Chapter 71: The Second New Alchemical Creation 3

The laughter around them quickly died away.

The more quick-witted dark elves quietly began slipping away one by one.

They had finally realized that perhaps...

This had not been the best moment to laugh.

Unfortunately, a few of the slower ones still crowded around Keta, eager to continue watching the spectacle.

Keta was already thoroughly irritated.

As far as he was concerned, if all these people had not stood around laughing, Kent might not have stormed off in the first place.

His temper finally snapped.

“Get lost!”

“Every one of you!”

“Have you all got nothing better to do?”

His voice thundered across the area.

“If any of you keep following me, I’ll use Woodification on every last one of you!”

Woodification was originally a defensive wood-element spell.

It transformed the surface of a person’s body into a wood-like substance, greatly increasing physical defense.

The spell could even be used to restore life to certain withered trees.

However...

There was one rather serious problem.

The spell had to be dispelled afterward.

If it was not removed in time, the wooden transformation would continue spreading through the body.

Eventually...

The victim would literally become a wooden person.

Under normal circumstances, someone might have interpreted Keta’s threat as an offer to improve their defenses.

At this particular moment, however...

Nobody was foolish enough to believe that was what he meant.

The crowd scattered instantly.

Within moments, the entire area was almost empty.

Only a few abandoned beast-hide boots remained on the ground, left behind by people who had fled so quickly that they had not even bothered to retrieve them.

“Grandpa...”

“What exactly happened?”

The person asking was Daphne.

Unlike most dark elves, Daphne had never possessed particularly impressive innate talent.

Dark elves generally had excellent natural gifts.

Those whose talents were considered too poor were usually raised collectively by the community and later assigned miscellaneous work.

Daphne had been one of those children.

No one had chosen to take her in.

In the end, it was Keta who adopted her.

Because of that, Keta was the closest thing Daphne had to family.

Later, she became a Watcher, a companion destined to fight alongside Keta.

Even so...

Daphne had always called him Grandpa.

Keta glanced at her.

Then he slowly began walking in the direction Kent had gone.

Daphne followed beside him.

As they walked, Keta explained everything that had happened.

When he reached the part about the green spell he had cast on Kent, Daphne finally understood the source of the misunderstanding.

The spell was called—

Nature’s Protection.

It was an extremely rare wood-element auxiliary spell.

Its first effect was to grant the recipient the ability to communicate with plants.

And unlike most enchantments...

The effect was permanent.

But that was not its most terrifying function.

If Kent were ever killed inside a forest...

The moment he died, the spell would identify his killer.

Then it would activate a Level-Nine forbidden spell—

Nature’s Wrath.

Within a radius of roughly one hundred li, every plant would go berserk.

Grass.

Vines.

Flowers.

Bushes.

Ancient trees.

Every form of plant life would turn against the person who had killed Kent.

It was both a protective spell and an auxiliary spell.

And it was extraordinarily rare.

More importantly...

Keta could only cast it once.

Ever.

He had given that single opportunity to Kent.

Daphne immediately understood.

“Grandpa, then we should just go explain it to him.”

She looked up at Keta.

“Kent wasn’t really angry about the spell.”

“He was embarrassed.”

“That’s why he stormed off.”

“Embarrassed?”

Keta looked genuinely confused.

“What use is that?”

He had certainly heard of something called face before.

Pride.

Dignity.

Reputation.

But he could not understand why anyone would cancel an important agreement merely because they had lost face in front of others.

Was such a thing really that important?

Keta remained deeply puzzled.

Still, with Daphne beside him, he continued searching for Kent.

At the very least...

He intended to explain the matter properly.

Meanwhile, Kent was walking toward the outskirts of the city while muttering curses under his breath.

“They’re all old foxes.”

“The longer they live, the craftier they become.”

“You think I’m going to fall for that?”

“Not a chance.”

“I refuse to believe I can’t figure this stuff out on my own.”

He continued grumbling as he walked.

From time to time, people passing by greeted him.

Kent responded automatically.

By now, he had noticed something rather interesting about Muan City.

There were practically no humans here.

According to Kobi, a few humans did live in some of the other underground cities, but they were extremely rare.

That was not particularly surprising.

Dwarves, dark elves, and gnomes were all rather insular races.

And among many of them...

Humans did not possess a particularly good reputation.

Greedy.

Cunning.

Untrustworthy.

Those were some of the words most commonly associated with humanity.

Kent could not entirely deny the accusation.

But in his opinion...

There was another side to it.

Human greed pushed people to desire more.

Human cunning pushed them to find new ways of obtaining it.

And in a strange sense...

Those very flaws had helped humanity become the dominant race of the continent.

They had also driven commerce.

Invention.

Competition.

Social change.

And the advancement of civilization itself.

Whether that was good or bad...

Kent was not particularly interested in debating it.

He had already reached the edge of the city.

The surroundings were considerably darker here.

Kent stopped.

Then reached into one of the pockets inside his mage robe.

His fingers closed around the newly completed monocular.

The telescope permanently enchanted with Low-Light Vision.

Kent slowly took it out.

For a moment, he simply held it in his hand.

This was his second true alchemical creation.

And unlike the weapons he had used against the kobolds...

This was something designed entirely from his own idea.

No one on this continent had ever created anything quite like it.

At least...

Not as far as Kent knew.

He drew in a long breath.

Then slowly raised the monocular toward his eye.

Kent pressed the lens close.

And began carefully observing the darkness ahead.

“Not bad.”

“I can see everything clearly enough.”

