Snow Mountain's Hideout (4)
#117 Snow Mountain's Hideout (4)
2022.06.02.
Bete's consciousness, which had blacked out, began to slowly return.
In the darkness, her brain cautiously probed the world beyond her skull through her senses of smell, hearing, and touch.
Soon, voices reached her ears, and Bete focused intently without opening her eyes.
"You were pretty good at whistling back there?"
A woman asked.
A man soon replied.
"It's called warbling—a technique for blowing rapid whistles. It's harder than it looks; it took me a whole year just to get it usable. Of course, it was a few more years after that to make complex sounds."
"Really? To become a Dragon Knight, you have to practice whistling for years... I never even thought of that."
"There are even tougher techniques. Like the uvula whistle—I can't do that one. The Odatria genus isn't my specialty."
"Ah... So Dragon Knights each specialize in certain dragon species."
Bete realized who was having the conversation.
The woman was Arwen, whom she despised.
The man had to be the Dragon Knight with the medium dragon.
She tested by twitching her hand slightly and realized she was bound to a stone pillar in the cave.
'I've been captured.'
As her mind cleared, a fierce headache surged in.
Bete remembered being knocked out by a rock and fury boiled up inside her.
'How dare a filthy human! Striking a noble like me! Unforgivable!'
Dark elves fundamentally viewed humans as little more than barbarians.
Being knocked out by one of them was an unbearable humiliation to Bete.
But there was nothing she could do right now.
Humiliating as it was, it was best to keep her eyes shut and assess the situation for the moment.
But Owen wouldn't let her.
"Looks like you're awake. Why don't you open your eyes now?"
"……."
Bete flinched inwardly but pretended not to hear.
Owen chuckled lowly.
"If there were a mirror, I'd show you. Your face keeps changing—did you think we wouldn't notice?"
"……Hah."
Bete let out a quiet sigh and opened her eyes.
There were Owen and Arwen looking down at her.
Especially Arwen's face, full of mockery, made her stomach churn.
Arwen stroked Bete's head like she was petting a dog.
"What brings the noble heir of the Black Bramble Family to a place like this?"
"What about you, you country bumpkin bitch!"
"Bete. You still haven't grasped the situation, have you? That mouth of yours doesn't know its place."
Arwen pulled a grotesque device from her bosom.
It looked like a cross between tweezers and scissors.
Owen recognized it immediately.
"Arrowhead remover, right?"
"Exactly."
Dark elves used bows so often they'd invented surgical tools like arrowhead removers.
You spread the wound with the scissor part and pull out the tip with the tweezers.
The pain was indescribable, of course.
Arwen tapped Bete's cheek with it.
"You'd better watch that mouth. If you keep it up, I'll shoot you with ten arrows and pull them out with this—ten times."
Owen, listening beside her, felt a chill run down his spine.
'She'll shoot arrows just to use the remover...'
It hit him anew that Arwen was a dark elf through and through.
He sometimes forgot amid her sweet demeanor lately, but she was a survivor of brutal succession wars.
He couldn't even imagine how much blood from her sisters stained those delicate hands.
"Hmph! Threats like that won't work."
Out of pride, Bete refused to bend.
Owen suggested they at least find out why she'd come here while torturing her.
But surprisingly, Arwen shook her head.
"Impossible. She won't talk no matter what. Torture would just be for my amusement."
"What? A few rounds with that thing you're holding should do it."
"You don't know how tough she is."
With that, Arwen suddenly started stripping off Bete's top.
Where her bound arms made it impossible, she sliced it away with a dagger.
"What are you doing?"
Owen stepped back in surprise.
Why strip a perfectly fine prisoner all of a sudden?
But when Bete's upper body was fully exposed, Owen's jaw dropped.
"What the..."
Her body was horrific.
Both breasts had been severed, and her torso was covered in burns and torture scars.
There were countless stitch marks from crude suturing.
"Scars from when she was captured by another family during a war. She sees them as badges of honor."
"She was tortured?"
"Yeah. Our torture techniques are way more varied than humans'. Even surviving that left her like this."
"And she still didn't talk... something like that?"
"Exactly. Breaking her with torture is pointless."
From the rest of the story, they'd only restored her face with magic to barely hide the scars.
The rest of her body, hidden under armor and clothes, was too gruesome to look at.
Bete ground her teeth and glared at Arwen.
"Better than your prissy little body!"
"Oh? But I like being beautiful. Better than your patched-up rag doll body."
The two glared at each other like they wanted to devour one another.
Owen asked about other methods.
"Magic?"
"Possible, but the protective spells on a heir's body would take too long. Not right now."
"Drugs? That's your specialty."
"She'll have resistance. Needs too much prep—not feasible here."
Unfortunately, there was no way to learn why Bete had come to the hideout just yet.
Bete smirked triumphantly.
"That's right! You won't find out anything. Except satisfying your filthy cravings!"
But unexpectedly, Arwen smiled back.
It was a chilling grin.
As if she'd been waiting for Bete to say exactly that.
"Fine, I'll admit it. You're tough. But what about your deputy? Would she be?"
"What?"
Bete's eyes widened in shock.
Only then did she remember one of her subordinates was still alive.
