The Weight of the Last High Elf
Golden Branch Castle.
The last High Elf.
That name carried a weight that could never be called light.
It was heavier than gold itself.
I, who didn’t even know much about elves, was stunned by its value, and elves must have felt it a thousand times more keenly.
Ray and I had understood in an instant why Elowen acted so deferentially toward Leaf.
If the doctrine of royal blood survived intact, it meant a survivor of a royal line ruled an entire race.
I would have been shocked too if the human imperial family that sat upon the golden throne had been wiped out, only to find a survivor.
“Th-that… does that make Leaf an elf princess?”
Ray spoke hesitantly, the words tumbling out.
Leaf thought for a moment, then slowly shook her head.
“Actually, the era when the High Elves served as the ruling class has ended. And originally, High Elves were closer to the priestly caste than royalty.”
In fact, the elves who truly ruled were the direct elves beneath them.
Think of the caste system.
Just as the priests held the highest rank among humans, the elves placed the High Elves—who performed the role of priests—at the top of their own hierarchy, and the real rulers belonged to the second rank.
“The World Tree is a god on the surface. But they could not pass on its full power directly to all elves. So the High Elves were born.”
The tip of the World Tree.
Mediator of its authority.
Children of the gods.
The High Elves had many epithets and nicknames.
Their power was so immense that it was only natural.
They were priests, shamans who honored the World Tree, and apostles who spoke its will.
Through them, elves perceived the World Tree and received a fragment of its power.
“Later, as the World Tree died, the connection was severed as well.”
High Elves are not born merely through reproduction.
Even if their parents were High Elves, without the World Tree’s transference, they could not become High Elves.
These were precisely the ones who formed the second layer of the elves—the social elite who handled real politics and core military power.
Of course, even they were only half-blooded descendants of the High Elves and lacked the absolute divine blessing of the World Tree. A single word from a true High Elf was enough to make them bow their heads, but still…
“Is that possible? You were born in the generation after the World Tree died.”
“That’s true. Can a High Elf exist without the World Tree? It’s a sensitive point, but yes.”
I didn’t know much about High Elves, but I didn’t feel there could be one of impure blood.
‘There are parts of Leaf’s words that aren’t explained.’
The mother who entrusted Leaf to the elven village—who was she?
If Leaf was truly a High Elf, why had Elowen recognized her but not noticed the elves who raised her in that village?
Leaf answered without hiding anything.
“My mother was human.”
“Ah, that’s what you meant.”
Ray’s habitual rudeness triggered.
No matter how you looked at it, that wasn’t the phrase to use.
Yet Leaf didn’t seem to mind in the slightest and continued calmly.
“My parents were both from the Progos family. They must have met here in the city.”
Imagining their faces, which never rose in her mind, Leaf sank into the bond that remained only in the blood they shared.
And that bond went beyond simple blood relation.
“I can feel it. The traces my father left and my mother carved.”
“…Huh?”
It must have been too difficult for a sixteen-year-old girl.
Ray tilted her head at my puzzled expression, and as an adult I offered guidance.
“Even if your memories of meeting them are hazy, you know how deep the love your parents gave you simply through your birth, right, Leaf?”
“Oh, that’s what it was. Elves really do have that talent for making words hard.”
“…Not that, either.”
I was about to let out a sigh when I caught Ray’s gaze and turned away, cleared my throat, and gave Leaf a look asking her to continue.
“My father was a High Elf.”
Leaf’s explanation picked up.
One of the nicknames I’d heard earlier.
The tip of the World Tree.
It wasn’t metaphor—it was perfect description.
A High Elf carried the authority the World Tree held within itself.
Even after the World Tree perished, the power planted in another body survived alongside the new life it rooted in.
A High Elf was, in a sense, a grafted sapling.
The true child of the World Tree, who received the World Tree’s seedling root.
That was the essence of a High Elf.
Yet even as the High Elves died one by one, the elves could not find a way to pass it on to the next generation.
The High Elves had become extinct.
Extinct, they had thought.
Only one.
Except the one who poured her entire life into that single being for the prosperity of her race, deep within the boundless mysteries of the abyss.
“Mom and Dad found the method. A way to graft the World Tree’s seedling root even onto a half-elf.”
