## Chapter 367 – Under the World Tree (9)
One by one, the elves left their volunteer work.
As they wandered around, calling out the name of the missing girl, I couldn’t help but sense the ominous atmosphere.
“What happened…?
Did the earth fairies do it again?
Could she have been captured?”
“I don’t think so…
Could she have…?
Gone to find her mother…?”
“The atmosphere has been strange since earlier…
Even we were late to realize it…
Maybe she went to look for her on her own!!”
It had already been half a day since the World Tree’s identity was revealed, and the elves’ ‘ritual’ of offering their bodies to the World Tree had begun.
In a way, the fact that she had been missing for half a day was making the elves anxious and whispering among themselves.
“Her dream was to be a hunter like her father…
Her father taught her so much since she was little…”
“But she didn’t have the talent for fighting, so she couldn’t go hunting after all…
If we don’t find her quickly, even she will…!!”
Frankly, considering her 0%, no, 1% miracle archery skills, it was understandable to think of Liel as a child cosplaying as a hunter.
But the problem was that she was still quite well-educated.
‘She used those skills to track us?
The problem was that she couldn’t shoot the arrow, even though she was good at finding us?’
Liel might be able to track the earth fairies to the end, but that was it.
She would be defeated by the earth fairies she tracked, ending up in the same state as the other victims.
Even among the monsters, there was a hierarchy of meat, and the tender, soft meat of a young elf might be used as a top-priority ingredient.
‘That means she’s in a very dangerous situation.
The same goes for the other captured elves.’
Watching the worried conversation of the elf women, Yurne, the youngest of the family who had lost her mother and now her sister, also had dewdrops of fear for the unfortunate future that might unfold in her eyes.
After her mother, even her sister.
She had been crying ever since the battle ended, so much so that I thought she would become dehydrated if I extracted her fluids, so I had left her alone.
Seeing her biting her parched lips while crying again, I roughly guessed that it was time to step in, and I was swaying my tentacles.
Since I had entered this body anyway, the goal was not escape, but rescue, and revenge for power.
‘Yeah… there’s no reason to run away now.
Who did I screw over? I’ll pay them back several times over…’
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“Sniff… Sniff…!!
Ugh… the smell of humus…
Ah… this way…”
It had already been half a day since she left the other elves who were trying to stop her and started tracking.
By constantly sniffing and smelling the scent leaking from under the ground, and carefully examining the bumpy marks left on the ground.
Liel had been able to steadily track the traces of the earth fairies so far.
“Uh… uh…?
The smell… it’s gone!!”
But her joy at thinking that things were going smoothly was short-lived.
At some point, the marks and scent on the ground began to disappear, and the trail was completely cut off.
“The smell… the traces have disappeared…”
Given the nature of the earth fairies moving through tunnels, what that meant was clear.
The earth fairies’ tunnels had become so deep that they could no longer be tracked through the traces coming up to the surface.
In the end, the elf girl, returning to the last trace, pursed her lips and frowned, and then began to put down the various luggage she was carrying.
She slowly put her hand on the ground and began to scrape away the soil, and after some time, the dug-out dirt floor collapsed, revealing the traces of a tunnel being dug.
Earth fairies could run rampant inside, but the narrow tunnel was only enough for a small fairy to enter and crawl around.
Once a stable tunnel was dug, it would slowly collapse over time, so she didn’t have much time to hesitate.
It didn’t seem like she could take anything with her, so Liel, picking up only one set of items from her luggage, a bow and arrow, tried to calm her trembling breath and slowly squeezed her body into the tunnel.
Even as dirt crumbs fell from the ceiling, dirtying her hair, and landing on her cheeks, dirtying her face, she gritted her teeth and carefully crawled through the tunnel.
– Squeak
She heard a strange noise while lying flat and moving through the tunnel, but fortunately, the noise told her that the source of the noise was not nearby, so Liel felt relieved and pricked up her ears as she moved forward.
“Ugh… Yurne… my sister… my mom too…
I’ll definitely bring the others back…”
The fear of not being able to move freely in the tunnel, and not knowing what might appear in front and behind her.
And the claustrophobia and deep darkness that instilled a fundamental sense of rejection unique to narrow places.
The girl, fighting against both of those things as she moved forward, was fortunately able to reach the end of the tunnel without encountering anything in the middle.
“Ugh…!!”
Liel, who was groping around in the dark at the end of the tunnel to check what was ahead, was suddenly taken aback by the environment where the front widened and there was a drop from the floor, and she rolled forward as she was, tumbling to the ground.
“Ugh… ugh…”
The process of rolling forward inflicted a stinging pain on her, but she was in a position to secretly follow the earth fairies.
Suppressing the painful sounds as much as possible, she picked up the bow and arrow that had fallen to the ground and tried to string it.
‘I’m going to save them… I will…’
Was it because the earth fairies needed at least a minimum amount of light?
In the wide space at the end of the tunnel, the light from the glowing, strange rocks provided a field of vision that allowed her to barely see ahead.
Still, it was just as dark, so she could roughly guess why the eyes of the big-eyed earth fairies were so big.
But using that faint field of vision as a beacon, Liel, who began to move forward, was holding up her bow with her trembling hand.
– Thud
‘Eek!!’
There were too many dangerous elements, such as tree roots getting caught in her feet from time to time, but in the midst of all that, she was finally able to step into a place that seemed to be a different space.
