The Meteor Bow
A grinding crash tore through the air.
"Sylphy! That bow...!!"
Les was staring at what Sylphy held in his hands.
The bow in Sylphy's grip was the Meteor Bow—an artifact passed down to Titania alone.
Which could only mean Titania had already—
"Keh-heh-heh-heh!! That's the bow made from the World Tree! The Meteor Bow! And yet all it can manage is such paltry little attacks!"
Spells came screaming in and were shot down one after another. Keeping the wyverns in mind at the same time, and fighting a Demon King Army Cadre on top of that, was no easy thing.
"Who the hell are you?!"
"...Heh."
The lich smiled.
"Demon King Army Cadre, Bane. I just wanted to pick up a few elf corpses from Elvenheim. High Elf corpses, even! And if I'm going to all this trouble—I'll take Titania's!!"
Teeth ground. Naked killing intent rippled toward Bane from every direction.
However many hardline measures she had taken over the years, Titania was the elf who had guarded Elvenheim across the long ages. She had lived longer than any other of her kind, and she had spent that entire life protecting Elvenheim and nothing else. To the rest of her people she was a guardian—almost a guardian deity.
Saying he had come for her corpse was the surest way in the world to earn every elf's fury.
Sylphy's arrow leapt from the string. Bane swatted it aside with magic at once.
"Everyone!! Please listen!! We each have our own work to do right now! Take care of the wyverns!! I'll handle this Cadre, this Bane—"
A violet flame bloomed in front of Sylphy's eyes before he even knew it was there.
Les yanked him back, and they cleared the fire by a hair—but the tips of Les's fingers grazed the flame and charred.
"Les!"
"Compose yourself. This is not an opponent you can beat if you lose your head."
"..."
Sylphy looked at Les's face and snapped back to himself at once.
Rage had swallowed him. He hadn't even been reading the field.
Their opponent was a Demon King Army Cadre. Olivia Reinhardt, the Hero, had slain five of the commanders known as the Eight Divine Stars, and that might make the rest of them sound like nothing much. But each of those executives was a powerhouse of absurd strength—among monsters, they stood near the very peak.
"All of you!! Listen!! From this moment, begin the wyvern hunt!! Don't let a single one escape—kill them all!! For Elvenheim!!"
"Yes, sir!!"
"Damn it, that lich bastard! How dare he insult Titania!"
"Just go! If we don't deal with the wyverns, elves who aren't even soldiers might die!"
Bane snickered and reached toward the elves who had turned their backs—but a heavy thud rang out, and he understood at once that an arrow had punched straight through his palm.
"Is that all you've got?"
Sylphy glared at him as he said it. Bane laughed.
"You're a half-elf, aren't you? Half-elves—I like those! Lifespan way longer than a human's, but weaker than an elf. The finest material!"
With every word Bane spoke, Sylphy felt a rage he had never known writhing up inside him. It was an emotion he couldn't even understand himself, and his eyes went wide.
He halted the mana cycling rapidly through his body.
The instant the flow stopped, his burning head began to cool.
"I see."
"Ooh, what's this? Sharp, aren't you?"
"Sylphy?"
"Mental erosion. For a moment I mistook that rage I just felt for my own."
"Aww, the anger was already there. I just made it bloom a little more spectacularly. Even now that you've broken the erosion, you still want to kill me, don't you?"
Mental erosion, if caught early enough, could be shaken off by briefly cutting off one's own circulating mana. The problem was that the victim had to do it themselves—which meant it only worked if they noticed the wrongness at the very start.
He was glad he'd heard about it from Lois.
Les listened, cut his mana for an instant, and took up his sword at once.
"An elf, picking up a sword? Ahh, so you're that famous Guard Captain. I want your corpse too... How about this? If you quietly hand over your body, I'll take only Titania's corpse and leave the rest of the elves alone—"
Les lunged, swinging his blade.
Bane formed a small barrier and caught the blow with a ringing clash.
"Figured as much. I don't understand why you hate us so much. You kill dogs and pigs and eat them too, don't you? How are you any different from us?"
"If a dog or a pig kills a person, we put it down on the spot. It's the same here. Does thinking in terms of humanity strike you as unfair, monster?"
