Torchlight and enchanted lanterns cast shimmering reflections across the polished stone floors of Alf’s royal palace. Shadows stretched long, like a timeline being squeezed shorter by the second.
The two elven envoys—back in the kingdom before anyone else—didn’t stop to rest. They didn’t even bother to straighten their travel cloaks properly.
They went straight to an audience.
The doors to the royal study opened with a heavy, decisive sound.
“Your Majesty.”
The first envoy dropped to one knee.
“The plan from Vanir is complete. They will send a force ahead to stall the enemy, and they will deliver additional manpower equivalent to Rank A within seven days.”
The second envoy took over, voice steady but urgent.
“The demon army is camped near the border approximately five thousand. If they begin their march… our walls may not hold for long. Evacuating the entire kingdom must begin immediately.”
Upon the simple, dignified throne, King Elrund of Alf sat unmoving.
His face showed no shock.
Yet the silence he carried made the room heavier than any scream.
He listened to everything—every step, every condition, every timeframe. When the final report ended, only one thing followed:
an order with no room for hesitation.
“Issue the evacuation order. Immediately.”
The words struck like a hammer hitting a bell.
The entire room moved at once—officials and commanders rising and answering in turn, like a machine awakened from long stillness.
Alf wasn’t the kind of kingdom built in layers—capital city, satellite cities, outer towns.
Here, there was only one true center:
Alf itself.
That was because more than ninety percent of the population were elves—long-lived, and not particularly inclined to have many children. The kingdom simply never became crowded, even with a single city acting as its heart.
Even if Alf’s total population was roughly twice that of Vanir’s capital, sheer numbers weren’t the real problem.
The real problem was the land.
Dense forests and deep valleys swallowed most of the territory. Paths twisted, turned, and disappeared into the green—narrow, hidden, and brutal for moving large groups of people. The domain itself was vast, power scattered among small villages dotted across wilderness rather than neatly divided into “capital” and “secondary city” systems where you could line people up and move them in order.
And the moment the evacuation order went out, another reality slammed into them like a wave.
Most citizens refused.
Some insisted they would stay and die where they were born. Some argued the order was panic—an overreaction. Some stood in the middle of village squares and shouted that if anyone tried to meddle with their homes, it wouldn’t end politely.
Chaos ignited in multiple places at once.
Arguments became mobs. Gatherings became clashes.
Opportunists started moving. Criminals surfaced like dark shapes in a night where the light didn’t reach far enough. Even villagers who had once been calm began to harden, to resist, to bare their teeth.
The stationed troops tried to maintain order—yet forcing people to obey a single route, a single plan, was nearly impossible.
Because elves weren’t a people raised to survive by depending on the state.
They were born with survival skills. They knew the forests, the mountains, the hidden paths—and above all, the average elf’s magic was not as far below a soldier’s as it “should” have been.
When it came to fighting, the gap between a trained trooper and an ordinary villager was… uncomfortably small.
An evacuation order that should have been movement—
became the act of dragging the entire kingdom into fragmentation before the enemy’s shadow had even appeared.
That night, Alf began to crack from the inside—
long before the war truly arrived.
After the evacuation order was declared…
time marched on, mercilessly, for seven days.
Seven days filled with footsteps.
With wagon wheels.
With people arguing, people crying, people cursing—
and the kind of silence at night that weighed more than any sound ever could.
But more than anything else, they were seven days of nothing.
No word from Vanir. No reply. No soldiers. No reinforcements.
Not even the smallest sign that the human side still remembered the treaty at all.
And that kind of silence wasn’t peaceful.
It was the kind that gnawed at trust one bite at a time—until it became a wound, deeper with every passing day.
On the seventh day, King Elrund sat alone upon his throne.
The royal study was vast, yet with every breath it felt smaller. The light from the enchanted lamps trembled faintly, as if unsure whether it should keep shining.
He let the silence pool for a long time—
until something finally slipped out.
Not a proclamation.
Not an order.
Not the words of a king before his people.
“Those damn humans… you can’t trust them.”
The profanity struck the empty room like a single stone tossed into a deep well.
Elrund leaned back against the throne, eyes fixed forward—yet it was as if he wasn’t looking at anything at all.
In his mind, the same image replayed again and again:
Vanir’s promise to send help.
And then… nothing.
