Elf Sword God, Chapter 9
“What are we waiting for?”
The potion had been distributed, the objective set. So why couldn’t we just smash the cage and walk out?
“We won’t be waiting forever, and I don’t plan to sit around doing nothing, either.”
Through the sylph, my mother had probably already pinpointed our location. After that, what would she do?
“Not just my parents, but the special operations team attached to them will be on the move.”
Yehwa’s parents wouldn’t be able to come. No matter how advanced the spatial transfer devices were, their limits were clear.
It wasn’t easy to cross from the opposite side of the planet to here.
“Then what are you going to do?”
“Have you ever heard anything like this on the news?”
There had once been a report in the media stating that all the kidnapped children were still alive.
That information had been wiped away by some incident, but the evidence the reporters had offered hadn’t been something to dismiss so lightly.
The SS-rank Awakened of this generation, the prophet.
She had said that the children were currently alive, and that when the moon covered the sun, God would appear.
In other words, the event in which the children were sacrificed could be interpreted as the moment of the eclipse.
Since there hadn’t been another eclipse after that, the children were still alive.
That was what they had said.
And today was the day of the eclipse.
The bastards of the Demon God Cult were probably in a rush, too.
Today was the day of the ritual, after all.
So what did that make the enemy forces here?
How far could I handle?
If it’s just one witch...
“Jayeon.”
Yehwa’s talent was level 8. There weren’t even twenty people like her in all of humanity. That alone made it worth going all out.
“Kim Jayeon!”
Yehwa grabbed my cheeks and leaned in close. There was dust on her face, but underneath it, she was still pale and doll-like as ever.
“Uh... what?”
“I hear something.”
Something?
“Close your eyes and listen carefully.”
—...can... me...
It was a voice. A child’s voice, at that.
No way.
Were all the children in this place?
“...Hah.”
Was that lucky or unlucky?
Hit the jackpot if we got it right. End up in the gutter if we got it wrong.
“You heard it?”
“Yehwa.”
Maybe she understood what I was about to say, because before I knew it, a wooden sword was in her hand.
“Yeah. I know. Let’s save the kids.”
Her earnestness was so cute that I reached out and patted her head. She closed her eyes and leaned into my hand.
She really did look like a puppy sometimes.
“Let’s hurry. We don’t have as much time as we think.”
“Okay!”
Mana seeped into Yehwa’s and my wooden swords.
A peculiar trait unique to black wooden swords. Beyond simply boosting physical strength, when mana was wrapped around them, they took on a hardness greater than steel.
Clang.
“Here. Strike this spot at the same time.”
“Got it! Haaah...”
I counted the beat.
“One, two. Three!”
“Hyaaah!”
Crash-!
The two black wooden swords struck the bars at the same time, and instead of a clear ring, there came the sound of something shattering apart.
“Done.”
“Aren’t they going to hear that and come running?”
“If it’s not that witch from before, we’ll be fine. Besides, they were talking about a briefing, a meeting, that sort of thing, right? The witch probably won’t come.”
I shoved my body through the cage, which was large enough to fit a child one at a time.
“Yeah.”
We had to gather the children in one place.
Each one was a weakness. A hostage.
“We have to rescue all the children before Mother gets here. Since the sylph already went, it shouldn’t take them that long to reach this place. Let’s move.”
“Okay! This way, right?”
“Right.”
The moment I ran straight ahead, another room opened up, the same size as the prison we’d just been in.
Inside, a child with red hair waved at us.
“S-someone! Please save me!”
“He’s a kid, isn’t he? Can we trust him?”
“Aren’t we kids too?”
I met the eyes of three children in turn: red hair, blue hair, green hair.
Were they traffic lights?
“Anyone know where the other kids are? Tell me, and I’ll let you out right away.”
“Me! I know!”
The red-haired boy who had spotted us first stretched his arm out toward me.
“Okay. We’ll get you out, so step back.”
“W-wait a second!”
The blue-haired kid who had seemed suspicious of us—was he part mermaid, maybe?
Did he think we might be tricking them?
Something like that?
“What.”
I said it with a bit of annoyance, and the kid stumbled over his words.
“S-sorry. I know you’re trying to save us. But... how are you using mana?”
What was that supposed to mean? How were we using mana?
“Huh? You guys can’t use mana?”
Yehwa stared at them like, You can’t do that?
“Of course we know how to handle mana! We were all called geniuses, too!”
Then what...
“Were you maybe restricted from using mana?”
“Yeah! Right before we were kidnapped, a man in a black robe appeared and did something to us! All of us! But how on earth are you using mana?”
How were we using it, she asked...
Ah. That, huh?
Yehwa seemed to realize it too, and she grabbed my sleeve, leaning close.
She was a little too close.
“J-Jayeon! Is it that person from before?”
“Yeah, I think so. Probably because of that contract back then. But could you move your face a little...”
“Huh? O-okay.”
Yehwa blushed and quickly backed away.
“The condition that they couldn’t harm us. Because of that condition, it probably wasn’t possible to restrict our mana.”
“But even if there was such a limitation, wouldn’t there have been a way to get around it? Why leave us alone?”
“Hm, who knows.”
“You didn’t know everything after all.”
“Of course not. What do you take me for?”
“A prince?”
What nonsense.
“Uh... sorry to interrupt, but could you stop flirting and get us out already?”
“Of course! I’ll get you out right away.”
Yehwa smiled brightly and swung her sword at the iron bars.
“Hey! Don’t just—”
Claaang!
I knew it.
“Krrrr?!“
“Hey, hey, you’ll hurt yourself.”
The bars didn’t break; they bent. And because of that, the impact shot straight back into Yehwa’s hand.
“M-my hand! Blow on it for me, Jayeon...”
