Throw some stones fellas!
---
"Since you're all going to follow me, we'd better prepare ourselves for the worst," Fafnir said, his face serious. "After all, we have no idea what kind of world we're landing in. It's better to be cautious than to regret it later."
Serie nodded. While she was quite excited and curious about the worlds they would travel to, she was neither careless nor stupid enough to believe the journey would be smooth sailing.
If there was one thing she had learned from her long life, it was that it was far better to be overly cautious than to be a careless fool.
She had not lived this long by being reckless.
With zero information about the kind of place they were heading to, it was wiser to be prepared—just in case.
At the same time, she felt the thrill of being a clueless elf once more, and that made her excited.
Frieren, on the other hand, simply wanted to experience what it was like to travel to another world. She also hoped to learn magic there—if any existed.
And so, they spent the next few days preparing. Once they were ready, they performed their first dimensional travel together.
—
Northern Frontier Lands
A cold blizzard howled across the area—a place so harsh that no human should have been able to survive.
Yet some had. A tribe had lived in this hellish land for generations, until they were wiped out in a rival tribe's raid.
No one was left alive—except for a single lucky child who had been out hunting and thus escaped the massacre.
By the time the girl returned, she found her village destroyed. Her home—where her family had lived—was gone.
She quickly scouted the area for any survivors. After a few minutes, she found one: the tribe chief, now former. It was her father, lying on the verge of death.
She rushed to his side, knelt beside his dying body, and shed tears. "Father! W-what happened?! W-why is the tribe like this? And y-you're dying!"
Her father looked at her with his final breaths, his mouth filled with blood. "A-a rival tribe ambushed our village while we were unaware… B-but by the time we realized, they had already wiped out half of us—cough! Cough!"
He spat a mouthful of blood onto his leather shirt, growing paler with every second. He knew he was dying and that nothing could save him.
Looking at his child, there were many things he wanted to say. But time was short. He had to give her the best advice he could—one that would ensure her survival.
From a young age, she had already been a prodigy in combat, the greatest of all generations. This child had to survive, because she would become the greatest warrior there ever was.
Rather than fill her with sentimental words that might weaken her potential, he chose to speak the truest, most primal law of their world. With his dying breath, he told his precious daughter:
"Esdeath… cough! Listen. We… we lost because we were weak. Not because of the ambush, but because we were too weak to win. The true law of this world is simple—cough!—the strong survive and the weak die. So don't be a weakling like me…"
Slowly his life faded. His eyes lost focus, his breathing stopped, and blood continued to pour from his mouth and body.
He had no idea what impact his words would have. If he had known, he probably never would have spoken that barbaric philosophy.
In that moment, he had single-handedly created the most sadistic monster of this era—and possibly of the next few centuries.
The Ice Queen.
But that was another timeline. Not this one.
Esdeath stopped her tears from falling as she replayed her father's words. Before they could take root deep inside her and become her way of life, she snapped out of it. She heard multiple footsteps approaching.
Her danger sense spiked through the roof. Her hunter's instincts screamed that an apex predator was near. Goosebumps covered her entire body despite the freezing cold.
She began to sweat even in the blizzard, clenching the dagger in her hand so tightly that the hilt creaked under her grip.
But right now she barely noticed. All her attention was locked on the "predator" approaching. 'Is this the group that wiped out our tribe…?'
If it was, then their annihilation was completely understandable. There was no surviving a monster like this.
She hadn't even fought them yet, but her extensive experience hunting Danger Beasts told her everything. Even a Special-Class Danger Beast she had once slain felt incomparable to the sheer presence she sensed now.
Finally, she caught a visual of the person who radiated such extreme danger: a man with long black hair, blood-red eyes, and… horns?
She had never seen a human with horns. Then again, this "man" probably wasn't human at all. No human should feel like their very existence emitted danger simply by standing there.
Esdeath knew she couldn't win this. There was no possible outcome where she came out alive. 'Father… it seems I'm going to die because I'm weak.'
"Hm…? Is that a native?" A short woman with golden hair spoke. Then she noticed the anomaly—this woman's ears were very long.
Esdeath became even more certain that these people were not human. She also sensed danger from the long-eared lady, though it was nowhere near as strong as the aura from the horned man.
Although…
Esdeath's eyes landed on the youngest member of the group. The girl looked about her own age and was probably the only one here she could take on in a fight. She, too, had long ears.
Esdeath had never heard of their species. Were they some new type of Danger Beast?
Then the horned man answered the long-eared, golden-haired woman.
"She's human, that's for sure. And hmm…" His eyes were on her now. The sweating grew worse as he stared, as though she were laid completely bare with no secrets left to hide.
It made her feel deeply uncomfortable—not because she was being stared at, but because she felt as if her soul were being dissected by his gaze.
"She looks lonely…" the silver-haired, long-eared child said, a hint of sympathy in her voice.
"What do you think we should do with this little girl?" the golden-haired lady asked. "I don't think she'll survive out here on her own…"
"You're wrong about that…" the horned man muttered, too quietly for Esdeath to hear clearly.
"Hm?"
"No, nothing. Maybe this is fate. Let's take her with us," the black-haired, horned man decided.
"Really…?" The golden-haired lady sounded skeptical.
But the youngest silver-haired girl had a different opinion. "Let's take her with us. I'm sure she just needs a companion to feel better."
Judging by her voice, she seemed confident about it.
Esdeath felt oddly offended by the assumption that she needed a companion.
"Yeah, you're definitely wrong about that," the horned man stated with a wry smile.
Then he stepped closer. The threat she felt made her scream as she lunged with her dagger.
Esdeath would rather die with dignity than live as a coward. But before her blade could hit anything, her world collapsed into total darkness. Something struck her neck.
Her last thought was: 'Sorry, Father… I'm not strong enough.'
Then she fainted on the cold, snowy plain.
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A/N: It's Esdeath! Because of her unfortunate childhood, she became what she is in the canon—largely thanks to her father's barbaric philosophy.