The Ancient Missing Link (7)
"Let's head inside. Staying out here is too dangerous." I spoke while listening to the zombies scraping at the walls.
Even if their numbers grew, they wouldn't be able to break through Veronica's earthen barrier. In the narrow confines of the well, they couldn't make use of their numerical advantage. Still, if we wanted to find an escape route, advancing was our only real option. If there was a magic circle or artifact controlling the zombies, we could use it to drive off the undead and break free. Even if not, there might be another exit somewhere else.
The party members exchanged glances and chose to push forward. It wasn't exactly a warm welcome, but nothing stood in our way. I'd been a little tense wondering if the bones embedded in the walls might rise as skeletons, but now I just felt stupid for worrying.
Step by step, we retraced the path the sparrow golem had taken. The tomb was narrower than I'd expected. With our longer strides, it took our whole party less than thirty minutes to explore the entire place. I couldn't begin to guess what kind of facility this had been in ancient times, or why it was even marked on a map.
"...I can sense the flow of mana in here. They've sealed it so that none leaks outside," Veronica said.
Just as I'd deduced back in the Underground Tower, it seemed they'd performed shielding work to keep mana from escaping and alerting any "enemies" on the surface. In any case, it was Veronica's detection abilities that took the lead now. There was no need for Franc to stay on guard.
Following Veronica's guidance, we reached a wide chamber after only ten minutes of movement. Since there was no door, we pressed ourselves against the wall and concealed our presence.
With a quick hand signal, I asked if everyone was ready. The response was a clear "yes."
After double-checking our well-stocked items and potions, we gripped our weapons tightly and stepped into the open space of the underground tomb.
──It was a good thing I took that first step carefully.
That was my immediate impression upon entering the solemn chamber. Because in the stadium-sized space, a clearly suspicious figure stood with its back to us.
It was a woman wearing a blue robe adorned with decorations. She looked exactly like a villainous mage straight out of a Western fantasy game. Could she be a dark sorceress?
I probed her mana first. Surprisingly, I sensed no evil aura in it at all. Still, I couldn't let my guard down. Anyone skulking around in a place like this, dressed like that, bore some responsibility. I figured the fault was roughly fifty-fifty.
But my assessment changed within three minutes. Fifty-fifty was far too generous. It was zero-to-ten.
The woman in the blue robe wore a veil, yet even from thirty meters away in the dim light, I could make out her hair color.
"──────."
It was indigo. Hidden beneath the blue veil was indigo hair. Long, pointed ears protruded from it as well.
An indigo-haired elf.
I felt my chest turn ice-cold, as if exposed to an air conditioner on full blast. If there had been a mirror, anyone looking into my eyes would have seen killing intent frozen solid.
Perhaps a sliver of that tightly suppressed bloodlust had leaked out. Or maybe she had been waiting for us to approach from the very beginning.
"──There are human children, aren't there? I sometimes forget."
The elf, still showing us her back, spoke as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
"Elves live such long lives that their perception of time is completely different, they say. How foolish. Just because it's held in a giant's hand doesn't make a flower's petal any lighter."
The elf glanced at the damaged wall, then opened her palm with a graceful, feminine gesture.
Flutter.
The same flower that had bloomed on the mummy now blossomed in the elf's hand. Dana and I didn't know its name, but we both remembered what kind of magic produced it—a spell that absorbed a monster's blood or bodily fluids to subdue and kill its target. It was an elf's magic I had seen hundreds of times during ruin explorations back in my researcher days.
"Time flows equally for everyone. The only difference is how much of it one can accept. It's simply a matter of the vessel that receives the years."
As she spoke, a centipede crawled across the ground near her feet. It must have wandered in from the surface. The elf plucked a petal and tossed it at the creature. The centipede immediately began writhing, trying to escape the petal now stuck to its body.
"Insects struggle beneath the weight of a flower, and die when crushed by a thick tree. But the forest is different. Even when flowers and trees reach the end of their lives and return to the soil, we elves must continue living through the remaining ages."
The elf muttered as if speaking to herself, showing no interest in us whatsoever.
"That may be why the thinking of humans and elves diverges. Even if the perceived passage of time is the same, the accumulated layers and the time left behind are different."
Crunch!
The centipede fleeing across the mossy floor was seized by a plant that suddenly sprouted from the ground. The small carnivorous plant, nearly a monster itself, crushed and swallowed the centipede like a predator before returning to moss. Just like a shark snatching a seabird from the surface and sinking back into the depths.
"So I'm quite surprised. It's only been two months and a little since we parted, hasn't it?"
Until that moment the elf had paid us no attention, but after those words she finally turned to look at me. Her face was completely unchanged from the last time we'd met.
"For you humans, the time needed to reach me must have felt terribly short."
Her gaze was like that of an artist appraising an interesting sculpture. For some reason, those eyes reminded me of the persimmon tree that grew in my family's yard—the one that had remained unchanged for over ten years since I was a snot-nosed child.
Was a creature called an elf truly that different from humans?
