A Desire Too Vast
‘That woman isn’t human.’
Auryll tilted her head. They were traveling with something that was not human, after all.
‘A monster. And an obscenely vile one at that.’
The moment she laid eyes on her, gooseflesh rose along her arms. The woman wore a human shape, yet she was nowhere near human. Several unidentifiable scents tangled together around her — the scent of something profoundly dangerous.
‘No emotions?’
More than anything, there was no desire. No feeling. Colorless. Every living thing, great or small, carried desire of some kind. Humans most of all. And yet this one had none. There was only one explanation.
‘A corpse. An undead!’
Auryll’s hand went instinctively to her hip. She was not alone. Every Laurel Warrior who had come with her took one look at the woman and dropped into a combat stance.
Elves and undead were natural enemies. Under no circumstances — none whatsoever — could they share the same space. This went beyond mere loathing into pure, visceral hostility. Simply looking at her sent a fierce rage boiling up through Auryll’s chest.
Why was there an undead among a group of humans?
“Quite the grand welcome.”
A man who had only just arrived spoke as he took in the elves arrayed for battle. And the other man beside him, dressed in priestly robes—
“Aruwen……?”
—called the Elf Elder’s name and froze like a statue.
Andrew’s eyes shook violently.
There was no chance he was mistaken. The elf standing before the warp gate was, without question, his wife Aruwen — the woman who had vanished one day without warning. The woman who had abandoned him and Andasar and returned to the Primeval Forest. She had left nothing but a single cold letter behind.
The letter had said almost nothing. Only that she would never come back. That was all.
He had searched for a long time and found nothing. He had considered going to the Primeval Forest himself, but Andasar’s presence held him back; he could not risk the journey. So he had resigned himself to never seeing her again.
‘Why are you here?’
Ha. To think the Elf Elder who had come looking for Randolph would turn out to be his own former wife.
But Aruwen was not looking at him. Her eyes were fixed on Andasar.
‘Ah.’
In that same instant the world seemed to spin around Andrew. It felt as though she, too, had realized that their daughter had become an undead — a lich. And if that were true, even ten mouths would not have been enough to explain himself.
A brief lull settled over the scene.
How that man in priest’s robes knew the Elder’s name was a mystery — but the undead was far more offensive.
‘The undead defy nature. They must be returned to nature’s embrace.’
Auryll had been raised to destroy every undead she encountered. She had trained directly under the Elf Queen, and among the Laurel Warriors she ranked among the top three strongest. That alone made the undead’s presence intolerable.
It seemed the creature was hiding among the humans, pretending to be one of them.
Laurel leaves unfurled like wings at both of Auryll’s feet.
“Auryll——!”
Fwoooosh!
Before the Elder could stop her, Auryll rode the wind and closed the distance in a heartbeat, drawing an ancient wooden branch from her hip. A sacred blade-shape clothed itself over the branch. Before this sword, any undead would crumble at a stroke—!
KAAANG—!
A sharp jolt ran up her wrist, and Auryll spun once through the air. Someone had blocked her attack.
“Are elves always this rude?”
The man who had spoken of a welcome. He had deflected her with a sword cold as winter itself.
‘Sword Gang?’
That faint radiance wreathing the blade was unmistakably Sword Gang — a secret art available only to those chosen by the World Tree, or to warriors of the seventh stage and beyond. To think a human had reached that level!
‘Ah.’
She had been so fixated on the undead that she had failed to observe the man. Careless. An unforgivable mistake for a Laurel Warrior.
And then—
“What…… is that?”
“Th-that…… how can something like that even exist?”
“Auryll…… run!”
The man holding Winter. The moment the elves saw the man the humans called the Successor, their bodies began to tremble violently, seized by pure horror. Auryll was no different. Her feet would not move. Her body had locked up as if turned to stone.
‘Wh-what is…… that desire……!’
The shape of the desire radiating from the man. She had never seen anything like it — never even heard of such a thing.
Black King.
A lion king whose entire body was pitch black. He bore a striking resemblance to the White King, yet his coloring stood in stark contrast as he gazed down from the cliff’s edge.
“Die!”
“Wipe them all out!”
“Don’t lose to a bunch of ants!”
“Annoying centipede bastards!”
Below the cliff, colossal insects were waging war over territory. Insect-type monsters native to the southern wilds. Originally insignificant creatures, they had gained high intelligence through the Black King’s “grace” — and ever since, they had hated one another without end, locked in perpetual slaughter.
“Black King. Have those things still not settled it?”
A dark elf approached from behind, shaking his head. The dark elf and the other members of the Rift Tower party had gathered in one place.
“Mm. Creating the strongest insect is proving harder than expected.”
The Black King shrugged.
Gu poison. A certain southern tribe had a custom of sealing every kind of insect inside a jar and brewing poison from whichever one survived last. Inspired by that practice, he had set out to forge the ultimate insect monster — but their elevated intelligence seemed to have stalled the war into a grinding stalemate.
The “grace” he had bestowed was apparently the problem. The Black King stroked his chin.
“Granting them ‘Great Sage’ may have been a mistake. Perhaps I should have tried ‘Mutation’ instead.”
“Wouldn’t they all just die?”
