Grand Chieftain

The stairs that had been carrying them smoothly up the World Tree came to a stop.

They had stopped at a point even higher than the altitude they had reached by sky carriage.

Contrary to Ferda's expectation that the air would be harsh and cold because they were higher than a mountain, it was calm and warm.

Lize gestured toward the entrance.

At once, the grain of the World Tree flexibly shifted and parted, as though it had become hundreds of intertwining branches.

A long corridor leading inside opened before them.

“If you follow this corridor, you will reach a place called Mother's Heart. The Grand Chieftain is waiting there.”

Lize clenched both hands into fists and gave them an energetic cheer.

“I'll wait here. I hope you have a pleasant conversation!”

Once the entrance behind them closed, Ferda brought up something he had been holding back.

“Are High Elves always that lively?”

Erika shook her head.

“Of course not. If the rest of them had even half of half that child's personality, they would be far more likable.”

“I see.”

“It feels like finding a pretty, two-eyed person living in a village of one-eyed people.”

Erika was trying to make Ferda understand while simultaneously revealing her hatred for all High Elves.

They walked along the long corridor and reached the innermost chamber where the Grand Chieftain waited.

The innermost chamber of the World Tree, the Grand Chieftain's dwelling, was a place that truly deserved to be called Mother's Heart.

There was a luxury inside the World Tree that even a magic tower with an ancient history could never dare imitate.

Pure mana, so dense and bright that it illuminated the interior, had settled into the ceiling.

That wasn't all.

Thin white threads were swimming through that blue light as if it were a lake.

Ferda knew what they were.

Any mage would have known what they were.

‘Thread.’

When mana is condensed and condensed again, it takes the form of thread, an item that could not be obtained even with money.

With a single thread over there, a fifth-circle spell could be drawn with ease, and if several strands were gathered and spun into a thicker thread, it could release a spell of up to the seventh circle.

Hundreds, even thousands, of them were swimming through the ceiling as if it were a lake.

Beneath those thousands of strands sat an old man in meditation.

A small old man with white eyebrows drooping over his eyes.

Yet he possessed the control needed to manage the thousands of freely moving Threads.

“It has been a long time, Grand Chieftain.”

Erika greeted him first.

It was a tone often used in a battle of nerves.

The Grand Chieftain gave a slight nod.

“The blessing of the earth. There are days when a Child of Water enters the Mother's embrace.”

“You needn't find it surprising. Why should there be any reason for even us to be on bad terms?”

“You requested a meeting last winter. I take it you must have had something urgent to attend to?”

“Not busy, exactly. It was merely troublesome, and I wanted to deal with it quickly.”

Ferda's breath caught.

It was obvious that Erika hated the High Elves intensely.

Fortunately, the Grand Chieftain did not seem to care about Erika's attitude.

Perhaps there was a reason he could not afford to care.

Just then, a Thread passed in front of Ferda, who was sitting nearby.

Without thinking, Ferda's eyes followed it.

“Isn't it marvelous?”

The Grand Chieftain looked at Ferda as he asked the question.

“I see.”

Ferda answered reflexively.

If asked whether he truly found it marvelous, Ferda would have shaken his head.

The moment he saw that Thread, Ferda felt the Shadow Circle rotating.

He had killed the High Elves and burned the World Tree because he coveted those hundreds of strands of Thread.

He had absorbed thousands of Threads, used their power to kill countless people, and killed Valdrova.

Since it only dredged up a painful past, Ferda turned his eyes away.

The Grand Chieftain also seemed ready to get to the main point.

“Now, let us discuss why you have come here.”

“Very well.”

Despite the room's immense size and abundant mana, its interior was extremely austere.

There was nothing adorned with gold like the possessions of dragons or human nobles; only objects woven from pure tree trunks.

“Regent, please, that item……”

Erika spoke to Ferda, and he took the notebook from the chest where he had stored it and held it out to the Grand Chieftain.

“Hmm……”

The Grand Chieftain groaned and flicked a finger toward the notebook.

At once, the Threads floating in the air came to a halt.

At the Grand Chieftain's will, the threads gathered together and took the shape of a hand.

The hand ran over the notebook's cover as though reading a Braille book.

“This…… These are Linne's letters.”

The Grand Chieftain recognized it from the writing embossed on the cover alone.

His fingers turned the pages, scanning the characters.

He murmured as though groping through a distant memory.

“Linne…… Yes, that child must have survived, or you would not have come searching for her like this.”

“You didn't know she was still alive?”

