The Ghost of the Great Forest
Watching the abnormal Gate take shape, it was clearly an Alien-type Gate. If it had been an Erosion-type, the surrounding environment would have already begun to warp, and if it were a standard Dungeon-type, the interior would have been completely obscured from view.
"An Alien-type!" Seohui blurted out, having noticed it immediately.
But more importantly, the scenery shimmering within the portal was far too familiar. Before I even realized what I was doing, my feet were moving toward it.
"Nix! Are you crazy?!" Seohui grabbed me, pulling me back.
"Ah..." I blinked, snapping out of it. What am I doing? "I... I think I recognize that place."
"What? Even so, you can't go in. We have to wait for the investigation team."
"Then, do you want to go in together?"
"That's..." Seohui hesitated. Honestly, bringing her with me seemed like the safer bet.
"No, we still can't. When a new Gate manifests, protocol dictates we wait until the government investigators and official hunters arrive."
Surely just a quick peek would be fine?
"I've already contacted them, so they should be here in an hour. Two hours at the absolute latest."
Two hours... That was more than enough time for me to slip inside, confirm my suspicions, and come back out. Now that the call had been made, the countdown had officially begun. Which meant...
"Sorry..."
"Nix!"
Ignoring Seohui's shout, I shook off her hand and leaped straight into the Gate. My intuition was screaming at me, ringing alarm bells in my head. If that scenery was what I thought it was, I had to confirm it with my own eyes. I plunged through the portal...
The moment I crossed the threshold, a wave of remarkably crisp, cool air washed over me.
"It really is..." It was exactly as I remembered.
"The Great Forest..." The sacred territory of the Elves in the Other World... a land once conquered by the demon army... and the wretched place where countless traitors had made their home.
As if to prove my realization, a dark, damp, and utterly repulsive energy lurked beneath the deceptively fresh air. It was Magi, the very corruption that had polluted these woods.
"Why is this place here...?" Why has the forest I personally burned to ashes manifested as a Gate on Earth? The Great Forest was a region the Hero and I, along with our party, had subjugated during my seventh year in the Other World.
It had once been the sacred homeland of the Elves, but as humanity suffered defeat after defeat under the relentless onslaught of the demon army, the territory was eventually surrendered. During that dark era, the Elves residing there fractured into several bitter factions.
If one were to simplify those numerous factions, they boiled down to two main groups: those who chose to submit to the demons to preserve their lives and remain in their sacred forest, and those who abandoned their homeland to fight alongside humanity.
Eina, the ranger of our Hero's party, had been an Elf of the latter faction.
Elves were a long-lived race blessed with an exceptionally high affinity for magic and outstanding natural abilities. Yet, as is often the case with long-lived species, they possessed a few glaring flaws—the most prominent being their insufferable pride.
They refused to bow their heads or cooperate with short-lived humans, viewing them as lesser beings. Relations between Elves and humans had never been particularly warm to begin with, but when the demon army launched its invasion of the Great Forest, the situation deteriorated rapidly.
The war against the demons was a grueling conflict that had dragged on for over a century. It was a miracle humanity had managed to endure for so long, but the sheer length of the war meant that every single race had suffered devastating losses.
The Elves had actually suffered the least amount of damage, partly due to their individual strength, but mostly because they stubbornly refused to leave their borders. They adhered to a strict isolationist doctrine, believing that as long as they huddled together and defended their sacred forest, the rest of the world could burn.
They looked down on humans, completely indifferent to whatever horrific fate befell the rest of the world.
But their arrogance backfired. The demons eventually launched a full-scale invasion of the Great Forest, and humanity—already harboring deep resentment toward the isolationist Elves—refused to send reinforcements. In truth, human nations were far too busy nursing their own wounds to spare any soldiers anyway.
Consequently, the Elves lost their beloved Great Forest to the demon army. This fall occurred several decades before I was ever summoned to that world, and it was during this catastrophe that the Elves split down the middle.
While some fled to human territories to join the resistance, others chose the path of betrayal, bowing down to the demons in a desperate, pathetic bid to remain in their sacred forest.
Leveraging their high magical affinity, these traitors willingly absorbed Magi—the corruptive source of demon power—and mutated. The Elves who embraced this dark energy were twisted into entirely new, monstrous entities. Thus, the Dark Elves were born.
In any case, the Elven race split, sparking a brutal civil war between the remaining Elves and the newly formed Dark Elves. Of course, the Dark Elves fought humanity as well. I had clashed with them more times than I cared to count.
