This Is Rather Troublesome...
"This is rather troublesome..."
Mei murmured.
"If I'd known it would come to this, I should have brought a communication orb."
"You forgot it?"
"No. They're so rare and expensive that they won't issue one on the spot."
"I see. Then I'll handle this alone. There's no way out except the entrance anyway, is there? Don't worry."
"Ah... All right. I'll be back soon."
"Right."
He would just as soon she never came back, but that was the answer he gave. He had needed some pretext for entering the hidden dungeon while the elves were around, and things turning out this way struck him as a stroke of luck.
"Still... wouldn't it be all right if one of us stayed?"
Mei said it out of nowhere.
"Sorry?"
Yujun asked, as if he couldn't have heard her correctly.
"I mean, all three of us don't have to go together."
"Mei. What are you saying?"
"We can't just leave you here alone."
"I-I'm fine. Yodri's orders were for us to go with Yujun anyway..."
"Even so, are you sure?"
The elves asked it with worry plain on their faces. Leaving her alone with a human who had put down dark elves in a heartbeat sat poorly with them. His affinity with nature might have risen, but Yujun was still human, and that was not enough to earn an elf's complete trust.
Mei's expression, however, was firm.
"I'll be fine. Go and come back quickly."
"...All right."
"If that's what you want."
The elves turned their backs and broke into a run.
Left alone with an elf before he quite understood how it had happened, Yujun stared after them in disbelief.
They're not even going to ask me?
Well, they had come along as watchers in the first place. He had no real grounds to object. And Mei was someone he could put down in a moment if it came to that.
Wait...
A thought struck him, and he spoke it aloud.
"What if the elves at the entrance have already been taken out?"
"That couldn't happen. Even in our tribe, Yodri ranks among the very best. No dark elf could break past Yodri in less than ten minutes. And there are dozens of our own people there besides."
"Hm. Then the question is how the dark elves got onto our trail at all."
"That, I don't know either..."
Yujun knew the mine had more than one entrance. The other, though, was extremely narrow—barely wide enough for a draft of wind, nothing a person-sized body could pass through.
Did they widen it? Break through a wall...?
Mining the ore might have opened it, or they might have enlarged it on purpose. If there was an entrance the elves didn't know, and only the dark elves did, then their sudden appearance made sense.
"Let's hurry. No telling where they'll turn up next."
"Right."
The dark elf who had left earlier to report might already have pursuers on their heels. There was no time to linger here.
Yujun quickened his pace—fast enough that Mei, fleet-footed even among elves, began to fall behind.
"Yujun! You're too fast."
"We'll be there soon."
"Do you actually know the way?"
"My master gave me a rough idea."
"What?"
Knowing a path from a rough idea? As disbelief crossed Mei's face, Yujun added a word.
"He described the landmarks."
In truth, it was a road he had walked himself. He knew this ground well.
At the last fork he took the right-hand path. If the terrain hadn't been warped beyond recognition, the hidden dungeon ought to appear if they kept straight on.
Even as he ran, he poured his attention into his senses—sound rolling ahead and behind, vibration through the earth, the faintest stir of wind. And then, all at once, something new caught.
The smallest of breaths. People who were very fast, very quiet, and suppressing their presence to the extreme.
The dark elves had already closed in. Their presence wasn't ahead. It was behind.
He sent Mei running on in front of him.
⊳ Player Shin Yujun has requested a party.
Mei accepted the message the moment it appeared, without so much as a flinch.
"Why this?"
"I've got a plan. And the dark elves have caught up."
"What? Then Maruela and Jutien..."
Shock broke the rest of the sentence off.
Yujun offered what reassurance he could.
"They might be fine. There's a good chance this mine doesn't have only one entrance."
"Not only one? When we surveyed it, that was the only place. There wasn't a separate portal either. And we patrol on a regular schedule, so that shouldn't be possible..."
"Magic could manage it, couldn't it? Or some unusual item."
In the Tower of Infinity, anything could happen.
"So we have to fight the dark elves again?"
"No. If we fight now, we'll lose."
"What? You brought down Gerihil earlier. Aren't you incredibly strong?"
"I'm not. Earlier I pulled a trick and it happened to work. If there are several like Gerihil, I can't promise I'd win."
"...Then aren't we... in danger?"
The color drained from Mei's face.
"The danger was there from the start. So why did you follow me?"
The rebuke left her crestfallen.
"Anyway, go on ahead."
"And what about you?"
"I mean to buy time."
"Do you have a way?"
"Oh, I've got plenty."
He said it with such confidence that a little of the tension eased from her face. A moment later she was quietly startled at herself.
Trusting a human I met for the first time today, and feeling relieved about it...
Elves and humans could hardly be called friendly. And yet, somehow, she believed the human in front of her.
Must be because he's strong.
Settling on that simple answer, Mei spoke.
"Be careful."
"Go. We're out of time."
