"This, the Illiad?"
Ahheman's expression hardened.
"The Illiad is a contest between warrior and warrior. It is a final, life-and-death struggle for honor in which neither side can back down.
The chieftain Aquila smiled gently and turned to Ahheman.
"Ahheman, great shaman of Balak, you are a being of high pride and shining honor, a defender of time-honored traditions, as I have said before. Will you allow such pride, honor, and tradition to be compromised?"
Ahheman could not help but grit his teeth.
He wondered why the chieftain, who had always thought of him as an eyesore, had elevated him.
It was all part of laying the groundwork to make the Iliad irresistible.
The veteran chieftain, Aquila, is determined to use this opportunity to remove the power of the shamans, who have taken over the chieftaincy.
He has been using his daughter, Aiyen, to incite the young people to overthrow superstitions and old habits to keep the shamans in check.
His grandson, Ahun, didn't take sides either.
"Grandfather. You always said we should honor tradition. The Iliad is our Balak tradition."
"Shut your mouth, I know that!"
Ahheman gritted his teeth and turned his head.
Before him stood Vikir, his expression grim.
The enslaved prisoner of war had been transformed into a local hero in an instant.
In less than two years, a ragtag outsider had filled the position that Ahheman had longed for all his life.
Ahheman felt his clothes turn inside out.
His anger at Vikir flared up like a pillar of fire in an oil field.
"Good! I understand! I demand the Iliad from you!"
Hearing Ahheman's proclamation, Vikir nodded without a word.
It was a sign of acceptance.
Patriarch Aquila spoke in a low voice that only Vikir could hear.
"Do you think you win...?"
"If you ask me to do it, I'll do it."
Vikir has been a hound of the Baskervilles for over fifty years, before and after his regression.
He was used to being someone else's sword.
Aquila smiled with satisfaction at Vikir's answer.
It felt as reassuring as a sharp knife in his hand.
"Very well, I believe you, son-in-law."
"...?"
For a moment, Vikir thought he saw a reflection of Morg Adolf in Aquila.
Then, all the warriors, young and old, united to fight.
A place where two warriors would fight for their souls.
All the warriors watched, their hands sweating.
Ahheman thought to himself.
"That's right. This is good. I'll take this opportunity to shake off all my bitterness and reclaim my place.'
He raised his searing eyes and glared at Vikir.
As if everything would go back to normal if only that thing in front of him were gone.
"The date is the full moon in three days," Ahheman shouted like boiling magma deep inside an active volcano.
"The date is the night of the full moon in three days, the place is here, and I formally challenge you to the Iliad!"
For a moment, the warriors were stunned by the ferocity of Ahheman's words.
However, Vikir, who was the target of the killing, was so indifferent.
Only.
"Three days. Let's do it now."
It's like he's just trying to get a chore done.
The warriors were once again impressed by Vikir's relaxed demeanor.
Ahheman, on the other hand, broke out in a cold sweat.
Three days of stealthy preparation had been undone.
Vikir knows this, which is why he hasn't given Ahheman time to think.
"That's what shamans do."
He's trying to slow down the Iliad with his usual bravado, but it's no use.
Vikir, too, is a worn and tattered old man who has seen it all, but he is no match for Ahheman.
In fact, as a man who has lived through an age of destruction, he is superior to the old shaman in the art of conspiracy.
"The Iliad gives the challenger the right to choose the date and place, by tradition, doesn't it?"
At Vikir's words, Ahheman makes a pained sound.
He's the one who's always been vocal about the need to honor tradition, so he's at a loss for words when tradition is brought up in this situation.
Self-absorbed and self-absorbed, his own words are weighing him down.
Seeing this, Aiyen chuckled.
"As expected, Ahhemman's is Ahhemman."
Aiyen muttered something accusatory, then turned his head to the side.
He saw his loyal subordinate, trusted ally, and close friend, the wolf Bakira, sitting stoically beside him.
Aiyen stroked Bakira's fluffy ears and leaned in close to whisper quietly.
"Go to the village and tell them to prepare to welcome the winner of the Iliad."
The instructions were for those who remained in the village to prepare a reception for Vikir.
But.
"Don't do that."
Vikir turned to Aiyen.
When Aiyen's eyes narrowed, Vikir turned his head and replied.
"If you get your hopes up, you'll always get the opposite result."
It's hard to prepare for variables when you're so sure.
