“Mm~ My piece is sweet. So that piece of Miss Grier’s must be salty.”
“…I suppose so.”
Sitting on a bench in a plaza in the lower district, Luc hesitated as she looked at the paper bag in her hand.
Beside her sat Milin, holding an identical paper bag…
She was swaying happily from the overwhelming sweetness of the local specialty snack.
She had pulled her hood over her conspicuous red hair, so the pedestrians in the plaza didn’t notice her.
To eat or not to eat was never a question worth debating for Luc.
To survive in those harsh environments, she had long developed the habit of eating anything she saw, and had trained herself to have an iron stomach that could even digest poisonous food without issue.
And the bag in her hand contained none of those things… but rather the renowned local specialty snack of the Sea of Trees.
‘I… am I really about to sit here with the daughter of my father’s murderer, happily enjoying snacks together?’
Luc would never even dream of such an absurd scene… but this was reality.
That’s why she hesitated. Normally, she would have started devouring it without even blinking.
“Why are you sitting there blankly? Chew chew… Could it be that you don’t like salty food? If so, do you want to swap my bag with yours?”
The shop selling these snacks packed both sweet and salty flavors in identical wrappings, so only by actually opening the bag and tasting could one know which flavor they got.
Thinking that Luc didn’t like salty, Milin pushed her own paper bag toward her.
“…No, it’s not that. I’m just a bit puzzled… Are you always this warm to every stranger?”
“Strangers… but don’t we already know each other?” Her question instead made Milin look puzzled.
A moment later, she suddenly clapped her hands in realization.
“Could it be that I’m too forward? Hahaha… If I made you uncomfortable, then I’ll hold back a bit.”
Milin said apologetically, at the same time moving her seat a little further from Luc.
“No, it’s not about being forward. You and I are strangers—because we’ve barely exchanged a few words. Apart from my name and family name, you know nothing about me. And you’re showing such goodwill to a complete stranger like me, which I find a bit strange.”
“Hmm… You do have a point. But if I don’t show goodwill, how else can I get closer to you?”
“You… want to get closer to me?”
“Yes. Only by getting closer can we understand each other, can we go from strangers to acquaintances. But I really am a person without much sense of boundaries, so I might have made you uncomfortable. If so, I’m willing to apologize.”
Milin bowed her head solemnly… but this action only made Luc even more confused.
“Earlier, you overheard about the forestry development in the Shadowforest Domain, which is why you came to talk to me, right? Do you know much about my family?”
“Uh… not really, but I know your family is one of the most prominent in the Shadowforest Domain.”
“As I said before, I’m not the person in the family responsible for this area… in fact, I’m basically detached from the family’s industries and affairs. So I want to know, is there some relationship between your mother’s company and my family?”
“Not that I know of…”
“Then why do you want to get closer to me? I should be of no value to you.”
“It’s not that you have no value. The fact that you can become my friend is valuable to me.”
“Friend…? You just want to be friends with me? Nothing else?”
“Yes. I want to be friends with you, nothing else. Don’t you want to?”
Milin offered her bag of sweet snacks again… Her smile was so dazzling, even more than the afternoon sunlight.
“…I think we can’t become friends.”
“Oh, is that so? Then I must have been too impatient.”
She didn’t take the bag. But Milin wasn’t discouraged by that.
Because she noticed that in that instant, the fairy maiden who had been keeping everyone at arm’s length had slightly lifted her hand, as if to respond to her invitation.
…
…
“How much further?”
“Very soon.”
Iyue walked through the dark underground tunnel… and ahead of her, guiding the way, was Yan Wei Fu.
He held a torch, lighting the path before them.
Soon he stopped. By the light of his torch, Iyue saw that the path ahead opened up—
It was a huge underground cavern. In the middle of the cavern were winding, intertwining giant tree roots… and these roots formed crisscrossing roads, extending far into the distance where the light couldn’t reach.
Yan Wei Fu stood there for a while, rotating the light source in his hand as if confirming the path.
A moment later, he led Iyue onto one of the roots.
“Please be careful. If you miss a step, you might fall who knows where.”
“Thank you for the reminder. But this isn’t my first time in such a place.”
After careful consideration, Iyue had decided to infiltrate the Nelf Family and quietly take the relic that was her target without anyone noticing.
So the two of them were now in the underground tunnel formed by the intertwining roots of the giant tree beneath Fenglin City.
After learning of Iyue’s needs, Yan Wei Fu had brought her here.
“I know there are complex underground passages beneath Fenglin City… but I didn’t know these passages connected to the giant tree.”
Yan Wei Fu told her that one of these passages led to the Great Tree Nelf.
“In fact, it’s not just Nelf… even the Crown Giant Tree is connected to this place. But you, a former Royal Guard Knight, must know that, right?”
“…I didn’t know. The root region of the Crown Giant Tree is off-limits even to the Royal Guard Knights.”
‘If I had known earlier, I might have been able to infiltrate the giant tree through here… No, even if I had infiltrated, I wouldn’t have been able to find my mother, who was imprisoned somewhere, without being discovered by the guards.’
Iyue recalled the days when, as a young girl, she tried to break into the giant tree to find her mother… Ironically, even after reuniting with her mother, Iyue never knew exactly where she had been imprisoned back then.
‘Because she didn’t bring it up, I never asked. If I had asked her then, would I have noticed her mental abnormality? If I had discovered it earlier, could that tragedy have been avoided…’
Those memories pierced Iyue’s mind like needles and awls.
She couldn’t pull them out, so she could only try to ignore their existence as much as possible.
This root path wasn’t very long. Soon Yan Wei Fu brought her to the end of the road… The cavern here was even larger than the one they had passed through.
But besides size, there were other differences.
The cavern was lit by some kind of crystal embedded in the roots and walls, and in the center of the cavern, a spiral staircase stood in a beam of light falling from above.
“Well… Welcome back to the Nelf Family, Lord Iyue.”
Yan Wei Fu extinguished his torch and bowed deeply to Iyue.