Land of the Elves
Land of the Elves
―BOOM!
A thunderous crash. A falling flash of light. From far away, Fay watched a blazing sun ignite the creeping night.
It was as if the sun itself had been dragged down and hammered into the earth.
Bursting flames scorched the ground and spread in every direction, and every tree they touched blackened and crumbled into ash.
What billowed on the wind was death and calamity.
While the other Elves held their breath, sobbed quietly, or covered their ears and crouched in terror, Fay gazed at the scene as though mesmerized.
In her blue-violet eyes, the fire blazed. A golden sun burning.
Fay found it deeply unexpected, yet the sight called up a memory.
A wheat field, stained gold.
Crossing that field, the moment she was dragged away by a slaver.
The first time she stepped into the outside world and faced true malice.
Thinking back on it now, Fay had always been a singular being.
Born, one might say, not at all like an Elf.
Anything different is inevitably shunned, but the other Elves were such virtuous souls that they never thought to blame or ostracize Fay for her strangeness, so it never became much of a problem.
Fay herself had never really felt it as a problem either.
Watching other Elves made it easy enough to see how to act like one, and easy enough to mimic it.
Setting aside, of course, the fact that it was only ever a pretense.
Strip away that pretense and Fay's essence was Void.
Then again, Fay considered Elves themselves to be rather Void-like beings.
Elves felt few desires or hungers from the start.
They hardly even satisfied the basic functions of a living being.
First, an Elf does not feel hunger. Without needing to eat or drink, they could live on the vitality of nature alone.
An Elf did not need rest. So long as they could set their feet on the ground, they could go an entire lifetime without sleep.
Elves did not age, and they did not die except by violence. And even then, killing an Elf was no simple matter.
Their creative regeneration turned loss into a joke.
They did not eat, did not sleep, did not rest.
They did not age, and they did not die.
So Elves were, at root, Void beings.
They had no hunger, and no desire.
All that existed within them was goodwill and kindness.
Fay's singularity lay precisely there.
She was, uniquely, even more Void.
Goodwill and kindness did not exist in her.
She was simply a more numb, more expressionless Elf.
That was why, even back when the slaver was dragging her away and the other Elves wore smiles of innocent trust, Fay could not wipe the dubious look from her face.
And why, when everything finally erupted, she made no pointless attempt to stop the fight or the violence.
While the other Elves wept and pleaded for them to stop fighting, Fay just watched in silence.
In that place, Fay found herself fixed on someone.
A man who offered to pay the price for Elves he had never met, was refused, and in the end resorted to the sword.
That man was Aslan.
Aslan killed the slavers, and with a deeply troubled expression, freed the Elves.
Most of those freed returned to their homeland, to the Land of the Elves. Fay did not.
She followed Aslan instead.
What that first impulse had been, Fay no longer remembered. She could no longer empathize even with her own past self.
The one certainty was that Fay had seen the world alongside Aslan.
And through that, she had learned something.
That she was special.
That even among Elves, she was the only one.
That while struggle was culled from other Elves, it was not culled from her.
That even if you gave other Elves the same memories, the same experiences, and implanted the same skills, a Fay would never be made.
That Fay was a fighting Elf because of her own singularity.
So the event that turned Fay into a fighting Elf was a trivial one.
There was no grand reason for the change itself.
There was, however, reason enough for the path she walked afterward.
Fay met Aslan and saw many things.
She met people.
Traveled the world.
Fought priests.
Witnessed the ruins of a bygone greatness.
After seeing all that, she met Aslan again and returned to her homeland.
And having finally come home, Fay understood.
Elves cannot fight.
Even if you put a weapon in their hands right now, they could not do what must be done.
They would simply, starved of goodwill and kindness, throw down their arms and try to dissuade the priests, or run away.
Glancing back at the Elves huddled in raw terror of the hostility and malice, Fay took in that whole truth and sighed.
When the Elves regarded her with puzzled expressions at that sigh, she lowered her head and looked at her twin swords.
The two blades she had found in the inner sanctum of the ancient ruin she had explored with Aslan long ago.
Dawn and Twilight.
Those two short swords with their red blades, Fay drew them tight in her grip.
There was no terror on her face, no fear, no hunger, no goodwill.
What was there was resolve.
'Something only I... can do.'
Fay thought.
'A task only I can perform.'
She felt the weight of duty.
'Something no other Elf can do, something only I... only an Elf named Fay can do.'
And so, raising the two drawn swords, she turned her back on the other Elves and spoke.
"Stay here and keep quiet."
It was a quiet voice. The voice of a girl not so different from any Elf.
Yet it sounded somehow different. The Elves, trembling where they crouched, looked at the girl and said,
"Where are you going? It's dangerous out there..."
Fay did not look back. She faced the flames and answered.
"To fight."
And the resolve in that voice was bright and clear.
Feeling the weight of her duty, having finally felt empathy with Aslan, the girl's voice was heavy.
The same feeling Aslan carried.
As that feeling took the shape of a voice and flowed outward, a warm wind blew in.
The wind coiled around Fay, and something invisible rose before her eyes.
[Fay]
[Level: 5]
[Remaining Points: 12]
[Strength 2] [Agility 7] [Health 2]
[Magic Power 1] [Fighting Spirit 2] [Luck 5]
*
KWAAAAAAANG!
A deafening roar. A wave of heat that swept the surroundings. The enormous plasma crashing down was, in a word, an attack out of nowhere.
Even Ereta would have burned through most of her divinity if it struck her directly. Even Angie's exceptional Health could not have endured it.
