Chapter 109
Chloe had been enjoying happy days lately.
When would she finally grow up?
When would she finally come to her senses?
When would she finally stop being an idiot?
You bring home money well enough, you money ghost.
When will you finally look for a partner?
At last, she had escaped the father who drove his nagging into her ears until they nearly screamed “Agyagyak,” varying his repertoire every time.
Her very own nest!
No one could nag her!
She would eat as much unhealthy food as she pleased!
“I’m a free elf, desuwa──!”
With such grand ambitions, she had personally designed and successfully moved into the ‘New Sweet High Elf Signiel Utopia’!
Not only had she become happy on a personal level.
Her business was flourishing as well.
Making a bold nationwide investment to split the novel division from Truth Daily and create Novelpia had been quite an adventure.
There had been plenty of opposition, of course.
But she had pushed ahead.
Naturally, it wasn’t solely because Kim Yul had lured her in with honeyed words.
The strong scent of money had been wafting around the tip of her nose, after all.
In the end, it had been a tremendous success.
Of course, it still couldn’t compare to the Empire Daily, the industry leader, but she was now busy preparing to open publishing houses not only in the imperial capital but throughout the Empire, expanding her reach even further.
A successful young (by elven standards) businesswoman!
Although that rude Kim Yul had once again shamelessly played with her ears today—fiddling, patting, rustling, rubbing, kneading, and performing all sorts of other actions too outrageous to describe in words.
Happy Chloe could generously laugh off that level of rudeness.
In fact, until the sun went down and the new moon rose, until she clocked out and returned home, a bashful smile had kept spilling from the corners of her mouth.
But.
Unlike ordinary office workers──people who only regained the smiles sealed away at work after leaving for the day.
The moment Chloe returned home, her smile had to be reported missing.
“What the elf……?!”
The heart of her New Sweet High Elf Signiel Utopia.
As Kim Yul abbreviated it, the Elf House’s core was its garden.
Chloe didn’t particularly enjoy extravagance.
But elves were, by nature, a race with an extremely strong affinity for plants, and Chloe’s only hobby besides making money was communing with them.
But.
What Chloe saw before her eyes now was.
“This, this can’t be happening, desuwa. What on earth is this……!”
The garden had been completely devastated, as though wild animals had gotten in, torn everything apart, and eaten everything they could.
With her heart collapsing in a thunderous crash, Chloe wandered through the garden with the expression of someone who had lost the World Tree.
“Vaseline…… I thought you’d bloom a huge flower…… Eclipse, if you just kept growing like this, you would have borne such sweet fruit…… And in the middle of all this, Ulysses, why is that weed still so perfectly fine……?”
Seeing the pitiful state of the plants that usually welcomed her with whispers, tears began to well up in Chloe’s eyes.
Right then.
“─……”
“──, ────!”
A sound like a beast stalking its prey.
And then a strange, low sound that didn’t even seem to belong to a beast reached Chloe’s ears.
Chloe’s ears perked and flicked rapidly as she searched for the source of the sound, and her gaze soon trailed behind her.
And.
She saw it.
“W-what, what in the world are those desu-in-sawayo……?”
Monsters harboring black shadows, seemingly shaped by the power of mana rather than possessing any physical form.
.
.
.
Chloe resisted with all her might to defend the garden.
And, furthermore, to protect her own life.
Unfortunately, the magic scrolls she had stolen from her father’s study when she entered the previous demon realm were all still safely locked away in her vault.
“Luluping!”
The only resistance she could offer was.
“Luluyap! Hyk!”
All she could do was briefly distort the flow of space to impede the feet of the charging monsters.
And use illusion magic to twist their mana circuits, gradually, little by little, turning them into a ‘harmless’ state.
As a result.
The face of the monster that had been gnashing its teeth like a deep-sea anglerfish, devouring everything in sight, became that of a cute Maltese.
Its sharp horn, which could pierce even stone walls, became a single brilliant flower.
But even so.
Its claws, talons, flowing negative mana, and body itself remained threatening.
However, at that moment.
“K-K-Kim Yuuul──!”
Her exclusive author, worn down by fatigue, appeared.
No one knew how he had found his way there.
He appeared like a hero overflowing with decadent charm, clutching a sturdy club……!
Kim Yul soon grasped the situation.
He sighed and muttered something, then gripped the club and charged at the monster.
And.
Whaaack──!
With an extremely crisp impact.
“……?”
“……”
The club shattered into two pieces.
“Aaaah!”
Kim Yul soon rolled disgracefully across the floor once to evade the enraged monster’s counterattack.
“Kyahah!”
Watching that clean naryeotagon takedown, Chloe burst into giggles without realizing it.
For a moment, she completely forgot her own situation.
Eventually.
“C-can’t you do something about this, desuwa!”
“I’ve had too many things happen today…… I’m out of strength now……”
There were now two idiots being chased by monsters.
Kim Yul felt wronged in his own way.