“When I traced the minds of the Dark Elves who had set foot on the Demon Lands, I watched every one of them die. So I was certain she had died as well.”

But the Grand Chieftain had been wrong.

“But I overlooked it completely. That child had the ability to escape the bonds of the High Elves, so naturally she could have escaped the minds of the Dark Elves as well……”

The white hand continued turning the pages without pause.

The Grand Chieftain swallowed a pained breath, then let it out again.

“In the end, it seems Linne is trying to seize another chance by stepping over the corpses of the people of her clan who followed her.”

Ferda could not tell what emotion lay in the way the Grand Chieftain finished his sentence.

Was it sorrow,

or long-suppressed anger?

While he murmured and rummaged through the past, the white hand scanned all the way to the last page and closed the notebook.

“I have confirmed the entire contents. I can also clearly sense what Linne…… is plotting.”

Erika's face brightened.

The Grand Chieftain stroked his beard and bobbed his head in his rocking chair.

“If I may.”

“Please do.”

“Did you bring the black liquid mentioned in this journal?”

“Yes. I brought it because I wanted you to examine it.”

Erika rolled one of the ampoules she had brought across the floor.

The Grand Chieftain pointed at the ampoule, and the Threads formed a hand that grasped it.

The white hand inserted a finger into the ampoule, and the Grand Chieftain reacted.

“……I see.”

His expression suggested that everything that had been bothering him had finally fallen into place.

“Child of Water, forgive my impertinence, but what do you intend to do now that you know this?”

“Obviously, we must respond.”

Erika answered.

“If they can create demonkin by making a substance similar to Godwin's blood, then it means a substance capable of countering it can be created as well.”

“Of course.”

The Grand Chieftain responded with a subtle “Hmmm……”

Apparently deciding that she would get nothing otherwise, Erika became more earnest in persuading the Grand Chieftain.

“I don't know whether it is recorded in the journal, but that Dark Elf named Linne is currently creating new demonkin.”

“That is so.”

“Recently, she has even been deploying replicas called Dopplers to plunge the Serdes Continent into chaos.”

“That is also true.”

“There is no doubt that she is attempting to mass-produce something similar to Godwin's blood. If demonkin begin pouring out, the tragedy of the Dragon-Demon War will happen all over again……”

Erika lowered her voice as she delivered her warning.

“And this time, even the World Tree will not be able to escape the flames.”

To dragonspawn, dragons were everything; in the same way, the World Tree was everything to the High Elves.

It was tantamount to saying they would die.

The Grand Chieftain pondered her words deeply.

“The Dragon-Demon War is a tragedy we must never repeat.”

They knew what kind of suffering had been inflicted before the Dragon-Demon War.

“It is obvious that I also wish to help.”

“Then—”

“But I have one condition if I am to help.”

As the Grand Chieftain said this, he turned his eyes away.

His gaze fixed clearly on Ferda, who sat beside Erika.

“I would like to have this conversation with Regent Ferda, just the two of us. Would that be acceptable?”

Erika's eyebrow twitched.

“Of course not.”

Erika could not permit it.

Of course, these were items Ferda had brought, so he was entitled to decide what happened to them.

But it was Erika and the descendants of Iorga in her tower who had been researching the black liquid all this time.

Being excluded like that pricked her pride.

“I have a duty to know as well, both as someone charged with protecting this continent and as a hero of the Dragon-Demon War.”

“I know this is a moment when I must act as a Child of Water. But this matter is separate.”

The Grand Chieftain did not yield an inch or offer any room for compromise.

“Then let us do this. Since you said this matter is important to Regent Ferda……”

Erika therefore chose to bring in a third party.

“Let Regent Ferda decide. What do you say?”

“Of course, that is one way to handle it.”

The Grand Chieftain carefully raised a hand.

Erika sensed something in the movement.

“What is—”

She immediately prepared to respond, but it was already too late.

A white Thread behind her gave Erika a light tap.

Erika vanished in an instant.

“……I won't allow you to decide, of course.”

He muttered words Erika could not hear.

Only two people now remained in the vast chamber.

Ferda, who had not said a word since taking his seat, quietly looked at the Grand Chieftain.

“You may rest assured. I did not harm Tower Master Erika.”

“I know you teleported her outside the door.”

Ferda was always calm.

There was only one thing he wanted to know.

“Are you certain there is a reason the Blue-Eyed Tower Master should be excluded as a third party?”

“Of course. The conversation is likely to become personal.”

Ferda found those words puzzling.

