Chapter 57. Encounter with Elves.
Chapter 57. Encounter with Elves.
I've probably gone over whether to tell them the honest truth about this about fifty thousand times in my head... but you never know what might happen, and I figured it was better to just come clean now rather than have it blow up later.
"A long time ago... I received help from them."
For some reason, the moment I said I'd received help, everyone in the group looked surprised. The old man spoke up, sounding like he couldn't quite believe it.
"You? Received help?"
"I'd been doing every dirty job you can imagine just to survive—wars, duels, assassinations—and it was wearing me down mentally. No matter how many villains I killed, no matter how I rationalized it to myself, I couldn't escape the accumulated stress."
"I suppose that makes sense... It's not for nothing that war veterans suffer from PTSD..."
"Even when death becomes incredibly common, you never truly get used to it. You just go numb. Then one day, I took on an escort request for a merchant company. Hmm... by today's terms, I guess you'd call it a mission to guard an armored cash transport vehicle?"
* * * * * * * *
Back then, I had no precise idea how much time had passed since I'd arrived on Titan. How many cycles had turned—children born, growing old, and dying of age...?
Those who reach the realm of a Master usually age very slowly. Even when they grew old and died, I still kept the appearance of a man in his twenties. The rulers of every nation sought to capture me, all for the sake of the immortality and eternal youth any human would covet. But I cut them down too, and in the end, I survived.
In the end, they were the ones who wore out first. That was how the epithet "Immortal" became attached to my name, and my fame resounded across the whole continent. At the same time, requests poured in. Not long after that, I received the merchant company escort request. It seemed simple enough.
[Merchant Company Escort Request]
- Escort the merchant company safely to its destination.
- Do not attempt to discover what is being escorted; you must not know.
- Escort personnel limited to two.
- For secrecy and security, a hidden route will be used, and half the request fee will be paid in advance.
'Must be something valuable. Well, the conditions are a little unusual, but nothing that strange. The pay's good, too.'
When I met the client and began the escort, my impression was that he had a very kind face, made sure we ate properly, and was generally thoughtful. And sure enough, the cargo must have been truly important, because the head of the merchant company was personally participating, taking on the role of the coachman.
The other man was a fellow well known as a human butcher. His skills were decent enough, but I'd heard his character was trash.
Along the way, the two of them chattered away merrily. Of course, the company head just chuckled along, offering nothing more than the occasional word of agreement to the man's stories.
As if mocking the smooth progress of the escort, men with their faces covered by cloth hoods ambushed us. The peculiar thing was that they only demanded we leave the goods behind. From the company head's perspective, the cargo was far too important—negotiations broke down instantly.
"Vile, selfish, arrogant humans... How dare you do this to our brethren and our princess...!"
The company head hastily shouted over them, his kindly expression twisting into something vicious as he ordered us to kill every last one of them.
For reasons I didn't understand, I didn't want to follow the order. So I just stood there, staring. Looking back on it now, it was behavior that would have left me with no excuse if I'd been expelled from the mercenary guild. What kind of insane mercenary refuses a direct order from his employer?
And to be honest, I felt no killing intent from the arrows the attackers were firing or the swords slicing through the air. I simply blocked them just enough to hold them off and kept watching the situation. The attackers must have sensed I was going easy on them, because they stopped attacking, and we ended up in a standoff.
Of course, the human butcher was still going at it, fighting tooth and nail with the attackers. He was supposed to be fairly skilled, and his fists were certainly doing the talking.
"Kill those bastards, all of them, right now! You took the money, so do your gods-damned job!!!"
"Hey, pal!!! What the hell are you standing around gawking for? Fucking hell, I can't handle this alone!!!"
He was decent with his fists, but numbers win against any single fighter, and in the end, he took several arrows to the body before a sword pierced his heart and killed him.
"H-hey, you...! I'll report every last thing you've done to the guild and have you expelled...!"
"If you die here, who's going to file that report to the guild? Are these attackers going to do it?"
My reply made it clear I had absolutely no intention of helping. His pupils shook violently, and then he clenched his fists, trembling with rage. And then, suddenly, he went into the carriage.
Inside, a girl who looked barely middle-school age was bound in chains. He held a knife to her throat and tried to threaten the attackers, but the girl wasn't human—she was an elf. And to prove he wasn't bluffing, he drew the blade very lightly across her throat, and a trickle of blood seeped out.
'A slaver planning to sell off an elf, were you... So these attackers must be other elves who came to rescue them.'
"If you want this bitch to live, drop your weapons, all of you! Once I've secured safe passage to the castle's main gate, I'll release her!"
The sight of the man holding a child hostage suddenly made revulsion boil up inside me. In the end, the company head, who'd been doing nothing but shrieking, died with a hole through the back of his skull from my blade.
The elves were wary of me, but when I remained still, they began freeing the others from the carriage, aside from the young girl I'd seen earlier.
