A Man Who Loved Elves (Chapter 1)
When that kind of thought crossed his mind.
Maybe.
Was he still living inside that fragmentary moment from that day?
Long golden hair. Eyes like the deepest blue. A strange accent and an unyielding presence.
What had he said to her?
“You’re not human. That’s right.”
The woman had tilted her head as if she had heard something truly odd.
She understood his words, so she could have answered in human language.
But she had not.
“Of course. Because I am not human.”
He had not understood the meaning of that sentence at the time. Only later did knowledge teach him the truth.
She had probably said:
“Of course. Because I am not human.”
“Sorry. I can’t understand you. What exactly should I call someone like you?”
He had not expected an answer.
Yet the woman spoke.
“Elf.”
Ah.
From that moment the crazy wagon wheels began to turn. Perhaps she had cursed him.
Any feeling that cannot be forgotten can be called a curse.
Because she was a fairy. Because she had placed a curse and magic upon him, and he had not noticed.
Since the fairy’s curse began.
He was a nameless person in the Empire.
He had abandoned the name he once held there long ago.
Instead, in the steppe he had forged a new name.
Ahak.
Meaning: Master (the one who guides the way)
“Master. What does that name mean?”
My disciple.
The words carried the meaning of reunion.
—
“You filthy orc bastards!”
A man heading to the steppe with a dream in his belly muttered curses.
The golden hair of the dreamlike elves had vanished.
Instead, dander flew everywhere.
“I can’t breathe. You brats…”
Scared of wolves was one thing.
Now he could curse them to his heart’s content.
Nose one nostril blocked, sniffing and clearing it, but only a headache and no relief.
Because of that fur, he had started breathing through his mouth.
Fwoosh—
One werewolf man shook his body vigorously. Fur floated in the air.
“Ugh…”
A landscape of endless swearing, as usual.
—
At first he had tried to understand the orc race.
Since they had not eaten him, at least they were beings who could communicate, right?
He had decided to adapt to their lives with that thought in mind.
Precisely, he had tried.
These orcs were insane.
The cultural gap between orcs and humans could never be bridged by a little understanding.
Compared to humans and the prairie elves, the difference was no bigger than people of the same race.
As he kept saying, he had tried to understand.
He had learned their language and tried to eat their food.
After all that effort, the conclusion he reached was this:
Orcs were different from humans.
Thinking back to the events from two days ago still made his head spin.
Of course orcs had children.
Did he know how they raised them?
They raised their young together with the werewolf humans.
It was not “raising them together.” It meant the same place, the same method.
The child slept with the werewolf humans.
Ate with them like them!
It was not caring for the child; it was raising them like dogs.
That was the exact moment he understood where their rude, etiquette-free behavior came from.
Let me speak without any swear words.
If you raise them like dogs, aren’t they naturally going to become dogs?
While he was in awe of the orcs’ child-rearing methods and serving them, the incident happened.
The werewolf humans valued hierarchy, and the young orcs were not free from it.
One young orc challenged a higher-ranking werewolf human.
What happened?
Crack! No! Spit.
Dead.
Ahak had watched it with his own eyes.
There was no way to stop it.
It happened so suddenly that he could not even feel real.
He ran off immediately to report.
The reaction when he returned was even more pathetic.
He did not understand their words perfectly, but he understood the feeling.
Their reaction was: “Huh? What can we do?”
At that moment he clearly realized:
The orc race was not especially evil or weird.
It was simply that they were not “human”.
—
He must run.
Ahak had decided that.
But he could not bring himself to act.
Running from orcs was difficult.
Difficult? No, far beyond that, no answer came.
Orcs had raised werewolf humans.
A lot of them.
Werewolf humans were pursuit masters no different from ordinary wolves.
Running from them was nearly impossible.
Others had tried.
Ahak’s slave motive had boldly run away once.
Ahak had stopped him.
Wait a little longer.
Find a way.
“No. I can’t live in this beast’s lair for even one more day.”
He left those words and disappeared.
The orcs had let him down the mountain.
His slave motive did not last a night.
He was caught again.
The orcs hated wasting strength.
They had tormented him for half a day.
Clearly, the cause of the suffering would not look beautiful.
A punishment was given to his slave motive.
As an example.
The foundation of their terror politics.
Look at the lone stake standing in the distant plain.
A human was tied there.
Or rather, academically, he could no longer be called human.
Because he was already dead.
Not from hunger or wolf attack.
From the wounds, it was clear he had died “broken”, not pierced or bitten.
The killer was a wild harpy.
Harpies were an extremely intelligent species.
They flew in with a large stone and dropped it on the slave motive’s head.
Thinking of the height, one stone the size of two fists was enough to shatter a human skull.
Of course, that was only when it landed well.
The slave motive had taken the first attack on his shoulder.
He had survived the second somehow.
But harpies were not only intelligent; they were tenacious.
The harpy dropped the stone many times.
Brought a bigger stone, lifted it higher.
At some point, a sharp thud of bones breaking echoed.
That sound had been heard occasionally during work hours.
Thud. Thud. Painful groans were extra.
The groans had stopped when morning broke today.
“I was saved, you friend.”
Being tied to that stake was no longer an option.
He was not ready to run.
Or rather, he lacked courage.
“If Vesta were here…”
Ah, the reliable little bodyguard.
He missed his brave disciple.
Still young, but a trustworthy kid.
The disciple had already crossed many hardships with him.
If that kid had been here, he would have solved this problem somehow.
But Ahak himself had been captured by orcs, and what about that kid? Elfs had taken him, right?
“Why only me.”
Ahak exploded with resentment.
“Jealous brat.”
A handsome face like that probably got loved by elf women.
Maybe he had already fallen in love with them.
Ahak knew this place was where bride kidnapping flourished.
He had even wanted to give his hard-working disciple the gift of marriage with an elf.
Yet he had to eat it all alone?
“Vesta…!”
—I am kidnapped by orcs and like this, you bastard…!
The life he had imagined with elf women did not exist here.
Here there were only orcs, orc women, and werewolf humans!
“Disciple. This master also wants to drink the elven woman’s milk.”
Jealous. Jealous. Jealous…
“Jealous.”
The master trembled with ugly jealousy and spat far from the werewolf human’s dung.
He could not be sold into the desert like this.
The bitterness was filled with that thought.
Grrrr.
Uuuuuh.
“What the hell.”
The werewolf humans started going berserk.
Even the orcs who had been resting and saving strength stood up at once.
“…It’s my fault?”
Ahak was frightened, but soon realized it was not his fault and changed his thinking.
Something was coming.
Something that could make the beasts tense.
And things that could make beasts tense were usually:
Enemies, or
Threatening kin.
Far away, one man was visible.
An orc adult.
He led the werewolf humans with a dignified appearance, and a human woman followed behind him.
The orc looked special.
His armor was good, and young blood flowed, but above all, the necklace around his neck stood out.
A brutal ornament decorated with elven ears and orc fangs.
Since the orc’s teeth were far more numerous, he must have killed many.
So he was:
At the same time kin and enemy to the orcs.
Narinhoon Ibahtar.
He was heading north to find a new pack.