Back then, before humanity could even light the beacon of a counteroffensive, we were constantly pushed back. But with my arrival and the summoning of the Hero, the tides finally turned. Humanity's grand counterattack began, and we slowly reclaimed our lost territories.
Naturally, the Great Forest was on the list of lands to reclaim. However, the forest had been so deeply corrupted by Magi that it could never serve as a sacred sanctuary again. Even the World Tree—the heart of their civilization—had been thoroughly tainted, reduced to a grotesque, rotting monument of demonic energy. Upon seeing its tragic state, even the surviving Elves wept and abandoned all hope of reclaiming their homeland.
Clearing that forest had been an absolute nightmare. The Dark Elves, fanatically obsessed with defending their corrupted sanctuary, threw themselves at us in endless, suicidal waves.
We eventually drove them out and reclaimed the Great Forest, but the land was already dead. Agreeing with the Elves' consensus that the corrupted forest could not be left to fester, we burned the entire place down. We scorched it so thoroughly that literally not a single speck of ash was left behind.
Yet here it was. The Great Forest, which should have been nothing but a barren wasteland of ash, was flourishing right before my eyes. How on earth? Why...? A profound sense of bewilderment washed over me.
Suddenly, a sharp whistle cut through the air. Spotting an arrow flying straight at my face, I instinctively raised a barrier to deflect it.
"Nix!" Seohui, who had slipped into the Gate right behind me, immediately dropped into a combat stance.
"Seohui? What are you doing here?"
"What, did you think I'd just let you run in here alone?!"
Well... Sigh. A massive headache began to bloom behind my temples as the situation rapidly spiraled out of control.
"Let's fall back," Seohui urged. "Monsters can't cross over the Gate's threshold anyway, right?"
"If we were just going to turn back, you shouldn't have jumped in here in the first place!" Seohui yelled. Even as she scolded me, shadows began to flicker between the ancient trees. The Dark Elves were closing in.
Thanks to my unnaturally sharp senses, their hushed whispers carried clearly to my ears.
"The Massacre Saintess has returned."
"The demon who burned our sacred forest is here!"
"Summon the warriors!"
"We must defend the sanctuary this time!"
It was the language of the Other World. Ha... to think I'd hear those harsh syllables again after a whole year. A cold shiver ran down my spine. But I didn't have the luxury of standing there in shock.
Wait, is the inside of this Gate actually connected to the Other World? If so, does that mean the Hero or my former comrades could suddenly walk out of the brush? No, my gut told me that wasn't the case. Regardless, dealing with these wretched, corrupted creatures took priority.
Before we retreated, I needed to leave them a little parting gift. I channeled my Holy Power, converting the raw divine energy into pure heat. This was different from a simple Holy Light. This was Sacred Fire—the divine flame that consumed all evil. It was a miraculous fire that ordinary priests and priestesses could never hope to manifest.
Seohui flinched as she caught sight of the brilliant white flame suddenly roaring to life in my palm.
"I'm going to throw this, and then we run."
"Right, got it..."
I thrust my left hand toward the canopy. The white flame flared violently, expanding into a massive sphere of blinding light. With a flick of my wrist, I hurled the miniature sun deep into the woods, grabbing Seohui and diving back through the Gate in the very same breath.
Peering back through the shimmering surface of the portal, I caught a glimpse of the aftermath. The forest was catching fire beautifully. It was burning with a spectacular, roaring intensity that would have made the Battle of Yiling look like a campfire.
"Alright, Nix. What was that all about?"
Seohui seemed to have regained her composure, likely because we were back in the safety of the real world.
"Well..." I glanced over to check on Ah-young and Gyuri. They were currently busy keeping a growing crowd of curious onlookers from approaching the perimeter. At this distance, they wouldn't be able to overhear us.
"I recognized the place inside the Gate. It's a region from the Other World, so I had to check."
"What do you mean...?"
"I don't know either." I wasn't just trying to brush her off; I was genuinely baffled myself. "I don't understand how this is possible."
"It can't be directly connected to the world I left behind. Because that forest... the Hero and I burned it to the ground."
The Elves themselves had estimated it would take at least fifty years of constant magic for the land to even begin to recover. Yet, the Great Forest had just appeared before us, completely intact.
"And the enemies lurking inside are Dark Elves."
"Elves...?"
"They're incredibly agile, possess a massive affinity for magic, and are highly skilled spellcasters."
To make matters worse, the Magi corrupting their bodies had twisted their minds, making them exceptionally violent and sadistic.
"They are incredibly dangerous. If the government sends in an ordinary investigation team without proper preparation, it'll be a massacre."
