Chapter 81
The elves who had finally filled their stomachs set down their chopsticks one by one.
Then they stood and bowed to me with great politeness.
“Thank you, Manager.”
“Thanks to you, I’ve had a full meal for the first time in a long while.”
“Ah, it was nothing. Really.”
Ugh. This was getting hard to handle.
All I’d done was order delivery and bring back some chicken.
It wasn’t exactly the sort of thing that deserved this level of gratitude.
The elves gathered the chicken boxes they’d emptied and buried them in the ground.
What the hell, why would you just bury them?
“Hey.”
“Yes, Manager?”
“Don’t you separate your trash? You can just bury that?”
“Pardon? Separate the trash? What is that?”
Patria tilted his head and asked back.
The other elves did the same.
Just from their faces, I could tell their society didn’t even have a word for waste separation.
What was this?
It was starting to feel like burying garbage in the ground was normal, and I was the weird one for asking whether they separated their trash.
Regina, who had been patting the spot where the trash was buried, clasped her hands together.
She closed her eyes and murmured something, and I could feel mana gathering in her joined hands.
“No way...”
Regina pressed the mana gathered in her hands to the ground.
At once, a sprout no bigger than my index finger popped up there.
Had she used magic to get rid of the trash and make a sprout grow in its place...?
Curious about exactly what had happened, I asked Patria.
“You turned the trash into a plant?”
“Pardon? Oh, no, that would be a joke and a half. Altera-Shonem. Is that not the magic that converts waste into nutrients for the soil?”
According to Patria’s explanation, Regina had transformed the trash into fertilizer with magic.
That in turn had allowed the seed buried in the ground to germinate quickly.
Magic that turned garbage into fertilizer...
That was a spell the world genuinely needed.
Especially in South Korea, where land was scarce and landfill space was a serious problem.
“That’s an incredible spell!”
“Pardon?”
“Altera-Shonem? I’ve never heard of such magic, much less seen it.”
That really did feel like elf magic.
Their obsession with meat was a little surprising, but this was exactly the image of elves I’d always had in mind.
After all, if you were an elf, this was the sort of bizarre magic you were supposed to be able to use.
“......”
I’d meant it as a pure compliment, but the elves tilted their heads again.
And this time the angle was even worse than before.
If they’d been at forty-five degrees before, now they were at ninety.
If someone else had seen them, they might have thought their necks had snapped and they were dead.
“Why... are you doing that?”
Twelve elves were looking at me with their necks bent in a hard right angle.
Even Regina, who had stood after casting Altera-Shonem, had bent her neck like the others.
What, why? What the hell had I done wrong....
The sight was so horrifying it felt like a scene from a horror movie, and I swallowed on reflex.
Patria answered.
“Ah, because we cannot quite understand it.”
“What don’t you understand?”
“This magic is one that the World Tree Manager should have taught us.”
“Pardon?”
I was supposed to teach it?
I didn’t know anything about that kind of magic.
“But from the way you’re speaking, Manager, it seems you do not know this magic either.”
“Right. It’s the first I’ve ever seen of it.”
“Ah! Perhaps you haven’t yet obtained the World Tree Manager’s manuals? Then I suppose you might not know.”
“Hm? No, I got them. Two volumes.”
“What...?”
When I answered that way, the elves all tilted their heads in the other direction at once.
I copied them and tilted mine as well.
So this was supposed to be a spell I’d teach, and it was written in the World Tree Manager’s manuals?
I had no idea what they were talking about.
The manager’s manuals the previous manager had left me didn’t contain anything about a spell like that.
If they had, I would’ve tried it myself just out of curiosity.
“How odd. It should have been written in Volume One of the manual...”
“Really? Volume One only had pruning in it.”
“Pardon? Pruning? That should have been in Volume Two.”
“Oh, Volume Two had the World Tree Root in it.”
“That is Volume Three’s content, however.”
“......”
Weird.
According to Patria, I’d learned in Volume One a skill that I should have learned in Volume Two.
And I’d also learned in Volume Two a skill that should have been in Volume Three.
What on earth was going on...?
I tried to infer the previous manager’s intentions, but nothing came to mind.
“Hmm. I’m sure he had a reason for it.”
Patria’s words carried an absolute faith in that man, whoever he was.
To me, the old guy’s image was that of a miser and a reckless bastard at the same time.
Still, it didn’t seem like he was nothing but that sort of person.
Looking at the trust they shared, there was clearly something there.
“He must have had a reason for it.”
I decided to believe that.
The previous manager wasn’t the type to deliberately shuffle the manuals around just to screw with the current manager.
There had to be some circumstances that had led him to change the order.
“Since you’ve obtained Volumes One and Two, I’m sure you’ll be able to get Volume Three as well.”
“Yes. Then I should also find out the reason, right?”
“Indeed.”
Patria agreed.
After our conversation ended, the elves each began doing their own work.
By work, I meant meditation.
Just as they had when I brought the chicken inside, they sat together around Saessak.
“Patria.”
“Yes.”
“May I ask what they’re doing?”
“Ah. If you do not know Altera-Shonem, then of course you would not know Nemoroso either.”
The way he said it, it sounded like this was something that should have been written in Volume One.
What had that previous manager skipped over so much for?
“It is nothing special. They are simply resting.”
“That’s resting?”
Resting by sitting in full-lotus?
As far as I was concerned, lying down was the best way to rest.
“We are elves.”
“Pardon?”
“Elf means ‘child of the World Tree.’ Our bodies are much like trees. So long as we are upon the earth, posture is not so important.”
“Ah...”
I nodded and looked over the elves.
Come to think of it, these were people who had come all this way without even solving their hunger.
They couldn’t have slept well.
I could understand why they’d try to steal a bit of rest whenever they had the time.
