“And it just went ‘TANG’ as the bolt hit it! It was like I hit someone in armour, and then, after looking at me for a moment, it just kept moving and took one of the goats for itself… I don’t even know what it did with it. I didn’t see it come out with the carcass, but it’s gone, and there's no trace of blood or anything inside...”

  The father explained as best as he could to the forest ranger that he was lucky to run into the very day that followed that most bizarre and worrying experience.

  Although it sounded crazy, the ranger knew very well that the man had no reason to lie. As such, it was indeed a worrying piece of information.

  The forest rangers looked to preserve and maintain the state of this great forest, for it was a place currently abundant with ‘nature energy’, another energy type with a very uninspired name, like there were countless of.

  But in general, this place was rich with all sorts of ambient energies and natural resources, and they had taken the duty of ensuring that it wasn’t exploited to the point of shrivelling up, which was unfortunately a bit too common.

  People tended to get a bit too excited about making a profit and forgot that natural resources couldn’t regrow quickly… Someone would always need to put their foot in the door to prevent such places from being turned into figurative deserts.

  “The description you’re giving me doesn’t correspond to anything I’ve ever heard of before. I’ll meet up with other rangers to see if they have anything, but we’ll be keeping an eye out nonetheless… Though we aren’t exactly exceptional at moving at night, so be careful, keep your doors and windows locked, just in case”

  The ranger, with his pointy ears that were rather short, gave this piece of advice before leaving, moving with impressive agility from tree to tree.

  Although forest elves were a bit stronger than the average human, their surprising capabilities mostly applied to their agility and dexterity. Something that a steel bolt fired by a powerful crossbow could not hurt was something they certainly couldn’t hurt either.

  The forest elf had dealt with a handful of monsters who had tried to make this forest their home in the past, and so had many of his fellows. However, it had never been anything too powerful or exceptionally dangerous.

  But what the father had described was a creature that could shrug off crossbow bolts, could make animals as big as a cow disappear entirely, and apparently, was capable of speaking… Not just speaking, in fact, but of holding conversations as well.

  Something like this was not feral in the least. All of the traits the elf had heard about painted the picture of a powerful creature with intellect on the level of a sapient… It might even be a genuine sapient.

  The farm was fairly deep into the woods as well, so that creature had either bypassed several forest rangers without being spotted, or had gotten very lucky…

  “It will be fine… We’ll just get a druid to find out its position”

  The elf muttered to himself as he stood upon a thick branch, the forest ground more than twenty meters below him.

  “Is somebody here? Please help me!”

  The voice wasn’t exceptionally loud or near, but the elf’s ears twitched as they picked up the sound. It was the voice of a young woman, rather light, judging by the tone of voice, so perhaps even a girl instead of a woman.

  Her accent was not that of the area, so probably a traveller or someone who had only arrived recently and got lost in the woods. That was not too uncommon, as a forest elf and natural lover of the woodlands, he understood the appeal of visiting such a beautiful forest.

  Swiftly, he changed his course and moved toward the source of the voice. Soon, finding an especially uncommon sight for the area. She was somewhat covered in leaves, having seemingly fallen into an unseen hole, but it was pretty easy to notice that she had blue skin.

  “A member of demonkind? I have never met one personally”

  The demon population of Rootriska as a whole was on the low end due to old conflicts with Malkazert, a kingdom next door, mostly inhabited by demons.

  So for the most part, you would mostly find demons in big cities and towns rather than in remote areas like here.

  “Did you get lost, Little Girl?”

  The blue-skinned demon seemed to want to say something, but stopped herself, instead nodding silently.

  “Leg… Hurts…”

  She spoke slowly and in a low tone.

  “Ah… Don’t move then, I’ll get you out of here… Where exactly do you li-”

  A rock twice the size of his head came crashing right on top of his skull.

  The elf went quiet instantly, resembling a stringless marionette.

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  “I… Told… You… They… Drop… Their… Guard… Easily…”

  “Gigi… Is… Just… Too… Cute… For… Them… To… Question… Anything…”

  Poppy phased out of the ground with a satisfied smile on her face. She had been worried that an elf would be much stronger than a human, but it seemed that a heavy stone did not care for such frivolous concepts.

  Although Gigi bore an awful lot of marks across her face due to her spiritual body reflecting the way she died, just like the others. It did not change that she remained the most adorable of the quintet by a long shot.

  The only problem was that she struggled to speak without a noticeable pause between her words. The five girls struggled with that, but some could manage a fair number of sentences in a row, whilst sounding like perfectly normal girls and not like vengeful spirits out for blood.

