READ NOVEL ONLINE Chapter 13
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The life of an elf is usually as dull as dishwater.
Thanks to the World Tree and the fertile embrace of the Great Forest, there’s no real need to work for survival.
With the energy of the World Tree, they don’t have to worry about wild beasts or monsters; it’s a life where they can simply eat and drink in peace.
Of course, they might practice some self-defense against threats from other races, but that’s more of a job for the soldiers, not the average citizen.
Besides, with the spirits that are children of the World Tree and friends of the elves, they can easily wield magic power greater than that of an average human mage without even training.
Plus, with an average lifespan of over a thousand years, their daily lives are incredibly laid-back.
It’s a peaceful life so monotonous that it borders on the boring.
Mirien was one of those young elves who felt fed up with such a tedious existence, eager to break free from the confines of the Great Forest and the World Tree.
Outside the Great Forest, there was a mysterious space called the Great Maze, built by the gods. She made up her mind to spend the rest of her life not in the dull Great Forest, but in the Maze.
When she first arrived in the town near the Maze, she felt a bit uneasy.
She wore her hood to hide her long ears from the leering folks who were all too eager to gawk at her elf-ness. Yet, due to her elf-like beauty, flies still buzzed around her, forcing her to cover her face the way only her jaw showed.
If she hadn’t met a decent party later on, she might’ve developed a prejudice against humans.
But either way… life in the Maze was anything but boring.
Endless trials and adventures, along with the rewards that came from them.
Life in the Maze was so colorful that it made her memories of the dull Great Forest seem pale in comparison. At the same time, she found great satisfaction in it.
While she felt somewhat uncomfortable about having to mingle with beings of other races in her party, she gradually became accustomed to it, even developing a sense of camaraderie.
In fact, the leader of her party, Hugo, was a pretty decent human, and Chrome, the dwarf warrior, had a surprisingly amiable character for a dwarf, quickly alleviating her discomfort.
At that time, fully enjoying life in the Maze… Hugo, the leader of the party, brought some news.
“The academy has commissioned us for a escort mission related to some exams. They want us to guide two students, one mage and one priest, to the fifth floor and evaluate them.”
“Oh? From the Academy? Looks like we’re starting to gain some recognition.”
Labyrinth Academy.
The top educational institution for humans established near the Maze.
From what she heard, high-ranking humans were worried about their adventurous and greedy kids who couldn’t resist the allure of the Maze. So they pooled their money to create a place that would train the kids properly for a safer exploration of the Great Maze.
This institution, funded even by the stingy humans, saw massive scale contributions from empires and kingdoms, gaining a reputation for being a prestigious center of learning that, despite its original goal to teach about the Maze, also offered various academic disciplines and technologies.
For nobles, it was an essential place to attend to elevate their family name, while for commoners, merely graduating became a dream that blossomed their futures.
Yet, fundamentally, it was a training ground for aspiring heroes desiring to enter the Maze and become true heroes.
They not only taught about the Maze but also administered tests related to it.
One such test was called the Maze Experience.
Students were paired with random parties chosen from the academy to experience the Maze, and the original party members would evaluate them as they navigated through.
Since they had to escort noble kids, parties were carefully selected based on their abilities and personalities, offering considerable honor and financial compensation from the academy for successfully fulfilling the mission.
In other words, if they performed well, it could be a lucrative gig.
Of course, sometimes noble students tried to manipulate evaluations using their status, but the academy used something akin to confession magic to ensure fair assessments, making such efforts futile. Moreover, the party was also under certain protective measures, meaning there had been rarely any disturbances due to these problems.
With a surprisingly long-standing tradition, learning that their party had been selected was undoubtedly good news.
“I take it everyone agrees then. We’ll meet with the academy students tomorrow and head to the Maze three days later.”
Mirien and her party members all agreed to take on the commission, and after meeting with the students, they set off towards the Maze.
This time, the students—a mage and a priest—honestly didn’t seem very dependable. Even in a good light, they were just bumbling beginners. From the moment they met, you could practically see their confidence dwindling.
Thinking there probably wouldn’t be anything good coming from their evaluation, she moved through the Maze until she caught sight of someone on the level three plains.
In the middle of that plain stood a lone man, looking suspicious for some reason.
Black hair, half-closed eyes that revealed nothing, and good looks that made her doubt if such a beauty existed among his kind.
That man exuded a strange aura, which she picked up on faster than her party members.
At the same time.
-…!
-Bzzzt! Bzzzt!
-Whooooooo…!
-Grrr…! Ggghhh…!
Colorful orbs of light floated around her, emitting strange sounds. Seeing this made her somewhat flustered.
‘…Spirits?’
She was the party’s scout, an archer, but also a skilled spirit master as an elf.
Though she hadn’t revealed to her party members that she was an elf or a spirit master, she was already adept at handling intermediate spirits.
Even so, she noticed her spirits acting a bit strange.
When entering the Maze, they had shown some discomfort towards the space full of the power of the Transcendents, but they didn’t run away…
Now, they were trying to flee in terror.
And that tendency only grew stronger the closer they got to the man.
Hugo, saying it wouldn’t do to leave him alone, seemed inclined to join the man, but honestly, she felt an itch of trepidation.
Beyond being a suspicious stranger, this was someone that even her spirits feared. Did they really have to stick around?
She would have preferred to keep her distance, but since the leader Hugo thought it would be better to team up, opposing him would only sour the mood of the party.
And so, while she hesitantly accepted the man’s company, she didn’t express her reluctance to Hugo’s decision.
