The Heart of the Forest
Hah…….
She had cleared even the third trial this easily?
Skill of that caliber would be more than enough to throw straight into the war against the demonkin. No—more than that. Granting her the rank of a centurion who commanded the battlefield rather than a mere soldier would still feel like an understatement.
Elanus felt his heart hammering hard against his ribs.
Her archery is similar to ours… and yet entirely different.
Elven archery read the flow of nature through communion with the spirits, then layered technique atop that current. But the human girl’s bow possessed none of that process. It was as if she herself were a part of nature—every current of the forest already embodied in her instincts.
Where the wind would blow, where a leaf would fall, even which direction a worm would crawl beneath the soil—her movements already knew.
This was not communion or prediction.
It was simply… knowing.
Absolute law.
Why is the heart of the forest beating inside a human body instead of an elf’s?
While he stood there in a daze, an elf beside him whispered carefully.
“Elder, the fourth trial now…….”
“……Ah.”
Only then did Elanus snap back to himself. He swallowed dryly and spoke in a voice far more formal than before.
“Then we shall begin the fourth trial.”
Yes. He needed to keep his head clear. Her talent was undeniable, but stages up through the third still appeared often enough among the elves. The problem was the fourth.
A realm that, across the entire history of the forest, almost never appeared!
“The fourth is the Trial of Causality. Loose an arrow into the sky. When the first arrow begins to fall, shoot a second and intercept it in midair.”
The moment Elanus’s words fell, a murmur rippled through the hundreds of elves encircling the altar.
“Hah.”
“It’s been ages since anyone took the fourth.”
“Isn’t that something only the true masters of archery succeed at?”
“Even they need luck on their side.”
It was a domain no mere excellence with a bow could ever reach. The reasons the trial was so difficult were clear.
First: absolute mastery over the laws of physics. The time from the moment an arrow loosed skyward reached its apex until it began to fall again. In that fleeting span one had to calculate—without a single error—gravity, air resistance, the wind’s ever-shifting direction, even the minute spin produced by the fletching. Every variable, simultaneously.
Second: this was a battle against oneself. No moving target, no predictable enemy. The result one had created—the first arrow—had to be precisely destroyed by another cause: the second arrow. A trial of causality that demanded perfect grasp and control of every habit, every breath, every modulation of strength within the archer.
And last: an instant of timing. All that calculation and control had to be completed within a few scant seconds, and the string released at one perfect moment only.
“There’s no way she can succeed. No matter how gifted she is, there are human limits…….”
“In our entire history, those who passed the fourth can be counted on one hand. That child will fail.”
The elves’ whispers no longer carried wariness; they mixed pity for an impossible challenge with cold prediction.
But the reaction of Kang Si-a, standing at the center of all that noise, was unexpected.
This?
She tilted her head inwardly.
I used to do this all the time whenever I got bored.
It was a training method she had invented alone during her athlete-village days, designed to hone extreme focus. In the empty training ground at dawn she would often amuse herself by striking a coin floating in midair or splitting an arrow she herself had just loosed with a second one.
To her this was not a trial. It was a familiar game.
Swish.
Kang Si-a did not hesitate. She drew two arrows. One she nocked; the other she held ready in her hand for an immediate second shot.
Been a while.
Creeeak—!
The string, with the first arrow nocked, drew taut. She aimed at a single cloud high above.
“She’s going……!”
Someone sucked in a sharp breath.
Twang—!
With a clear, ringing note the first arrow streaked upward in a clean parabola toward the blue sky. In an instant it became a tiny black speck and seemed to vanish from sight.
Every elven gaze locked onto the heavens.
When would it fall?
Where would it fall?
While they waited, tense, Kang Si-a had already nocked the second arrow. She did not look at the sky. She simply closed her eyes and poured every nerve into the song of the wind, the tremble of the air.
About now?
The faint sound of the first arrow beginning its descent, pulled by gravity. The trajectory as it sliced through the air drew itself in her mind as a vivid line.
At the same instant her instinct shouted.
Now!
Her eyes snapped open.
Fweeeeeee—!
The second arrow left the string with a far sharper, faster scream than the first.
Two arrows.
The cause that had soared into the sky, and the effect that chased after it.
Two points seemed to meet at a single place in empty air—
Crack!
A crisp shattering sound, and the first arrow split cleanly in two. Twin wooden shards drifted down, limp and powerless, to the ground.
“…….”
Silence.
Only a choking stillness hung over the altar. Hundreds of elves merely glanced back and forth between the split arrow fragments and Kang Si-a, as if they could not yet comprehend what they had just witnessed.
“I-Impossible…….”
“In a single try……?”
“She didn’t even look at the sky……!”
Elanus felt gooseflesh rise over his entire body. With a trembling hand he touched his own jaw.
That was not technique.
It was a realm bordering on blasphemy.
If a god of the bow existed, that was exactly how it would look.