──No. Race had nothing to do with it. It was this woman. Her fundamental nature simply did not mesh with mine at all.
"...Have you been well?" I asked, deliberately ignoring her question. "I've been wanting to see you, Professor Yerna."
I used polite speech on purpose. It wasn't because any respect remained. I simply had no intention of playing along with her little game. The fact that I was standing here must have seemed as novel to her as a lab rat she had left behind suddenly showing up at her new home.
"Hehe. Is that so? I'm glad to see you look healthy too, Nor."
Yerna's reply was indifferently kind. She didn't seem bothered that I'd ignored her question. It was as if she and I existed in completely different places and situations. If I wasn't careful, even I might have mistaken this for the university lab from three and a half years ago. If not for the fresh bones discarded in the corner of this tomb, I might have thought exactly that.
Had others come looking for traces of Yerna, just like us, only to be killed? Unlike the skeletons throughout the underground tomb, these moss-covered remains had been tossed aside with zero respect.
"You seem quite angry. There are so many possible reasons that I can't pinpoint just one."
Chuckle, chuckle.
Yerna laughed gently. She must have realized we knew everything, yet her smiling face was identical to the one from before. The sight sent a chill down my spine.
"...Yes. There are so many things I want to ask that I can't organize them all, but this situation is easy enough to understand."
Curious things? Questions? Those could wait. There was no way this bitch had been waiting here just to satisfy my curiosity. Only brain-dead idiots would think she'd actually answer me. My head wasn't a flowerbed that could still entertain optimistic thoughts after seeing this scene.
On the other hand, it was extremely regrettable. Look at her—kidnapping and murdering innocent adventurers. Having seen those corpses, any future in which I dragged Yerna by the hair and reclaimed ownership of my thesis had vanished.
I stopped that train of thought. Hopeless speculation was a waste of time and focus.
Yerna's heels grew wet with the blood of the adventurers' corpses. I leveled my spear at the murderess.
"──We're hardly in a position to sit down for drinks and catch up, are we?"
"...Hehehehe."
Yerna's lips twisted. As if she'd heard a hilarious joke, she shook with suppressed laughter, then covered her face and let it burst out.
"Hehehehe, hehehehehut! Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahat!!!"
Her maniacal laughter echoed through the unnecessarily vast underground tomb.
──Tingle, tingle.
I didn't need to look back to feel the party members radiating an aura of absolute resolve. They too had realized it. There was no longer any option to leave without fighting.
"Hehehehe... Nor, do you know?"
Yerna, still covering her face and giggling about whatever she found so amusing, suddenly muttered, "Everyone in this world is nothing but livestock and fools. Trash belonging to the Nine Gods and the False Gods. The apostates of Romania. The idiots of Tatarnia who have gone mad with peace. The utterly stupid ones who lost their recorded texts and even forgot the orally transmitted traditions."
Her muttering grew into a savage growl toward the end. Random expressions of hatred. In those words, Yerna's true feelings seemed to pour out unfiltered.
I realized the mask of the kind, gentle professor named Yerna Gracy was finally crumbling. There was nothing surprising about it. It was only natural. Was there anyone in the world who was kind without reason? People were, by nature, calculating and selfish. Whatever purpose or dream that woman harbored, there is no free lunch in this world. No happiness without compensation. Nothing is more hypocritical than vague "kindness." A person who is always kind and gentle is simply putting on an act.
"Living for hundreds of years among such creatures makes life terribly dull. Enough to make one want to do what must be done while searching for entertainment in the gaps."
Yerna, spitting the words like venom, looked at me while still covering her face.
"──Welcome. I thought you would come after me."
It was the gaze of a garden owner happily plucking a ripe fruit. Her bewitching eyes swept across our party.
"Hehe. Dana is here too? It seems you've seen everything there is to see with your beloved Nor. Did you learn this location from Lilian? I thought she would be the one to come, but the world never goes as planned, does it?"
After babbling whatever she liked, Yerna clicked her tongue in dissatisfaction. Her tone was perfectly crafted to get under one's skin. To think she had managed to pretend to be a benevolent elf with a personality like this.
"By the way, may I ask? After we parted, what did you think whenever you remembered me? What emotions did you feel? A desire for revenge? Or longing? If it was love, I would be truly delighted!"
Kick kick kick.
Yerna burst into laughter like a third-rate comedian cracking up at her own joke. Beyond her fingers, her refined face twisted into something sinister. It was a smile ten times more blatant than the one I had seen on the day my thesis was stolen, right before falling asleep.
She no longer had any reason to hide her true nature.
"What a shame! If you hadn't been discovered like this, I could have played along with your little love games for another year or two."
"...Crazy bitch."
When Dana spat the words as if she had nothing left to say, Yerna crossed her arms in amusement.
"Why? It's easy to understand. 'Pretending to love' is something I can do far better than you. Males of any species are satisfied as long as you fill their base pleasures and sense of superiority. Since that wife of yours doesn't even know how to act cute toward a man, I feel so sorry for our Nor, what can I do?"
