Chapter 171 – 171 – First-Person Dragon Lord Perspective (Top)
Another time, really the last time, a few hours ago.
Big Elan, where the elves, a proud world citizen race, live, and Small Elan, where the less proud people live.
Between the borders of two kingdoms that are one and yet separate, there is a huge coniferous forest that sits like thick ham in a sandwich. And around it, there are numerous guard posts with the words ‘No Entry’ written on them.
Of course, in Elan, a country that loves trees, it is common to find areas where development is prohibited, but at the same time, people also love forest bathing, so it is not uncommon for people to even block access to the forest. In addition, the size of the forest, which no one should enter, is so huge that there are even strange rumors going around in the world. It is said to be a dark forest with a curse lurking within it, and the ghosts of those who died unjustly before the Age of Enemy are buried in the land and torment visitors.
However, the fairy guards stationed at the guard post know the truth. In fact, there was nothing special about the ‘Dark Forest’ that distinguished it from the rest of the forests.
“It’s just that there are a lot of dangerous animals. Man-eating tigers that are 4 meters long, brown bears…”
“The number of troops stationed at the edge of the forest is enormous. Would it be difficult to drive out wild beasts with that much power?”
In response to the leisurely explanation of the Dark Forest garrison soldier, the woman in the white dress, who had lost her way and came in, spoke in confusion.
“I think it’s strange to leave this large area of land alone for a thousand years just for that reason.”
“Because we are naturalists. Wild beasts are also a part of nature.”
“But you love arboretums, honey farms, and hiking trails as much as nature conservation. Isn’t this the only forest you don’t even go into?”
“No country utilizes its land 100%. Why don’t they just leave useless rocky mountains and sandy fields?”
“The rest of the races use the rocky mountains as quarries, and the sandpits to collect sand to mix with cement. Does it make sense that elves can’t find use in the forest?”
“No, well. Even if it’s not a profitability issue, if dangerous things come in and out, it’s natural that the motivation for development will decrease-“
“Well, don’t you usually ask a hero party to drive out threats little by little and expand the area of civilization?”
The elf guard sighed, thinking that common sense was not working. She frowned, lifting her sombrero like a woman would. As if she were searching for something beyond the dark forest.
The sight of her flowing red bangs struck him as very beautiful, but the guard quickly dismissed her thoughts, thinking it was a misanthropic idea.
“And in that case, we don’t build guard posts to prevent people from entering the mountain from private houses. It would be logical to do the opposite.”
“The story is endless.”
Her tall guard eventually grabbed the woman’s shoulders and lowered her to eye level. Her attitude was as if she was dealing with a much younger child. Based on her appearance, her elf side seemed quite young, so she didn’t really fit in.
“Even without developing the Dark Forest, Elan is already overflowing with forest resources, young lady. The reason we are meticulously guarding even these remote places is because the High King of Elan does not want the guests of Elan, a civilized nation, to experience bad things. .”
“It’s a civilized country.”
“Miss, listen to me carefully. Bad things can happen outside of Mirkwood. I’m saying good things right now, but this is not the time to turn a blind eye. You don’t know how my colleagues will behave when they see you?”
“In what way?”
The woman asked back as if she was genuinely curious. The guard finally confessed honestly.
If an elf wanders around the Dark Forest, the appropriate response from the sentry is to politely send it away.
On the other hand, the manual states that it is okay to shoot and kill other races. It was thanks to the guard’s mercy that the red-haired woman without elf ears was still alive.
It is not surprising that it is the instinct of short-lived species to fill their short lives with pleasure, but it is too foolish to wander into such a dangerous area just by walking.
However, the guard did not think that foolishness was a serious crime worthy of death. Like his colleagues, he didn’t even dare to slash at the skulls of other races for fun.
“You’re honest. You’re kind, too. Are you saying this out of loyalty between women?”
“What is the loyalty between women just because I saw it some time ago? I am giving this advice out of conscience. In the end, the most dangerous animals in Elan are elves. I am an elf too, but there are only shit here. There is a human peddler at least 1km away from the dark forest. “If you pass by here, it’s swarming with bastards running with their mouths watering, trying to kill you for the pretext.”
“Are you saying that you aim an arrow just for fun, even if you don’t have to go in? You’re not that type of person, are you?”
“Me? How can I proudly say that I am different? I wouldn’t know if I actively tried to stop you. So, human girl with wanderlust, please come to your senses and listen to me carefully-“
“It’s hardly a reward, but I’ll give it to you.”
The red-haired woman took off her hat.
The elf guard did not recognize the woman, but he clearly recognized her and the horns on her head.
Reflecting on who really needed to come to his senses, the guard opened his mouth to scream from his heart.
Ragna Roca, who squeezed her cheek to muffle her screams, laughed leisurely.
“After work is done and your colleagues wake up, tell them. I don’t have a hobby of killing small things, so please be lucky.”
The armed conflict that suddenly broke out in a corner of the dark forest did not last long.