Give that woman a proper bow and she could wipe out at least one demon brigade by herself!
While Elanus’s chest filled with hot exhilaration—
“Whoa…….”
“Insane.”
“Seriously…… how the hell did she do that? We knew Si-a could shoot, but…….”
“There’s a reason she’s a gold medalist, right, noona?”
“No, that wasn’t gold-medalist level.”
The party members looked at Kang Si-a with new eyes. Even as fellow climbers the level of mastery inspired awe; now they thought they understood why their leader Hyun Si-woon placed such particular trust in her above the others.
And most of all—
Baek Yeon-ho was the most shocked, and the reason was none other than Kenzo.
— Khhngh. That girl is no ordinary talent. With senses like that she wouldn’t be out of place even against the archer Rankers I faced in my prime. Remarkable potential.
A Ranker is acknowledging her?
— Obviously I don’t mean her current power is Ranker-level. But her potential alone is outstanding. Honestly, even I’m left speechless right now.
Kenzo was flabbergasted. How long had it been since his seal was broken, and already he had witnessed two scenes that defied common sense?
The first, of course, was that unidentifiable leader named Hyun Si-woon—the bastard who had dredged up a trauma Kenzo wanted to forget and finished establishing the pecking order. Even accounting for the madwoman Ha-wol standing behind him, the man himself was no ordinary monster.
And now this girl.
— What kind of climbing party is stuffed with this many freaks?
…….
Baek Yeon-ho could say nothing. The team he belonged to was being judged a gathering of monsters even by a Ranker like Kenzo. Pride welled up, yet a strange sense of crisis accompanied it.
— Listen carefully, rookie.
Kenzo’s voice dropped low.
— If you want to walk shoulder to shoulder with freaks like that…… no, even just to trail behind them, you’ll need to train a hundred times, no, a thousand times harder than you do now. If you stand around half-assed with a shield, one day you won’t keep up with their speed and you’ll be left behind. I’ve watched that happen more times than I can count.
It was not simple scolding. It was the cold, clear-eyed realism of a Ranker who had survived countless battlefields.
Baek Yeon-ho clenched his fist tight. Kenzo’s words struck bone.
Left behind, huh…….
That was the word he feared most. The responsibility of never becoming a burden to Hyun Si-woon—that had been the driving force that moved him until now.
No. Never. That can’t happen.
Just as Baek Yeon-ho was steeling himself—
“……Hah.”
A near-laugh of pure admiration burst from Elanus’s lips. He could no longer regard that human girl as an outsider.
That was talent chosen by the forest itself—something that could not be measured by the standards of the elven race.
He stepped forward and spoke with a formality incomparable to anything before.
“By our tribe’s tradition, simply passing the fourth trial would already fully qualify you to receive the treasured bow.”
At Elanus’s declaration the surrounding elves stirred once more. It amounted to recognizing Kang Si-a not as an outsider, but as a hero of the forest.
Yet his words did not end there. His deep, clear eyes fixed straight on her. In that gaze lay reverence and an irrepressible expectation.
“But…… with you, it may just be possible.”
He drew a brief breath. The air above the altar grew heavier still.
“You are granted the right to attempt the final, fifth trial. For reference, however…….”
Elanus’s voice dropped another degree.
“In the past several thousand years, throughout the entire history of our forest, only one person has ever passed the fifth stage.”
“Only one?”
“Yes. The great Founding Queen who united our elven race and raised this very Sylvanus—Lady Vilsana alone.”
Legend.
It was no longer a trial but a story belonging to the realm of myth—an impossibly distant past that even Elanus, who had lived for hundreds of years, had never witnessed himself, known only through records.
He asked Kang Si-a once more.
“Will you challenge it?”
It was not Kang Si-a who answered.
“Hold on a second!”
Baek Yeon-ho cried out urgently and stepped forward.
“That trial—is it dangerous?”
At the words “only the Founding Queen passed it,” every gruesome possibility flashed through his mind. Not a simple archery test, but something that might demand a life.
But Elanus shook his head.
“There is no danger to life. However…….”
His gaze deepened.
“From the perspective of the one taking the trial, it may feel extremely hollow.”
At the same time that gaze pointed toward the empty air at the center of the altar—nothing at all.
“Then I shall explain the fifth trial. Shoot the heart of the forest, right now. The heart of the forest is…… a target visible only to those the forest itself has acknowledged. Legend says that the moment that target is struck, the entirety of Eldona Forest itself begins to shine. I grant you exactly one hour. Fail to hit it within that time and you fail.”
“……?”
When the explanation ended, a strange silence settled for a moment.
What kind of nonsense is this?
Did I hear that right?
Shoot an invisible target? No— the target itself is only visible to those the forest acknowledges?
What kind of cloud-chasing nonsense was that?
The party members were left speechless. In the end it meant everything depended not on the shooter’s skill but on the forest’s selection…….
Wasn’t this a trial that was impossible to pass from the very start?