***
The man introduced himself as ‘Yujin’ and was always polite.
He was mindful of the situations of the party that took him in, constantly showing consideration and wearing a friendly smile.
However, that made it all the more unsettling, as she couldn’t gauge his true intentions.
It felt like he was putting on an act to hide something.
As expected, this unsettling quality would be revealed later in a battle.
‘What…?!’
Just before Chrome was injured by the useless mage Eri’s spell, she caught sight of it.
With a mere flick of his hand, Yujin cast a protective shield around Chrome without any casting.
The problem was the color of his mana and the power it contained.
It was a peculiar mixture of black and red mana. Considering that regular mana was usually blue, it was an odd hue.
And as an elf blessed by nature, she had a keen sense of energy, and she felt it.
‘….!’
A powerful mana capable of bringing everything around it to its knees. A wicked power that seemed to place all of creation beneath it.
From Yujin’s mana emanated a force that felt tyrannical.
Only then did she realize.
This was it.
She figured out what her spirits had feared so much.
***
After that, she kept Yujin under covert observation.
Well, “observation” was more like occasionally checking to see if he was doing anything suspicious.
However, Yujin didn’t engage in any particularly strange antics.
While setting up camp, he simply gathered magical materials, and after preparing the campsite, he showed no odd behavior.
But that only deepened Mirien’s suspicions. How could someone with such power act so ordinarily?
What could possibly be the reason he joined their party? Was there some ulterior motive?
As her doubts deepened, the time to set the night watch arrived.
With more people around, they decided to pair off for the watch, and Mirien ended up on watch duty with Yujin for two hours.
Things were working out nicely. When surrounded by the rest of the party, she wouldn’t have been able to confront Yujin, but just the two of them meant she could safely interrogate him.
She decided to take a somewhat bold approach.
…Only to discover later that it was a mistake.
***
“Who are you?”
“……”
She pressed a cold dagger to the man’s throat.
It was a tense situation that would make anyone think twice about their life.
In a position where any slight movement could lead to a cut to his throat, the man never lost his composure. His eyes remained obscured, and his face retained that ever-present smile.
It was as if everything was going exactly as he expected.
This irked her. Why was he so calm?
He spoke up.
“Is the way elves greet each other this rough?”
“!”
He seemed to have seen right through her elven nature.
This caused her to momentarily falter, but it was only for a moment.
“How did you know?”
She had hidden all traces of being an elf, even concealing her face except for her jaw.
So how could he possibly know?
“Haha, well, maybe it was simply because you’re utterly beautiful, and I unconsciously thought so.”
But Yujin just brushed it off nonchalantly. This only further riled her.
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
“Joking? Ah, I see.”
The man flashed a meaningfully cryptic smile.
“If I were to make a little ‘joke’ right here, would the mood lighten up a bit?”
“What? What are…”
“『Isolation(孤立)』.”
The incomprehensible word that slipped from the man’s lips.
As that alien term escaped his mouth,
Bam!
“….!”
The world shifted.
Everything around became pitch black. It felt like she’d entered a canvas soaked in black paint.
Amidst that darkness, the man before her stood out clearly, even without a light source.
At the same time, she could no longer sense the spirits. Only Yujin and Mirien remained in this space.
“Haha, what an amusing expression.”
The man now stood up, gently pressing down the dagger at her neck with his finger.
It was a light gesture, but she felt a colossal force behind that light touch.
‘What kind of power is this?’
Was he really a mage? Even though her arm trembled, it fell powerless, almost like a massive weight had been placed on the dagger’s tip.
“Well, now that the threatening atmosphere has lifted, how about we have a nice, wholesome conversation?”
Lifted? Was he really oblivious to the oppressive air he’d just created? Or was he mocking her? She felt it was closer to the latter.
The man opened his mouth.
“First… Oh, yes. You asked how I knew you were an elf, right?”
“Grr…”
“It’s simple. I may not know much about elves, but I could feel your spirits. The ones circling around you. Although this was the first time I’d seen them, I recognized them at a glance.”
He recognized the spirits? That meant he had known she was an elf from the start. The spirits always surrounded her.
“The spirits that elves commonly wield… Oh, and I could also sense that your energy felt oddly different from other races. The refreshing aura of nature and the pristine mana compared to humans… That’s something I recall hearing that’s characteristic of elves.”
“….!”
“What’s more, my senses are a little sharp. Just covering your ears with a hood doesn’t mean I’d be unable to perceive your elven features.”
In short, he was just saying it was obvious she was an elf. Her face turned beet red.
“And… oh, you asked what I am, right?”
He said this with an ever-present calm smile directed at her.
“Want to take a guess?”
“…Huh?”
“Go on, take a shot at who I am.”
As he said this, the man slowly opened one of his eyes.
“….!!!”
In a split second, her entire body froze.
Yujin’s half-opened eye revealed itself.
A blood-red eye.
It was a captivating hue that felt like being drawn into a lake of blood.
And yet, it was also terrifying in its own right.
Between those blood-like irises was a vertically slit pupil, resembling that of a reptile, staring at her intently.
Ssss…!
Crimson mana swirled around them. As that prideful, majestic power enveloped the vicinity, she felt her body being crushed beneath its weight.
Shiver, shiver…
As the Dragon’s Fear radiated from him, terror consumed her reason. She found herself trembling uncontrollably.
The man…that being, raised a finger to his lips and spoke.
“Tell me who I am. You know the answer, don’t you?”
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