Grind.
Someone ground their teeth at Yerna's mockery. It wasn't me. Probably one of my wives.
"Ahahaha!! Thanks to the thesis Nor wrote, those idiot fools are foaming at the mouth and rampaging about, and I've made real progress toward my goals for the first time in ages! It would be too shameful to end things without repaying this kindness! Becoming one of Nor's collectibles might have been entertaining for a few years. I'm disappointed too."
Yerna spread her hands theatrically, treating the party members' reactions like seasoning.
"So, Nor. Will you answer me? As things stand, I feel like I've dropped my treasured candy on the dirt floor without even tasting it. Before I clean up your corpse, at least tell me what you thought of me."
Yerna's distorted smile crumbled with anticipation. No matter what answer I gave, this situation would be like refreshing soda in her life.
──'What' I thought, huh.
I kept Yerna coldly in check while thinking. Honestly, it would be a lie to say I hadn't considered it. To be frank, I had. In the one-in-a-million chance that the elf named Yerna Gracy had stolen my thesis to protect me from some danger.
Since I was the one directly involved, it was only natural to think about it two or three times more than others and imagine every possible reason. In fact, the number of possibilities that had crossed my mind until today exceeded several hundred.
That's why, from the moment I saw the directive Tabula carried, I had held onto a faint hope. I had no intention of forgiving Yerna, but if she truly had stolen the thesis with good intentions, then I might be able to reclaim credit for it. That possibility was a hundred times better than a reunited Yerna seriously lying or mocking the master's student whose thesis had been stolen.
That was why I had hoped there might be some circumstance behind Yerna's actions. Of course, I hadn't truly believed it. If she had genuinely acted with good intentions, she should have at least given me a hint. After suddenly running off like that, what if I reported it to the academic world or published another thesis on the same topic? Why would she fly off to a foreign country so carefree without leaving even a single line?
If she had left a letter, everything might have been resolved. There was no way a capable woman who received contract offers from first-rate universities would make such a stupid mistake. In other words, the hypothesis that Yerna had taken my thesis with good intentions had been full of holes from the start.
The assassination order we obtained from Tabula was the same. Just because someone is targeted by evil bastards doesn't guarantee they are virtuous. By that logic, the bandit boss I had beaten would have been destined to die at Tabula's hands, so he must have been a good guy too.
The more I thought about it, the higher the likelihood that Yerna was a bitch. And sure enough, once the mask came off and her true colors were revealed, Yerna was a psychopath who enjoyed using other people's lives as toys to relieve her boredom.
'She turned out to be thousands of times more of a bitch than I imagined.'
Well, what did it matter?
What I needed to answer was clear. I spoke with words that came from one hundred percent of my heart.
"Thank you."
"…………………………………………What?"
Yerna's heightened emotions cooled as if doused with cold water. I twisted the corner of my mouth. Half of me felt "serves you right" and the other half felt it was pathetic.
"Thanks to you, I met the wives I love. I didn't have to be chased by insane bastards I couldn't handle, either. Whatever reason you had for stealing my thesis, whatever your true nature is, regardless of any of that, I believe I should thank you for what I gained because of you."
Yerna was the world's greatest bitch, far beyond my expectations. But a fact is a fact. I had to acknowledge that her ego-driven actions had turned the course of my life in a positive direction.
What if that woman had left me behind in the slave market or hadn't stolen the thesis? I wouldn't have obtained Beast Regression in Sardagis, nor would I have met Franc. It was questionable whether Dana would have realized her love after being separated from me. I would have passed by Larilura and Veronica without ever knowing them, and dark clouds would have continued to hang over their futures as well.
The power, freedom, and encounters I had obtained were acquired through my own talent and effort. But wasn't Yerna's trolling the trigger for all of it?
"──So, thank you."
For remaining complete trash until the very end.
I sneered at Yerna, who stood stunned by the completely unexpected reply. I had conveyed all my gratitude. I couldn't act like a beast just because I was dealing with a beast that wasn't even human. With this, I had fulfilled every human duty. I had settled every relationship that needed settling. Frankly, I was truly grateful. The woman who had been difficult to beat due to her social position had revealed her true nature and come down to a place where my spear could reach her.
Now, only one thing remained between me and Yerna.
──The fact that she had stolen my thesis.
That was the only thing left.
Whoosh!
White flames blazed within my inner world. Brilliant mana enveloped me. I pressed my forehead to the spear shaft as if in prayer and drew up my mana. The condensed rage was set free.
Emotions are consumables; if wasted, they disappear. That was why I had refrained from even thinking about that Yerna bitch during all this time. It was probably because of that.
When I released the anger I had thickly accumulated over several months, I wasn't surprised at all that it came accompanied by a hatred powerful enough to shake my entire consciousness.
Burning fiercely─!!!
Pure white rage coloring my vision! The exploding emotion transformed into a perfectly forged spear!
I unleashed the rage I had gathered with a roar and the mana of Beast Regression.
"STICK YOUR NECK OUT, YOU FUCKING BITCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"