IRE Chapter 4

The distance he sensed while saying that was roughly 300 meters ahead.

No matter how much it was the forest, the elves’ home ground, detecting the presence of a being about 300 meters ahead was abnormal.

“Mother, please rest for a bit. I’ll go take a quick look.”

“Alright… But don’t go alone and wait for me. No matter how outstanding of a sentinel candidate you are, you’re still just a child who hasn’t even had your coming-of-age ceremony yet.”

“…Yes. And I’m not alone anyway.”

Having said that, Eldmir reached out and grabbed Atir by the scruff of the neck.

-Ack! Let go! I’ll stay here and protect Esiria!

“Shut up.”

Ignoring Atir’s shouts, Eldmir leaped onto a tree.

Finding a suitable spot, Eldmir glared at the location he had sensed.

-You damned bastard. What beings are here that can threaten you, making you cause such a ruckus with me? Let go right now!

“I said be quiet. Those guys, they have sharper ears than I thought. Keep it down.”

-You rotten log that’s been soaked in rainwater for 300 years…

Hearing the racoon spirit’s characteristically curt rough words, Eldmir entered observation mode.

“Those guys, what’s with them? Among the four cats, there aren’t any that look older than adults? The dog… Ah, it’s a wolf. That one is almost at the level of a barbarian warrior, but it’s already half-dead.”

One beastman that was practically in rags, its entire body wrapped in bandages, and four cat beastmen of various sizes.

The biggest one seemed to be barely over fifteen years old, and there was a cat that seemed to be only seven years old.

One peculiar thing was that there were no wounds from elven weapons.

“What? Didn’t they flee after fighting with us? No, rather…”

What… So they fled after fighting with orcs.

“Oh, so that’s how it is…”

-What, what is it? Let me know too.

“It’s nothing. Ha… How embarrassing…”

The legend of the mystery-solving detective Elf Eldmir did not exist…

-…I don’t know what it is, but I can tell you’re in a swamp of self-loathing. Sigh, why are you starting again, rebel?

“I said it’s nothing. Anyway, it’s been revealed that those guys aren’t our race’s enemies… So what should we do now?”

As if seeking advice or talking to himself, Eldmir muttered ambiguously, and Atir lightly responded,

-Regardless of what it is, the fact remains that those guys are invaders and sneaked into the forest. Don’t waste your mental energy on unnecessary emotions, okay?

“…”

At that moment, Esiria’s presence cautiously approached from behind him.

“How is it?”

“You’re here? You should have rested more.”

Surprised by Esiria’s arrival sooner than expected, Eldmir asked if she would be alright.

In response, Esiria smiled gently and replied,

“I’m not old enough yet to have my son worry about my health, so you don’t need to be concerned.”

Far from being old, she maintained a youthful appearance to the extent that if they stood together, people would ask if they were siblings.

If she went somewhere and said she was a young widow with a child, probably no one would believe her.

It was the dignity of an elf.

Clearing his throat and composing his embarrassed feelings, Eldmir lowered his voice again.

“Mother, you know… those speculations I mentioned earlier.”

Scratching the back of his head and hesitating, Eldmir soon let out a deep sigh and said in a self-mocking tone,

“They were all delusions. I jumped to the wrong conclusion. Yeah.”

“Delusions?”

“Looking at their scars, they weren’t injured by elves but by orcs. Scimitars and glaives used by orcs… Above all, there’s not a single wound from arrows.”

Naturally, the main weapons of elves were bows.

“So those guys were desperately fleeing for their lives to escape from the orcs… And avoiding the elves too… Well, I guess they were trying to flee as carefully as possible since we’re also enemies to them.”

Although they are potential enemies, elves have a principle of not attacking unless provoked first.

Of course, there are exceptions, but unless there’s a reason, being a non-aggressive race is the unspoken rule. However, that’s only possible when the other party is in a neutral position. If the other party is the beastmen who have been hostile to them for a long time, the story is different.

If they were wandering beastmen from a completely different village, it would be a different matter, but the appearance of that warrior was also in Eldmir’s memory.

It was identical to the attire of the beastman warrior who had fought with the sentinels of a neighboring village several times. Naturally, from the elves’ perspective, they were beings no different from enemies.

“Then were those children’s villages destroyed by orcs?”

“Probably, right?”

So they must be carefully passing through this forest in that state right now.

The cat girls were relatively unharmed, perhaps protected by the male beastman somehow, but the beastman himself was in a half-dead state.

Especially one of his legs was already in tatters, and he was barely moving with the support of the girls.

Eldmir thought it was impressive that they had come this far while hiding their traces in that state.

“They barely left any traces, so I thought they were highly trained beings, but the cats are just using their racial traits, and the wolf… That person must be really something. To be able to hide their presence so well even in a half-dead state.”

-So what are you going to do now?

“Well.”

They had chased after them with all their might, thinking they were the enemies of the elves, but when they actually uncovered the truth, they were pitiful victims of the orcs.

Four young cat girls and one beastman warrior who risked his life to protect those girls.

A tearful evacuation journey where they had to pass through the heart of enemy territory after their village was destroyed to reach their kin’s village in a foreign land.

If this were a game, he wouldn’t have hesitated in choosing whether to kill or spare them.

In his previous life, when Eldmir played games and encountered situations like this, he chose to either kill or spare the other party based on his mood at the time or according to the concept of the character he was playing, without seriously pondering over that choice.

