barbarian, or a barbarian warrior.

Thus, when he was first possessed into the game, Eugene really struggled.

Inns wouldn’t give him a room, no store would hire him.

The vigilante groups and guards in charge of town security always looked at Eugene with suspicious eyes, and if he walked around without a hood, he often encountered trouble.

Now, three years later, Eugene was still a wanderer, unable to settle anywhere.

His goals were always twofold.

One was to survive in this hellhole, and the other was to find a way back to Earth.

Surviving was difficult, but he had somehow managed so far.

However, even after three years, he hadn’t even found a clue about returning to Earth.

This fact was enough to cast a dark cloud over Eugene’s face.

Sitting under a large boulder by the road, preparing for camp, Eugene unconsciously let out a deep sigh.

Slumping down, Eugene stared blankly at the rising campfire, momentarily lost in thought.

‘If I’m possessed in such a crappy game, shouldn’t there at least be a status window? No skills given, no spatial inventory, not even a mini-map… I hadn’t even played this game before… Damn it, God… if you have eyes, look at my miserable state. Isn’t this all because of you?’

He couldn’t understand why or who had possessed him into such a crappy game, but he always considered God as one of the prime suspects.

After all, who else could make such a miraculous thing happen if not a divine being?

While he was complaining to a God who might not even exist, an odd sound caught his ear.

Eugene reflexively stood up and looked in the direction of the sound.

Under the setting sun, he saw a large pack animal carrying what looked like a person, with three dark shadowy figures chasing behind.

‘Judging by their movements, wolves, or maybe varums? They’re quite large compared to the pack animal in front.’

Thinking this, Eugene continued to observe the pack animal’s movements.

At some point, the pack animal slightly changed direction and started running. Precisely towards where Eugene was standing.

Once the direction changed, it showed no signs of changing again. The pack animal was definitely running towards him.

‘What? No way? Is it really coming here?’

Eugene frowned at the sight.

Running towards him like that with something chasing behind was as good as passing the danger onto Eugene. It was clearly an action to use Eugene as bait to escape.

‘Are they crazy? Do they think I’ll just stand still?’

Eugene immediately reached for the crossbow hanging next to his backpack beside the sleeping bag.

He lowered the ring at the end of the crossbow to the ground and stepped on it firmly to secure it, then pulled the bowstring with both hands. The steel bow made a creaking sound as the crossbow was loaded.

Placing a sharp-tipped arrow on the crossbow, Eugene aimed at the approaching pack animal.

Meanwhile, the pack animal running towards Eugene’s location was getting closer.

Even without straining his eyes, Eugene could tell that what was chasing the pack animal wasn’t a four-eyed monster varum, but ordinary wolves.

The unidentified human riding the pack animal had their hood pulled up over their head and remained motionless.

‘Yeah, keep coming silently like that. I’ll put an arrow in you.’

Eugene’s stance of aiming the crossbow was a clear warning. It meant he would shoot if they didn’t immediately go elsewhere.

However, the direction of the running pack animal showed no signs of changing.

As it approached close enough that he could hit nine out of ten shots if he fired the crossbow, Eugene made up his mind.

‘I clearly warned them.’

Just as Eugene was about to pull the trigger of the crossbow, one of the chasing wolves sped up and tried to bite the pack animal’s leg.

The pack animal, quickly noticing this, jumped into the air in fright.

With the sudden leap, the hood of the person riding the pack animal came off.

At that moment, Eugene could see the face inside the hood.

“Oh…!”

Eugene’s eyes widened at the unexpected face.

It was a young girl who looked to be about fourteen or fifteen at most.

The girl was crying with a terrified expression.

She called out to Eugene, who had made eye contact with her, in a desperate voice.

“Please save me! Please…!”

At that moment, something whispered in Eugene’s inner mind.

‘Shoot that girl right now as you planned and leave this place. While the chasing wolves are tearing apart that young girl and the large pack animal, pack your things and move your campsite elsewhere. The fact that that young brat tried to screw you over hasn’t changed!’