As time passed, there wasn’t even a shadow of them—like the words had been nothing more than air, blown away with the ceremony that carried them.
He couldn’t stop thinking it.
Maybe Vanir had intended to break the treaty.
Because if demon-kind truly invaded and took Alf… who would open a court and demand justice for them?
The dead had no right to sue.
The throne that had once been the kingdom’s center—
was slowly becoming a seat where resentment ripened, heavy and dark.
Footsteps sounded outside.
The door opened carefully, and the two envoys entered. Their faces were as tense as ever—only today, urgency was unmistakably mixed into it.
“Your Majesty.”
One of them dropped to a knee.
“Please permit us to have our mages open Bifrost and send us to Vanir to demand an answer. At the very least, we must know whether they intend to honor the treaty.”
The other envoy hurried to add—
“If we go ourselves, we might be able to bring reinforcements back in time, or at least”
The words at least were cut off by silence.
Elrund did not rise. He did not shout. He did not slam a fist on the table.
He simply spoke—calm and cold.
So cold it felt like the edge of a blade.
“No.”
Both envoys lifted their heads at once.
“That alone tells us they’ve betrayed us,”
the king continued slowly.
“Why should I waste our mages on a transportation spell, when all we’ll receive in the end are excuses?”
He pointed toward the map, pinned with markers—villages scattered through forests and valleys like capillaries in a country being squeezed.
“Keep the mages stationed within the city,”
Elrund said.
“Use them as fighting strength. That has more value.”
The sentence ended—
like a door closing on hope, layer by layer.
The envoys fell silent. They did not dare argue—not because they lacked reasons, but because they could see it in the king’s eyes:
Trust had died before the enemy even arrived.
And in that vast royal study, the refusal echoed into the silence—
like a declaration that Alf was about to stand alone.
After making that decision, Elrund refused to let his anger remain nothing more than bitter muttering in the dark.
He dressed himself in full battle regalia. Polished elven armor caught the enchanted lamplight, throwing it back in clean, sharp reflections. His royal sword was strapped tight at his waist—
as if proclaiming to the entire kingdom that this was no longer a night for waiting.
A number of royal guards joined his escort as he set out for the front lines—toward the kingdom’s wall near the border.
The place where everyone could feel it:
whatever was creeping closer could appear at any moment.
At the front lines, it wasn’t only soldiers.
Civilians were there too—those who refused to sit still, those who insisted they would stay and fight to the death on the land where they were born.
They came with hardened eyes. With whatever weapons they owned. With the same answer echoing across the kingdom:
Even if we die, we’ll die on our own soil.
The air beyond the wall was so tense it felt physically thicker. Alf’s troops formed the forward line in tight ranks—shield walls and drawn bows—assembling every force they could gather into a battlefield-ready formation.
Inside the wall, the remaining soldiers and another portion of the populace dug in as well, prepared to fight. No one knew exactly what waited ahead—
but everyone knew it would come.
The moment Elrund appeared on the front line, a roar went up, as if the entire length of the wall answered him.
The cheer thundered across the ranks—through soldiers, through villagers, through torches and war banners snapping in the wind like they were trembling with the people’s resolve.
Elrund stepped up to the highest point of the defensive line and looked out over his army. His gaze swept across faces smeared with dust, sweat, and stubborn determination.
Then his voice rang out across the field—not because he shouted with all his strength, but because an amplification spell was released with perfect precision.
“I am Elrund Estellion Elendil, King of Alf. And I will fight alongside you.”
The words were steady—pinning down the tremor hidden in people’s chests and straightening it into resolve. Elrund paused, then continued with a clarity as sharp as a blade.
“The Kingdom of Alf has endured many crises. We have survived disasters time and again. And we survived because you stood together because you helped one another.”
The banners whipped harder, as if responding.
“Just as in the past, Alf now faces another great trial. The enemy before us may be more powerful than we can imagine yet every one of you who stands here today does not retreat, does not flee, and is prepared to protect our homeland.”
The roar began to rise in waves, but Elrund lifted one hand slightly, signaling for them to listen.
“I, Elrund Estellion Elendil, King of Alf, will stand shoulder to shoulder with you. Let them witness the true power of the elves descendants of Ljosalfar, beloved of magic itself.”
He pointed toward the horizon, where forest shadows and valleys swallowed the distance.