Even though he had given up the minimap and summoned Napoleon’s spirit, his physical abilities had not changed at all.
Actually, Napoleon hadn’t conquered Europe through physical prowess, so it made sense.
Still.
‘There has to be some kind of ability……!’
Kim Yul desperately racked his brain, forcing himself to ignore the screams of his thighs, which were already beginning to cramp.
He had no intention of being put on display alongside an elf in a monster eating show.
Therefore, Napoleon.
The skill Napoleon had granted him was ‘Grand Strategy.’
Since the power of a spirit summoned through Divine Possession was generally stronger than the abilities one could manifest through ordinary skills.
Various hypotheses were etched into his mind in an instant, then revised, deleted, edited, combined, and gradually brought into coherence.
Kim Yul remembered.
The stages of illusion magic that Historie had explained while chatting with him.
“Chloe.”
“Hyk, sob, why, why are you calling me, desuwa?”
“You are more beautiful and wise than any elf I have ever seen, with an exceptionally high affinity for mana and the ability to wield illusion magic with great skill. You are truly a genius of magic.”
“Hyk?!”
At the sudden barrage of praise, the tips of Chloe’s ears turned red, and she nearly stumbled and went clattering across the floor like a can.
As though he had predicted it, Kim Yul caught and half-embraced her to steady her, then continued whispering sweet-talking manipulation into her ear.
“The only one who can overcome this situation is you, Chloe──the genius of illusion magic bestowed by the heavens and acknowledged by the World Tree! Wield it. It’s already inside you……!”
“Heu, heu……!”
At Kim Yul’s gentle, sweet voice, the likes of which she had never heard from him before, Chloe’s mana circuits began spinning and spewing errors.
At the same time.
Though clumsy, Kim Yul’s words had been formulated into a kind of ‘strategy,’ giving Chloe the powerful conviction necessary to follow his ‘command.’
Because the most important thing in illusion magic was the caster’s faith.
At the same time, Yi Sun-sin’s trust-based skill, which was still active, bound the two of them—close both physically and magically—together.
The next moment.
“Lulupang……!”
Her voice trembled slightly, but as Chloe formed complex hand seals, the mana she created enveloped the monsters.
Immediately afterward.
“──, ──……”
“────!”
The monster’s.
No.
The body of what had once been a monster completely stiffened, its outer shell beginning to harden like a husk.
The change appeared quickly and dramatically.
Like a withered old tree, the monster’s body rooted itself starting from its legs, then cracked once and twisted as it scattered a strange light.
Eventually, it completely transformed into a gaunt tree, as though it had been there from the beginning.
Without either of them waiting to see who would move first.
“W-we did it, desuwa……?!”
“Did we get them……?”
The strength went out of their legs, and the two of them collapsed.
Soon afterward, Kim Yul had a minor incident in which he slapped his own mouth for uttering an NG word that should never be spoken in a situation like this.
Fortunately, Kim Yul’s mana sensitivity, officially certified by the Mage’s Tower, was scraping the absolute bottom, so the resurrection spell did not take effect.
Their joy at surviving lasted only a moment.
A little later.
“My New Sweet High Elf Signiel Utopia…… My garden has been completely ruined, desuwa……! Sob……”
The garden had been reduced to wasteland, apart from the plant Ulysses and the two newly sprouted trees that had once been monsters, which had somehow survived.
The house itself had windows shattered here and there and walls collapsed, making it look as though it could no longer properly serve as a home.
Chloe made a miserable face, sat down on the floor again, and began wiping away her tears.
No matter how coldhearted a writer Kim Yul was, with slightly less of a human heart installed than most.
“……Let’s go for now.”
He wasn’t heartless enough to abandon an elf whose entire household had been ruined.
─
…
* * *
“……That’s what happened. Let’s let her stay for a while.”
After hearing Kim Yul’s explanation.
“It’s a humble place, but this noble me will impose for a little while, desuwa!”
“You should say, ‘Thank you for letting a lowly elf stay in such a noble place.’ Where are your manners?”
“How dare you say that to the beautiful, wise, mana-affine, heaven-bestowed, World-Tree-recognized genius of illusion magic, the great Lady Chloe──Agyagyak──!”
Even as she listened to the two of them bicker.
Historie narrowed her eyes.
The two of them had never been particularly distant, but today they seemed even closer than usual, bickering exactly like real siblings.
That fact sent a strange signal through Historie.
Within her system of knowledge, the source that had provided the most extensive information about relationships between men and women was subculture.
Watching the two of them, what came to mind was.
The ominous machine-language tag ‘Tag:incest’.
In addition.
Historie felt a strange emotion taking root in her chest, one that her modules had not yet finished interpreting.
An emotion she could not express in that language.
■■ was probably──
“First, go wash Kim Yul. Chloe, I’ll show you the empty room. Follow me.”
“Sure.”
“Thank you, desuwa……!”
It didn’t seem as though deciphering it would take very long.