Barbarian's Adventure in a Fantasy World-Chapter 345: Champion (1)

“What do you mean where did I come from? I am from the White Snowfield,” Ketal said, as if the question had no mystery at all.

Kalosia did not answer. They did not have the composure to answer.

“Kalosia?” Ketal asked them, hearing the odd strain in their silence.

Only then did the god steady themself. “You are... truly a being of the White Snowfield? You are actually a barbarian from there?”

“Ah. That is what you mean.” Ketal understood the weight inside the question.

If a god enters my inner world, they can see it for themself, he thought. The Abomination had sensed it; there was no reason a god could not.

He considered how much to say, then tipped the question back with an amused light in his eyes. “What do you think?”

Ketal did not deny anything.

Kalosia gulped once and looked at Ketal. Their mind moved through a tangle of thoughts and then cut cleanly through.

“It does not matter,” they said at last. “You are still on our side, yes?”

“Why ask that now?” Ketal replied. “If I were not, we would not be having this conversation.”

“Then it is settled.”

There was no problem to fix and no contradiction to untangle. Kalosia accepted the simple truth.

“You will bear the authorities of the gods without breaking,” they said. “I will speak to the other gods. Some will resist, but they will accept it in the end.”

“I will wait,” Ketal said, smiling.

Kalosia rose from the Mortal Realm and vanished. Ketal stood alone, looking up at the sky with an easy patience.

“So you plan to fill yourself with the children’s authorities,” the Abomination muttered, displeasure roughening its voice. “I do not enjoy the thought.”

“Are you just being territorial because you got here first?” Ketal teased.

“Do not be ridiculous. I dislike being lumped in with them. But as expected, the children’s authorities cannot truly fill you.”

“You sound as if you know me very well.” 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

Ketal wondered, not for the first time, what his inside looked like to beings like it and to gods. He himself could not see it. No matter how carefully he tried to observe himself, he saw only an ordinary body and a man’s simple breath.

“To you, of course,” the Abomination said, dry as dust. “To us, the inside of you is a strange country. You are neither god nor demon nor anything like us. You are an Anomaly. That one plans to pretend they saw nothing. It is not a foolish choice.”

It paused, and its tone shifted as if it could not resist the urge to share what it had brooded over for years.

“I have some guesses.”

“You do?” Ketal leaned in, genuinely curious. “I would like to hear them.”

“How long do you think I have lived inside you?” the Abomination asked him. It did not wait for an answer. “Since not long after you first entered the White Snowfield.”

Even to something that had lived since the universe began, that stretch of time meant something. For all of it, the Abomination had not managed to speak to anyone or even make anyone notice it. It had thought and thought again. It had weighed what Ketal was and why it had become trapped inside him.

“Then tell me,” Ketal said. His interest was bright and plain. He had his own vague suspicions, but he had never chased them to a clean end. He wanted to hear how they saw him. He wanted to know why he had carried the Abomination without feeling its weight.

“Do you take me for a convenient device that answers any question you ask?” it said, bristling on principle. “I am the Abomination. I once killed more of the world than anyone.”

“I know,” Ketal said, laughing under his breath. “I know.”

“You do not act like it.” It grumbled, but the desire to speak won. “Before the details, hear the order of this world. Gods and demons cannot easily interfere with the Mortal Realm.”

To descend in their true forms, gods or demons had to pay a price. They needed offerings in blood and spirit. Even then, if they descended and set both feet on earth, killing them there became a near impossibility.

“And if a demon claims territory on the Mortal Realm, nothing answers it except holy power,” the Abomination continued. “Myst can drive an avatar back, but it cannot uproot a demon who has turned land into their domain. Only holy power can do that.”

“Mortals cannot kill a god who descends in the flesh either,” it said. “Only demonic energy, the raw essence of Hell, can break a true god’s spine.”

Mortals could not truly harm Heaven or Hell.

“Do you know why?” it asked Ketal.

“Because they are higher,” Ketal said.

He already knew the broad shape. Heaven and Hell sat above the Mortal Realm. That height demanded offerings to bridge the gap, and that same height prevented mortals from dragging such beings down by force.

“Correct,” the Abomination said. “And the same scale governs us.”

The Oldest Ones possessed an advantage of affinity over the three realms.

Even the primates of the Deep Sea, brittle as they looked before the White Snowfield’s Whitie, could ruin worlds when they stirred.

“We already exist on the Mortal Realm,” it said. “We do not pay offerings to enter. If that were not true, the price would be steep beyond counting.”

“It’s like a ladder of rank,” Ketal murmured.

At the top were the Oldest Ones. Below them stood Heaven and Hell. At the bottom walked the Mortal Realm.

The Abomination did not disagree. “You may say it that way.”

That was one of the laws of the universe.

“I cannot swear why such differences exist,” the Abomination admitted. “I have a guess.”

“What is it?” Ketal asked it.

“It likely ties to the time of birth.”

“Ah, I see.”

The Oldest Ones had been born with the universe. Heaven and Hell appeared after order took its first form. Mortals came later still, once order settled into rules. The differences of birth gave the differences of standing.

“It is only my conjecture,” the Abomination said. “It is plausible, not proven.”

“It sounds right,” Ketal said, enjoying the talk the way one enjoys an author’s notes after the last page of a story. “But the Demon King feels stronger than the Primarchs.”

“The Demon King received almost everything that belonged to his domain,” the Abomination said. “The Primarchs did not receive their full measure that way. Higher does not mean absolute. You see demons lose to mortals often enough.”

The Abomination sounded almost lively now, carried by the rhythm of telling. Ketal rubbed his chin.

“The gap is still large,” he said. “How did you lose?”

