Chapter 189 – Greynif (5)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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[You have come, Star-Devourer.]

It rang by Alon’s ear.

No.

More like a voice reverberating heavily inside his head.

Alon whipped his head around.

But the only thing he saw was Lim staring at him strangely.

Only then did he realize that the voice had sounded solely inside his own mind.

And then, just as quickly,

[Reach the deepest part of the roots. There you will find what you seek.]

“Wait.”

The heavy voice stated that bare fact and vanished at once.

Alon opened his mouth in haste,

but the only reply that came back was Lim’s voice.

“What is it?”

He lowered the hand he had raised without thinking.

“…Nothing.”

“Then we will continue forward.”

“There is farther to go?”

“This is only the entrance. We are moving to the outpost.”

As if no further conversation were needed, Lim continued forward.

Alon followed after her while thinking about the voice he had just heard.

What was that?

At first he thought it might belong to the thing that had guided him beneath the roots.

But that was not it.

That voice was clear. Unlike the voice of the incomprehensible eye, which could not be distinguished at all, this was clearly a man’s voice.

It was unmistakably different from that other voice, the one whose nature he could never make out.

As Alon silently considered the matter,

“We have arrived.”

“…Oh.”

Lim announced their arrival.

Alon let out a breath of admiration.

In the darkness of the abyss stood a structure shaped like a fortress.

Its scale was not especially large.

And yet in that immeasurable darkness,

that small fortress alone glimmered faintly like a firefly.

It felt dreamlike.

Alon stared at the view for a moment before entering with Lim.

At least this is better.

Unlike the abyss beneath the roots, where he could not see anything at all, the interior of the fortress was dim but at least visible.

While Alon calmly looked around,

“Hm? Lim, why did you come down? It is not time for the shift change yet.”

“What is going on?”

“It is Lim. …Hm? And Dark Leaf too?”

Three elves walked out from deeper inside.

Two men and one woman.

“…A human?”

The instant they spotted Alon, the easy atmosphere vanished from their faces.

Each of them moved a hand toward a weapon.

“Stop. This is a direct order from Her Majesty.”

“…From Her Majesty?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“It is about that matter. You may not have heard the details, but you know the general outline, do you not?”

At Lim’s warning, something seemed to occur to them.

Ah. That.

Their expressions said as much.

Then they pulled their hands back from their weapons.

The caution in their eyes remained.

The same feeling Lim had.

As Alon thought that, the tall elf with a sword spoke.

“Egal.”

Then the next two gave their own names in turn.

One was a large elf by elven standards, with a huge double-bladed axe slung over his back.

The other was smaller, with twin daggers hanging at her waist.

“Bian.”

“Ramuya.”

“…Alon.”

The introductions were so blunt they were nearly empty.

Alon looked at the three elves for a moment.

Then Lim’s voice returned them to the point.

“So, what is it that you intend to do here?”

“How do we go deeper than this?”

“…You intend to descend below here?”

“Yes.”

At Alon’s answer, the chill in Lim’s face deepened.

“Are you saying this while knowing what lies in the depths beneath these roots?”

“What lies there?”

“Below this place are the Ashen Ones.”

It was Bian who answered instead of Lim.

Alon turned toward him.

“The Ashen Ones?”

“If you want the simple explanation, think of them as monsters living beneath the roots.”

“…Are they strong?”

“Not particularly. A few dozen of them are something we can handle ourselves.”

Bian stated the truth plainly.

“Then…”

“But in the deeper part you spoke of, there is the Ash Scatterer.”

“…The Ash Scatterer?”

“The gatekeeper of the roots. The thing that endlessly creates the Ashen Ones. And that thing…”

Unlike before, Bian’s expression twisted.

“We cannot kill it. That is why we are suffering like this in the first place.”

“…It is that powerful?”

“Yes. But that is not the only problem.”

This time Lim answered.

Her expression was as cold as ever.

“In the deeper region where the Ash Scatterer is, mana cannot be used.”

“…Mana cannot be used?”

“Yes. The farther down beneath the roots you go, the less you can use mana. Even with Lady Filde, who has one foot in the ninth circle, we still cannot eliminate what lies below. That is the reason.”

