Chapter 118: Chapter 118: Abomination
"Hang tight, elves..." he thought, though the words rang more like a prayer than a taunt. He wasn’t sure whether he prayed for them, or for himself. Perhaps both.
The thought clung to his chest like armor, but armor made of paper—thin, fragile, one touch away from tearing.
His breath fogged in the night air, carrying with it a metallic tang he could not name.
The Weight of History
The elves.
Long-eared folk who had carved their dominion not in stone, nor in steel, but in the forest’s marrow itself.
A people who did not build monuments outward, but inward, sinking into the green, binding themselves to root and leaf, to the pulse beneath soil.
A species obsessed not with what lay beyond the horizon, but with the silence inside the trees.
And in that silence, they had found their goddess. Not by questioning, not by wrestling with doubt, but by surrender. Sheer, unrelenting subservience.
Even humans—divided as they were, half-believers and quarter-believers, saints and skeptics alike—still carried a measure of distance between themselves and their gods. They doubted. They debated. They wandered.
But the elves? No.
The elves would burn themselves alive if the goddess so commanded. They would bleed in her name, die in her name, wage endless war in her name. To them, destruction was devotion, conquest was communion.
The webnovel whispered fragments of this truth, though most readers skimmed past. Hidden between the lines, a secret glimmered—a secret the author had once revealed, not in the Chapters, but in the bottom lines of reviews. A curious soul had asked, once.
Why did the elves stop their war midway? Why accept defeat when victory was in their grasp?
And the author, humble as he was, had answered.
The answer was not defeat. It was prophecy.
One high elf, oldest of them all, had gazed into the veil of years and seen the future of their race.
In that vision, a man would come. A man who would unite the eight races, weaving them into a single thread.
A vision bestowed not by chance but by their goddess herself.
Their goddess did not crave war, as her zealots believed. She wanted unity. And so, obedient to the last, they had retreated—not from weakness, but from faith.
The revelation had stunned him when he first read it, back in his old life. He remembered how his hands had trembled against the phone screen, how puzzle pieces clicked into place.
The war wasn’t lost. It was surrendered. Not like how humanity saw it. How Arina saw it.
Even now, with monsters snarling in the dark and sweat running down his back, the memory burned inside him like contraband fire.
He could not tell Arina. Not yet.
Thud!
Another beast fell, collapsing into the dirt with a wet, final sigh. A red ogre-like creature, nine feet of swollen muscle, one eye mashed to pulp by Arina’s knife.
Her blade was still embedded in its skull when she exhaled, ragged and fierce.
"Haaa... that’s done."
Her voice carried exhaustion, but also something sharper. Triumph.
Aiden’s own arms trembled with fatigue, his shoulders aching from hours of hacking, parrying, lifting.
Yet Arina—sick, fevered, bleeding inside—still moved like a predator.
"God, you move like a fucking beast even when you’re sick and in pain," he muttered, watching her wrench her blade free. "What could you do when you’re well?"
She flicked the knife, wiping crimson arcs across the earth. Then she drew her sword in one clean sweep, slicing the air. The blood vanished, not a drop daring to cling.
"...Oh, you think I’ll heal?" Her eyes narrowed, dark pools glimmering with sweat and something unspoken. "You’re really positive, aren’t you?"
Aiden tried to mimic her—slashing his own blade through the air—but streaks of gore clung stubbornly. The weapon felt heavier for it, like it resented him.
"...You’re mine," he said simply, forcing steadiness into his tone. "Of course you’ll live."
Her lips curved, tired but amused. "Haha... really? Where’s all that confidence coming from?"
"Well..." He grinned, reckless. "You’ve seen me naked. So you know."
She laughed, genuine this time, though it was jagged around the edges.
"Hahaha... Aiden, oh Aiden. First let me live. Then you can flirt with me."
The blush that flared across her cheeks—whether from exhaustion or from something else—did not fade quickly.
Aiden pretended not to notice, but the image seared into him.
They pressed onward, step by punishing step, cutting down monsters that lunged from the shadows.
With each victory, their bond deepened—not in words, but in rhythm. Two blades, two breaths, moving through the forest like a single scar carved into the night.
The Tree of Ages
At last, the monsters thinned, and before them rose the gates.
No—the Gate.
Huge, towering, carved from white marble veined with green. Yet even its magnificence seemed humbled, dwarfed by what stood beyond.
The Tree.
Aiden’s breath caught. His chest felt too small for the air it needed.
"Oh.my.god," he whispered. "It looks incredible... up close."
The trunk was no tree—it was a continent. Thick as a city, roots like mountains sprawling beneath soil.
The branches spread across the heavens, woven tapestries of green blotting out the sky. The air itself smelled of old rain and sap, heavy and eternal.
And then he saw them.
Hanging from the branches were shapes—shapes he thought were nests, until his eyes focused. Houses. Roads. A city suspended in the air, dangling like jewels in a crown of leaves.
"Wait... are those...?" His voice cracked with disbelief.
"Yes," Arina muttered, her voice taut with something bitter. "They evolved after the war with us.
Before, they were zealots—illiterate, hungry only for glory. But after they saw our civilization, they envied. They copied."
Her tone was a blade of its own. Aiden glanced at her but said nothing.
The gates loomed closer. Curved arches, designs echoing human craft yet twisted with elven flourish—curves where there should have been lines, spirals where there should have been stone.
’It’s like they wanted to imitate us,’ Aiden thought, studying the carvings, ’but their zealotry warped it. Ingenuity bent beneath faith.’
The gates creaked open. No knock, no herald, no music. Just silence.
The Smell of Blood
Arina froze.
Her nostrils flared. Her eyes sharpened, instincts screaming before her lips could shape the words.
"Something’s wrong."
Aiden’s stomach dipped. "...Again? What now?"
"I smell...blood," she whispered. Her voice shook—not with fear, but with certainty. "Too much blood."
The gates parted wider. The marble seemed to sweat under the weight of what approached.
Not elves. Not song or ceremony.
But a shadow.
The Abomination
It stepped into the light.
A figure tall as despair, wrapped in darkness that clung like tar. Two horns, red and ridged, jutted from its forehead like broken crowns.
Its eyes gleamed with disdain, voice rasping like stone against stone.
"...Humans...?... What a surprise."
The air grew colder. Even the sap-heavy wind seemed to shrink away.
Arina’s blade rose an inch. Her foot slid back.
"...A bastard," she said flatly. "Dragon and elf. You’re lucky, Aiden. To see such an abomination. A rare abomination."
Her words carried venom, but also awe.
Aiden’s throat tightened.
’Great,’ he thought bitterly. ’The elves. The monsters. And now this. Do I have the main character’s bad luck or some shit?’
The abomination smiled.
And the gates yawned open wider, swallowing the day.