“No matter who the enemy is before the elves of Alf, they will be forced to bow.”
At the end, his voice softened slightly—not weakening, but laying sincerity down at the center of the battlefield.
“It is my highest honor to fight with you, my brave comrades. Let us make history together.”
The moment his words ended, the entire line of the battlefield erupted into an even louder cheer.
Soldiers raised their weapons. Villagers slammed spear shafts against the ground. Banners snapped so fiercely it felt like they might tear the air apart.
The surge of fervor shook everything—so strongly that even the ground beneath their feet seemed to tremble.
And all of it happened…
before the enemy had even come into view.
Yet everyone stood ready—at full battle readiness.
Not long after the thunder of cheers had swallowed everything—
something else began to seep in and take its place.
A glooming aura. Not the darkness of night, but a darkness that felt like the meaning of life itself had been torn away.
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The stench of death and despair drifted on the wind from the dense treeline ahead. It didn’t blow hard. It didn’t roar.
It simply… bled into the air.
Like cold fog sliding along skin and stabbing all the way into bone.
An enormous pressure crashed into the minds of the warriors.
The cheers, the fervor, the clatter of weapons against the ground from moments ago—
all of it faded, little by little,
until only a silence remained—one that made it impossible to draw a full breath.
The enemy still hadn’t shown itself.
Yet the atmosphere leaking out of the forest was enough to break morale without proving anything at all.
It was pressure that spoke clearly of death—
so clearly that some, for a fleeting moment, thought it might be better to die now and never have to see what was coming with their own eyes.
Then a sound rose.
Soft footsteps.
So soft they were like a cat walking along a window ledge—barely touching the ground, barely audible.
And yet they struck straight into the heart for no reason at all.
The soldiers outside the wall began to tremble.
Fear. Anxiety. Emptiness.
Those emotions surged as if someone had ripped the lid off everyone’s chest at once. Some began to think—maybe they should have abandoned this land and run from the start.
Sweat slid down foreheads despite the chill, traced along cheeks, and dripped from chins like their bodies no longer obeyed any command.
Vision blurred from stress. Breaths turned shallow, rapid—like the air around them was being squeezed thinner.
Inside their chests, heartbeats pounded too loudly—
so loud it felt like betrayal, like it would give away their position to an enemy they still couldn’t see.
The aura of death kept crawling closer.
It didn’t slow. Not even a little.
The footsteps… multiplied.
From one to two.
From two to three.
Whatever it was, it wasn’t coming alone.
For the soldiers, even if their hearts insisted they would fight—
their brains sent the clearest order they had ever issued in their lives:
Run. Do not stay.
But their bodies didn’t respond.
They remained rooted where they stood—shaking, eyes forced forward, held in place by a strange sensation.
Not by chains.
Not by orders.
But by something unseen.
And in that crushing silence, the dense treeline kept swallowing everything—
like the open mouth of a giant beast, waiting.
And it didn’t take long.
Something—shapes—began to emerge from the dense treeline, as if black fog were slowly gathering itself into form.
First came a boy.
A dark aura spilled from him so deeply it seemed to twist the light around his body. His face couldn’t be seen clearly—as if he were nothing more than the silhouette of the Grim Reaper dragged out of a horror tale.
He stepped forward slowly.
Then another man followed—his gait far too graceful to be called walking. It was the movement of a judge.
Of a god of death who had come to reap lives with indifferent calm.
Next, a small young woman appeared. There was something strange in the lines of her shadow—something that looked like what people called a witch.
After her came another woman—tall enough to feel unreal, like a goddess among them. She carried some enormous weapon in her hands, and its shadow stretched long across the ground like a grave already marked in advance.
Another man staggered into view. No rhythm. No steadiness. Like his body didn’t care about ceremony at all—
and yet the pressure rolling off him was impossible to ignore.
Then another woman stepped out, perfectly composed—so calm it was chilling, like a priest finishing the rites of a funeral.
And last—
a man carrying a massive weapon. He stood with his weight settled and still, yet the very space before him felt heavier in a way that didn’t make sense.
Seven figures stood in a line.
And the aura pouring from them all meant only one thing:
Do not get in our way.
Their outlines sharpened, little by little. Shadow became skin. Eyes. Hair.
Faces.