The common sense that there was no creature in the forest that could defeat an elf was shattered by the demonstration of force by just one person. The guard, who had escaped harm in return for his kind heart, watched in horror as a human-shaped dragon dismantled a guard fortress accommodating over a hundred people with his bare fists. And he thought that he really missed the hundred years he had spent boring and being bitten by mosquitoes.
While the compatriots were screaming in fear and flying into the sky four or five at a time with each punch of the intruder, the guard watched for signs to sneak away, albeit belatedly.
And then he ran into a group of Tigris from Hwanghwagok who followed the dragon and was captured. The sharp-eyed woman who appeared to be the leader of her group spoke as she stroked the head of the elf who was on the verge of fainting.
“Where are you going?”
“···I’m home. Can you send me…?”
“If you do me a favor without sniffling dirty, I can promise you that I will leave.”
If so, I can only be thankful. The guard quickly adjusted his posture and sat down.
Fortunately, the requests of dangerous people who could start a war just by appearing within the border were not the kind that were difficult to grant.
“Huh? I can do it for you. But why don’t you two throw it yourself…?”
“Because we’re fast enough to decide whether it’s front or back.”
“Tossing a coin is only meaningful if it’s luck, right?”
The guard nodded his head in understanding and raised the coin handed to him with a trembling hand. And he threw it high and caught it.
The result is heads. The face of King Danar engraved on the silver coin sparkled.
Ragna Roca, who missed out on winning, pouted her mouth regretfully at her flower girl. The owner of Hyanghwagok’s squadron looked astonished at the joke of the strongest living creature in existence.
“Congratulations, I’m the boring one.”
The guard elf, who was trying to ask what the boring side meant, was struck in the neck by Hwa-ryeon’s hand blade and fell unconscious, making an unusual sound.
Hwa-ryeon said, looking down at the elf’s face full of regret and resentment.
“You are not here for a pleasure trip, Dragon King. Stay safe. The fate of the world is determined by wind and stone.”
“What do you mean by physical pain? Hey, don’t act like you’re being boring. When you were young, wasn’t Hwa-ryeon really the type of person who would do anything?”
Hwaryun, who had been lightly scoffing, opened her eyes wide and glared at Ragna Roca’s response. Ragna Loka narrowed his eyes and caught her gaze.
Soon Hualian’s gaze became anxious. Ragnaroka smiled mischievously.
“Oh, wasn’t that something you shouldn’t have said?”
“···I am a different person now than when I didn’t even know your identity.”
“No problem, Hwa-ryeon. You’ve become a lot more mature. What did they call me in front of the gate of Hwanhwa-gok? ‘King of the Lizards?’ To be honest, it was quite thrilling at the time. I thought the girl at that time, who had once looked at me as cute when I was young, must have really remembered it as a draw and went back.”
Hwa-ryeon bit her lip as if she felt a sense of frustration. And she tried to ignore the interested gaze of her Tigris subordinates.
“Do you want to hang out for a little while? We refrained from seeing each other’s children at the time, but there’s no one here.”
“No one can say no. Are you really going to do that in front of our kids, sister?”
“What’s wrong? I told you not to leave it out. Are you trying to pretend that we didn’t know each other again?”
“Lord Seondaegok, what on earth happened to you a long time ago?”
The oblivious Tigris, who intervened with his eyes sparkling with excitement, got his eye stabbed squarely in retribution, causing him to scream and roll around.
Hwa-ryeon wiped the subordinate’s tears from her fingers on her collar and tried to raise her red face. Ragna Loka, with a slight smile, decided to stop harassing her former colleague, whom she had once been very passionate about.
“I’ll just go to the Amethyst Palace.”
“···I will somehow secure the seal of the Demon God, so please take care of Eshen.”
“The children will take care of themselves. They have trustworthy colleagues with them, right?”
Hwa-ryeon, as her mother, felt a little offended by Ragna Roka’s tone of voice, which seemed to sincerely believe that. Suddenly, her guilt for causing trouble to her children because she could not trust them to take care of it came flooding back to her.
But soon Hwa-ryeon shook her head. When she thought about it, it wasn’t her Eshen ability that Hualien didn’t trust, but when she was young, she had that damn temperament that looked just like her.
While the two of them break through the Dark Forest by force and find Thena Everlight and Edin, the children’s party’s original plan is to keep a close watch on the elf king Danar. However, Hwa-ryeon felt very ominous that Eshen ignored her request to ‘leave her alone’.
“I said something wrong. Please take care of the rest of the children who are involved with my daughter.”
“···It’s too much. Eshen will be upset if he finds out, Hualien.”
“Her sister, put yourself in my shoes. She gave birth to a child who looks like me, and her blood pressure is not getting better.”
Hwa-ryeon left with a deep sigh, leaving behind a grievance that was difficult for her to respond to. The strongest Tigris carefully selected by Hyanghwagok followed them into the coniferous forest, giving off a ferocious spirit. There was no way to know whether the wild beasts that the guard had warned about would even dare to attack.