Vikir watched Ahheman grit his teeth in the distance.
He was a shaman, so there were many surprises in battle.
Vikir had fought countless shamans, warlocks, alchemists, and the like throughout the Age of Destruction, and almost every time, there had been a surprise counterattack.
In the end, Vikir was always the victor, but they always had a hand they kept hidden just before they died, and Vikir was used to that.
"I don't let my guard down even one percent.
A hound does his best to catch a rabbit.
This is especially true when the prey is an old raccoon.
Vikir reviewed all the information he had before the regression, checking off each of the possible contingencies.
Seeing Vikir's cautiousness, Aiyen became cautious as well.
She wanted to be as helpful as possible, so she told him everything she knew about Ahheman.
There came a point in the story where Vikir's ears perked up for a moment.
"Wait a minute. Tell me about that part again."
Seeing Vikir's interest, Aiyen opened his mouth excitedly.
"Which part are you referring to, Ahheman's taste in underwear colors? According to the boy in charge of the laundry, he prefers tight, leopard-print pelts...."
" ...Before that."
"Oh, you mean his birth background?"
Aiyen whispered to Bikir, repeating what she had heard from Aquila.
At this point, it was a secret that no one knew except for Aquila, Aiyen, and Ahheman himself.
"Ahheman is not a native of Balak. He was originally a member of another tribe and was kidnapped as a child. He was probably around the same age as you, Vikir."
Vikir was a little surprised to hear that.
He'd thought he'd been a native Balak for generations before tradition got in the way, but he was actually an outsider.
I was even more surprised by what Aiyen said next.
"He went around saying that he was captured for son-in-law hunting, but… … In fact, he was taken as a slave. To the shaman at the time who enjoyed sodomy."
Perhaps because he was an outsider who had been taken as a slave as a teenager, Ahheman saw himself in Vikir.
It was a kind of homophobia. ...
Since Vikir, who had been like that, followed all the ideal routes and became a hero respected by everyone, Ahheman's stomach was bound to get even worse.
"Anyway. He was a sex slave, waiting for an opportunity, and one day he killed a shaman and took his powers."
Aiyen went on to recount the bloody struggle Ahheman went through afterward to fit into Balak's society.
"He had no place in a Balak society that valued physical strength, and he was despised for killing the shaman who had raised him, so he would do anything to be accepted by his people."
He took on all the village's odd jobs, from scavenging human and wolf feces to driving in dangerous game and serving as bait.
It was not uncommon for him to rise at the crack of dawn and hold the shoes of the previous chieftain in his arms, warming them with his body heat.
At that time, to impress Aquila, who was still a child, he put her on his back and crawled on all fours, imitating a dog.
And by the time ... he was accepted as a member of the tribe's society, his gray hair had already grayed.
As an old man, he couldn't help but notice the privileges of his youth that he hadn't been able to enjoy.
The blood, violence, and impulses that had been pent up in his youth, unleashed to their fullest extent, rose to the surface with a sense of compensation.
And so he sought to overthrow the authority of his chieftain, Aquila, and devour Balak, and the entire jungle.
Outside the walls, he even joined hands with the Imperial House of Leviathan!
Meanwhile, Vikir suddenly had a question.
"...So, what tribe was Ahheman originally from?"
"Hmmm. I don't know about that."
Vikir nodded at Aiyen's answer.
It doesn't really matter at this point.
Meanwhile, Ahheman had been fidgeting nervously since earlier.
It only intensified when Vikir entered the battlefield for the Iliad.
Like a seasoned hound, Vikir takes his time, slowly, gradually, tightening the leash on his prey with each step.
Prepared for every eventuality, Vikir heads into battle.
But before the Iliad could unfold, a deadly twist occurred that even the mighty Vikir could not have anticipated.
…Boom!
A foot stamped the ground once behind him.
And then someone grabbed Vikir's wrist and yanked him backward.
Vikir turned his head.
"...!"
Lips brush against Vikir's lips.
Aiyen, whose head has shrunk in the last two years, stares up at Vikir with a ravenous gaze.
"Win and come back. I'll give you something better."
She smirked and shoved Vikir in the chest.
Vikir thought about saying something in Moorish, but decided otherwise.
This isn't the most important thing right now.
Now.
…Cha-ang!
Beelzebub slices through the artery in his wrist, revealing his black teeth.
It was the moment when the leash of the Iron-Blooded Sword's Hound was released.