And every face that emerged was—
human.
Ordinary human faces, no different from the people of this world.
The crushing silence that had held everyone down was ripped apart by a shout from the witch girl.
“WE FINALLY MADE IT OUT!!!!!”
The soldiers didn’t drop their guard. No one lowered spear points. No one loosened bowstrings.
But what stood before them was too strange to interpret as a normal enemy invasion.
Because instead of war cries or proclamations, what drifted from the group of seven sounded like the complaints of people who’d just finished a long trip—
with absolutely zero respect for ceremony.
“A city… thank gods, a city.”
One girl spoke like she was sighing out her entire soul.
“Finally. I can take a bath.”
One of the men immediately muttered, dead serious, like it was the most important mission of his life.
“Do they have alcohol here?”
Another man cut in fast—like he’d smelled something from a mile away.
And at last, the voice of the man who had stepped out last rang out—flat, but clearer than anyone else’s.
“Next time, read the map properly, Lily.”
The moment that sentence left his mouth, one of the elven envoys—standing beside the king—shouted as if he’d just been jolted awake from a nightmare.
“That’s… Vanir’s Rank S adventuring party!”
Elrund snapped his head toward him.
“What did you say?”
The envoy swallowed and answered quickly, his face still full of disbelief.
“Yes… it’s them. The very group that said they’d join us seven days ago, but… why are they coming out of the forest?”
The seven of them were still standing at the edge of the treeline—far enough that Alf’s soldiers could hold a full defensive formation.
Their posture looked exhausted, like they’d been through something brutal.
And yet, bizarrely—
their clothes, their armor, their weapons were immaculate. Clean. Neatly arranged. Gleaming—
as if they’d just stepped out of a laundry shop.
Then, one by one, they began walking forward at an unhurried pace.
No hostility. No threatening gestures.
But the pressure lingering in the air hadn’t faded completely, and it made Alf’s front line tense even harder.
Elrund raised a hand slowly, then gave the order in a heavy voice.
“Everyone… lower your weapons.”
Spear points and bows gradually dipped, inch by inch—yet every eye along the line stayed locked onto the group ahead.
Elrund stepped forward with the two envoys and a portion of his royal guards, moving toward the seven with an expression that was impossible to name:
suspicion, anger, or relief crushed tight enough to hurt.
“What is going on here?”
Elrund’s voice was low, but razor-clear—like he was forcing himself to remain calm as his gaze held on the seven “strangers” the envoy had just identified as Vanir’s Rank S party.
Ace immediately jabbed a finger at Lily, not bothering to manage his emotions.
“This is her fault! She grabbed the wrong map! Instead of the city map, she opened the one the scouts drew showing where the demon army was and warped us straight here!”
Like the phrase wrong map was a fuse—
turning a battlefield-wide shock into a nationwide level of confusion.
Romeo added, methodical as if he were delivering a daily report.
“In short, we ended up materializing in the middle of the demon army… instead of the city.”
Lily immediately threw up a hand, looking like she’d just been accused in court without even being told the charges.
“How was I supposed to know?! I saw it on the table and I grabbed it! I was trying to be responsible, okay?!”
Ace looked ready to fire back, but Mary cut in—her tone carrying the weight of the entire world in a single sentence.
“Whatever. We finally found a city. I can take a bath… and eat some decent food.”
The word bath made several Alf soldiers swallow without meaning to, like their brains still hadn’t decided what to be shocked by first.
Elrund’s brows knit together.
“Wait… you appeared in enemy territory like that?”
“Yes,”
Valda answered simply.
And in that exact moment, something popped into existence from empty air.
Pop!
A strange-looking square box sprang up and landed neatly on Valda’s head, its bright white eyes flashing like flickering lightbulbs.
Shouts of alarm burst from every direction. Many soldiers raised their weapons by instinct—the dark aura from that thing was impossible to ignore, and the word undead made more than a few people step back before they even realized they were moving.
Valda lifted a hand and gently touched the creature, like she was calming a pet.
“It’s fine. It’s my pet.”
She said it with zero intent to hide anything—like someone too exhausted to explain the charm of a cursed box to anyone anymore.
Elrund didn’t let go of the question.
“Then how did you escape?”
Sight let out a long sigh, as if to say the question shouldn’t even need to be asked. His irritation was the most obvious thing on his face—
the irritation of a man deprived of something essential to life.
