DMHS 51

The wind that had been blowing violently like a storm stopped in an instant.

Kian’s vision tilted down toward the ground, and he saw sunlit earth shining brightly.

Kian lowered his arm and looked ahead. Then he opened his mouth in awe.

“Ah……”

The first thing he saw was a vast plain.

Unlike the forest where random weeds grew wildly, the grass here was green and neat, as if a gardener had tended to it with care.

Next he saw rows of gravestones standing straight in lines.

There were about a hundred. Even after countless years, not a single edge of the gravestones was broken. Kian laid the fainted princess down at the entrance.

“……”

Kian checked the gravestone at the very front. He could not fully understand the words written in elves language, but he knew at least the first word.

‘Mother.’

Kian drew a holy sign to the goddess Celestia and offered a prayer.

‘May eternal peace be with those who sleep here…’

This was the ancient elves’ graveyard.

Unlike the forest, where tall trees made even daytime dark like night, this was sunny ground.

As he walked across the graveyard under the bright sunlight, a stone-carved mural appeared.

The mural, carved with great detail, depicted several scenes.

The first scene showed a child loitering at the entrance of the Eternal Forest where the elves lived. Kian knew who that child was.

‘Betias.’

Among the stories passed down among people, the guess that Betias was a half-elf was true.

Betias was born between an elf mother and a human father. What people did not know was that in all of the elves’ long history, Betias was the only half-elf ever born.

It was a very old time, not long after the goddess Celestia came into being. The goddess, with her will of creation, made a race resembling herself. That was the elves.

Following her command to make this world flourish, the elves planted trees, connected rivers, and nurtured the world into greenery.

They were purer than a newborn child and more spotless than morning dew. They fulfilled the duties given to them for their whole lives and did not know how to be greedy.

But as time passed, the world around them changed. Among the beings the goddess created, humans changed the world the fastest.

Humans had originally been among the weakest of the goddess’s creations.

They had no thick skin to protect their bodies. They had no sharp fangs to end an enemy’s life in one strike. It even took a long time for them to reach adulthood, and without caretakers, they died as soon as they were born.

But humans had strong survival instincts. To make up for their weaknesses, they formed groups. Then they quickly increased their numbers and maintained them.

Villages became towns, towns joined to form cities, and nations were born. All of that took only about five thousand years. After building kingdoms, humans began trying to conquer the world.

Their mindset also changed. In the past, survival had been their only goal, but they went on to seek more wealth and power, honor and glory. Their growing numbers and their desires brought a new current into the world, and…

They changed one young elf.

Betias’s mother was the first elf who became curious about the world outside the Eternal Forest.

She could not resist her curiosity and left the forest. She met a man in the human world, fell in love, and gave birth to Betias.

The problem came after. Though she was curious about the human world, she was still a naïve elf. She could not understand how humans lied with smiling faces, stole from one another, and even killed each other.

Unable to adapt to the human world, Betias’s mother grew ill and eventually died.

The young Betias was rejected by the village because of her strange appearance. Tired of bullying and discrimination, Betias left her father’s side and went toward the Eternal Forest.

–……

The elves who first saw Betias were greatly unsettled by this unfamiliar being. After fulfilling the goddess’s command to nurture the world, they had devoted themselves only to tending the World Tree in the Eternal Forest, without interacting with other races.

In the end, Betias could not blend into the world of the elves either.

She grew up tormented by loneliness and isolation, anger and destructive desires. The end of her twisted heart was a terrible disaster.

No one knows what event started it. Only that the anger piled up inside her was immense. Blinded by the thought of giving the same pain she had suffered, Betias brought the elves to extinction.

After that, she burned down the Eternal Forest and created a new one. The Forest of Creation, where Kian and his group were, was made that way.

‘It is all in the past.’

While Kian was lost in thought, the sound of flapping wings reached his ears.

When he lifted his head, he saw a white eagle descending from the sky. The eagle drew a wide curve and landed naturally on the back of Kian’s outstretched hand.

“Sorry. Did you wait?”

Kyaa.

“I stopped for a bit because I remembered the past. Let’s move now.”

Kyaa.

