Got a Gallery in the Wild

There is nothing eternal in the world.

And that also applies even to countries that seem impossible to destroy.

Throughout history, countless nations have been founded and destroyed over and over again.

And it was common for their legacies to either be inherited or completely erased.

As long as people exist, conflicts both large and small will always arise.

And when those cracks accumulate, sooner or later everything ends up collapsing.

This world was no different.

Here too, countless kingdoms and empires had existed and disappeared.

I was never particularly interested in history.

But since this was another world, I inevitably became somewhat curious.

└WildGrills: I’m back. What exactly did that text say?

└AllFather: Ohhh! You’ve returned! Mr. Grills, you have discovered an incredible record!

└WildGrills: Is it really that important?

└AllFather: I still haven’t managed to translate even half of that page, but these are none other than records from the Valkhan Kingdom! Do you not understand how impressive that is?

└WildGrills: No.

└Hey. You said you know mathematics, right? Then you received basic education.

└And yet you don’t know what the Valkhan Kingdom is?

└WildGrills: I told you I came from another world.

Even if I had received an education, the only ancient countries I knew were Joseon, Goryeo, Goguryeo, Silla, or Baekje.

And being generous, also Mongolia, Nazi Germany, England, and things like that.

If I went even further back, maybe Rome.

But that was the limit.

I was never particularly interested in history.

‘And even that I only know because I browsed the internet.’

There were countries that had way too many memes.

The most representative example was England.

That meme saying if something bad happened in the world, England was probably involved.

And while they truly had committed all kinds of atrocities, there was one country that made England look mild.

Nazi Germany.

The lunatics who turned genocide into an industry.

The absolute peak of madness.

And that was the extent of my knowledge.

I knew absolutely nothing related to this world.

└WildGrills: Then the Valkhan Kingdom must have been an absurdly powerful kingdom, right?

└AllFather: Hah right now I feel like casting a Meteor.

└WildGrills: Huh?

└AllFather: It wasn’t merely a powerful kingdom. It was a kingdom that reached the pinnacle of magic, especially necromancy.

└And it was also the kingdom where the Immortal King was born.

└All records related to it disappeared when the kingdom fell, so it’s hilarious that they appeared intact in the Forest of the Four Seasons lmao.

└But then why did he go to the Forest of the Four Seasons? That part really makes me curious.

One after another, history lovers began leaving comments.

But since I knew nothing, honestly I didn’t understand even half of it.

I thought about looking up information separately, but I also didn’t want to miss the conversation.

‘I don’t even know who the Immortal King is.’

The only thing I remembered was that the Mage King, Kadir, had defeated him.

Other than that, I knew nothing.

And I had never felt the need to know.

└WildGrills: I don’t understand anything you’re saying. So, to summarize, there was a really powerful kingdom and it ended up destroyed because of the Immortal King?

└AllFather: More or less.

└WildGrills: And then the Mage King defeated the Immortal King.

└AllFather: That is also correct.

└WildGrills: Then when did the Valkhan Kingdom fall?

└AllFather: If we’re talking about dates, it disappeared approximately 30 years ago.

└Back then it was complete chaos. Everyone was evacuating and panicking.

└My father was a Holy Knight and we received notice that he died in battle.

└Stay strong.

└Wasn’t the previous generation’s hero there too?

└From what I understand, the previous hero died gloriously, and thanks to that Kadir was able to defeat him.

Thirty years wasn’t that long ago.

It was inevitable that the consequences were still present.

Even World War II only happened around a hundred years ago.

And the Korean War, one of the worst tragedies in Korean history, was only around eighty years ago.

Practically the current generation had suffered directly because of the Immortal King.

For people, the Immortal King was still a gigantic terror.

└WildGrills: Did the Immortal King destroy the world or something?

└AllFather: He turned all the inhabitants of an entire kingdom into undead. It was the worst disaster in history. He almost devoured the entire world.

└After that incident, the Holy Kingdom completely banned necromancy.

└Rather than banning it, didn’t they directly classify it as heresy?

└Not exactly heresy. More like evil magic. Though it’s a shame. Necromancy was incredible for replacing labor.

└It caused problems from the beginning anyway. In the Central Continent they banned it from the start because they said it disrespected the dead.

└Respect for the dead my ass. The living have to survive too ;;

└Damn it, do you want to farm fields alone with your bare body? When there was a necromancer in the village everything was way easier.

└Necromancers are always suspicious. You never know what they’ll do.