What could possibly become personal in a matter involving demonkin?

“Let us first discuss this black liquid.”

The Grand Chieftain's white hand lifted the ampoule containing the black liquid that he had set down.

“The Blue-Eyed Tower Master must have thought this substance resembled dragon blood.”

“That's right.”

“But you thought that, although it resembled dragon blood, it was not dragon blood and was something beyond your comprehension. So you must have assumed it was related to High Elf blood.”

“That's right. Is that recorded in the journal?”

“No. I merely guessed that if the Tower Master had gone so far as to set foot here, it could only be for something like this.”

He was dead-on.

Or was Erika simply more straightforward than expected?

“To put it simply, it is true that this black liquid was created through the abilities of the High Elves.”

“Do High Elves possess some special ability?”

“Unlike humans, elves possess the ability to commune with their own kind. Among them, the minds of the High Elves are all connected as one.”

“I see.”

“That mental network is not simply a way to share thoughts. It interprets and retrieves all the information they possess through the language of the elves. To explain it more plainly…… it can even retrieve information about someone that the person themselves does not know.”

A power that allowed one to know everything about someone else, including things that person did not know about themselves.

Perhaps because he was a mage by nature, Ferda found himself coveting it simply from hearing about it.

As though he had read Ferda's thoughts, the Grand Chieftain added,

“It is not entirely beneficial. Since everything is shared, they are sensitive to anything that cannot be shared.”

“Is that why the elder acted so aggressively?”

“That's right.”

Ferda recalled the face of the elder who had intended to throw them out at the door.

He could understand the elder's reaction, but that did not mean he wanted to forgive him easily.

“Linne used the abilities of the High Elves to retrieve information on every race living on the Serdes Continent.”

That explained why such an experimental facility existed in the North and why so many different races had been imprisoned there.

She had analyzed every cell composing their bodies and developed drugs optimized to fuse that information with the information on existing demonkin.

“Can all High Elves use that ability?”

Ferda asked cautiously.

The Grand Chieftain shook his head.

“A united mind is as natural as breathing and a beating heart from the moment we are born. Even I, the Grand Chieftain, cannot sever and reconnect it at will.”

“Was Linne able to do that?”

“Yes. That is why she was able to betray us and become a Dark Elf.”

If she had been unable to do so, Linne's intentions would have been exposed already, and they would have responded swiftly.

The fact that only Linne could use it was a blessing in disguise.

“Wait.”

Ferda suddenly thought of something ominous.

“Then, to create this substance similar to dragon blood…… did she connect her mind to Godwin's and retrieve that information?”

Being able to create the dragon blood used in the Ascension Ceremony meant she had obtained information about a dragon.

Had Linne understood everything about dragons?

“Unfortunately, she could not have done that.”

The Grand Chieftain stated it with certainty.

“No matter how much we may rank ourselves above or below one another, we are merely creations fashioned from the earth. But dragons are creations fashioned by God. Understanding them requires the language of God. No matter how advanced the High Elves' language may be, it remains a language of the earth, and it can never interpret beings created in the language of God.”

The Grand Chieftain drew his conclusion.

“Therefore, this black liquid also comes from a creature fashioned from the earth.”

“Does that mean the Ascension Ceremony can be performed without a dragon doing it directly?”

“That is not true of dragonspawn, but it is true of demonkin.”

A creation of this earth that was not Godwin, but held influence comparable to him.

Thinking about it, only one person came to mind.

“The black liquid here was made from the mana possessed by the man called the Demon King.”

The Demon King.

Godwin's name was so enormous that the Demon King might seem small by comparison, but he had also been a man of terrible notoriety.

The fact that the Far East had come to be known as the Demon Lands was entirely the result of his solitary accomplishments.

He might not have been comparable to a dragon, but he possessed enough power and ability to be called a calamity upon the continent.

“I see.”

Ferda did not know the details, but he had grasped the context clearly.

The Grand Chieftain was resolving every point that had made Erika curious.

As he listened to this, Ferda could no longer suppress his question.

“Was there really any need to discuss all this with only me?”

Taking everything together, the black liquid was a substance that used the High Elves' mental network to imitate the Demon King's mana.

There seemed to be no reason to keep a matter that merely involved exchanging information a secret.

“From this point on, I am going to tell you something that only you, Regent Ferda, should hear.”

The Grand Chieftain pointed at Ferda with a thin, knobby finger.

Precisely at the area below his lower abdomen.

It was Ferda's Red Circle.

“The Demon King's mana is inside your body as well.”