It was far too massive and powerful to deflect with Richard's Compliance, and because it was not a purely physical attack, even that would not have worked properly.
The sole reason the party survived was a single man's actions.
First, Domination. He shaped a cage with telekinesis. It would not hold, but simply trapping the plasma so it could not escape would be enough.
Having made the cage, he focused all the plasma onto himself.
Next came the counter. Aslan wrapped his hand around the Dragon-king's arm.
Recalling the Dragon-king spewing plasma with its breath, it stood to reason that this plasma could not melt the Dragon-king's arm.
Then he could block it. Aslan threw his fist forward.
KUGUGUGUGUGUGUGU!
Colossal flames roared outward, and his companions were hurled away. The plasma sweeping the ground scorched the earth and built a second cage outside the first.
The cage of telekinesis shattered in an instant.
In that brief moment while his companions were blown back, what protected Aslan's body was a skill he deployed on pure instinct: Thunder Call.
A crash of thunder buried within the violent detonation.
The accompanying shockwave diminished and dispersed the plasma's force just enough to preserve his body.
This was, in a sense, the best move Aslan could make.
Among his available options, it was arguably the only way to meet the attack head-on.
Even so, the damage was grievous. Yet the decision itself had been superb.
His skin was scorched and sloughing off, and his lungs, seared by the superheated air, produced a wet, hissing rasp with each breath. But his Flame Resistance, the Dragon-king's skin that had become his armor, and the regeneration from the Purity he had newly acquired let him endure.
As charred skin flaked away and new flesh grew in its place, he thought.
He doubted he would survive another plasma strike anywhere near intact.
He was not sure he could endure it as well as he had this time.
The moment Aslan's teal eyes turned toward the Chimera, it twisted its head and screamed.
"AAAAAAAH—!"
A rending female shriek. Then the Chimera flipped its body and plummeted straight toward him.
Its descent, bristling with dozens of plasma spears, looked less like a meteor and more like the sun itself being driven into the ground.
The objective was obvious. Annihilate Aslan.
Kill him first, in that fleeting window before his companions could close in.
The isolation would not last long, so the judgment was sound.
The Chimera had seized a clear opening to strike.
Aslan recognized that, clenched his teeth, and extended the Purity blade behind his body.
Gripping the long hilt with both hands and lowering his stance, he readied a counterattack.
Touch the plasma: instant death. Knock the plasma aside with Purity: grievous wounds. Then the dozens of spears coming behind would finish him.
Better, then, to accept a devastating wound and end it in a single blow.
The probability of success was low. But had he ever fought a battle where it was not?
Aslan, already resolving to use Equalization the instant the plasma cut him, and the Chimera streaking toward him—just as the gap was vanishing—
'What?'
He froze for a beat at the sight of a system window that suddenly flickered to life before his eyes.
The moment of confusion, the sudden shift of his pupils. The Chimera caught the sign and accelerated even harder.
The silhouette was now little more than a golden afterimage. The spears were leveled. Aslan did not look at them; he looked at what had appeared before his eyes.
Buffeted by the surging heat, he thought,
'Respond? Or...'
The hesitation ended. Aslan swept his hand through the air. The distance was gone. No more than two meters remained before impact.
Still, no impatience touched his expression.
Aslan's current level was 10.
The true boundary of the superhuman realm.
When Aslan gained a companion, that companion would be at level 5.
And when an NPC at level 1 became a level-5 companion, the stat points they received were 12.
He put 9 into Agility, and 3 into Health.
Under ordinary circumstances, that would not be an efficient allocation.
Those were stats suited to an evasion-based tank. Inadequate to resolve the situation now facing him.
To draw real efficiency from this distribution, the recipient needed to be one of two things.
A warrior with a Perfect Body, already possessing both high Strength and high Agility.
Or an Elf.
An Elf, who could substitute the Agility stat for Strength.
And because of that, Aslan's choice was the right one.
SHIEEEEK!
A sound like something piercing the air at blinding speed. A blood-red bolt of lightning tearing through the sound barrier. Before the Chimera's spearhead could pierce Aslan, that lightning twisted its body and swung its swords in a single motion.
CLANG-KAGAGAGAGANG!
An onslaught that left no time even to draw breath. A flurry of strikes hammered the plasma-wielding arm aside, carved through the chest armor, bit into the waist, raked the nape, battered the head.
A blistering assault that gave the Chimera no chance to even register its movements, let alone to parry, knock aside, or press the thrust toward Aslan.
The speed was absolute.
Faster than Angie, who through a Perfect Body had attained speed equivalent to Agility 15.
The blade raked the Chimera; the Chimera twisted to track it. The instant it tried to redirect the spearhead, the spinning halted.
A spray of brilliant sparks. Rent armor.
Before the Chimera could even scream, after a number of slashes that sounded like a single stroke, Fay stopped spinning and whipped her body around into a kick.
CRACK—WHUMP!
The accelerated kick smashed squarely into its head. The Chimera's neck bent and its body was hurled backward.
Thud. Thud. CRASSSSH!
It slammed into an ancient tree, snapped it, and only then stopped.
Amid the rising dust, a girl stood tall in the very spot where the Chimera had lunged.
People called her this:
The Fighting Elf.
Master of the Sword.
Fay.
Fay, who had at last become Aslan's true companion, had crossed beyond the superhuman boundary to become the first being to reach the semi-divine realm without ever touching an Evil God.
And Fay, possessing a demigod's speed, struck her two sword blades together.
CLANG!
Between the ringing steel, Dawn and Twilight kindled into flame, and the Elf's lips curled faintly upward.