“Escape!?”
He repeated the word, then tilted his head slightly.
“Run from that? How? You just deal with them. All of them.”
His tone sounded like he was complaining about house chores rather than recounting a fight against an enemy army.
And that annoyance only sharpened because the alcohol he’d brought—
had run out on the second day.
By now, he was practically trembling with withdrawal.
Elrund blurted out at once.
“What… you wiped them out? All of them?”
“Put that aside for now.”
Romeo lifted a hand, like he was cutting off a national emergency meeting with a single gesture.
“Everyone can go home. Open the city gates. Let us in so we can bathe and eat already.”
His tone was flat—
but firm enough that it sounded like the most important order on the battlefield.
Alf’s front line—just moments ago so tense it felt like everyone’s breath was stuck in their throats—
began to part in bewilderment. One person. One row. Then another.
As if their minds were still trying to decide whether everything they’d just witnessed belonged in the category of nightmare… or reality.
Elrund froze for a heartbeat, then gave the envoys a small nod and stepped forward toward the Rank S party—his expression impossible to read.
Should he be angry?
Relieved?
Or should he simply surrender to the sheer absurdity standing in front of him?
“Make way.”
The king’s command rang out.
The city gates opened.
Elrund and the envoys led the seven inside, issuing orders for every unit to stand down and disperse—
as if nothing had happened at all.
As if there had been no aura of death, no grim reaper silhouettes, no heart-haunting footsteps—
only an order that made the entire front line finally loosen, still not understanding why.
When they reached the palace, the seven didn’t spare a second for ceremony.
Water was prepared. Baths were filled to the brim.
They washed thoroughly—dust, sweat, and the grime of seven days that felt far longer than seven days had any right to feel.
Then they sank into the hot spring baths—an onsen—completely at ease, like they’d returned from a relaxing holiday…
not like they’d gotten lost in the woods and triggered an incident that nearly made an entire kingdom panic.
Afterward, they changed into comfortable, elf-style loungewear—soft fabric, pale colors, simple and understated—
a bizarre contrast to the armor that still gleamed as if it had been meticulously cared for.
Only then were they escorted to a reception room to eat.
The food was arranged with painstaking care. Fragrance filled the room—so warm and rich it felt like the tension they’d carried from the front lines was being pulled out of their lungs, little by little.
Everyone began serving themselves, eating without much talk.
Because hunger didn’t care about treaties.
Or war.
Across the table, however, Elrund refused to let “we’ll talk about that later” survive for long. Questions fired from him nonstop—between the soft clink of spoons against bowls and the steady rhythm of chewing.
And in the end, the conclusion was brutally straightforward in its chilling simplicity.
When the seven of them materialized in the heart of enemy territory…
there was no escape.
So they had to fight.
And because Earp switched into a mode of killing without restraint—using his skill Massacre—the demon troops stationed there were wiped out completely.
No witnesses.
No prisoners.
Not a single one left alive.
Everything ended in just a few minutes.
But instead of the story ending there, the real problem began once the silence returned.
They discovered the forest was saturated with abnormally dense mana particles—so dense they couldn’t find a way out. Direction itself felt warped. Distance was a lie. Paths that should have been straight looped back on themselves.
They spent the last seven days lost in that forest.
They couldn’t use Bifrost, either—because Lily hadn’t brought a map of Vanir in the first place.
Eventually, Earp had no choice but to release all of his aura, forcing a map to pierce through the mana veil—because ordinary mapping skills simply couldn’t punch through it deeply enough.
That was the source of the terrifying aura that had rolled out when the seven finally emerged from the treeline.
And at the same time, the thunderous roar of warriors—those triumphant shouts shaking the air before the city—
became the simplest compass in the world.
They realized they weren’t far from people anymore, and followed that direction until they finally made it out of the forest.
Only to find what awaited them—
Alf’s front line, on the verge of shooting them on sight, along with the despair of an entire kingdom.
Elrund still couldn’t quite believe what they were telling him. Even hearing “we dealt with all of them” again and again, it sounded too unreal.
But the problem was—
their story matched too perfectly to be a lie.
The explanations flowed smoothly, consistent at every point. There were no gaps—none of the tells you’d expect from people improvising a story on the spot.