Seeing Bete's face fill with dismay, Arwen giggled.
She'd known the conversation would go this way from the start.
Give a cornered foe a taste of victory, then plunge them into despair.
A perfectly dark elf way to toy with someone's psyche.
"Heh..."
Watching from the side, Owen got goosebumps.
'I must never cross Arwen. Gotta treat her right from now on.'
He even wondered if he'd ever slighted her in the past.
"You moved just the deputy for a reason."
"Yeah. Rest here a bit. I have business with her bitch's lieutenant. Might take a while, so sleep if you want."
Hearing that, Bete thrashed with a demonic expression.
"Arwen! You damned tear-you-apart bitch! Is this revenge for killing your father? That lowborn scum you don't even know by blood anyway—"
Slap!
A sharp crack echoed through the cave.
Arwen had slapped Bete with all her strength.
For the first time, Arwen's composure cracked.
Her face twisted in rage as she panted and ground her teeth.
"How dare you!"
Seeing Arwen's expression, Bete sneered.
"Kyahahaha! Hilarious. You still care about that worthless beggar?"
In dark elf society, fathers held almost no recognized position.
They weren't important.
Just seed-bearers—most dark elves didn't even know who theirs were.
But rarely, some formed deep bonds with their fathers.
The problem was that for a successor, it was shameful.
Even ordinary dark elves treated mentioning or bonding with their fathers as taboo.
Let alone an heir.
"Shut up! One more word, and I'll grind away the last pretty parts you have left."
Arwen pressed the arrowhead remover against Bete's beautiful face and growled.
Bete didn't even blink.
"It was for you! That's why I did it, Arwen! Without me, do you think you'd be heir? Really?"
"Shut your mouth! I never wanted it!"
The grudge between these two ran far deeper than he'd thought.
"Fine. I'll talk to your lieutenant."
"Leave her alone! Arwen!"
"No. I'll give you exactly what you gave me!"
"Uwaaaaaah!"
Bete's lieutenant was her childhood friend.
The only one she could trust in a family full of backstabbers.
They'd grown up like sisters.
So when Arwen grabbed the remover and headed toward the lieutenant, Bete struggled wildly.
"Untie me! Arweeeen! You cursed bitch! Rot in hell!"
Soon, agonized screams erupted from deeper in the cave.
Hearing them, Bete's eyes bulged red as she shrieked.
"Untie me! I said untie me! I'll kill you!"
The torture lasted three hours, with Bete cursing nonstop the whole time.
But when the screams from the depths finally stopped, Bete went pale as a ghost.
"Th... thaaat..."
She stared blankly, speechless.
Arwen soon returned, her face and arms splattered in blood.
As if nothing had happened, she said to Owen,
"The Grand Matron sent her looking for something called the Runkana Key. It's in Kalania's hideout."
Of course, it stemmed from the demon Igdes Ptagun's demand, but no one except the Black Bramble Matron knew that.
"What happened...?"
Bete looked up at Arwen, lips trembling.
Arwen extended her hand with an icy expression.
It held a blood-soaked clump of hair.
The moment Bete saw it, tears burst from her eyes.
"Euhhuk! Hic!"
Her face twisted in grief, wrenching sobs pouring out.
But Arwen showed no pity.
She even frowned slightly.
"Shut up. I'll let you be with your friend."
She shoved the bloody hair into Bete's mouth.
"Guhk! Kk!"
Bete sobbed miserably, hair clenched in her teeth.
Arwen stroked her head and whispered,
"This is nothing compared to what I lost. Don't grieve yet, Bete. It's just the beginning."
Watching it all, Owen deeply felt the pitch-black darkness of dark elf society.
Killing fathers, killing friends, endless blood revenge—it was enough to chill the bones.
'Orcs are sneaky too, but not like this. Might makes right, so at least it's clean...'
Still, Owen didn't butt in rashly.
Humans had their morals; dark elves had theirs.
Revenge was their morality.
Dealing with other races meant enduring such discomforts.
"Hoo..."
Owen shook his head to clear the heavy thoughts and asked Arwen,
"The Runkana Key? What's that?"
"She didn't know exactly. Just that it's in Kalania's hideout. Let's go."
The group prepared and set off immediately.
They went deeper in, reaching the end where a vertical shaft appeared.
Even dark elf eyes that pierced the dark couldn't see the bottom.
Only then did Arwen cast a spell, summoning a sinister glowing eyeball.
The creepy magic eye shone brightly, scanning the area and revealing the shaft was a full fifty meters deep.
"We have to go down there to reach the hideout."
"Just the descent will be a chore."
"Heh, scared, human? This is nothing for a dark elf."
Dark elves were indeed adept at such things.
The ones who'd raided Edel before had scaled cliffs without hesitation.
They hammered in pitons and set ropes with practiced ease.
"Uh... look."
As Owen started to speak, Arwen shook her head.
"Don't say you're scared. I'll show you— just follow. You can handle a cliff like this, right?"
"No, that's not—"
"Hey!"
Arwen cut him off and grabbed the rope, descending.
Her skillful navigation of the perilous cliff was impressive.
Something a human could hardly mimic.
She glanced up with a smug look.
"Sigh. Thick-headed as ever."
Owen sighed and summoned Grenville.