Kian went back to the entrance of the graveyard and carried the princess on his back. When he passed through the graveyard to the opposite side, a forest covered in thick fog appeared.

The white eagle no longer flew high in the sky. It circled around near Kian’s head and kept flying low.

“Are we almost there?”

Kyaa.

After a short while, the fog surrounding the forest began to clear little by little.

Grass and trees came into view, and before long the clear blue sky with no clouds appeared. A tower rose high as if it would pierce the sky.

Kian was slightly startled.

“This is the Fourth Tower, right?”

Kyaa.

“I still haven’t found all of my companions. Lord Lucien, Frederick, and Daisy must go with us.”

Kyaa, kyaa, kyaa.

The white eagle cried out and shook its head from side to side. Kian tried to talk with the bird.

“Can’t you find them?”

Kyaa, kyaa, kyaa.

“Or did they go into the Tower first?”

Kyaa, kyaa, kyaa.

“If it’s not that either, then what? Are you saying entering the Magic Tower takes priority over finding my companions?”

The white eagle bit Kian’s sleeve with its beak and pulled. When Kian saw its urgent movements, his expression stiffened quickly.

‘No way…….’

There was a strange spell cast on the forest that connected the village and the Fourth Tower. Kian had thought it was a spell to stop outsiders from entering the tower, but what if it was the opposite?

What if it was a spell that stopped those inside the Tower from coming out?

‘The people inside the Magic Tower might be in danger.’

As if to confirm his guess, Kian felt an unusual wave of mana from the direction of the tower. It was such a wicked power that it made his back run cold.

‘Let’s hurry.’

Kian laid the princess down in a place covered with branches. Then he grabbed some dirt, breathed mana into it, and looked around. By then the eagle had disappeared somewhere.

After making sure no one was watching, Kian murmured quietly.

“Protect this lady.”

Dark shadows surrounded around Kian and vanished.

Next, Kian checked the weapons inside his inner pocket. Right now he had three daggers.

‘I might not have enough weapons.’

Kian clicked his tongue and walked toward the Fourth Tower.

The Tower had the shape of a round pillar, narrowing as it went higher into the sky. He had heard it was made in the image of the World Tree that had once been in the Eternal Forest.

The tower’s surface was white and smooth like marble. If not for the balconies built into each floor, it would have been hard to even guess it was a building.

But what surprised Kian was something else.

‘Where is the entrance?’

He circled widely around the tower, but there was no place to enter. The only openings to the outside were the balconies, and even the lowest one was at least at the height of the fifth floor.

‘I could get in through there, but…’

Kian wanted to enter through a normal entrance if possible. It would not be good to leave the impression he had sneaked in.

‘……Should I just go in?’

While he weighed whether being nagged by a mage or searching for the entrance would be more troublesome, a familiar voice came from behind him.

“What are you doing?”

When he turned, he saw Lucien walking out of the foggy forest.

“Lord Lucien. How did you find your way here?”

“How else? I flew here.”

Kian tilted his head at the incomprehensible words, and Lucien belatedly made an ‘ah, oops’ expression.

“Not flew, I mean I knew. I knew and came here.”

But what he said after that was even stranger. Kian pointed at Lucien with his finger.

“You mean if you know Lord Lucien, you can come here?”

“Well, if you know really well… if you know, maybe it’s possible?”

A light went on in Kian’s head.

“Ah, do you mean you came because you knew me? You sensed my mana and came here, right?”

“……That’s it. That’s exactly how I came.”

The answer, late by half a beat, was suspicious, but Kian himself thought it was a good method, so he felt no further doubt.

“Anyway, this is good. Judging by the atmosphere, it seems something has happened inside the Tower. The spell laid on the forest seems to be isolating the tower. I have placed the princess somewhere safe, so at least the two of us should go inside first.”

“That’s a good idea.”

“But Lord Lucien.” Kian carefully brought up the main point.

“Do you know how to enter the Fourth Tower?”

“You go in through the door.”

“That’s what I thought too, but there is no door. I circled the tower, and there was no entrance a person could use.”

Instead of answering, Lucien walked toward the tower with his usual unhurried steps. Soon Kian heard footsteps along the tower, then a voice.

“There is an entrance here.”