And more than that, Alf’s Adventurers’ Guild already knew this party’s name, at least to some degree.
The name that had come out of Vanir wasn’t just a rumor carried on the wind.
Mary was another reason the truth carried weight without needing a shred of physical evidence.
She had once been appointed as the would-be Archbishop—and that news had reached Alf as well. After all, the current Archbishop, Simmon, was originally from this kingdom. The Church wasn’t bound to any single nation, but its offices existed across the world. The reputation of someone nominated for the highest seat didn’t stop at one border.
And then there was the name Ripper.
Even if you didn’t want to know it, you couldn’t avoid hearing it.
An assassin family that had never failed a job—one hundred percent success. That alone was enough of a seal to prove they were real.
Even so…
“Defeating an entire demon army”
still sounded absurdly over the top.
Elrund was about to ask again, but Valda spoke first—her tone like someone closing out a report before the discussion turned into an endless interrogation.
“It seems… the force that came was a small unit. Led by a single commander. Not something overwhelmingly terrifying.”
She enunciated every word.
“And the true Demon Lord of course wasn’t with them.”
Valda paused briefly, then dropped the fact back onto the table like placing a weight on the world itself.
“But after this, the kingdoms should hold a proper summit. Because we don’t know what will happen next.”
The moment she finished, she turned right back to feeding snacks to Michan—
as if an impending world-scale disaster and taking care of a pet sat on the same priority level, perfectly naturally.
Romeo nodded, then spoke like a man who already had his life scheduled down to the hour.
“As for us… we’re thinking of sleeping here for one night, then returning to Vanir to report. It’s been seven days already. They’ll have the army prepared by now.”
He paused, then added:
“But we’ll probably have to split up as well.”
Lily made a face like the words split up were the single most annoying thing in the universe.
“Just us is enough. We don’t need anyone else’s help.”
Her voice hardened.
Ace snapped his head around and shot back instantly, not even giving her magic time to hang in the air.
“Shut it. Or I’m going to eat everything on this table before you do.”
Lily’s eyes went wide—like she’d just been threatened with the ultimate taboo of her life. She immediately wrapped both arms around her plate, clinging to it.
“D-Don’t! This food is mine!”
The reception room—just moments ago heavy with war and treaties—loosened in a strangely gentle way.
Not because hope had returned.
But because no matter how close the world came to falling apart…
some people could still argue about food exactly the same as always.
The next day, all seven of them set out to return to Vanir using the same spell—Bifrost.
But this time, no one was willing to let a “wrong map” incident happen again for even a second.
The map the envoys had provided was spread out and checked—again and again. Coordinates were compared with obsessive precision. One person pointed. Another repeated it. A third confirmed it—like they were signing off on a nation-level document.
Only when everyone was satisfied did Lily finally begin her chant.
A magic circle was drawn across the ground. Mana light swirled into lines—beautiful, yet solid with intent—and then all seven vanished together, as if folded into a curtain of light in a single blink.
The sight made the elves who witnessed it go completely still.
And it became yet another reason the party’s story felt believable without argument—because in this world, no one could open Bifrost alone.
Except the one they called the Elemental Overlord.
A name the elves who had studied magic in Luna spoke of often, like a living legend of the modern age.
Now that they had seen it with their own eyes, they understood immediately:
the throne of number one in magic no longer belonged to elves alone.
Not long after, the seven arrived back in Vanir.
Their report went straight to Odinir. Every fact was laid out in full—neatly connected from start to finish—before the conversation moved to the next stage:
planning a summit of world leaders, to prepare for the rising threat of the demon race.
But once something global had been placed on the table, the life of Vanir’s Rank S party returned to what felt most familiar with remarkable speed.
All seven were back in the guild, just like always.
Ace was still arguing endlessly with Lily about a manga spell that didn’t work in real life.
Mary sat there bored enough to start seriously gossiping with Romeo like it was her daily mission.
Valda meticulously checked the team’s gear—feeding Michan snacks in between.
Earp did nothing but sit there, and the atmosphere around him still shifted anyway.
And Sight, cheerful as ever, had already set up a daytime drinking circle with adventurers from other parties like he owned the place.
The same routines. The same familiar picture—like everything was normal.
This was the kind of life the strongest Rank S adventuring party tended to have…
on days when there was no quest to do.