Kent continued examining the darkness through the monocular.

“The crystal still isn’t perfectly transparent, but for a first attempt... this is already better than I expected.”

He adjusted the angle slightly and looked farther into the distance.

Several kilometers away, the rough outlines of enormous rocks appeared clearly within his vision.

He could even make out beetles crawling across the ground, clusters of ferns growing between cracks in the stone, and several strange plants glowing faintly with their own natural fluorescence.

Kent lowered the monocular slightly.

A satisfied smile appeared on his face.

The experiment had succeeded.

His night-vision monocular worked.

What remained now was not the question of whether the device was possible...

But how to improve it.

Better crystal.

Better magnification.

A lighter body.

Perhaps even more stable enchantments.

Those were problems for later.

For now, Kent was already more than satisfied.

“What is that?”

“Let me see!”

A voice suddenly sounded beside him.

Kent nearly jumped out of his skin.

He spun around.

Only then did he realize that the person standing behind him was Daphne.

Though he often called her a little girl, Daphne was actually nearly as tall as Kent himself.

She simply had a rather slender frame, and her voice still carried the unmistakably youthful tone of a teenage girl.

Kent patted his chest.

“You scared the life out of me.”

He gave her an exasperated look.

“Girl, what are you doing all the way out here?”

Kent had been an only child back on Earth.

His family had been relatively well-off, which was one of the reasons he had once been able to live such a reclusive life without worrying too much about money.

But his relationship with his parents had never been particularly close.

Perhaps it was because they had always been busy with work.

Perhaps it was because they had simply never learned how to communicate with him.

Kent rarely thought deeply about it.

Only occasionally, late at night when everything was quiet, would a faint sense of loneliness surface.

If he were honest with himself...

As a child, he had always envied families with brothers and sisters.

That was probably why he had taken such an immediate liking to Daphne.

He knew that she had been born from the Tree of Life.

She was lively.

Adorable.

Beautiful in the delicate way of the dark elves.

And without quite realizing when it had happened, Kent had begun treating her almost like a younger sister.

Which was why the word girl came so naturally whenever he spoke to her.

“I came to see you!”

Daphne answered cheerfully.

Kent handed her the night-vision monocular.

She immediately began examining it with curiosity.

And almost the moment she touched it...

She fell in love with the thing.

The casing shimmered beneath the dim underground light.

Tiny silver-white flecks of Magic Silver sparkled across the deep violet sheen of the Violet Gold.

A faint magical halo lingered around the surface.

And engraved upon the metal were those strange little figures Kent had carved earlier.

Two warriors locked in battle.

Trees.

Birds overhead.

The scene was formed from only a few simple lines.

Yet somehow, the figures seemed almost alive.

That alone was completely different from the style of painting commonly seen on this continent.

Daphne ran her fingers over the engraved surface again and again.

She clearly could not bear to put it down.

Under Kent’s instructions, she finally raised the monocular to her eye.

“Ah!”

Daphne suddenly screamed.

Kent raised an eyebrow.

She had been startled by what she saw.

Several kilometers away, a passageway appeared clearly through the lens.

Daphne had lived in this region for years.

She was extremely familiar with the surrounding terrain.

Although she had never ventured deeply into that particular tunnel, she knew the area around its entrance very well.

And yet now...

Through the monocular...

It looked as though the distant passage had suddenly been pulled right in front of her.

Kent said nothing.

He simply stood there and let Daphne explore the device on her own.

Very quickly, she became completely absorbed.

She turned one way.

Then another.

“I can see that rock!”

“And there—there’s a beetle!”

“Oh! There are mushrooms over there!”

“And that plant!”

“What is that glowing thing?”

Daphne kept exclaiming excitedly.

One moment she was pointing out insects.

The next, fungi.

Then rocks.

Then distant plants.

She had clearly become completely fascinated by the monocular.

Kent watched with amusement.

Daphne was delighted.

Keta, however...

Was becoming increasingly anxious in the distance.

After all, there were still many members of his race who needed Kent’s light-element magic.

And Kent seemed to have completely forgotten about that matter.

“Hahaha!”

A strange voice suddenly came from nearby.

“Well now, little beauty...”

“Is this Muan City?”

Kent and Daphne both froze.

Only then did they remember that they were outside the city.

And in the span of only a few breaths...

A mounted squad had already arrived in front of them.

Kent narrowed his eyes.

There were dozens of riders.

Every one of them was clad from head to toe in black armor.

Only a narrow slit around the eyes had been left exposed.

Judging from their height and body proportions...

They were human.

Their mounts, however, were anything but ordinary.

Each rider sat astride a massive Scale-Beast.

The creatures vaguely resembled gigantic pangolins.

But even the smallest among them measured nearly five meters in length and over three meters in height.

Each possessed six thick, powerful legs.

Their entire bodies were covered in heavy scales.

Scale-Beasts were Level-Three earth-element magical beasts.

And they were famous for one thing above all else—

Their astonishing defensive power.

Kent’s gaze swept across the riders.

There were several dozen of them.

Clearly, they belonged to some organized faction.

Their armor was nearly identical.

The same design.

The same workmanship.

And each breastplate bore the same emblem.

At first glance, it looked like a black dragon with claws spread wide, as though preparing to tear something apart.

Kent did not study the symbol too closely.

Because something else had already caught his attention.

The tone of the riders’ voices.

Casual.

Mocking.

And far too frivolous.

Kent’s expression gradually cooled.

Whoever these people were...

They had not arrived with much respect.