"..."
Les's brow furrowed.
"You monsters have slaughtered that many of our people by your own measure, and now you want to talk morality? We can never coexist."
Those were words Lois had spoken as well—that monsters thought in a fundamentally different way from humans, and that even if one wished for coexistence, it was impossible. And yet humans, too, killed creatures they considered beneath them: beasts that, at the extreme, were little more than ingredients. Calling monsters "evil" from some objective vantage might not be entirely just.
But they were humanity. They had no choice but to think as humanity.
"Does it gall you? Stop fighting. Don't spill blood. Don't eat humans. Don't decide everything by strength—govern yourselves under proper law."
"..."
"Can you even hear those words? Can you understand them? Doesn't humanity, living like this, look like a pack of fools? You could settle everything with power, so why invent rules like that? You don't understand it at all—isn't that right?"
"You..."
"That is exactly the feeling we have toward monsters right now."
A faint crack webbed across the barrier, but Les's attack still didn't get through. Sylphy's arrow followed; Bane blocked it as if it were nothing and stepped back.
Sylphy's brow furrowed.
No. The Meteor Bow isn't putting out its real power.
Even if it couldn't match Titania's output, a legendary bow ought to hit with legendary force. At this rate, it was barely different from an ordinary bow Sylphy had made himself.
The Meteor Bow had allowed him to hold it and fight—but it still wasn't lending him its true power. It felt, quite literally, as if it had only permitted him to grip it. And yet at first he'd been sure the bow's mana was flowing into his body.
And then—
He's strong...
This was a Demon King Army Cadre. Olivia had supposedly brought down five of them by herself.
"A bow, is it? You shoot it like this?"
Bane shaped arrows of violet flame in the air and filled the sky with copies of them. For an instant, the sheer number of them stunned Sylphy and Les. Then they set their jaws and braced.
"Just so you know, my attacks carry a curse... so if they hit, it might not simply be over!!"
The arrows came. Blocking them all would be difficult. Together with Les, they could at least avoid a fatal wound.
Then something cut across the field.
"Hn? What?"
Bane's face twisted. He'd been looking forward to some fun for the first time in a while—and then an arrow like the wind itself shot past from the side. That arrow raised a storm and knocked every one of his projectiles aside.
"This arrow that raises a storm..."
Les's eyes went wide. Sylphy's gaze followed as if drawn.
"What in the world... is going on?"
"Lady Rayna."
Rayna stood there.
"Ugh, this is insane."
I gasped, sweat pouring off me. I couldn't fathom why the path to the World Tree had to be this steep. You couldn't just climb it. You practically had to scale a wall, and it wasn't even a proper path. If Titania had guided me, I might have found a real route—but there hadn't been time, so I'd had no choice but to claw my way up.
Once I'd crossed the barrier and reached the World Tree itself, Titania's illusion finally vanished, and I could see the tree—leafless, bare.
Elvenheim worries me too, but if I think about the worst case, reviving the World Tree might be our reversing move.
If the World Tree returned, its blessing would return with it and settle upon the elves. During the war between humans and elves, the elves had been outnumbered—and one reason they'd survived at all was the Protection of the World Tree, which made them stronger in the forest.
Which meant that even now, if the World Tree were revived, the elves would regain their strength. Elves who might otherwise die could cling to life through that blessing long enough to be treated.
And if I could get my hands on the World Tree Sap quickly, I could heal Livia. A Livia free of the Curse of the God of Death might well be the key to resolving this whole crisis.
"How am I supposed to get in?"
I'd made it here, but I had no idea how to enter. Was there a hole somewhere? I doubted there would be anything so physically convenient.
I laid my hand carefully against the World Tree.
Light shimmered, and an opening formed—as if inviting me inside.
"...I should look on the bright side and take this as proof I at least qualify to take the trial?"
The World Tree itself had granted me entry. That suggested it wasn't going to slam the door in my face. At least the most likely bad outcome was off the table. There had always been a chance it wouldn't let me in at all. Given how temperamental spirits could be, I'd thought that was entirely possible.
"Let's hurry. We're out of time."
Accept me or refuse me—I just wanted it to decide quickly.
And preferably, that decision would be yes.