The Demon King stood a little above one Primarch, not a mountain above. No one could predict a winner cleanly. And there were three Primarchs

Even if Heaven and Hell joined hands, he wondered how they could possibly fail to win.

“We were not fond of one another,” the Abomination said, voice low with old facts. “Even when the young ones joined forces to cast us aside, we never united. Instead, we took it as an opportunity to kill those who had long irritated us. The Primarchs were no different. Rather than facing gods and demons, they turned on each other with even greater fury.”

“We fought each other harder than we fought the gods and demons,” it continued. “At the end of it, we were thin and bleeding. They sealed us while we were dying.”

Ketal snorted. “That was foolish.”

“Utterly,” the Abomination said. “Yet if we went back, we would not join hands. We cannot accept one another.”

It let the past fall and set a new question.

“Then answer me,” it said. “You can hold gods and demons and even the Oldest Ones without strain. Why do you think that is?”

Ketal’s expression sharpened.

“It is simple,” the Abomination said. “You are higher.”

Ketal was higher than the Mortal Realm, higher than Hell, higher than Heaven, higher even than the Oldest Ones that date to the dawn. That was the Abomination’s judgment of Ketal.

“I do not know where your place is,” it went on. “But it is high. My essence and a god’s authority are only pictures hung on one wall inside you.”

Ketal breathed out through his nose. “I see.”

“The fact itself does not surprise me,” the Abomination said. “We never believed we were the top of all ladders.”

Then its voice roughened with honest confusion.

“But why would such a being come here?” it asked him. “Why take such a weak and fragile body?”

It asked one more thing, the one that mattered most.

“What did you sacrifice to descend?”

All who stood higher had paid a price to fall. That price had not been small, nor had it been ordinary.

“What offering did you give to reach this place?” it asked Ketal.

“I do not know,” Ketal said, and he lifted his shoulders. “I prayed.”

He had not carved runes in blood, nor weighed stars upon a scale. Instead, he had prayed. He had begged to be taken to a world where fantasy was real, to be lifted from the barren hell that held no wonder and no mystery. And at the end of that prayer, the world had answered. He had arrived.

“Perhaps someone answered me,” he said.

“Who?” the Abomination asked him.

“I do not know.”

When he first arrived, he had assumed a god or the Demon King, something vast and obvious, had pulled him in. After he stepped Outside, he understood that it had not been them. They were far too weak. They knew too little of him. They could not have done it.

Then came the question of who had granted the wish—or whether the truth was something else entirely. Perhaps it had never been another’s hand at work.

A memory surfaced—the Quest. It had led him Outside and commanded him to move only when something bound to the Demon Realm began to stir. It had never appeared for any other calamity, not when darkness ravaged the Mortal Realm, nor when the Demon King descended. Unless a thread of the Demon Realm touched the knot, it remained silent, as if to say that such matters did not warrant its presence.

Maybe some kind of authority..., Ketal thought, and his eyes narrowed.

The Abomination fell quiet. After a breath of silence, Ketal stretched his shoulders and let the puzzle rest for later.

“We will take it slowly,” he said. “Time is what we have.”

“Unfortunately,” the Abomination grumbled. “Damn it. How much longer must I stay in you?”

Ketal listened to its lament with a small smile and went to find the Tower Master. He needed to pass Kalosia’s plan to the Mortal Realm.

The Tower Master heard him out, stood silent for a long count, and finally spoke. “So it is possible. You can do it.”

Ketal would accept the Hall of the Gods’ power and endure. The Tower Master could not hide his awe. Wonder colored his next words.

“How can something like you exist here?” he whispered.

Ketal only laughed and shifted the subject. “The gods have not answered yet, but Kalosia said it will work. Rest for now. I will finish this and come back.”

“Understood,” the Tower Master said. “You truly will be a Champion.”

Not the false Champion who wore the Holy Sword as a mask, but the true one. He bowed with deliberate grace, every motion measured and precise.

“Ketal,” he said. “You are an outsider, yet you stand for the Mortal Realm. I am sincerely grateful.”

“Then teach me magic afterward,” Ketal said. “That will be enough.”

“Do not worry,” the Tower Master replied. “I will teach you my most guarded spells.”

“That is a fine payment,” Ketal said, openly delighted.

A few hours passed, and Kalosia returned to him. “We have an answer.”

***

“How did it go?” Ketal asked them.

“Some gods objected,” they said, “but in the end they agreed. One god fought it to the last moment and still accepted.”

“Who—no, I can guess,” Ketal said. “Ferderica.”

“Correct.”

Ferderica had tried to cast Ketal out with direct force and had failed. It was no surprise that they did not wish to place authority in his hands.

“But for the greater good, they accepted,” Kalosia said. “They care for the Mortal Realm more than any. They will not let the Demon King stain it.”

“What do we do now?” Ketal asked them, “Do I go to Heaven?”

His eyes lit with a boy’s shine. Kalosia set the expectation aside.

“There is no time,” they said. “The Demon King’s seal will break soon. We must finish before then.”

“I see,” Ketal said, disappointed for a breath and then already moving to the next step. “So how?”

“We will link a passage to here,” Kalosia said.

“Mm?”

Before he could work out the full meaning, the god’s voice fell into a measured invocation.

“Come, O path. Gate of the heights, open.”

Their authority unfolded. The world and the space above it wavered and warped. Far off, the Tower Master and Helia sprang up without knowing why.

“Open a road to this place,” Kalosia said.

A path rose into the sky. A gate waited beyond it, and the gate stood open. On the other side, Ketal felt the weight of many gazes. He knew whose eyes they were. It was the gazes of the gods who sat at the Hall of the Gods. They were looking down at him now.

“Magnificent,” Ketal said, and his grin turned sharp and bright.