"Are you serious...?"
"Yes. They shot an arrow at us the second we stepped in. There's no doubt about it."
Seohui bit her lip, deep in thought, before pulling out her phone to make another call.
"I've requested emergency backup from the guild," she said, hanging up. "Min-hyung said he's coming himself."
The Rank 1 S-class hunter, Namgung Min... I guess I was finally going to meet him.
"Good. That was the right call."
We decided to wait by the perimeter until the government officials arrived. Meanwhile, my mind raced as I tried to make sense of the situation. Why the Great Forest, of all places...?
"Is... is it really that dangerous?" Seohui asked, her voice laced with concern.
"Yes. The entire region, including the World Tree at its center, is heavily saturated with Magi. It requires complete purification."
And "purification" was no simple task. It meant completely eradicating every single living thing within that space. If even a fraction of the corruption remained, the tainted World Tree would simply pump out more Magi, re-polluting the entire area. There was a damn good reason the Hero and I had burned the forest to ash in the Other World.
Sigh. My head throbbed. The fact that those wretched traitors had manifested along with the forest made things infinitely worse. During the original campaign, both the human coalition and the allied Elves had suffered catastrophic casualties.
The Dark Elves fought with a suicidal, fanatical frenzy, rendering conventional military tactics useless. Worse, the Magi they had absorbed made them physically and magically far superior to normal Elves.
It was only after the Hero's party managed to pierce through their lines, burn down the World Tree to weaken the Dark Elves' source of power, and incinerate the entire disadvantageous forest terrain that we finally secured a pyrrhic victory.
"A forest is an incredibly difficult battlefield to navigate."
"I know," Seohui agreed. "Forest dungeons are always a nightmare."
"Their specialty is using the dense canopy to move completely undetected and launch sudden ambushes."
And these weren't simple arrow volleys; they utilized complex magical traps, curses, and coordinated spells. Back then, our party had only managed to break through because our mage, Liselotte, used her overwhelming firepower to clear paths, while I maintained absolute defensive barriers, and Eina used her divine archery to snipe the hidden ambushers before they could strike. But could Earth's hunters pull off a similar strategy here? I highly doubted it.
I looked up at the Gate again. Through the shimmering portal, I could see the brilliant white flames of my Sacred Fire rapidly consuming the foliage near the entrance. In the distance, the frantic silhouettes of Dark Elves desperately trying to extinguish the divine fire flickered against the light.
"Are those... the Dark Elves?" Seohui whispered, her eyes locked on the portal.
"Yes. They excel at stealth and assassination, and they're deadly with both bows and magic. To make things worse, they're no slouches in close-quarters combat either. They're an absolute headache to deal with."
The only saving grace was that by embracing Magi, they had completely severed their connection to nature, losing their ability to commune with spirits. Normal Elves often fought alongside powerful spirits, which was incredibly annoying since they would let the spirits handle defense while they rained down arrows and spells from behind.
"But seriously... are you absolutely sure this is from that other world?"
"Yes. But as I said, it doesn't seem to be a direct portal to the current Other World. That forest was completely reduced to ash."
It was more like a severed fragment of that world. Based on the layout, this seemed to be the Great Forest exactly as it was right before the human coalition launched our final, desperate offensive. It was as if that specific point in time had been perfectly preserved and copied. How such a phenomenon was possible, I had no idea. But one thing was certain: that Gate was a localized slice of the world I had spent ten years saving.
"What do you think the government will do with this Gate?" Seohui asked.
"Well... they'll have to run their investigations first. If they find any rare or valuable resources inside, they'll likely try to keep it open and harvest it."
Though, of course, that would depend entirely on whether they could actually clear it.
"Why? Are you worried?"
"Well, yes. The entire area is heavily contaminated with Magi. If ordinary hunters stay inside for too long, the exposure will start to corrupt them."
Severe Magi corruption could theoretically turn a human into a demonic entity. Granted, that usually required an incredibly high affinity for magic—like the Elves had—and ordinary humans rarely mutated even after years of low-level exposure. Still, there had been plenty of human traitors in the Other World who willingly embraced Magi and mutated into half-demons. It was a very real, very troublesome threat that couldn't simply be ignored.
"Hmm... Even if we try to warn them, they're going to ask how on earth we know all this detail," Seohui muttered, frowning.
No matter how high Seohui's rank was as an A-class hunter, or how much political clout the Murim Alliance wielded, they couldn't just bypass government authority and force a Gate closed. It was only natural, of course... but it didn't stop me from worrying about the disaster that was bound to unfold.