Land of the Elves
Land of the Elves
Chimera.
A priest of the Predator and its most colossal operator.
The priest's name was, unexpectedly, one that history remembered.
As the most horrific tale of trust and betrayal ever told.
It began simply enough.
A monster harboring divinity—a Wendigo born from the corruption of the God of Eternity and Night—attacked a village.
While the village burned and most of its people died, a young mother made a pact with the Predator to save her child and became a priest.
A story that could have happened anywhere. What came after was what mattered.
Against all odds, the woman kept her reason. The Predator did not strip away her will.
She took her child and fled to the Kingdom of Perbe.
Perbe, one of the foremost kingdoms of the Southern Continent—its sphere of influence included the woman's village—accepted her as a soldier. They granted her various accommodations while using her as a military asset.
It seemed like a happy ending.
A mother had saved her child and earned the child's adoration and the people's respect.
The people trusted her deeply and praised her immense strength.
The kingdom placed absolute faith in her loyalty to a power they could control.
The child was loving enough not to mind that his mother had changed. Mother and son appeared truly happy.
Up to a certain point, that was how it appeared.
One day, just as she had become a priest to protect her child from a monster, she became one herself.
On the outskirts of Perbe, in a small city bordering the Polaina Duchy, where the woman and her child lived, the mutation began.
The priest who would later be called Chimera commenced her true work.
One hundred guardsmen who tried to stop her.
One hundred twenty of the lord's standing army.
Twelve hundred residents.
All of them were devoured. All became resources for Chimera.
Her son was the first to be consumed, becoming a part of her.
As far as Aslan knew, this was the Predator's classic stratagem.
Deliberately leave the will and reason intact to cultivate deep trust, then maximize the harvest of resources.
A guerrilla war reenacted in some grotesque fashion.
After that, Chimera became a persistent plague upon the Southern Continent.
A colossal body resembling a Wendigo.
A towering giant that crushed its foes with a massive frame, stumping along on two arms thick as ancient trees.
Aslan understood that to become a high priest, one had to be Chimera.
Yet something had gone wrong. In his third year, Aslan encountered a Chimera that was still a mere priest.
'A brutal fight.'
That was how Aslan remembered it.
Since she wasn't yet a high priest, her size was somewhat smaller and her defenses weren't as formidable as anticipated, but for Aslan at the time, she was still an almost unwinnable foe.
His lower body was utterly crushed. His limbs were torn to shreds.
The techniques instilled in him by the martial monks, the accumulated magic tool proficiency, swordsmanship, martial arts—none of it worked.
Back then, Aslan was not yet the Master of Combat. He wasn't a powerhouse who could blindly brawl with a priest and expect to win.
Most importantly, he hadn't reached the threshold of a demigod. He had no other option.
That was the first time Aslan ever used Equalization.
Without the Taking Root spell he'd carved mid-battle and the Equalization scroll he'd bought as a trial, he would have died there.
After that, Aslan used every conceivable means to kill Chimera.
He burned through every scroll he'd collected. Starting with Giant's Strength, Metal Heating, and Vibration Infusion—buffs from the Transmutation School.
Debuffs like Curse, Darkness, and Blackout, along with Transmutation magic like Hardness Alteration.
He unleashed every spell of Manifestation Magic he possessed and fought all day long.
At the very end, he barely managed to kill Chimera.
He ripped, melted, cut, and ground down that thick carapace until he could finally drive a blade into the core.
Back then, Aslan believed he had killed Chimera for good.
For the Predator's priests—all of them machine-types—the core was the fatal weakness.
The soul, the component that sustained life, the essential part.
No matter how powerful a Predator's priest, a core always existed.
He had pierced that core. He had seen the soul leak out in the form of plasma.
He had witnessed the eruption of unmoderated mana and soul energy.
He had watched that massive body slump powerlessly, collapsing in on itself.
So when he later clashed with the Dragon-king at Belus Alpen and exchanged blows, Aslan could afford to ask if he was a high priest.
Nine years had passed. It would not have been strange for a new high priest to emerge.
That was where the problem lay.
The Dragon-king had been a priest of the Predator for a thousand years.
And no priest named Dragon-king had ever existed in the game.
Whether he had been a high priest for a thousand years was unclear, but the Dragon-king Aslan remembered from the game was never a priest.
No matter which route you took, the Dragon-king never became a priest.
He was always just a winged dragon-kin with a touch of divinity.
Looking back, Aslan recognized the pattern.
Just as gods who never existed in the original game—the Formless One, the Twilight Flock—had appeared, this Geladrion he'd fallen into had diverged.