In the end, the other party was just NPCs, AIs, and mere data fragments, not visible living beings right in front of him.

They were beings that were purely tools for gameplay, seasonings to spice up the fun of playing. That’s all they were.

“…”

That’s how it would have been in a game.

In games, he had killed many lives. He had spared them too, but the essence of the MMORPG genre, which this game belonged to, was to kill and become stronger. He killed monsters and he killed NPCs.

Putting aside whether they were simply enemies or villains, he had even killed village citizens who were just passing by. There was no reason. He had killed them just because he was bored while passing by, he had deliberately killed them to become a bounty target, and he had even killed them by accidentally clicking the mouse.

That was possible in games.

It was a world that had been just a game. But at some point, that game… became reality.

-Hey?

Killing people. It was something he had agonized over countless times, hesitated, and feared during the past 20 years.

20 years. That much time had passed since he accepted that this world was not a game but reality, and at the same time, became convinced that he was a player.

Naturally, he could easily guess that the things that had happened in the game would become reality.

The racial war, monster waves, great war against the demon realm, dragon raids, all kinds of wars and massacres. Ideological wars, wars of conquest, slave rebellions…

The endless deaths of NPCs that had always continued.

All of them were large-scale events consisting of violence and slaughter. Now, those events that had been in the game became the future that Eldmir had to face.

“Well, it’s not a difficult thing.”

-What is?

Murder.

For a reincarnator who had lived for nearly 20 years, murder was an act that only remained in the process of becoming numb to it.

He no longer agonizes over killing people, hesitates, or fears it. Because it will be a necessary act for him to survive in the future. The countless real combat experiences he has gone through and his growth as Eldmir prove that.

Having organized his thoughts, Eldmir shook his head.

“Killing them is a bit… But not killing them is also…”

Dispelling the complex thoughts, Eldmir focused on the matter at hand again. Even if the beastmen in front of him don’t have an immediate conflict with us elves, they are destined to fight with elves anyway. No, in the first place, they were already forces that had been fighting with elves.

Putting aside the cat girls, the beastman warrior in front of him, as mentioned, was someone wearing the attire of a force that had been hostile to elves.

Regardless of the racial war or large-scale events, considering what impact the beastmen will have on the elves, it was only proper to eliminate the beings right in front of him.

“Thinking that way, it’s only natural to eliminate them, but…”

Was it because of their outer appearance that it bothered his conscience? Or was it because those cat girls were young that it made him uneasy? Somehow, he felt reluctant to harm those beastmen.

“Eldmir, but those children haven’t harmed our race, have they?”

“That’s true for now. But think about the past and the future. Will those beastmen really not be harmful to our race?”

He knew the logic.

Recalling the racial war that would unfold in the future, the beastmen were nothing more or less than enemies to the elves.

In ‘Omega World’, regardless of what choices the player made each playthrough, the early story always had random branching points, and the story continued based on those branching points.

Regardless of the player’s intentions, the story always flowed randomly each playthrough.

Nevertheless, there were some events in ‘Omega World’ that were almost fixed, or stories that didn’t change, and one of them was ‘Elves are the first race to be eliminated in the racial war.’ And the beastmen are one of the races that greatly contribute to this directly or indirectly.

Based on those memories, Esiria calmly said in response to Eldmir’s words,

“There are only five of them. Four of them are still young children who haven’t even had their coming-of-age ceremony, and the only threatening one is that beastman warrior. But even that warrior clearly won’t be able to function as a warrior anymore. Even so, will sparing them be harmful to our race?”

Esiria’s words seemed reasonable at first glance.

Surely, she must have her own beliefs and conclusions reached after deep thought based on the experience of living for over 100 years to be able to say such things.

In fact, Eldmir didn’t strongly oppose her words either.

His concern was only from the perspective of the beastmen as a whole, so what’s the point of worrying about just the five in front of him?

At that moment, the beastman warrior muttered something to the cat girls in a dying voice.

I don’t know what he said, but perhaps hearing that, the cats are shaking their heads vigorously and shedding tears.

He’s probably telling them to abandon him and leave.

It was a very moving scene.

A warrior sacrificing his life for his master and young girls shedding tears, saddened by the warrior’s life.

“Hmm, I don’t know much about the beastmen language, but I can at least understand a few words. Princess, hometown, orcs, run away, revenge… Those young children must be princesses.”

Princesses.

Hearing those words, Eldmir wasn’t particularly moved.

In the end, for beastmen whose racial trait is to have many children, it’s common to send royal children to nearby territories or villages as hostages or for political marriages.

Those princesses were probably similar cases.

‘Or they might really be fleeing from Kelvan… But surely that’s not the case.’

Beastmen usually have their coming-of-age ceremony together as a male-female pair, and the two become lifelong companions.

Of course, after that, following the beastmen’s racial trait of the law of the jungle, polygamy or polyandry lifestyles continue… But that’s a story for later.

In that sense, that beastman warrior must also have a mate, and for beastmen, especially werewolves who are known for their strong reproductive urges, the probability of not having offspring is virtually nonexistent.

Nevertheless, the beastman is together with those four cat girls who are not his own offspring.

That means even if he has to give up his own offspring, the well-being of those girls is important, and for beastman warriors with deep loyalty, the beings they have to risk their lives for are narrowed down to a few.

Namely, the royal family or the children of the lord they serve.

More than that, the brief impression he had upon seeing them was…

‘The princesses are four? What’s with that gender ratio?’

It was a trivial idle thought.