The Elf Princess and the Elixir
I carefully buried my agitation and opened my mouth with forced calm.
“I didn’t expect a tail to be following me.”
“Why the sudden formal speech? You were talking plenty casual when you wiped those guys out a second ago.”
A mischievous smile gleamed as her half-lidded purple eyes fixed on me.
I’d felt it even looking at her game illustration, but up close the decadent impression was no joke.
Elf princess Jerie Beloborg.
Possessor of a mythic Gift favored by all living things, and the hollow figurehead of the elven forces that had slipped into Arca.
“No need to get scared. Honestly, it’s a little weird watching a guy who just casually murdered a bunch of people get spooked by this much.”
Jerie’s gaze flicked past my shoulder.
Corpses lay piled there, bodies pierced and severed in places by rock spikes and blades that had erupted from the earth.
She stared at that gruesome scene for a few seconds, then wrinkled her nose as if the stench of blood offended her and gave a light wave of her hand.
“It reeks.”
Krrrk.
It was the same careless motion a person might make when brushing cigarette smoke away from their face. But unlike a smell that refused to scatter, the source of the reek was tidied away with that simple gesture.
I glanced back. The corpses were already being dragged underground.
Tree roots that had sprouted at some point were lashing the bodies and rock spikes together, yanking them down into the soil.
“Cleanup should be thorough, right?”
“Haha. I was about to handle it myself, actually.”
Jerie’s unreadable eyes stared straight at me.
I kept up the nonchalant banter as best I could, but inside I was wound tight.
I’d planned to meet Jerie eventually—just not this soon.
I couldn’t even begin to guess from where she’d erased her presence and started trailing me.
“You clearly don’t look like someone from the back alleys, so why come all the way out here in the dead of night just to cause this kind of mess?”
Jerie’s eyes curved into crescents.
Her teasing mouth kept twitching as she fired off question after question, clearly savoring my discomfort.
“Hmm? You’ve gone quiet. Are you the type who freezes up in front of a girl?”
Giggling, she stretched out her index finger.
That pure white, slender fingertip touched near my solar plexus and stroked upward with a softness that seemed to whisper there was no hostility here.
Immediately, tree roots burst from the ground.
They bound my feet, climbed my body, and locked me in place.
Watching me freeze completely, Jerie let out a low hum.
“Hnn.”
“You’re a mischievous one.”
I gave a short snort of laughter and met her gaze head-on.
She held my eyes for a moment, then suddenly burst out laughing.
“You’re not actually scared of me, are you?”
The sly expression vanished. Only a faint spark of interest remained on her lips as she chattered on.
“You’re tense looking at me, sure—but you’ve still got room to breathe.”
People who react like that usually fall into one of two categories, she muttered, and then she simply threw her arms around me.
In an instant the distance collapsed until we could feel each other’s breath.
With a half-head difference in height, Jerie looped her arms around my neck and clung to me, looking up into my face.
“Someone whose carefully laid plans just went sideways. Someone fretting over a future that’s about to get annoying.”
As if demanding I grade her deduction, she tightened the arms around my neck and pressed her face closer.
Soft warmth and a sweet scent of skin rolled over me, but Jerie only kept that mischievous smile, as if she were deliberately trying to rattle me with it.
“Am I wrong?”
She asked from a distance where our noses nearly brushed.
I could no longer hide behind silence. I laughed helplessly and wiggled my fingers.
At least let go of my arms.
“As expected, I can’t fool Your Highness.”
“……Wait. What did you just say?”
I was completely bound, yet the emotion that rose in Jerie’s eyes as she looked at me was pure wariness.
The sharp, honed presence that slammed into me made it impossible to find any trace of the playful girl from a moment earlier—as if demanding to know how I knew that.
“You. How do you know that?”
The roots constricting my body tightened further.
They didn’t stop there; several more tendrils sprouted and writhed as if ready to skewer me.
I didn’t flinch.
Just as Jerie had said earlier, I felt no fear of her at all.
“Answer me.”
Her face had gone hard as she forced the demand.
I only looked at her with a faint smile.
So a promising sapling really is different from the start, huh?
Her situational awareness and response were impressive enough to draw genuine admiration.
Yes, things had gone sideways and left me in a bind.
Yes, I was worried about a future that would get troublesome.
Reading my thoughts in an instant and pinning them down so precisely—Jerie truly deserved to be called a princess.
That’s why those elven supremacist elders overlooked the fact she’s a half-elf and pushed her into the role of princess.
But there was no real problem.
I knew the situation she was trapped in. I knew what she wanted. And I had both the ability and the method to grant it.
Jerie was a princess born with the qualities of a king and elevated against her will.
At the same time, she was a half-elf who rejected the throne and dreamed of ordinary life.
“I just happen to know a lot of different things.”
The foundation of negotiation is knowing the other party’s lack.
If that lack is something I can fill, even better.
But there was no need to lay the whole board out yet.
“Anyway, it’s getting late. Shall we call it a night?”
“And why would I do that?”
“Because if those old men find out their princess had a midnight tryst with some random man, more than a few of them will raise hell.”
Jerie’s brow twitched.
