New Paradise (1)
“The ants! There are mana beast ants too!”
“I hope no bulls show up this time. I want to test how effective our barrier really is.”
The deeper dungeon, still too filthy to clean, kept spitting out ants that bared their hostility toward the World Tree and the elves defending it.
Serenian climbed onto the barrier with the children. The ants charging toward them now consisted of one mana beast ant and over a dozen ordinary ones. She glanced at Battle Bot 001 positioned outside the barrier, bow in hand.
Until now, whenever ants appeared, the bot had sort of sortie and fought in their place, protecting them. But now that the barrier was complete, Serenian hoped it wouldn't intervene. She wanted to test the power of this wall they'd poured everything into.
As she'd told Seung-hyun already, she had no intention of just relying on others. To survive in this world, she believed they had to face even the most horrific enemies with their own strength and win—that was the only way to earn the right to live.
“Th-that black bull really isn't moving! Why?!”
“Be grateful, Ren. It means the divine spirit trusts us and is giving us this chance.”
As if reading her mind, Battle Bot 001 didn't roar to life with its engine this time. It simply stood guard in silence. Ren, who'd been hoping the bot would crush the enemies in an instant, looked flustered, but Serenian smiled faintly and handed him a bow.
“I'll draw their attention. You shoot arrows from a safe spot in the meantime and take out the small ones. You're a warrior of our clan now.”
“...Got it!”
Ren's eyes widened at Serenian's words, letting him join the fight instead of hiding away, and he nodded eagerly, his gaze trembling with excitement. With the barrier as minimal protection, she was giving him this opportunity.
“Lea, you stay up on the World Tree. It won't take long.”
Serenian sent the still-childish girl to safety, then raced along the top of the coated barrier with her bow and arrows, luring the ants toward her.
They're following, as expected.
She loosed a mana-infused arrow, sniping one. The ants raised their antennae as one, recognizing her as the enemy, and swarmed.
Not a small number. Even as she picked them off one by one with arrows, they closed in on the barrier fast.
“That's right...!”
But Serenian laughed as the bold ants hesitated and flinched right before the wall. The single-layer barrier stood about 1 cm high. Not just the ordinary ants shorter than her, but even the 1 cm-tall mana beast ant couldn't recklessly climb it.
She'd shattered sewing pins to her size and driven them into the outer wall like stakes. The ants, with their inflexible bodies, couldn't easily dodge the pins to scale the barrier.
If they had time, maybe—but as they stalled, Serenian and Ren's arrows rained down, felling them one after another.
“Will it work?”
As its kin fell around it, the mana beast ant scraped against a stake with its foreleg and hauled itself over the wall with a thud.
Serenian, waiting for that exact moment, drew her bow to full tension in perfect form and fired at the ant's exposed underbelly. Blue mana blazed like flames from her arrow, bow, and entire body.
Unlike its armored upper shell, the ant's belly was vulnerably flat against the ground normally. The mana-reinforced arrow pierced it, exploding in a shockwave that tore a hole bigger than its head clean through its chest. The massive body collapsed.
The barrier is secure.
She gazed down at the ants, battered one-sidedly and strewn across the ground—unlike before. Proof complete. Their corpses were the evidence.
“...What is it.”
But before her battle-high emotions could settle, she sensed something. Her eyes widened as she whipped around to the World Tree behind her.
The World Tree was signaling her. And it wasn't trivial.
“World Tree, open the rift to this world and permit the visitor. I shall greet them.”
Serenian hurried down from the barrier and ran to the tree. Her destination was the exact spot where she'd first arrived in this world. She pleaded with the troubled World Tree, which was debating whether to allow an outsider: grant entry for now.
Before, visitors could come and go freely without the tree's control since it hadn't grown enough. But now this world was fully under the World Tree's dominion.
“Thank you.”
And it granted her request. Their bond was special, after all. To ordinary elves, the World Tree was root and foundation—but this young tree she'd revived saw her as a parent.
“Who's coming here?”
“Who knows.”
Serenian stroked Lea's head as the girl sidled up curiously.
“Someone exiled like us?”
“...I don't know that either. Not until we meet them face-to-face.”
She shook her head with a wry smile at Lea's question. She didn't know the visitor's identity. If it were malicious intrusion, the World Tree would've blocked it outright.
“But no matter who it is, we won't cower or shrink back. We're no longer exiles. We're the new clan guarding this land. We'll bow to no one.”
Before the rift opened, Serenian sternly instructed the somewhat cowering children. Roots and identity denied in exile? They could rebuild from scratch.
“Th-the space is opening!”
Then the rift the World Tree had sealed reopened.
Who could it be?
And someone emerged. Not a group—just one, but no small figure. A burly man larger than Serenian herself.
Population: 04
“Leon...!”
“Lady Serenian.”
Serenian gripped her bow subtly, then widened her eyes as the figure fully emerged. She knew him.
The man, already seeming out of his mind, staggered at the sight of her, then dropped to his knees with a thud.
***
“What the hell do you mean?! They took Luri?!”
“I-I had no choice! They shoved weapons in our faces and threatened us—there was nothing I could do.”
The village was in turmoil from all sides. Amid the chaos, Leon—a mere villager—had luckily kept his routine, finishing work and heading home as usual.
But the world's storms finally crashed over him too. He gaped at his ransacked home and his wife's absence, then bolted straight to the chieftain's house.
There, he heard the shocking news: elves from the center had conscripted and taken his wife.
“What for? Why us?!”
“I don't know. Gods know how it came to this.”
Learning that a sleazy-looking, portly human man had been among those who dragged her off left Leon's mind blank. He'd never even imagined such a thing.
Something's wrong.
He wandered the streets in a daze, chewing over his thoughts. The Demon King—the great evil—might be gone, but to him, the world had only grown more vicious and cruel.
It's our fault.
Avoiding fights with excuses, forcing it down—it had all turned into poison rebounding on them. Fearing change, shirking risks in silence—it had swelled into a cataclysmic wave destroying their daily lives.
“Please forgive me, even now.”
After searching for his wife, getting beaten and chased off, he'd flirted with extreme ideas, backing off repeatedly before steeling himself at last.
Dying without trying would be too unjust. In Deneb—the largest village of the Great Forest elves, rapidly turning urban—he'd slain a drunken reformist elf in a human-style tavern and fled. That was his resolve.
But having committed the unforgivable sin of kin-slaying, he felt guilt toward someone entirely different. Toward the steadfast young elf they'd failed to aid amid their fear and cowardice—the one who'd fought the enemies to the end.
“Get up. This isn't some exile dump for criminals fleeing justice. It's sacred ground for new life and strength.”
Serenian snapped at him coldly, the massive World Tree at her back. As Leon blankly looked up, her exhausted glare bored into his broken form.