Hearing that explanation, Alon grasped the outline of the situation.

So in order to obtain a way to use Gyeok, I have to kill the Ash Scatterer and go inside a place where even mana cannot move.

“…”

Alon thought carefully.

This time it was unlike every previous situation where he had at least some information.

About this Ash Scatterer, he possessed not one truly useful piece of knowledge.

That meant the danger was much higher than usual.

And if he really would be unable to use mana, then the risk only grew greater.

Even taking all of that into account,

“I would like you to lead me deeper.”

it was still worth going.

“There is no need for you to follow me if you do not want to. If you show me the way, I can go down alone.”

He had already decided he could go by himself, thinking of his emergency measures.

“Sorry, but we never intended to let you reach the depths in the first place…”

At that, Ramuya stepped forward as if asking what nonsense he was talking about.

But Lim stopped him.

“No.”

She blocked his path.

“Why?”

“Her Majesty said to let him have what he wants.”

“…She really said that?”

“Have I ever lied to you?”

“No, but no matter how I think about it, letting him go beneath the roots is too…”

“Ramuya. It is Her Majesty’s command.”

Her Majesty’s command.

Ramuya bit at his lips several times, clearly wanting to say more.

In the end,

“…Fine.”

he stepped back.

“Then let us move now.”

And so they left the fortress once more and began walking through the dark abyss.

Toward the deepest reaches of the roots.

####

How long had they been walking after leaving the fortress?

The surroundings were nothing but abyss, and with all his senses dulled by it, Alon continued forward almost numbly.

By the time his legs had begun to feel faintly numb,

“…!”

light suddenly burst across his vision as though the space had opened up.

The stimulation after so much darkness made him narrow his eyes.

“This is the middle layer of the roots.”

Lim’s dry explanation followed.

Alon took in the view.

The middle layer of the roots looked completely different from the level above.

It is bright.

Unlike the uppermost level, which had been nothing but abyss, the middle layer was bright enough that he could see all the way into the distance.

Huge roots intertwined everywhere, forming a chaotic maze of roads.

A moment later, Alon realized that the path beneath his feet was itself one of those roots.

It did not feel especially strange.

The root was simply too massive.

It felt less like walking on a root and more like walking down the middle of an enormous eight-lane road.

Quietly impressed, Alon followed Lim downward again.

####

As they continued even deeper together,

Why are we doing something this dangerous just because a human asked for it?

Lim, who walked at the front, let out a small sigh with a faintly irritated expression.

No matter how she thought about it, she could not understand the queen’s order.

At least to her eyes, the human behind them looked like anything but the first elf.

Of course, there was some circumstantial evidence.

He possessed an item of the first elf’s, and he had been certified by Filde, the elves’ great mage.

But setting that aside,

what actual certainty was there that he was the first elf?

More than that, there were points that directly contradicted even Lady Filde’s words.

Filde had said that because the first elf had reincarnated through a contract with something, and because of the bizarre thing behind him, he could not come to the World Tree.

But what was happening now?

The man had come to Greynif carrying that skin-crawling thing behind him.

He was even descending toward the deepest part of the roots.

In other words, he was moving in a way completely different from what Lady Filde had expected.

And yet the queen had acted as if she had seen undeniable proof with her own eyes.

That was what worried Lim.

Could it be that the queen, still unable to let go of her lingering attachment to her dead elder brother,

wanted so desperately to believe that man might be the first elf that she was clinging to the faintest possibility?

That thought left Lim unable to hide her displeasure.

Then,

“…Lim.”

Bian’s voice suddenly reached her.

“What is it, Bian?”

“Something is strange.”

“…What is?”

“By this point, we should have already encountered the Ashen Ones.”

Only then did Lim look around and frown.

Bian was right.

Something was wrong.

The Ashen Ones sometimes crawled constantly upward along the roots.

But at the same time, they always kept several hundred stationed around the middle layer in order to block the elves from descending.

They should have been here.

And yet we are almost at the bottom, and there are none.

A tight tension rose through Lim’s body.