Eugene reflexively shook his head.

She hadn’t approached deliberately to screw him over.

She was just a child who didn’t know what to do in this situation and was asking an adult for help.

It was the right thing for an adult to save a child in trouble.

It didn’t matter if the child had caused trouble for the adult in the process.

His still uncorrupted morals and conscience came to that conclusion.

Eugene, with a grim face, slightly adjusted the direction of the crossbow and pulled the trigger.

With a twang sound, the arrow fired from the crossbow grazed past the girl’s face.

The arrow lodged in the chest of a wolf that had leapt up, aiming for the girl’s nape from behind.

As soon as Eugene dealt with one wolf, he immediately put down the crossbow.

There was no time to leisurely reload the crossbow.

He immediately pulled out a throwing knife from the leather strap wrapped around his thigh and gripped it.

“Hey-! You sons of bitches-!!”

A voice filled with terrible killing intent burst from Eugene’s mouth like thunder.

It had enough power to momentarily freeze the two beasts chasing the girl.

For a very brief moment. It was truly just an instant, but that was enough time.

Eugene swung his arm with all his might.

The knife that flew from his fingertips rushed towards the wolf at a ferocious speed.

The beast tried to quickly roll to the side, uncoiling its crouched body, but it was too late to dodge.

The knife entered its body, tearing through muscle and cutting internal organs.

Another wolf fell to the ground, letting out a pain-filled scream.

Now there was only one left.

The remaining one was the largest of the pack. Its size was almost equal to Eugene’s.

As Eugene reached the front of the last remaining wolf and drew his sword, it bared its sharp fangs and growled.

“Come on-!”

Beneath some plain on the continent, a beast and a human rushed at each other, each wielding their carefully honed weapons.

The beast sprang off the ground, lunging for Eugene’s nape.

The human simply swung his sword diagonally from top to bottom in a concise motion.

However, the human’s sword was filled with enough power to cut through the beast’s tough hide and bones without hesitation.

A moment passed, and a red line was drawn across the wolf’s neck.

The wolf’s fangs never touched Eugene’s skin as it completed its leap.

It simply ended with its body and head separating and falling to the ground.

“Whew…”

Eugene tilted his head back and let out a big breath. The tension that had built up in his body subsided.

The sun was already setting beyond the horizon.

It dyed the sky and earth orange as if burning itself, as if today was the last day.

Eugene lowered his head.

The decapitated wolf was spewing liquid, staining the ground red.

This was its last moment.

After feeling the nameless wild grass swaying in the wind and his heated body cooling down.

Only then could Eugene move again.

After retrieving the knife he had thrown and cleaning the blood from his weapons and body, Eugene turned his head to look for the pack animal.

The pack animal, which had somehow moved far away from Eugene, tried to avoid his gaze while trembling when their eyes met.

Ignoring the pack animal’s reaction, Eugene shifted his gaze to the girl riding on top of it and started walking.

He had many questions to ask: how she ended up being chased by wolves, if she was okay, what had happened for her to be wandering outside the village alone.

“Hey kid, are you alright?”

“…”

The girl, with her robe pulled over her head and her head hanging low, showed no reaction even when Eugene called out to her.

“…?”

When there was still no answer despite calling out several times, Eugene moved closer. Then he could hear her muttering something.

“Aaaah… Aaaaah…”

“Hm?”

With an ominous feeling, Eugene tilted his head to look at the girl’s face under the hood.

Her face was deathly pale. Foam was dripping from the corners of her mouth, and her eyes were completely unfocused.

“Ah! Oh no…!”

Eugene finally realized what he had done to this girl.

She must have been mentally shocked by the roar filled with intense killing intent that she had faced head-on. It was powerful enough to make even considerable monsters and beasts cower.

‘How could I make such a mistake… I should have told her to cover her ears…’

With a self-reproaching expression, Eugene carefully picked up the girl.

He started walking to quickly take her to his campsite.

He planned to lay her down next to the warm campfire and watch over her until she regained her composure.