## Chapter 365 – Under the World Tree (7)
The doubts I had harbored until now seemed to dissolve in an instant, and I was clearly organizing the truth in my mind.
‘It’s an Enic…!! That’s it!!
So, it couldn’t be anything else!!’
The reason why the female elves of the past were such strong hunters was simple.
Just as Vivian and the beastkin females had grown stronger after becoming subordinate to me, Enic inherently possessed the ability to enhance the females it took as hosts.
Of course, this was largely to efficiently utilize the host, whether it was for effective and healthy childbirth as a mother for birthing its colony members, or to increase the chances of survival if the precious mother was in danger.
‘Right… so the women had no choice but to be stronger than the men.
Because they directly received Enic’s fluids… I mean… blessings.’
And when Enic’s intervention disappeared, the women inevitably became physically weaker compared to when they received the blessing, so it was only natural that the originally stronger men regained their positions.
‘It’s natural for men to be stronger on average in the first place.
But the women who received Enic’s blessing are just a bit stronger than that.’
Combat power is determined by a combination of factors such as individual characteristics, physical abilities, and combat techniques, but even just increasing the physical ability aspect of strength is enough to significantly inflate combat power.
Imagine a woman having the strength and physical abilities comparable to a man.
Usually, in the absence of established concepts of human rights, women are reduced to powerless victims in many areas simply because they lack strength.
Because they are weak and fragile, they need protection, and if there is no one to protect them, they are weak beings who cannot resist on their own.
Therefore, in history, women have naturally been treated more as important resources than as independent entities.
But a strengthened woman can become another subject of history.
Just as Vivian commands the Henias and secures her power in the back alleys, in the elven villages of the past, female elves could excel as outstanding hunters and become beings who led the village.
‘I know what to do now.
So, what I have to do now is……’
Concentration and insight.
Looking around the enormous lair and scurrying here and there, I discovered something familiar and rolled towards it.
Since this Enic hadn’t been touched by human hands, its concept of utilizing the lair seemed somewhat lacking. Even moving through the lair itself felt difficult from the start.
Avoiding the trap-like holes scattered across the floor, I reached my destination and slowly brought my body to a thick vine hanging from the ceiling, resembling another tree root.
‘Become……!! That’s it!!’
Bringing my body to its tentacle and concentrating, recalling the feeling of possession, the creature, which seemed to have little control left, easily handed over control to me.
At the same time, something like a ray of bright light brilliantly illuminated my mind.
‘Memories… are these its memories……!?’
The synchronization of so many memories threatened to confuse or even destroy my mind, but my consciousness was instead engrossed in following that unfamiliar and awe-inspiring bright light.
Thousands of years, nearly ten thousand years.
‘Then this dungeon is even older than that……
This really is an unknowable place……’
It took root in this place, erected its pillar, hunted the approaching monsters, and continued to reproduce using the females.
A single flower gradually growing based on abundant resources.
A thousand years passed as it grew into a somewhat immense being, and finally, ragged elven refugees arrived here and looked up at Enic.
‘The dungeon gate doesn’t just open in one place…?
They accidentally passed through a randomly opened gate from an unknown location?’
At this time, the men seemed to be acting as hunters, as there were no armed elven women in sight.
In any case, Enic naturally welcomed the elves who entered its territory, and they seemed to believe in this giant tree that had called them here as the World Tree and trusted Enic.
Following the call of the World Tree, many elven women willingly entrusted their bodies to its tentacles, and regardless of whether they had husbands, lovers, or were old or young, all the elven women became Enic’s property.
And the male elves, who thought of the women’s happiness in the most intense pleasure they could feel as the World Tree bestowing blessings, not only did not stop it, but actively encouraged it.
As a result, Enic, who could obtain sufficient nutrition by eating monsters anyway, did not need to kill the men who were not obstacles, and could use the females entirely as hosts to increase the size of the colony.
Their bizarre worship relationship took on a new form of ‘symbiosis,’ and the World Tree faith became perfectly established among the elves, and powerful women who had become hosts of Enic began to emerge.
During the day, they hunted monsters with the power bestowed by the World Tree, and at night, they returned and offered human sacrifices of gratitude to the World Tree.
The female elves rejoiced in receiving the blessing and willingly allowed their bodies to be violated by the tentacles, and their husbands violated their increasingly lewd bodies to conceive children, and their numbers gradually increased.
And they cherished and cared for the colony members that Enic sent out as the World Tree’s confidants, and as always, willingly offered their bodies to those ‘fairies.’
‘Is that Riel’s great-grandmother…?
The one who danced happily with the fairy……’
Seeing the face of a woman who looked somehow familiar, I looked into the memory with a feeling of wanting to clear my throat out of a sense of depravity.
The faces of the elves being violated by strangely shaped flying colony members, with several fist-sized eggs being laid in their wombs.
Their faces were filled with the elation and sincerity of repaying the World Tree’s grace, and the anticipation of the pleasure it would bring.
Thus, the elves’ prosperity and Enic’s flourishing, like a golden age of paradise, seemed to be coming to an end after a long time.
If so much time had passed, Enic must have been quite old by now.
Its enlarged body gradually escaped control, and the various functions of its body gradually began to shut down. Enic gradually reduced its activity over a long period, and probably several hundred years before Riel’s great-grandmother was born, Enic had completely entered a state of dormancy.
All the elves who had lived with the World Tree’s blessing lamented the master’s eternal rest with tears, and knowing that they could no longer be blessed, they believed that Enic would rise again someday and lived diligently in this place for thousands of years.
As the generations passed with the blessing withdrawn, the female elves who had lost their power gradually declined in their roles, and eventually they became the same weak beings they had been when they first set foot in this paradise.
And today, at this very moment, those who have returned as ordinary elves.
Quietly looking down at the weakened elves, Enic’s eyes caught sight of the existence of those being attacked by monsters.
‘You… you’ve been watching everything until now……’
From the very moment I, riding on Leia’s shoulder, arrived in this forest, in the small village of elves.
Enic was already watching us, and it was now welcoming the visit of its kin who had reached this place, my intervention.
And finally, reaching the end of that memory, as if it was trying to tell me something, a single, intensely felt idea continued to linger in my thoughts.
‘Protection……’
Along with the absurd last thought left by the monster Enic, the synchronization of memories that felt long but eventually came to an end.
– World Tree, my ass……
It’s just a withered old tree.’
Even though everything was over, I was lost in thought for a long time, pondering the meaning of the last words it had left, and slowly wriggled my new tentacle.
‘I’ll take back what I said back then.’
I don’t know what this creature wanted to protect.
It may have wanted to protect its prey from being taken by other creatures, or it may have wanted to protect its own life that could be continued by it.
But from the perspective of someone who was just a human who couldn’t understand monsters.
At least I hoped that its last thought would be fulfilled.
‘At least for those who were protected by you……
You were probably the World Tree in the truest sense for them.’
Beyond a sense of bitterness and a strange sense of awe that seemed to warm one corner of my heart, the pulsation of the enormous colony, beginning to awaken from its long sleep, was slowly spreading out.