Was this a distortion caused by the Ancient Gods' arrangements? Or a butterfly effect born from the existence of new evil gods? There was no way to know. But one thing was certain.
Regardless, the Dragon-king was a high priest. And that Dragon-king was incomparably stronger than Chimera, a match for the Sword of the War God.
He couldn't be sure whether killing Chimera back then would have let her ascend to high priest, or if the Dragon-king would still have held that position. It didn't matter.
What mattered was this: the Dragon-king was dead and no longer the high priest.
And Chimera had shed her original form for a sleek aerial combat model and become the high priest.
Only those two facts remained.
Aslan watched the spear hurtling toward him. High-temperature plasma. That golden-burning fighter frame radiated the same light, the same heat, as the Dragon-king's breath.
Could his dragon-blood flame resistance withstand it? Probably not.
Aslan swiftly drew the Artist's Shield from his back and murmured.
"Domination."
The plasma bolt devoured space as it flew. The shield extended in a straight line to meet it, intercepting the blast.
—KWA-BOOOOOOOM!
The explosion roared. The white-iron shield blazed red-hot. Aslan grimaced against the staggering pressure, a momentary force powerful enough to shatter his telekinetic grasp. He shouted on reflex.
"Run!"
The words were aimed at the elves. They stood frozen in terror, but Aslan had no time to wait.
Clatter. The shield hit the ground. Amid the noise, Aslan swept his cloak aside and reached out.
Ssshhk—CRACKLE!
Throwing daggers flew, aimed at Chimera's chest. The airborne Chimera swatted them away with her spear like a man swatting flies. The daggers, glancing off plasma, fell to the ground glowing red. The moment they landed, Chimera extended an arm.
"Ah, Slaaaaan!"
She screamed as if his name was the only word she knew. The plasma spear launched on a straight trajectory.
A direct hit meant instant death. This time, Angie intercepted it.
"Hraaaah—HAHT!"
KWA-WOOOOOM!
She swung Victory, the greatsword resting on her back. No swordsmanship, no esoteric principle. Pure, raw power.
Victory's effect was simple. Indestructible, like Verdict, with damage scaling to the user's strength. For Angie, who had attained a perfect body, no better weapon could exist. No one in the world—not unless the dead Sword of the War God himself returned—could wield it better than her. Muscles that surpassed the superhuman and brushed the divine drove the blade forward with crushing acceleration, swatting the spear from the sky. The greatsword swept back through the flames, wreathed in fire, its blade trailing smoke without so much as a scratch.
"Move!"
Angie's shout jolted the masters into action. Tiyamal drew his crossbow, taking aim as he shifted his footing. Ereta ignited her axe in flame. Rumel swung her white-iron spear into guard. Richard looked around in bewilderment.
Aslan briefly calculated. Victory's damage output, amplified by Angie's strength, was immense—on par with his own attack power boosted by the principle of impermanence. The fact that it had only canceled out that thrown spear meant Chimera's plasma projectiles packed monstrous force. A direct hit would mean more than instant death. Wide-area destruction. The ground itself would shatter.
He looked up at Chimera, hovering in the air, readying the next spear.
'No time to hesitate.'
Still maintaining Domination, he spoke while channeling telekinesis.
"Purity."
A pure-white sword materialized in his grip. White flames. A crossguard resembling a set of scales. A hilt long as an ancient tree.
He didn't grip it with his hands. He moved it with telekinesis.
Purity shot forward. The instant the thrown spear flew, the hovering sword split the plasma bolt apart.
KWA-BOOOOOOOM!
The violent detonation shuddered through the trees. Leaves rained down, shivering. Scorching air swirled, melting the accumulated snow, as Aslan shouted.
"Fay, get the elves out of here!"
Fay didn't hesitate or argue. She sheathed both her blades at once, nodded sharply at the elves, and called out.
"Follow me! Run!"
The terrified elves could not refuse one who looked so much more mature than they were. They turned and fled, faces blank with shock.
Chimera's stiff head swiveled toward them with a grinding creak.
"AAAAAAAHHH—!"
A scream. A meaningless shriek. Then her back split open.
Dozens of arms erupted from the fissure. Thin, doll-like arms. At their tips, countless streams of plasma burst forth, shaping themselves into spears.
"The hell...?!"
Tiyamal's voice cracked with horror.
Aslan saw the spearheads turning toward the fleeing elves. He seized Purity in both hands and focused his demon eye on their trajectories.
'Moon Splitting.'
He swung. The arc that extended beyond reason stretched as if cutting the moon's reflection on water and collided with dozens of javelins.
KWAKWAKWAKWAKWANG!