└That’s prejudice. Even using magic on corpses to investigate causes of death was a form of necromancy.

└WildGrills: D-D-Damn… You can do that?

└AllFather: To this day it remains an unresolved issue. However, perhaps we may find answers in the books you discovered, Mr. Grills.

I still didn’t understand very much.

Everything sounded like a completely distant story to me.

Maybe it was because I had been trapped inside the Forest of the Four Seasons for too long and was losing my sense of reality.

Or maybe it was simply because this was the gallery.

None of it truly hit me.

Neither the Valkhan Kingdom nor the Immortal King meant anything important to me.

└WildGrills: I’m going to upload photos of every page in the book, so can you translate it? More than the history, I’m interested in how this person survived inside the forest.

└AllFather: Ohhh! Thank you very much! I don’t know how I could ever repay this honor…!

└WildGrills: Just tell me the parts related to survival.

Like I had already said before, the most important thing was survival.

I began turning the pages and taking photos one by one.

Uploading all of that to the gallery was going to take time.

That’s why I came back so quickly.

‘Should I just hand the books over to AllFather?’

For a moment I considered it, because uploading everything would be an enormous hassle.

But in the end, I decided to post it anyway.

Even if AllFather was intelligent, perhaps he would have difficulty translating it alone.

If I uploaded it publicly, at least I could obtain somewhat more objective information.

And if it truly ended up being a huge help, I was willing to even give him an adult Mandrake.

‘Though I have to ignore the comments from anonymous users.’

After all, all kinds of people gathered in the gallery.

And the anonymous users would probably end up translating random nonsense just to confuse others.

‘Still, I think I’ll hand the books to AllFather.’

Besides uploading them to the gallery, I planned to give them to AllFather.

Even if I kept them with me, they would be useless.

And out of everyone, AllFather seemed the most trustworthy.

Beyond their academic or historical value, what mattered to me was any information related to survival.

‘This person was incredible too. He forcefully survived in this hell and even had time to write diaries.’

While photographing the pages of the book, I turned my head toward the sack containing the bones.

What kind of person had he been to forcibly survive in such a hellish forest and still have time to write diaries?

Hoping there would be useful information inside those records, I carefully photographed page after page.

And surprisingly, considering how old they were, they had been preserved very well.

There were barely any letters impossible to distinguish.

‘Oh. What kind of plant could this be?’

At first most of the books were filled with text.

But as I moved on to other volumes, illustrations began appearing.

And some of them looked genuinely useful for my survival.

There were drawings of different plants and animals.

Even maps or sketches of specific locations.

Since they were exactly the kinds of things I needed right now, I became even more careful while photographing them.

“Ugh, my neck hurts.”

I ended up spending almost the entire afternoon just taking photos of the books.

Even so, it took less time than expected.

After all, I didn’t need to hold a camera in my hand.

I only had to look at the page while turning it.

And since the image quality depended directly on my eyesight, the letters never came out blurry.

My eyesight was good.

That meant high quality.

‘Now I have to upload everything to the gallery.’

I began posting all the photos I had taken of the books.

Why go through so much trouble?

Wouldn’t it be easier to just hand them over to AllFather?

Even if I said I wanted to keep the information objective, most people probably wouldn’t understand.

But for some reason.

I felt like I had to do it this way.

‘It’s better if I upload each book separately so they’re easier to distinguish.’

The gallery had no limit on photos.

However, it also didn’t work for free.

Each post consumed a small amount of mana.

And the more images or videos you uploaded, the greater the consumption became.

Title) First book found

WildGrills: (Photo of the contents of the book)

WildGrills: (Photo of the contents of the book)

WildGrills: (Photo of the contents of the book)

…

WildGrills: (Photo of the last page of the book)

WildGrills: I’m just uploading the entire contents of the book.

I’ll give an adult Mandrake to whoever manages to decipher useful survival-related information.

And just so we’re clear, I’ll only listen to users with fixed nicknames, so don’t even bother, anonymous users. I’ll upload the rest of the books later.

I uploaded the posts exactly like that and then did the same with the other books.

Even though it was only repetitive manual work, finishing it left me with a strange sense of satisfaction.

Once I finished reading and uploading all the contents, I initiated a trade with AllFather.

And the moment I sent the request, he accepted it before even three seconds had passed.

[WildGrills: Hello, Mr. AllFather.]

[WildGrills: Did you see the posts I uploaded?]

[AllFather: At this very moment I’m reading them with my lower half completely hard.]