Mei said nothing more. Watching her sprint away at full speed, Yujun opened his inventory.
Let's see... the Scentless Apple's effect still hasn't worn off...
He had expected the dark elves' pursuit from the beginning, and he had a few methods prepared. From among them he chose the surest, the most effective, and the one most likely to make them choke on it.
Time they learned properly what happens when they cross me.
Tall, lean, with just enough muscle to show the training underneath, and a face cut by sharp eyes into something savage. The man was Stelln, high elder of the dark elves of the Karamtan tribe.
He ran, swift and silent, and he thought.
So the World Tree Seed is genuine. All that's left is to take it back...
There was a problem. The dark elves' presence had vanished completely from his senses. He had not been far from them, and their sudden disappearance struck him as wrong.
He had been running with six dark elves in tow when he stopped dead.
He had found the bodies. Three lay dead nearby, and Gerihil—an outstanding warrior of the Karamtan tribe—had fallen some distance off, his life already gone.
Shock locked every face, Stelln's among them.
"H-how did this..."
"They were taken."
"What?"
"By the human, you mean?"
Stelln nodded.
"The others, perhaps. But Gerihil..."
"Yes. Gerihil was strong. And that is all he was. The result is right in front of you. What is there to deny?"
Into the heavy silence, Stelln spoke again.
"We move as we are. We'll recover our fallen when we return."
This was no time to grieve their tribesmen. They had to find the one who had made this mess.
They had barely kicked off the ground again when Stelln brought himself to a halt. As the dark elves looked to him in confusion, he said, low,
"Wait. The traces... there is no trace of the human."
"What?"
"Did he slip off somewhere else? I sense only one elf. Chasing that is pointless. A trap? A trick?"
Stelln rested a hand against his chin. After a brief deliberation, he decided.
"We go straight."
"Which way?"
"There's only one path, isn't there? We follow the elf."
"But the human has the World Tree Seed..."
"Humans are fond of petty little schemes. If he knows we are pursuing him, he will have used some method to deceive us. Do not believe everything you see."
At Stelln's order, the dark elves raised no further objection. He was one of the three most influential figures in the Karamtan tribe, and none of them cared to hesitate at his word and earn his displeasure for nothing.
Following the elf's presence, Stelln and the dark elves soon had no choice but to stop. The very human they had been hunting stood there, stock-still, waiting for them.
Suspicion came first.
A trap?
The level of the human carrying the World Tree Seed had been measured long since. High magic cast by another skilled elder had placed him at roughly over 100 and under 120. At that level he was merely average within the Karamtan tribe. And a human like that was waiting to face them?
Carelessness is out of the question. He did bring down Gerihil.
Not only Stelln—the other dark elves seemed to have grasped as much as well. They watched Yujun with wary eyes.
"Human. Did you kill our kin?"
"Yeah. They tried to kill me first."
"All we needed was the World Tree Seed."
"I didn't feel like giving it to you."
"You won't die cleanly."
"Weren't you the ones who needed the World Tree Seed?"
"There is more than one way to obtain an item."
"What? What do you— Don't tell me."
"So you know of it."
Stelln smiled the smile of a man whose plan had landed, and drew out an item.
A familiar shape. A scroll. More precisely, a Target-Designation Item Scroll.
Grade: None
Option: Kill the target and take one designated item.
Tear that scroll and kill a player, and you could take one item in that player's possession. The Target-Designation Item Scroll had been a notorious piece of gear back when War of the Gods was still only a game—an item that let you murder a user and steal something they had fought hard to obtain. It was, accordingly, exceedingly difficult to acquire. Even Yujun had only about ninety of them in his inventory.
He gave a wry smile.
"Look at you. You actually got your hands on one."
"Almost no human player ought to know what this is. Curious. Then you already know what I'm about to do."
"You never meant to compromise anyway."
"Had you meekly done as we asked, it might have been different."
"At least wet your mouth before you lie."
"...Hah. There's no reasoning with you."
Stelln tore the Target-Designation Item Scroll.
Player Stelln designates Player Shin Yujun's item, World Tree Seed, as the target item.
"Now I can kill you. You seemed to be swaggering on nothing but your inventory. That ends here."
Stelln's smile was vile.
Yujun smiled back.
"Oh, how'd you know? Yeah. I'm counting on nothing but my inventory."
What Yujun did next turned Stelln's face to stone.
The ground beneath his feet caved in, and his body plunged downward.
Stelln moved at once to look.
"A hole?"
Pitch-black, its depth impossible to judge, and not particularly large. It was too dark to see a thing. Nor was there any sign of the human he had been speaking with a moment ago.
"Troublesome..."
Stelln threw himself into the hole without a shred of hesitation.
But—
Clang!
Something he could not identify flung his body far back.
"Elder!"
"Are you all right?!"
As the dark elves came running in a panic, Stelln could only stare, struck dumb, at the hologram window floating before his eyes.
Stelln had nothing to say.