Because she knew.

The absence of the Ashen Ones did not mean something good.

After a short pause, Lim called to Bian.

“Bian.”

“Go on.”

“Did we not have an abnormal event before as well?”

“One or two months ago the Ashen Ones poured out in enormous numbers. That was the end of it.”

“And after that?”

“There were no signs worth mentioning after that, but this looks like…”

“…another abnormal event.”

That was the term used for sudden changes in the behavior of the Ashen Ones.

It was not common.

But once it occurred, something extremely dangerous always followed.

“We would have had to come down here at least once anyway.”

Lim muttered under her breath.

An abnormal event had to be discovered as quickly as possible so that they could prepare for what came after or deal with whatever problem had already emerged.

Her face grew more serious.

So did every step she took deeper into the roots.

At last,

“From here on, this is the deep part of the roots.”

They arrived at a place where all the tangled roots converged together, and in the center yawned an enormous hole.

“How do we get down?”

The inside was as hard to see as the upper levels.

Without a word, Lim pointed to a circular staircase carved along the wall of the giant hole, winding downward.

Once again, the group began to walk down.

And by the time Alon was beginning to suspect he had blisters on his feet,

Lim realized at last that they had reached the deep part of the roots.

Then she froze.

No.

It was not just her.

Egal.

Bian.

Even Ramuya.

All of them went rigid on the spot, faces filled with shock.

Because what covered their whole field of vision was

■■■■

an immense number of Ashen Ones.

“Hah…”

Lim swallowed hard.

Their forms were still human or beastlike.

But pale ash drifted constantly from their bodies.

Their skin stirred with red soot every time they moved, like the ground of a volcano with lava simmering underneath.

Every one of those features told her the same thing.

They were unmistakably Ashen Ones.

Lim tried to count them.

Hundreds?

No.

Far too few.

Thousands?

Still too few.

Then that meant…

Tens of thousands.

Lim clenched her teeth.

Because she could already see the future coming.

Whether mana could be used or not no longer mattered.

If that entire mass began to climb the roots at once,

Pagade would collapse so helplessly it would be absurd.

The scale before them was that overwhelming.

Despair bit at her lips.

And in that moment,

■■■■■■■■

one Ashen One, which had remained silent until then, suddenly screamed toward Alon and the others, invaders who had descended underground.

■■■■■■■■

As if answering it in resonance, all the others began howling madly.

Then the Ashen Ones launched themselves at Alon’s group in a storm of gray dust.

“Run.”

Lim shouted in panic and immediately turned to sprint back up the circular stair.

But then,

“No.”

“What?”

“Above us too…”

At Ramuya’s cry, she looked up.

“…!!”

And saw it.

Ashen Ones were descending from the staircase above.

As though they had waited until Alon’s group reached the deepest level.

It made no sense.

They had been fighting the Ashen Ones for centuries.

Not once, until now,

had those creatures ever behaved as if they possessed intelligence.

There was no time to ponder the incomprehensible situation.

Despair spread across the elves’ faces.

None of them here was weak.

They were Pagade.

Even so,

“Th-this…”

not even Pagade could see any hope of surviving while breaking through such impossible numbers.

One by one, despair turned to resignation.

Then,

“All of you, get against the wall.”

“!”

A voice cut through the air.

A voice so calm that it did not fit the urgency of the situation at all.

Lim turned her head.

There stood Marquis Palladio.

Even with the grotesque cries of the Ashen Ones filling the entire space,

even with death close enough to fall on them at any second,

he only looked at them with emotionless eyes.

“You will get swept up otherwise.”

At him.

“Idiot. I told you already. In this place, mana does not move. Magic cannot be used…”

Lim shouted in haste, remembering that he was a mage and therefore effectively had his hands and feet tied here.

But Alon merely looked over the Ashen Ones advancing from above and below.

Then he spoke in a quiet voice.

“My allied god, manifest.”

The moment Alon’s calm words echoed through the roots,

the elves saw it.

Beneath the roots of the World Tree,

with a crashing roar that crushed countless Ashen Ones beneath it,

Receiver Basiliora manifested.