Chapter 6
Elves.
One of the four major races.
They looked similar to humans on the outside, but on the inside, they were completely different.
Pointed ears, slender bodies, long hair, and long lifespans were their most recognizable traits.
However, those characteristics mainly applied to pure-blooded elves living in the Blessed Lands, the homeland of the four major powers.
Elves who had been continuously exposed to the Dark Lands, the Sanctuary, and the Dungeon often showed very different traits.
Some developed a taste for demonic beast meat and grew enormously fat.
Others lost their once noble and gentle nature, becoming wicked and cruel instead.
But the greatest difference was their shortened lifespan.
The average lifespan of elves living in the Dark Lands and the Sanctuary didn't even reach three hundred years.
That was still far longer than the lifespans of the other three races, but...
It proved that even elves weren't immune to the corruption that had soaked into the land.
Perhaps, because they worshiped forests and the earth, they were affected even more strongly than the others.
...That was the basic information Yohan knew about elves.
The elf introduced himself as Aren.
He liked reading.
He hated smelly Weres and demonic beast meat.
His specialty was memorizing magical formulas.
The person he feared most was Uncle Albern.
His best friend was Nuadillen.
And he was fifty-nine years old.
Aren continued rattling off more than fifty pieces of information about himself without stopping.
The moment he finally fell silent, Yohan answered the question Aren had asked earlier.
"Y-You know where the Sapien district is?"
"Yeah."
"Ah... I-I see. S-Sorry! I just assumed you'd gotten lost and were some kind of missing child... Hehehe."
Aren awkwardly scratched his cheek.
Then Yohan suddenly said,
"...You were born in the Sanctuary."
Aren's eyes grew even wider.
"H-How did you know? E-Even other elves usually can't tell unless I tell them."
How could he not know?
The elf had already revealed so much information about himself with his own mouth.
Yohan almost answered exactly that.
Instead, he kindly gave him another reason.
"Anyone who's come here from outside, or left this place even once, becomes stained with poison."
Yohan glanced at him.
"A deadly poison. Especially for supposedly noble elves."
"S-So something like that exists... I've n-never read about it in any books. N-Nuadillen never told me either..."
Aren leaned forward curiously.
"D-Does that poison have a name?"
"Who knows."
Yohan closed his mouth after that.
It was about time for him to move anyway, and he saw no reason to keep talking.
"I-Is it because they came into contact with demonic beasts? Or because the entire D-Downland is already c-corrupted, so the land itself produces some kind of p-poison...?"
Of course, deciding not to talk didn't mean he could get rid of Aren.
"M-Mister. Mister. C-Can you hear me?"
Step.
Step.
"Why did you go near the b-black clouds? If you stay exposed to them too much these days, your l-lifespan will probably get shorter."
Step.
Step.
"Are you planning to enter the D-Dungeon too? Is that why you're preparing yourself? Or maybe it's r-research? Research where you're risking your life? That's amazing. Hehe."
Throughout the entire walk toward the elven district, Aren followed a few steps behind Yohan, chattering without pause.
Yohan neither chased him away nor threatened him.
He simply continued walking slowly.
Before long, no voices reached his ears anymore.
Except for one.
[What? Don't tell me you've actually taken a liking to that brat.]
The voice of the half-goddess burrowed directly into his mind.
"Not particularly. I just thought he was an unusual specimen."
[An unusual specimen...]
She sounded amused.
[Well, elves are already famous for having almost no desire to reproduce. For one to actually have a child inside the Sanctuary really is rare.]
[Unless we're talking about the servants of weirdos like Dagon.]
"That's not what I meant."
[Hmm?]
For the first and last time, Yohan stopped walking.
He glanced back at the elf following him.
"That brat..."
Yohan narrowed his eyes.
"His body, mind, and soul aren't corrupted at all."
The Dark Lands.
Or, as they were sometimes called, the Downlands.
Originally, this wasn't a place where life could exist.
It was cursed land whose very existence was poisonous to living creatures.
To survive here, some degree of corruption was unavoidable.
Demonic beasts and corrupted servants were the most obvious examples.
There were only a handful of exceptions.
Karaam, the Sanctuary where demonic beasts couldn't enter.
The homelands of the four major powers, protected by the Outer Gods.
And...
Certain rare races that were said to have been born together with the Dark Lands.
Aside from those few exceptions, there was no way to escape corruption.
Even in those protected places, however, at least a small amount of corruption was unavoidable.
Living creatures who traveled between the Dungeon and the Dark Lands brought the poison back inside with them.
The Dungeon was the worst case of all.
Any living creature that entered the Dungeon even once could never completely return to the life it had before.
And the longer they remained there, the worse it became.
It was even said that anyone who entered the Dungeon three or more times would have their lifespan reduced to one-fifth of what it should have been.
That was how deep and powerful the corruption was.
[Of course, none of that applies to you, Yohan.]
"...I wish it did."
[Anyway, that means the brat is an exception like you, right?]
The goddess giggled.
[Maybe the two of you were drawn to each other? It seems suspicious that you encountered such a rare case so quickly.]
"No. That's not it."
Weapon techniques.
Magic.
Aura.
Divine authority.
Commanding armies.
Yohan Blake had once surpassed the limits of every field imaginable.
But that had been during his prime.
The Yohan of the present no longer possessed that level of ability.
After all, it had taken him quite some time after meeting Aren to even notice that the elf was an exception.
They had simply met by coincidence.
That was the only reasonable conclusion.
"...Well, whether it was coincidence or fate will reveal itself naturally with time."
Quite some time had passed while they talked.
Their destination was close.
Yohan casually spoke to Aren, who was still following behind him and chattering away.
"Two days from now, at noon, I'm entering the Dungeon."
"I-I knew it! You're going there because of r-research, right?"
Ignoring Aren's conclusion, which he had reached entirely on his own, Yohan continued.
"You seem to be curious about many things in this world."
Aren went quiet.
"If that's the case, experiencing them yourself would be better."
"Books and other people's testimonies can only take you so far."
"..."
Yohan looked ahead.
"If fate allows it, we'll meet again."
Then he added,
"Until then, I pray in the name of Eris that you remain alive."
That was the last conversation between them.
Aren stopped following Yohan.
Even after Yohan entered the elven territory, Aren's noisy voice could no longer be heard.
Yohan increased his pace.
The goddess suddenly clung tightly to him and smiled.
[Hmm...]
[What do you mean you don't like him? You obviously adore that brat.]
She giggled.
[I never knew our Yohan had those kinds of tastes. Hehehe.]
"You were strangely friendly toward him yourself."
[Because he didn't stink.]
The goddess moved from Yohan's arm to his shoulder.
Her expression twisted into something close to a sneer.