“It seems to have become an unquestionable common sense among the elves, but this is probably the only place in all of Great Elan where the World Shrine is hidden. If it’s Hualien, you can trust it and leave it to us.”
Ragnar Loka looked behind her. Not far from the Dark Forest, a huge tree with a purple crystal texture rises inside, containing the elf palace.
The Dragon Lord took out the ‘Compass of Desire’ that he had recently acquired. The artifact, which tells you the direction if you sincerely think of the person you want to meet, pointed straight to the Amethyst Palace.
It couldn’t be more sincere, so he’s definitely right. Rod smiled bigger and cooler than before.
“Then… Shall I go and settle the debt I haven’t been able to fully repay?”
—————-
The elites from both sides, Hwanghyanggok and Dragon’s Nest, who once almost clashed in the East, hastily flew across the continent to support Daelan, which was in crisis due to the monster infestation.
And after noticing something strange, he changed his purpose. No matter how you look at it, there were no traces of a large-scale battle, and this was because Ishtar’s Apostle Monica sensed the suffocating divine power of Mithras everywhere.
Indeed, timely, her daughter’s party includes a child who is the daughter of the famous pirate Tomko and has inherited the rare Siren ability. Morgan Tomko, who picked up the stream of sound coming from the Amethyst Palace from several kilometers away, informed him that King Danar had prepared a plot of some kind.
A new operation was immediately established. The main force of the East-West Allied Forces breaks through the Dark Forest, which is presumed to be hiding the World Temple, and finds and intercepts the fragments of Edin lurking somewhere.
And in the meantime, the special monster extermination and removal party watches the elf king Danar. And if an unavoidable situation arises, secure the guy and run away…
Looking at the fairy soldiers running around shouting to protect His Majesty, it seemed like an unavoidable situation had occurred. The underground passage of the Amethyst Palace was noisy as there was an emergency going on.
Ragnar Loka, who had entered the Amethyst Palace in hiding without any witnesses, grimaced as he wiped the nosebleeds of the witnesses he had removed from his fist.
‘Should I go help? Or not···.’
Ragnaroka looked back at the shimmering light next to it with a reluctant expression. He had recently encountered it in the eastern desert, so there was no way he could not recognize the wide-open dimensional gap.
It was so magnificent that a large horse cave could fit in and out of it. There would be nothing like this as proof that King Danar was in cahoots with the fragments of Edin.
Eshen’s cheerful laughter echoed from somewhere in the distance in the passage. The children seemed to be enjoying the adventure rather than feeling a sense of crisis. Ragnaroka smiled warmly and decided to trust the skills of the special combatants.
Ragnar Loka stepped his foot across the dimensional gap.
[···We can’t let them go alive easily. The same goes for a guy named Tannhäuser! The magic power of Yagarum was mine!]
[Sit down and don’t get upset. Since we are being hunted anyway, we have no choice but to come here.]
[Is it my business? I always didn’t like the way a woman from a ruined country was wandering around in the demon world, like going in and out of my house. It is time to teach a lesson.]
[But it’s my living room, right? They were just kicked out by us… Wait a minute.]
The great devils, who were huge and bloody in appearance, stopped giggling and looked around as if they were feeling uncomfortable.
And then I discovered a mysterious woman who had crossed the dimensional gap and was looking around with curiosity.
A hat that makes you look like you’re a tourist, a dress that emphasizes your curves, and hair that’s been neatly maintained and tied up. It was an appearance that did not fit in the slightest with the surrounding scenery covered in dull steel, and would only be suitable for a city woman of a lower average age.
While the demons, soaked in embarrassment, looked at each other with arrogant expressions, Ragna Loka let out an exclamation from her mouth and took in the scenery.
“A military factory! It’s exactly what the underworld people from the demon world wrote. It’s in places like this that demon caves are created and devices that open dimensional rifts are manufactured.”
[···What is this, Archazel? Is she your mistress?]
[Do I look like someone who brings a lover to a public event like this? I swallowed it cleanly before it came. I don’t know.]
In that case, it would mean that he came across through the portal beneath the Great Elan Palace.
Unless Danar went crazy, the guards would have been heavily guarded, so even the Great Devil would have had to break through the siege that would be difficult to handle before coming over.
But for all that, the white dress was too clean. The four great devils felt some kind of ominous feeling and fell silent again.
Ragna Loka looked back at them as if she had suddenly remembered something.
“Wait a minute, what did you say earlier?”
[···I asked you if you were Azazel’s mistress?]
“Previously.”
[Like a woman from a ruined country coming in and out of my house…?]
“Previously.”
[Hunting in droves-]
“Jeon.”
[You can’t keep Erina Soprania or that guy named Tannhäuser alive?]
The great devil, who was tens of meters tall, lost his head the moment he uttered those words. It was because the large fist smashed his skull and planted it in his shoulder.
The three remaining Great Demons first rubbed their eyes before screaming. In the place where the woman disappeared, a dragon that seemed to symbolize the apocalypse stood tall.