Now that I looked closer, the clothes and armor they wore weren’t in very good shape either.
They weren’t dirty or filthy, but they were worn down here and there.
Some of the elves were even wearing armor with holes in the shoulder.
Those holes were...
“Stab wounds...?”
“Ah...”
Patria let out a troubled groan.
Hearing that, I understood that something had happened to them.
They have now grown fond of the World Tree Manager.
As a result, deep conversation has become possible.
The message from when I’d completed the quest flashed through my mind.
If deep conversation was now possible, maybe I should ask and they’d answer.
I pointed at the resting elves and asked Patria, “Are you all from the same forest?”
“We are. We are all elves of the Reditus Forest.”
“......”
“......”
“Could it be that there are only twelve of you...”
I let the sentence trail off.
I was about to ask a question that would be hard for the listener to answer.
At first, I’d thought they were a scouting party.
There were only twelve of them, after all.
But the fact that they’d made it here hungry and without even asking for proper rest had made my suspicions flare.
Were they really a scouting party?
Patria let out a long sigh and continued.
“The Manager’s guess is correct.”
“......”
“We are the survivors of the Reditus Forest.”
So that was it....
I asked him carefully, “Were you attacked?”
“Yes. The demonic army invaded.”
“Demonic...?”
“You do not know?”
“No, I mean, roughly.”
Honestly, I’d vaguely assumed some other race like humans or dwarves had invaded.
I hadn’t expected the words “demonic army” to come flying out of the elf elder’s mouth.
Earth was already in trouble because of those Crowd bastards, and it looked like Yggdrasil was in just as much trouble for the same reason.
“We fought hard to defend the forest, but... they were far too strong for us. The forest... our forest... in the end...”
His voice trailed off, and a shadow fell over his face.
His expression was so wrecked I couldn’t even begin to comfort him.
With their home trampled by their enemies, what words could possibly soothe their grief?
Talking carelessly would help him in no way at all.
So I simply waited in silence until he gathered himself.
“...Outside.”
How many minutes passed?
Patria, having composed himself, slowly opened his mouth again.
Outside. That probably meant Yggdrasil.
“Would you care to go outside once?”
“Me, outside?”
“Yes. There is something I would like you to see, Manager.”
“......?”
I tilted my head, but Patria didn’t explain.
He simply fell silent and looked back at me.
I could have demanded an explanation, but I didn’t.
If he were going to explain it, he would have done so already.
Seeing is believing.
Patria had clearly decided it would be better for me to see it myself than for him to describe it.
“...All right.”
“Thank you.”
“Please, you don’t need to do that.”
The elf elder bowed deeply from the waist as he thanked me.
It was only a quick trip outside. Why was he making such a fuss?
Only after I reached out and helped straighten his upper body did he raise himself again.
Man, with an elf that much older than me bowing that low, it was hard not to feel burdened.
“Regina will be your guide.”
“I’ll be in your care, Manager.”
Before I knew it, Regina had come up beside us.
“Likewise. Please take care of me.”
“Should we set out now?”
“Of course.”
And so I set off with Regina as my guide.
The Sanctuary was smaller than I’d expected.
I hadn’t even been walking for thirty minutes before I’d reached its edge.
Regina extended her hand forward. There, a transparent membrane spread before us.
It looked almost like a shield spell had been activated.
“That’s the dimensional barrier.”
“The dimensional barrier?”
“Yes. It’s the barrier that separates Yggdrasil from the Sanctuary. We entered here by passing through this barrier.”
Unlike me, who had entered through the smartphone.
Right. Since the elves didn’t have smartphones, they couldn’t possibly have gotten in the way I had, by crossing space itself.
I walked up to the dimensional barrier with her.
A barrier separating Yggdrasil and the Sanctuary.
When I got up close to it, I finally understood what she meant.
The scenery inside and outside differed sharply on either side of it.
The Sanctuary was filled with green forest, but beyond the barrier lay barren land.
“Huh...?”
I had seen that wasteland before.
No, seen was too weak a word.
I had looked at it every single day for a year.
That’s right.
The wasteland was what Saessak had looked like before it grew.
“What I’ve been staring at on my screen every day was Yggdrasil...?”
Still stunned, I reached out a hand.
When I did, it felt as though I’d touched a hard wall.
A barrier separating dimensions.
There was no way I could pass through as I was.
“You need a key to pass through this dimensional barrier.”
“A key?”
“Yes, this necklace is the key.”
Regina gently cupped the necklace around her neck.
Rather than a jewel, it held what looked like a sharp fang.
“Why is there a fang on it?”
“Ah, this is the previous Manager’s fang.”
“......”
You made a necklace out of your fang and gave it to a girl?
And that was the key to opening and closing dimensions?
As expected. The previous manager didn’t sound like a man who thought normally.
Regina pressed the fang into the dimensional barrier.
Unlike my hand, the fang slid right through.
Then Regina passed through the dimensional barrier herself.
“If you do it like this, Manager, you can pass through too.”
As she said that, she reached out a hand to me.
Apparently, if the person holding the key made contact, one could go out through the barrier.
So that was why Patria had chosen Regina as the guide.
“Here, quickly.”
Regina waved her hand.
I took hers.
I stepped forward to pass through the dimensional barrier, but...
“......?”
“......?”
My foot was stopped.
I tried extending the other one.
No use. It still wouldn’t pass through.
The dimensional barrier had turned into a wall and blocked me.
“Huh? Wh-What? That can’t be right.”
I heard Regina’s flustered voice.
She seemed just as unable to understand the situation.
Then, as if to explain what was happening, a holographic message appeared.
World Tree Manager Baek Do-woon cannot enter Yggdrasil.
The current Manager is too weak to enter Yggdrasil.
What the hell, man?