[WildGrills: ;;]

Better to ignore it.

If I got uncomfortable over that, then in the end I’d be the weird one.

[WildGrills: The thing is, I’m thinking about donating the books I found. Well, something like that.]

[AllFather: W-What?! Those books are so valuable…?!]

[AllFather: You truly intend to hand them over to me?]

[WildGrills: Even if I keep them with me, I can’t decipher them.]

[WildGrills: But if you find anything related to survival, please tell me immediately.]

[AllFather: That will be simple.]

[AllFather: Aren’t you curious about the Valkhan Kingdom or the Immortal King?]

[WildGrills: Wasn’t he just a king who raised an army of skeletons and started a war?]

[AllFather: Hah, you summarized everything too perfectly, so now I don’t even know what to say.]

[AllFather: Then you’re simply not interested, right?]

[WildGrills: I’m too busy surviving.]

[AllFather: I see. I understand.]

[AllFather: Then I’ll explain how this person managed to survive.]

[WildGrills: Thank you.]

[WildGrills: Ah, before that, may I ask one more thing?]

[AllFather: Go ahead.]

[WildGrills: I’d like to know this person’s name.]

I felt like I should at least know his name.

The difference between having a name and not having one was enormous.

Fortunately, it seemed the name was written on the first page of the book, because AllFather answered immediately.

[AllFather: The last scribe of the Valkhan Kingdom. Rice Craone. His name was Rice Craone.]

Rice Craone.

[WildGrills: Understood.]

After handing the books over to AllFather, there was only one thing left to do.

Bury the bones inside the sack somewhere with sunlight.

I took a shovel, a hammer, and the sack containing the bones and headed outside.

‘A cross…? No. I’ll just use a stone instead.’

A mix between an ancestral rite and a Christian cross sounded way too strange.

It was better to simply drive a flat stone into the ground.

Thud! Thud!

I began digging the grave with the shovel.

Just long enough for the complete skeleton to fit inside.

After that, all that remained was placing the bones and covering them with dirt.

‘How strange. The bones are still connected.’

The skeleton perfectly maintained its shape, just like a model from a school laboratory.

Normally it should have fallen apart.

But it remained whole.

I didn’t know whether that was normal or not, but it didn’t bother me either.

I carefully placed the skeleton into the grave and covered it with dirt.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

Then I drove a flat stone on top and firmly fixed it in place by striking it with the hammer.

That finished the preparations.

Afterward, I bought a cheap bottle of alcohol from the auction house.

By the way, it was alcohol from the Central Continent.

At least it had an oriental feeling that seemed familiar to me.

Pouring beer just didn’t suit me.

Shhhhh—

I poured the alcohol over the grave and the stone to soothe the spirit.

Then I bowed twice.

Even though it was an improvised and clumsy ceremony, it felt sufficient.

The important thing wasn’t the protocol.

It was the respect.

At least, that’s what I believed.

‘Ah, right. The name.’

I almost forgot to write it on the stone.

That would have been terrible.

I laid the stone down again and bought ink and a brush from the auction house.

Then I carefully wrote.

Of course, in hangul.

It was the only language I knew.

The last scribe of the Valkhan Kingdom.

Rice Craone.

Resting here.

That was enough.

I waited for the ink to dry and placed the stone back over the grave.

With that, I finished showing respect to the deceased.

I turned around to return to the cave.

There were no relics to collect.

After all, I never even touched the pendant the skeleton wore until the very end.

I buried it together with him.

And just as that strange funeral ceremony was coming to an end.

[Thank you.]

A gloomy voice echoed behind me.

At the same time, I felt an energy so cold that all the hair on my body stood on end.

Startled, I quickly turned toward the grave.

And…

“……”

There was nothing there.

It even seemed as though that voice had been an illusion.

Only the silence and the grave where I had just performed the ceremony remained there.

‘…Am I seriously starting to hear voices now?’

I rubbed my face and returned to the cave.

Even after eating eel, it seemed my energy had been drained immediately.

‘I think I’ll take a nap.’

For some reason, my body felt completely exhausted.

While Grills was taking a nap.

└Hey. If what I translated is correct, this is going to cause massive chaos.

└What does it say?

└That the Holy Kingdom massacred the people of the Valkhan Kingdom to create the Immortal King ;;;

└W-WHAT???

└What the fuck does that mean??

└The Holy Kingdom? No, but why would they do something like that?

An unexpected revelation was beginning to spread.