“One of them might adapt and survive, no? Of course, that has never happened so far……”
The Black King could bestow “grace” — Hidden Traits. But Mutation was among the most difficult of them. Bestow Mutation, and nearly everything simply failed to endure and perished. Still, it might have been better than Great Sage. If the goal was to isolate a single strongest specimen, a gamble of that magnitude was worth taking.
The Black King slowly turned his head. Five of them had climbed the tower. Only four stood here now.
“So Master is dead.”
“Yes. We never should have trusted that piece of trash from the start.”
He had been useless. Believing his sweet talk and climbing the tower with him had been the worst decision imaginable. In the end he had died alone and handed all the points to the first-place party.
“Be that as it may — did we not fail?”
But the Black King was speaking of their failure as a whole. Failure was failure. Whoever was at fault, they had moved as a party, and this was the result. It was everyone’s failure alike.
The dark elf’s pupils trembled.
“Th-that is…… Black King. There was an unknown interferer. Someone using a ‘bug’……”
“A bug, you say.”
“Someone who moved alone through the divided zones. Neither the tower’s administrator nor the lord of the first floor could have accounted for such a being. However — we did kill Dae-to-ryong.”
They had not returned empty-handed. They had gathered intelligence on the first-place party, and they had slain the White King’s subordinate, Dae-to-ryong.
Only then did a flicker of interest enter the Black King’s eyes.
“Dae-to-ryong? Who killed him?”
“……Laktusha.”
“Is that so? Did he truly kill Dae-to-ryong?”
Under the Black King’s gaze, Laktusha nodded.
“I dealt him a mortal wound with the Black Heaven Sword. He cannot possibly have survived, Black King.”
“So you did not see him die.”
“……”
“Tsk tsk. Dae-to-ryong lives.”
“……What? That cannot…… be.”
Laktusha was stunned. He had struck with the Black Heaven Sword clad in Sword Gang — a fatal wound no living creature could survive. And yet the Black King, who had not even been there, declared that Dae-to-ryong was alive. On what grounds?
The Black King raised a finger toward the sky. A colossal giant floated overhead, vast enough to seem capable of blanketing the world.
“Do you see ‘Despair’?”
“……Yes, Black King. I see it clearly.”
Despair. One of the Four Calamities — a being whose very name was its epithet, unlike the malevolent god Baal. Invisible to ordinary eyes, yet plain as day to those who had received the Black King’s grace, whether they wished to see it or not. Currently fusing with the Death King, it was a monster the Black King was certain would become his greatest trump card upon awakening.
“The four main pillars who have stood with the White King from the beginning are linked in spirit. Had Dae-to-ryong died, there would surely have been a reaction.”
“Ahh……”
Laktusha let out a groan. Alive. How could anything survive after taking his attack?
“Dae-to-ryong, who should not be alive, is alive. If that is possible, then the ‘bug’ user must have been involved. Did you see his face?”
“……I did not. But it was definitely a party of a human and a dryad.”
“Is that so? Then the elves will have made contact.”
“The elves of the Primeval Forest, you mean?”
The Black King nodded. Now that the Rift Tower had risen and its clear rewards were known, there was no chance the elves would sit idle. A dryad, especially, was a being that lived through the medium of the forest. Elves under the World Tree’s protection would find one with ease.
“But Black King — do the elves not shun contact with the outside world?”
“The World Tree is dying. They will have no other choice.”
“The W-World Tree……?!”
The World Tree that stood at the heart of the Primeval Forest. A colossal tree whose roots stretched as if to embrace the world itself, just as its name suggested. It was the elves’ symbol, their very life — and he was saying it was dying.
There were even stories that if the World Tree died, the continents of the sky would sink into the Abyss. That was how vital it was. Yet the Black King spoke of it as if it were nothing.
“The World Tree and the elves are one. If the World Tree is dying, the elves are dying with it. They have stagnated for far too long. This is the natural result.”
They had lived hundreds, thousands of years within the Primeval Forest alone. Stagnant water, left to fester and rot. Only by raising their max level and attempting to break their limits could they cling to life.
Laktusha spoke, tense.
“Then…… if the elves have made contact……”
To that end, they would try to climb the tower. Likely alongside the bug user.
Hmm. The Black King tilted his head.
“It seems a more interesting specimen has appeared than I expected.”
A bug user recognized by the tower itself. He had never heard of such a thing. In principle, no being should be able to break rules set by the administrator. And yet someone had shattered those rules, brushed aside the Black King’s own subordinates, and cleared the tower with overwhelming force.
‘Breaking the rules. Hidden Traits…… if anything could do it, that would be it.’
The only functions that exceeded the tower’s specifications were Hidden Traits. But the Black King still could not make sense of it. He knew every Hidden Trait. He could bestow them. He could elevate beings beyond their station with them. But a Hidden Trait that broke the tower’s rules……
‘The Heavenly Realm. Or failing that — an Operator.’
The one remaining possibility was the Heavenly Realm — the sole Hidden Trait he could not bestow. But the Heavenly Realm was something that could never be internalized into a body. So if it was not that either, then truly, only an Operator remained.
Just who was it?
Goooooh.
At that moment, the gathering fell silent. The war was over. The Black King looked down the cliff once more, and as if he had never been lost in thought, he smiled brightly.
“Oho. At last it is born. The King of Ants — your new companion.”
“……Ah.”
Auryll let out a strangled gasp.
How had she failed to see it? Desire of that magnitude should have been visible from the very start.
‘It was simply…… too vast.’