Chapter 1339 — Before the Return Home

The "door" woven from leaves and vines rustled apart to either side, and a petite golden-haired elf stepped out of the dim corridor into the wide, vaulted chamber. Carefully skirting the faintly glowing plant conduits that looked like blood vessels or nerve fibers, she walked toward Beyira and said in a very small voice, "I... woke up. I heard lots of noises outside, so I came to take a look..."

"Lots of noises?" Beyira blinked, then caught on quickly. "You mean the stirrings you picked up through the neural resonance? Sorry for waking you—those are neural signals coming from the border of the wasteland."

As she spoke, she slowly emerged from the thicket of vines where she had been resting. The luxuriant flowering vines and leaves peeled away from behind her and drew back, forming a structure shaped like a throne, while her gaze settled on the petite elf before her—

The young elf called "Belna" wore only a simple garment. On the skin exposed along her arms, back, and legs, intricate runes—pale green threaded with fine golden lines—and the connecting strokes between them were visible everywhere. Dense yet orderly, these runes and lines formed tattoo-like "arrays," and where the runes did not cover her, her skin had a whiteness bordering on translucence. The veins beneath were faintly visible, and within them seemed to flow some kind of luminous... "solution."

These traits, plainly different from those of a normal human or elf, covered Belna's body and lent this young "elf" an alchemical-doll-like, inhuman quality out of thin air. She came to a stop before Beyira, a faint shimmer running across the runes on her skin, then glanced at the vines and neural nodes that had contracted into the "throne" and asked cautiously, "The border... is the fighting at the border still very bad?"

"The fighting is fierce, but you needn't worry about it—the enemy is a pack of vermin that can only squat in the wasteland; they can't reach the Spirit Plains," Beyira said offhandedly, her tone carrying undisguised contempt. Then she looked at Belna, and though her face showed little change of expression, a note of concern entered her voice. "It's you I'm thinking about. Your body has just finished its final stage of growth, and now you need proper rest so your nervous system can adjust. Go back to your room, or go find your friends in the neural network and play..."

"I can't sleep. I feel full of energy..." Belna said softly, sounding a little troubled. "And the neural network is full of news about the battlefield in the south. The friends I know are all talking about more or less the same thing..."

Here the young golden-haired elf paused, as if hesitating over something, but in the end she could not hold back. "I heard things aren't going well for the Silver Empire? It seems we've lost contact with the south, the Silver Empire is isolated and without support, and even... even the Glorious Dome has fallen out of the sky..."

"Some people just love to exaggerate on the neural network—the farther away the rumor, the more inflated it gets," Beyira commented bluntly at once, and even the flower vines at her feet swayed along with her. "The Glorious Dome made a forced landing on the surface to plug the gap in the barrier. The Silver Elves' Millennial Legion and the ranger legions of the Highland Kingdom have long since stabilized the defense line, and we haven't completely lost contact with the south either—only the arcane-net communications have been temporarily cut. We still have couriers who travel through the Shadow Realm and the Typhon Empire's backup channels to reach the south. The situation isn't nearly as grave as all that..."

"A forced landing... When I left my homeland, my mentor said that once the Glorious Dome comes down to the ground, it can never fly again," Belna said, recalling memories that had already grown a little blurred and yellowed in her mind—memories so distant they seemed to belong to another person's life, yet in these recent days of "waking," they kept surging up, growing clearer bit by bit in this body "manufactured" with cutting-edge biotech and arcane-rune technology. "A courier... Do you mean the mysterious envoy codenamed 'Deerouter'? I heard friends on the network say that envoy is an ancient being acquainted with His Majesty the Emperor..."

"...Something like that," Beyira said casually, then could not resist asking, "You seem to have taken a great interest in the south lately?"

"I..." Belna hesitated, unconsciously clutching the hem of her clothes. "I want to go back and see... go back to the Silver Empire. Since Mr. Envoy can get there, then maybe..."

"Belna," Beyira cut in before the other could finish. She regarded this young elf who, in biological terms, had only "come into being" a short while ago, and her tone was somewhat complicated. "I did promise to send you home, but... none of us expected this war to break out so soon and turn out like this. The situation isn't suitable now. War is burning across the whole continent, and your body..."

As she spoke, she could not help glancing again at the runes exposed on Belna's skin.

The intricate druidic runes and the divine-power inversion arrays inscribed on her body were keeping this frame stable. Through a liquid circulation system coexisting with her blood vessels flowed a biotechnological alchemical solution of complex composition. The nervous system under multiple layers of protection, the backup organs, the bones with internal plating... This seemingly frail body was in fact the utmost limit of the Cecil Empire's current biotech, a creation gestated by the Great Tree Soren and even more wondrous than a synthetic brain—and all of it was meant to bring an elf long dead for many years back into this world, and to let her survive stably in the outside environment.

"Although I've used technical means to let you move about outside the culture capsule, and the results of several tests have been more or less as expected, your final growth stage has only just been completed and still needs more verification," Beyira said patiently. "At the Great Tree Soren, I can still deal with any problem that arises in time. But once you go south, I won't be able to look after you—in the Silver Empire, who could repair this body of yours?"

Belna looked steadily at this former High Priestess of the Arcane Umbra. After a moment, she suddenly laughed.

She was still that same little elf Belna, yet no longer as ignorant as she had once been. She knew of Beyira's past, knew of the dark Order of the Ending of All Things, and knew what had happened to her own body. But precisely because of that, looking at such a "dark high priestess" now struck her as especially... inconceivable.

But the little elf had made up her mind.

"I know the state of my body—Sister Beyira, don't forget I also have the knowledge you shared with me in my mind. I know how this body of mine operates," the petite golden-haired elf said calmly yet firmly. "I know the south is dangerous, but that's exactly why I must go back and see. I've been away from home a long time; there are people I may not see this time, and if I don't, I may never see them again... And you needn't worry about this body failing. The Silver Empire has many excellent druids too, and I can handle my own 'malfunctions' in an emergency. Even if something really does go wrong, Mr. Envoy would be able to get me back here in time."

"That envoy... Well, maybe," Beyira said with some helplessness. Her mind—and many auxiliary minds besides—raced. Realizing that this Silver Elf who had left home so many years ago had firmly made up her mind, she began to consider the feasibility of the matter. If she could not dissuade the other, then the only thing to do was perhaps to keep the affair from slipping out of control.