There, she could see traces of their spoils being thrown around like in a warehouse, and in other corners, there were bones of monsters that seemed to have been eaten, with chunks of flesh still attached, scattered haphazardly.
The strangely strong stench was a bonus.
Liel, who entered the place with her bow in front and looked around, swallowed her saliva and began to sniff, braving the stench.
‘Ugh… the smell…
It smells like poop…’
But as a few smells that she could barely distinguish even among such a stench were guiding her, Liel was carefully moving her feet with a relieved expression.
“Mom… Mom…”
Liel, who groped below and found something squishy and warm, smiled happily and called out to the other person in a small voice.
“Ugh… ugh…? Lieia…?”
Judging from the voice, it seemed like she was gagged, and Liel nodded vigorously as the voice that leaked out was heard softly, groping for her mother’s bound body.
“Hoo…!! Liel… Nia…
How did you get here… it’s dangerous here…”
As soon as she was barely freed from the gag, her mother recognized her with a similar smell and small voice, and stared at Liel with her eyes wide open in surprise.
Seeing her like that, Liel, who was smiling brightly with tears welling up in her eyes at the emotion of reunion, was trying to untie the vine ropes that bound her body, using her fingers to forcefully untie the rope knots.
“Don’t worry. I came to save you…
I’m Dad’s daughter, after all…?
I, I learned hard?”
It was a shame that she didn’t have a knife, but Liel was diligently cutting the vines as if rubbing them with a stone that she had groped around and picked up, which felt sharp.
“That’s… that’s not it…”
“Huh? Just stay still.
I’ll untie you…”
At that very moment when she was reassuring her mother.
“They’re there… they’re already watching…”
Liel’s mind, hearing her mother’s voice trembling with fear, was turning as white as the sky where snow was falling.
“Ah…”
– Creak
“Run away!! Liel!!
Quickly!! Augh!!”
As she screamed to make her daughter run away, her mother, who was soon hit in the head with a fist-sized cobblestone, bled from her head and fell silent, and Liel was running into the darkness without being able to help but look back.
At the same time, she could guess what it looked like from the sounds that the things she inadvertently stepped on were making.
“Ugh…!!”
“Ugh!!”
“Plea… se save me…!!”
Many of the elves who had been captured were thrown around in various places in this warehouse-like place.
There were monsters dying with their arms and legs tied up, and there was also a being that resembled elves but had round, small ears.
Liel, who was somehow suppressing the nausea that was rising as she watched the earth fairies climbing on top of such beings and shaking their waists in an unknown act.
However, all she could do was retrace the path she had come from and run forward in a hurry.
In the midst of all that, she suddenly stopped as she felt a stinging sense of crisis as if piercing her head.
Liel stopped running forward and suddenly took a step back as her survival instinct told her to.
As if to celebrate that her instinct was right, the earth fairies slowly walking out of the dark darkness in front of her were surrounding her in a circle.
From the moment she entered this den, she had already been surrounded.
In that way, she was cornered into the corner of the place she had passed by earlier, and in the end, she crashed into the wall and collapsed to the ground.
In the midst of all that, when she grabbed something that was caught in her hand, Liel, who inadvertently looked down at it, was startled and threw it aside, vomiting on the floor with a “waek.”
“Ugh… waek… sob… sob…!!
Dad… dy…!!
Sob!! Ugh!!”
A skull with hair-like strands and part of the face remaining bounced and rolled to the floor, colliding with other skulls and stopping, and the vitreous humor flowing from its half-torn eye socket was flowing down like tears.
In the end, Liel, who was sobbing while vomiting, could not take her fearful eyes off the earth fairies who were approaching her in the darkness.
She sensed her end here and was shrinking her body as if she was afraid, closing her eyelids slightly.
She came to help her mother and the people, but in the end, she couldn’t be of any help.
In the end, she was just a half-wit with no talent as a hunter.
Like her dad ‘who used to be’ here, she would no longer be given the chance to become a great hunter.
“Sob… Yurne… I’m sorry… I’m sorry… ugh…”
Her reaction as she burst into mournful sobs and trembled while thinking about the terrible future that would come.
The earth fairies who saw that were looking at her, showing a reaction unique to prey that had given up, and were starting to tease her while smiling at each other.
As if tormenting a neighborhood dog, they were scaring her by quickly stepping forward, enjoying the fact that her sobbing, trembling with fear, was getting louder.
Sometimes they would spin around her, grabbing her flowing hair, and sometimes they would slap her cheek from an invisible angle, making a “smack” sound.
“Ah… Aah…”
Liel, who couldn’t even resist such harassment, eventually lost control of her body and collapsed to the floor with a thud.
She was squinting with tearful eyes, looking at the earth fairies who were tormenting and enjoying her with a blurry vision.
And finally, thinking that it was about time, one earth fairy was walking towards her with a fist-sized cobblestone in his hand, at that very moment.
“Mommy… sob…”
– Woooong
Liel was startled again as a vibrating sound that made her body tremble, like an engine sound, brushed past her ears, and she began to curl up her body even more.
– Squeak? Squeak!! Squeaaak!!
– Wooongwoong
– Creak!!
And hearing screams erupting from the earth fairies who were starting to look around in confusion.
Liel, who could no longer bear the weight of her heavy body, laid her tired body on the dirty floor, and was slowly closing her eyelids, which had become so heavy that she couldn’t open them due to her flickering mind.
“World Tree… nim…”
– Wooongwoong
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[Condensed Bikini Lielnia. Human Aristocrat Girl ver]