She’d clearly realized that my “old men” was a dig at the elven elders who had elevated her.
“Also, the blood’s starting to cut off, so I’m going to free myself now.”
“What?”
The moment Jerie voiced her confusion, alchemy activated.
The roots binding me crumbled into sawdust and scattered in an instant. The sharp tendrils that had been threatening me suffered the same fate.
The second I broke free and regained my freedom, Jerie flinched hard and put distance between us.
Normally she would have counterattacked or pressed me immediately, but seeing the wood that had been touching my body disintegrate must have made her leap back on pure instinct.
“……Alchemy.”
A wise call, of course.
The standard way to deal with an alchemist was to open distance and overwhelm them with one-sided firepower.
“I thought you could only use earth and stone type alchemy. You can transmute wood too?”
“I do consider myself the world’s greatest alchemist, after all.”
After that brief exchange, Jerie let out a hollow laugh.
“Arrogant.”
“It’s just the truth.”
A night wind brushed across my skin.
The weather had grown cold, and the atmosphere colder still.
It was time to end this meeting.
“For now, all you need to know is that I’m on Your Highness’s side.”
“You expect me to take the word of someone as suspicious as you at face value?”
Jerie refused to drop her suspicion to the end.
Well, if she simply accepted it in this situation, that would be its own problem.
“Can’t be helped. Then consider this a freebie and take one piece of information.”
I pretended reluctance and cut loose a fragment of the information she needed most.
The reason Jerie was so tightly bound by the elven elders and forced to waste time in places like this was entirely because those elders held her only weakness.
“The method to create an Elixir.”
“……?!”
A storm of emotions crossed Jerie’s face in an instant.
Most of it was shock and astonishment frozen on her rigid features and trembling lips—but her half-lidded eyes flew wide open, and those violet irises told me everything.
She had found hope in my words.
“I know how to make an Elixir. And if I have the materials, I can craft one right this moment.”
Immediately, tree roots charged in from every direction, saturated with mana.
I could feel the desperate resolve writhing through them, determined to seize me by any means.
Of course she was desperate.
It was the means to save her only family.
The reward those elders she wanted to tear apart had dangled before her—one she could never refuse.
I calmly disassembled the surging roots one by one while speaking to her.
“I’ll say this first: capturing me by force won’t get you anything.”
At that, every root froze as if the earlier frenzy had never happened.
Through the chaotic tangle of trunks and branches, Jerie approached slowly.
“……What do you want?”
“I don’t particularly want anything. Your happiness is enough.”
My answer twisted her expression.
It wasn’t anger so much as a look that demanded to know what kind of nonsense I was spouting.
“……Not that you’d believe me even if I said that, right?”
“Obviously.”
“I’m serious, though.”
This game had far more tragic stories than expected—dark fantasy levels of misery.
Half the character narratives ended in sorrowful conclusions.
And I didn’t particularly like those stories.
Tragic, cruel tales belonged to villains who deserved them. I could never understand why perfectly good people had to thrash in agony and die.
Charlotte was one. Jerie was another.
Starting with the two I could meet right away, I intended to rewrite the tragic futures of many characters, one by one.
I couldn’t stand watching people I cared about and cherished fall apart.
“Anyway, take this.”
I laid a hand on one of the roots Jerie had grown, transmuted a portion of it with alchemy, and pulled it free.
A sheet of white paper covered in black writing.
When she accepted it, Jerie’s expression grew complicated.
“This is……”
“The address of the house where I live.”
The moment I mentioned the Elixir, I was certain Jerie would not attack me.
So I needed to show goodwill like this and win over this suspicious, guarded hedgehog of a princess.
Exposing my residence without preparation was normally a foolish move, but in the present situation this approach was actually better.
Those old elves will never dare storm my house in person.
If the elven supremacists wanted to rebuild an elven nation, there was only one path.
Prepare endlessly, then raise a rebellion against Hwan-guk.
Like any rebellion, they would get only one chance. Fail, and history would record them as nothing more than the bungled scheme of a pack of fools.
If their existence and plans ever leak, everything becomes dust.
A rebellion dies the moment information leaks.
Naturally those self-proclaimed elven elders kept their own bodies carefully hidden, repeating only filthy, underhanded backroom schemes while they waited for the perfect opportunity.
They don’t have the guts to attack an Origin Academy instructor—especially not at his private residence.
And if those old geezers were crazy enough to try, that would actually be ideal.
I was confident I could face every elven elder alone, and I could also slam out emergency requests to the Security Bureau and the other instructors and uproot them completely.
Crushing a nation’s rebel faction would provide more than enough justification, diplomatically and morally.
So realistically, all they can do is watch from a distance or send people in secret.
Annoying, maybe, but that much I could handle easily.
“I might not be home sometimes, but feel free to drop by whenever.”
Leaving room for possibility tonight was enough.
If she simply understood that I could become her ally at any moment, my small goal for the night was achieved.
However.
“Then right now is fine too, yeah?”
“……Excuse me?”
“Let’s go to your place. While we’re at it, I might as well stir those old farts up a little.”
That, I hadn’t expected.