“Quit talking nonsense and drink a potion.”
Bang!
Yehwa smashed the bent bars flat and shattered them.
“Come out.”
Maybe I’d sounded a little threatening, because the children all shrank back.
“Uh... o-okay.”
Even as they climbed over the cage, they kept sneaking glances over their shoulders at me.
What was there?
Whip!
“What?”
I looked at Yehwa to see what was going on, but she was just holding her own hand and smiling to herself like a fool.
“Why aren’t you drinking the potion?”
“Ah, hahahaha. R-right, I should.”
Seeing Yehwa laugh, the traffic lights flinched again.
They must have been through a lot. Were they getting PTSD in bursts or something?
“Let’s move to the next room. We don’t have much time.”
The moment I turned to head for the next room, the green-haired one tapped my shoulder and said, “You’ve got a hard road ahead of you.”
What was that supposed to mean?
“What do you mean by—”
Just as I was about to ask the green-haired kid to explain, Yehwa spoke from behind me.
“Don’t we already have no time? Let’s hurry up. And you there, green—”
“Y-yes...”
Yehwa crushed a small stone she’d been idly rolling between her fingers into powder.
Was she bored?
“Be careful, okay?”
“Ah, y-yeah! Of course! Absolutely!”
The traffic lights clung to my back and stiffened up like boards.
That’s our Yehwa for you. She even worries about the safety of people she’s meeting for the first time.
Still, why were these kids so rigid? At this rate they’d wind up hurting themselves.
“You’ll get hurt, so loosen up a little.”
“R-right! O-okay. Yeah, that’s right.”
Those vile Demon God Cult bastards—just how much had they tormented these kids?
Escaping the prison alone had them drenched in cold sweat. What the hell had they done to them in here?
About twenty kilometers off Ulleungdo, out on the East Sea.
A single warship appeared at the minimum distance that would keep it outside the detection range of the cultists.
“I’ll repeat the order. The top priority is rescuing the children. The second is exterminating the Demon God Cultists.”
Operation: annihilate the Demon God Cultists and rescue the kidnapping victims.
Overall commander: Major General Lee Sihyeon.
Second-in-command and staff officer: Brigadier General Kim Seokhyun.
Special operations teams 1, 2, and 3 from Military Intelligence Command.
Everyone stared at the sea and, beyond it, the island, their eyes sharp as blades.
“This is the altar of the Demon God Cultists we finally tracked down. We will rescue the children no matter what. And we will eliminate those cult bastards. Understood?”
Even among the families of the special team members, there were victims.
Maybe that was why every one of them answered with voices tinged by feeling.
“Yes, ma’am!”
Lee Sihyeon drew up the contract residing within her psyche.
Green script rose across her forehead, and the color of her hair and eyes shifted to green as well.
The one she called upon was the Wind Spirit King.
Arriel.
The apex of the spirits contracted with Lee Sihyeon appeared before them.
A vast storm taking the shape of a human being.
Something that neither looked fully male nor female gazed down at Lee Sihyeon.
—It has been a long time, contractor. And you greet me with such dense demonic energy the moment I arrive. Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.
The Spirit King looked toward Ulleungdo and gathered power.
For a spirit, demonic energy was filth that had to be erased.
“I’d appreciate it if you could do some trash cleanup for me again, just this once.”
—You still haven’t fixed that habit of yours since you were a princess. How can you possibly call yourself an elf princess? The world really has gone to hell.
“It has gone to hell.”
—Tsk. You should have come into the world when that ridiculously strong, human-like bastard was still around. And yet all you ever did was cling to the World Tree... Even I thought that was a little much.
“That’s... Hah, you didn’t come all this way just to talk about that, did you? Please. I’m asking you.”
—Tsk. Fine.
Ariel pointed a finger toward Ulleungdo.
Violent energy converged on the fingertip.
A typhoon gathered within a single finger.
“Wow.”
The members of the special operations team gasped at the sheer force of it.
The energy coiling at that fingertip was so immense that just looking at it made the hairs on their bodies stand on end.
“That’s the commander at Military Headquarters...”
The fiercely gathered wind suddenly went still.
“Cover your ears!”
At Lee Sihyeon’s shout, everyone put on the prepared headsets.
“All team members, ready!”
At the same moment, the wind shot toward Ulleungdo.
The wind, compressed to the point of becoming a single point, sliced the sea in two.
Whoooooosh—!
The aftershock whipped everyone’s hair into their faces, blinding them, and even through the headset the noise was loud enough to leave their ears ringing.
Beeeeep—.
Could that really be called mere wind? It looked more like a natural disaster.
Kwaaaang—!
The mass of wind, charging forward with a beastlike momentum, stopped in the air above Ulleungdo. No—something had collided with it.
A barrier, black and sticky with malign energy, appeared in the sky over the island.
“The moment the cultists’ shield breaks, we land on the island immediately!”
Kagagak-!
Cracks began to spread across the barrier, and everyone drew their weapons.
Pa-gagagak-! Pa-ching!
It finally happened.
The barrier that had seemed impossible to break was pierced through.
“It’s broken!”
Lee Sihyeon opened the way.
A path of wind stretched in a straight line to Ulleungdo’s barrier.
The instant they stepped onto the sky road made of wind, they would be thrown straight to the island.
“Deploy! First team, follow me and eliminate the cultists. Second and third teams, follow Brigadier General Kim Seokhyun and begin the rescue!”
“Yes, ma’am!”
They raised their mana and entrusted themselves to the path Lee Sihyeon had created.
Special Operations Team 1, under Major General Lee Sihyeon.
Extermination of the Demon God Cultists.
Special Operations Teams 2 and 3, under Brigadier General Kim Seokhyun.
Rescue of survivors.
Operation commenced.