"It's strange for me, who attacked a human, to ask this, but wasn't he your comrade? Why did you do that?"
"I don't know either..."
I let out a sigh, brooding over how to settle this mess, and turned to leave. At that moment, the young elf girl I'd just saved grabbed the collar of my clothes, on the verge of tears.
"...?"
For a while, I just stared at the young elf without a word. She stared right back, as if refusing to back down.
"Let go."
The girl shook her head and wouldn't release my collar. If anything, the other elves were the ones looking on in surprise, murmuring among themselves. Then the one who seemed to be their leader spoke to me.
"Human, if you've nowhere to go, will you come with us?"
"Captain...! He's a human!"
"How can you suggest bringing a human into our forest..."
"All of you, be quiet!!"
I'd heard elves hated humans, but now one was asking me to come with them. Could it be because I'd saved this girl?
"Saving this child makes me look like a good person to you?"
"I am not trusting you. I am trusting the princess. Those of high elven blood are born with eyes that can distinguish the righteous from the wicked. And besides, going back after this would be troublesome for you too, wouldn't it?"
The elf surveyed our surroundings and smiled as she spoke to me. She was right; returning would invite all sorts of annoyances. So I followed her. If I'm being honest now, my mindset at the time was largely that I didn't care if a few hundred of those ragtag fools came after me. As expected, my arrival caused quite a commotion.
As a little more time passed, I received thanks from the girl's mother and lived among them, blending in. For about a year, I lived under their gazes, which were filled with disgust.
Then I spent another five years living with them, passing my days in a monotonous cycle of carrying out mercenary requests. The unexpected thing was that the requests I took on became a matter of incident cleanup. Fearing I'd be found out, I had deliberately magically disguised my appearance and operated under a different name, but it all became meaningless. And just like before, there wasn't a single day when my body wasn't slick with blood, hunting monsters or subjugating bandits.
Yet the girl I'd saved that day didn't mind in the slightest. She kept coming to find me and chattered away incessantly.
"Ahjussi, they say I'll become queen when I grow up, but what if there are too many bothersome things to deal with?"
"You little brat... the most bothersome thing right now is you..."
"Hey!! I'm not a little brat, I'm Adela, all right?"
The girl—no, Adela—came to find me almost daily and kept me company. Of course, whenever Adela ran her mouth, I gave her nothing but "Uh-huh" or "No," but she kept chattering on as if she didn't care at all.
Another ten years or so passed while I dealt with demon beasts in the Great Forest where the elves dwelled, and helped them in other ways. By then, everyone had accepted me as a brother and looked after me with goodwill. I didn't realize it at the time, but now that I think back, my spirit, which had always been worn down and slowly eroded from my solitary travels, was restored again thanks to them.
Adela came to find me again—by now, I'd have felt disappointed if she hadn't.
"You found me again today, little brat."
"Ahjussi, I keep telling you, I'm not a little brat, I'm Adela. Ah, anyway, Mother is calling for you."
As the years had passed, she'd matured, and her way of speaking had grown as gentle as her mother's.
"Lady Arwen is looking for me?"
She was Adela Avery's mother, the current ruler of the elves, Queen Arwen Avery. Occasionally she would come find me personally to share tea and keep me company, but it was extremely rare for her to summon me.
"I was told you were looking for me, Lady Arwen."
She smiled faintly and made a request of me.
"Sihu, my remaining lifespan is not long. When I return to the embrace of the World Tree, Yggdrasil, will you protect our Adela until she becomes queen?"
"Yes..."
"But do not worry too much. It is a short time by the reckoning of elves, though it is a long time for a human."
I made that promise with her, one that only the two of us knew, and several more decades flew past. During that time, I also experienced the deaths of elves who'd grown old. Unlike humans, they keep their youthful appearance until death. When their lifespan reaches its end, they simply close their eyes, lean against Yggdrasil and lie down, and gradually turn into particles of light and vanish. And once every ten years, we drink a cup of wine made from the collected fruit of the World Tree and remember them.
I witnessed such deaths of elves, guided others, hunted demon beasts directly alongside them, and even taught Adela the sword. One day, an elf I'd been instructing handed me a water flask made of leaves and spoke.
"Sihu, this must be a bother, but thank you, every time."
"It's nothing. If I stay still, my body just gets stiff anyway..."
The elf who spoke was the one I'd first met during that escort mission, named Dana Grace. She was, in her own right, the captain of a ranger unit.
I taught them and trained myself, and around that time, I had probably already surpassed the realm of Grandmaster. I hadn't yet achieved full transcendence, but I had attained a faint measure of divine authority.
And so we passed the days, exchanging greetings, asking after one another, sharing meals. Enough time went by that the name "Immortal" in the human world was likely forgotten. Then, just when I was living fairly happily, the elven Great Forest was invaded by a kingdom.
And of all times, it happened when I'd accepted a request and was away.