A searing gale scorched the ground. Hot enough to burn an ordinary human and send them writhing. Only Aslan, with his flame resistance, could endure it.
But endure was all he could do. It wasn't without cost. His skin reddened, white flakes of shed flesh drifting from his body. He gritted his teeth against the searing pain and reached out.
More javelins remained. He answered them with the feathers of Stymphalos.
"Domination."
Metallic plumage sprayed like machine-gun fire. Dozens of feathers per javelin. The cloak behind him thinned rapidly.
Chimera thrust forward the arm she had kept drawn back. The final spear. Aimed at Aslan's body, meant to skewer him dead.
Angie shoved herself into its path.
"Hraaaaah—!"
A deep, drawn breath. Ignoring the skin sloughing off in the heat, she swung the greatsword with her solid arms and slammed the plasma aside.
KWA-WOOOOM!
The redirected blast of fire scorched the ground. Grassland burst into flame. Blazing embers scattered everywhere.
Through those embers, Ereta emerged. Right beside the airborne Chimera.
"Aaah?!"
Chimera's cry of shock. Ereta's axe, wreathed in flame, came down.
KA-GA-GA-GAK!
The blade bit into the thoracic armor, splitting it open as it ripped free. The ambush had landed, bypassing the Predator priest's exceptional detection abilities, thanks entirely to the Thief's Skin Ereta wore beneath her cloak, outside her dress. The artifact that fully erased her presence had let her scale the tree and launch herself into a successful strike.
The chest carapace split apart.
The moment Ereta touched the ground and rolled, before the shattered shell finished scattering, Tiyamal leveled his unfamiliar crossbow at Chimera.
"Don't complain if I miss!"
Twang!
A pathetic sound compared to his old bow. But the effect was undeniable. The bolt struck the exposed chest dead-center. More armor fell away. Before the last of it had even dropped, Rumel, slipping past the flames, aimed her white-iron spear.
"Hup!"
She hurled it. A straight-line trajectory. A seamless chain attack. The instant Ereta hit the dirt and rolled clear, the white-iron spear pierced Chimera's chest.
CRRRRACK!
The spear punched through and lodged deep. Chimera's body shuddered. Watching, Aslan felt a surge of certainty. He didn't know how she had survived, but with her core pierced, it was over.
Until the anomaly began.
The moment Chimera's trembling stopped, violent energy bled from the fissure in her chest.
CRRRRRACKLE!
Golden lightning arced. Amid the savage harmony of lightning and flame, the spear of Tormule embedded in her chest melted. Liquid white iron dripped onto the ground. The half-melted shaft plunged down after it.
"What...?"
Tiyamal's voice wavered. Plasma still streamed from the chest wound. As the party stared in confusion, Chimera slowly lifted her head. The split in her chest gaped wide, vividly exposed. Aslan's own expression flickered with bewilderment.
The core was the fatal weakness of every Predator priest. All of them possessed one. That weakness was an immutable truth—one that had never been disproven, either in the game or in this reality Geladrion had become. For roughly four thousand years, from the moment the sky cracked open until now. So what Aslan's demon eye now witnessed was an unmistakable abnormality. The split chest, the core within bleeding light and energy—it was damaged. Bearing the exact scar of the blade Aslan had driven into it nine years ago.
"AAAAAAHHH...!"
Chimera screamed, chest bared. The higher the pitch of her shriek climbed, the wilder the energy gushing from the crack became.
KWA-AAAAAAHHH!
As the raging energy erupted, spears slowly sprouted from the dozens of arms on her back.
Bzzzt. Crackle-crackle!
Plasma coalescing under electric command. The fierce heat whipped up a scorching wind that sent the snow on the ground scattering into the air.
Watching, Aslan finally understood. For a Predator priest, the core was simultaneously the soul, the mana supply, and the power source. What bled from that damaged core was unmistakably soul. Soul bleeding out as plasma. The grotesque ingenuity of using the very power that moved that titanic body as a direct weapon. Surviving a condition that should have meant death and opening fire anew.
Two possibilities surfaced in Aslan's mind. She had transcended death through the Flock's intervention, or she was replenishing her soul through some other means. The moment that thought formed, images clicked together in his head. A race rich in divinity and soul. Elves. The fact that she had thrown spears at them.
The moment the overlapping possibilities locked into place, Aslan's Luck triggered. The answer followed like instinct.
'Chimera devours souls.'
And the instant he realized it, Chimera, clutching multitudes of souls in her grasp, screamed.
"AAAAAAAHHHHH—!"
A shriek so piercing it rattled the ears. Aslan broke into a cold sweat at that high, almost womanly wail. From the gaping chest, plasma poured down and hammered the earth.