  “Wait… He… Is… Not… Dead…”

  Elowen descended from a tree. She had naturally been the one to drop the rock, being the only one of the group currently capable of interacting with physical objects, and even if she wasn’t, it was dubious if the others could have managed to carry a stone all the way up there.

  Not wanting to create too much evidence of the murder, the tomboy grabbed the unconscious forest ranger into a chokehold and suffocated him until his heart had completely stopped beating for thirty seconds.

  The last thing she wanted was for him to wake up and take off running.

  They had seen these elves move, and even Annie couldn’t keep up with them, especially in the forest where they had the homefield advantage.

  “Let’s… Not… Linger… Someone… Might… See… Us…”

  This was a classic Nessa concern. Being seen by other people was the thing she worried about the most, but here, she was perfectly correct. They should strive to make their existence unknown.

  Elowen picked up the corpse, and all five of the girls got out of here, carrying their spoil to their loving big sister.

  Their big sis was in dire need of sustenance at the moment…

  ___

  Is this what it feels like when you drink yourself to the point of passing out for a month straight and then have to deal with a headache for the rest of the year? I wouldn’t know, I was never one to drink much alcohol.

  Muddying my pristine thoughts would be a crime, after all.

  After being sliced up and falling into the river, due to the strong currents and the fact that I had lost most of my body. I was forced to just let myself be carried by the flow of water, as a single arm couldn’t get me anywhere anyway.

  The result was an unknown amount of time–Three weeks, according to Nara– Of me being flung around, crashing into rocks after rocks, being swept to the bottom, propelled outward, encountering a waterfall of several dozen meters in height…

  Until I finally hit an especially large rock and was able to pull myself ashore.

  To say that I had been beaten up would be a gross understatement. I was a pile of dented junk. Not just that, but I had actually started to rust.

  I had thought that it wasn’t something that could happen to my gorgeous steel body, but I was wrong. Due to being so severely damaged, my natural regeneration, which had been preventing even a speck of rust from forming for even a second, was overwhelmed, and I began accumulating it.

  My articulations would groan loudly and struggle to make the movements I wanted them to. My maw would get stuck in place at times and require some bashing to get back in place. It was terrible… But I knew how to see things on the bright side.

  This experience somehow completed a condition toward yet another form of mine.

  Rusted Plague Form

  I found it doubtful that ‘plague’ was a genuine nod to what I would turn into, so I assumed that it meant that this form would allow me to spread rust or something like that… Not that it mattered much at the moment, I had just completed one condition of an unknown number.

  So instead, I had been focusing on finding nourishment for me to recover my full grace.

  It was difficult.

  I had been raiding this farm for a while now, but as it turns out, rust is one of my worst enemies.

  It shows up when I am damaged, but it has to be removed before anything else can begin to heal up. In short, if I have a bit of rust, it takes priority in being fixed up over everything else.

  So I had to crawl around for a long while, feasting on bits of steel here and there whilst dining on some of the farm animals. I didn’t kill too much lest I trigger too strong a reaction from the farmers.

  So to supplement my recovery diet, I also caught some wild animals. It wasn’t too complicated to lure some to me. They never suspected that I was a threat until my jaw came shut around their bodies.

  And I still had my ghostly assistants and servants to help lure prey in my direction.

  Today, though, the quintet brought me an unusual lump of meat. One shaped like an elf.

  The girl gang acted as my eyes and ears most of the time, getting them out here and active also helped them develop their abilities, so it was a good thing all around.

  And they were quite smart as well. When they heard that this elf was going to inform others about my presence, they decided to lay a trap and swiftly take him out.

  This would only push back the problem, but that was the best that could be done anyway. Hopefully, those so-called ‘Forest Rangers’ are dispersed enough that one going missing will go unnoticed for a little while.

  I had only recently managed to rid myself of the rust coating my body, so now, all that I devoured went directly toward helping me regenerate. It was a shame that I couldn’t use the flesh and steel I had already eaten and stocked to quickly recover, but I suppose that would make me near unstoppable if I could do this.

  And as Nara basically spelt out on several occasions, there was an intention for me to struggle and learn on my own without being hand-held. Which I preferred, I would hate to be treated like an idiotic child…

  Speaking of stupid spawnlings. There was one that I didn’t dislike as much as usual. At first, I had been trying to lure her to open the window so that I could get a quick snack, but then she asked me if I had any talent for some reason, and she greatly enjoyed my singing skills.

  Since that girl had an ear for the best of lyrical performances… And also because my cute assistants had grown fond of her as well, since they now all shared one thing in common. Truly, it seemed like my voice could bring people together.

  Anyway… Let’s eat this elf, I wonder what he tastes like. I never ate any elf before.