“Perhaps it was possible precisely because I was a half-elf. The pure-blood elves were all too obsessed with that and failed.”
The elves had thrown every means at preserving the High Elves.
But they failed, while Leaf’s parents succeeded. Perhaps they had been trapped by the mistaken belief that only pure-blood elves could become High Elves.
If the god died and the world changed, the thoughts of those who lived in that altered world should have changed as well.
“So you only mentioned your mother? Because if you implanted the seedling root, it wasn’t normal, right?”
“…Yes, that’s probably it.”
Leaf gave a somewhat strained affirmative to Ray’s guess.
With the seedling root inside her, Leaf could roughly imagine the future that would come when it was gone.
This time, Ray sensed the heavy meaning packed into that short answer.
A heavy silence followed, until Ray, unable to bear the atmosphere any longer, raised her voice.
“Aaaah—! Now I feel like the most ordinary one!”
“Ordinary? Who? You?”
“Yup. Me.”
Ray opened her eyes wide, as if declaring it was true, and pointed at me.
“User of lost-space magic.”
Ray’s finger swung toward Leaf.
“The last High Elf. With a half-elf included.”
And finally, she pointed at herself.
“Just a beastman.”
Now, who was ordinary?
“…True, but lion beastmen are the royal line of beastmen, right?”
“There’s no beastman kingdom, Roman.”
Did I not know that?
Ray made a face that looked like she wanted to slam me hard with one punch.
“It’s the rarest, though.”
“Well, yeah. But compared to a half-High Elf or lost-space magic user, I’m still a nobody, a nobody.”
“But you inherited two bloodline boosts, didn’t you?”
Leaf looked worried I might be feeling relative deprivation or inferiority and tried to cheer her up in a friendly way.
But I knew.
That girl had no such thoughts.
On the contrary, it seemed Ray had been trying to lighten the solemn mood with a bit of self-deprecating humor.
Seeing her like this reminded me she had a surprisingly mature side.
“See~?”
The face she was making looked a little too relaxed; maybe she was wrong again.
‘If I don’t open my mouth, I get a cool, beastman-like coolness, but the second I speak I turn into a plain jane.’
I couldn’t listen to Leaf flattering Ray’s face any longer and cut in.
“So, is Leaf’s story the end of it?”
“Hmm… no. There’s one last thing left.”
“One last thing?”
“Yeah.”
Now that I thought about it, there was indeed one secret Leaf was still hiding.
“Internship.”
“Right.”
Ray, who had gone to the frontier through connections, and I, who found a common thread with the demonologists and knocked on the door of the Thelema School.
Yet Leaf had received an internship as an individual and never said with whom.
“I’d like to meet her once before we head back down to the Abyss. All of us.”
Three days before the 2nd-floor extermination expedition.
A place we had to visit had been added.
§
Golden Branch Castle.
Alchemy, born from the desire to forge gold.
In a world transformed by the disappearance of the gods and the emergence of the Abyss that followed, it was the headquarters of modern alchemy, where the system was newly established and a towering ivory tower of vast knowledge was built.
Founded by the pioneer Cordelia Wollstonecraft of the First Expedition, this place was one of the organizations wielding the strongest influence in Res Limen.
After alchemy was separated into its own domain from the subordinate class of mages, unlike the mages divided into various schools, the alchemists maintained Golden Branch Castle as one under absolute leadership.
Of course, traitors who left Golden Branch Castle mid-way to found their own faction or even allied with the mages to drag alchemy back into the mage hierarchy had appeared, but the castle’s fortress remained solid.
First and foremost, it had money.
All the metals, leather, gems, and other materials used in the equipment explorers relied on carried the touch of Golden Branch Castle.
When I said materials, I didn’t mean the shabby ingredients Novices and Regulars used.
With an enormous budget used almost entirely for research after covering basic operations, no matter how hard you tried to rebel against Golden Branch Castle, it was nothing more than a transient survival in front of the wall of unyielding budget.
At the top of Golden Branch Castle, also called the Golden Branch Castle because of its branch-like shape, someone had just set up shop.
Observing celestial bodies was also an important matter in alchemy.
Therefore, the alchemists were fairly skilled in astrology.
The woman viewing the horoscope results let out a sniffle mixed with expectation.
“Will a customer come?”