Elena was abandoned.

It wasn’t just that she had been branded a failure and left behind in her father’s heart. She was truly, physically discarded. Cast out by the Elves. Cast out from the forest. She fell from being the chieftain’s daughter to the status of a slave.

Her father had abandoned her. The Elven Chieftain himself had thrown her away.

Her body was covered in bruises, cuts, and the lash marks of a whip. Handcuffs bound her wrists and ankles, and a heavy, fixed shackle was locked around her neck. It was a cold, solid weight that made her realize, with despairing clarity, that her own strength could never break it or find a way to escape.

Elena remembered every word her father had said as he cast her out—the man who had colluded with high-ranking humans to sell her off.

“You said you wanted to see the outside world? Fine. Go out there and roll in the dirt like a dog. You are no longer an Elf. You are not my daughter, nor are you a resident of this forest.”

With those words, he had turned his back on her. As the humans approached to cage the young Elf, he ignored her desperate gaze and returned to the forest. Elena found herself inadvertently recalling memories of that monstrosity—memories that shouldn’t even exist—showing just how broken she had become.

Instead of the dreams she once had, what she saw now were humans seeking to devour her for their own greed. They dragged her to a place resembling a plaza, standing her up before a crowd. They held up boards with writing only humans could understand, reciting her gender, age, species, and origin as if appraising a piece of meat to set a price.

The marks on the board were surely numbers. Though the style of writing was slightly different, Elena was certain they represented her cost. A middle-aged man in ridiculous clothing finished speaking and stepped back. Then, one by one, people in the crowd stood up, raising boards of their own with numbers written on them. Most were men, though some were women; regardless of gender, the gazes fixed upon her were filthy.

They were hideous and vile. They were more disgusting than the Elves, more loathsome than her father. It was so nauseating and foul that she began to wonder if the stories the forest creatures had told her were all lies. Vile and filthy—there were no other words in her vocabulary to describe them or their wretched, dog-like smiles.

‘…Disgusting.’

In that moment, Elena’s light faded. Her eyes, which once looked as though they would never dim, lost their luster and plummeted into darkness. They sank toward a place deeper than the abyss, turning cloudy as if they would never shine again, her blue eyes swallowed by shadows.

She hated her father. She hated him for bringing her to this hell. She hated the humans. She hated those who looked at her with lecherous smirks, scanning her body only to satisfy their own desires.

Elena slumped her head. She shifted her lifeless eyes, looking at these people who were so different from the humans in her imagination. Men who stared at her while their loins stirred; her price, which had started in the hundreds, quickly surpassed a thousand, then ten thousand, eventually reaching a hundred thousand.

When the price reached a point they could no longer afford, hundreds of disappointed spectators sighed and slumped back into their seats. Each time they did, the light in Elena’s eyes died a little more. Where would she be sold? What would become of her? Would she be a human toy? A sex slave?

She had heard that human lust was stronger than that of any other race—so strong that even Succubi, who lived for sexual acts, would step back in awe. While most humans were no match for a Succubus, it was said that some rare individuals possessed a lewdness that surpassed them. They said at least twenty out of a hundred were like that. Regardless of their innate stamina, their sheer depravity was said to exceed that of demons.

That realization drenched Elena in even more shame and loathing. She gave up on everything. As she watched the pot-bellied men with crooked beards fighting fiercely over the numbers on their boards, she let her handcuffed arms hang limp. She bowed her head so low it felt as if her torso would collapse into the earth. Her legs trembled so violently that she would have fallen if not for the support of her shackles. She let go of it all.

In that moment—

CRASH!

The sound of something shattering rang out. Elena, lacking even the strength to turn her gaze, remained despondent. But the crowd could not hide their confusion. They stammered, staring at the figure before them, pushing at the air as if trying to keep a monster at bay.

“Sigh…”

The voice was deep and resonant, enough to belong to a middle-aged man, yet the tone and mannerisms were anything but mature.

“This place is a shtshow, too.”*

The man who appeared looked like a third-rate thug, standing with one leg cocked arrogantly while scratching the back of his head. Elena slowly lifted her torso. Conversely, the terrified crowd scrambled to bow their heads. A thick black mist grew denser, yet they didn’t even realize the man emitting it was forcefully suppressing them as they struggled to grovel.

Through her clouded eyes, she saw a beautiful young man. His appearance possessed a natural grace and beauty that would rival any Elf she had lived with in the forest. His behavior was a bit odd, but Elena was in no position to care about such things. Her “dead eyes” stared fixedly at the Half-Demon wreathed in Magi.

Noticing Elena’s gaze, Keyal turned his head and tilted it, a metaphorical question mark appearing above him. Elena just stared at the handsome man. Even as he emitted his dark energy, he simply stared back at her without taking any other action.

Elena let a smile spread across her face—very faint, very fragile. She was conveying her gratitude to this man.

Why? Because he was looking at her for who she was.

He didn’t change his expression; he only tilted his head. When she smiled, he simply lowered his eyebrows as if confused. At the very least, he was looking at her as a human being. He looked at her as a living, breathing being just like himself, without projecting any hideous emotions.

That made Elena so incredibly happy. Even though her mind and body were broken, she felt a momentary surge of gratitude toward him. Unlike her monstrous parents who saw her as a tool to be used and discarded, or a doll on strings to be dressed up and defiled just to show off their own ugliness, he projected no such filth toward her.

In this place, he was the only one seeing her as a person.

A piteous Elf, covered in scars, wrapped in chains, with hands and feet in irons. A miserable, wretched Elf with an unbreakable shackle around her neck and dead eyes, who until he arrived had been prey for the dirty, vulgar, and foul gazes of the audience.

The man’s eyes turned serious. He was indeed looking at her with pity.

He turned his gaze away. He looked upon the people—those who were screaming and struggling to find a way to live or to kneel—with the same loathing Elena had felt for them. The mist emanating from his body grew even thicker. It created a massive vortex that tore through the surroundings, powerful enough to be mistaken for a small storm.

‘Piece of sht bastards. I don’t care if this is just a game.’*

His deep voice grew even more forceful.

‘As far as I’m concerned, you’re not even human.’

He began to vent his rage on her behalf, gritting his teeth at the humiliation she had endured. The crowd, now crying and bowing, looked ready to stand on their heads just to show submission, but such acts were not permitted in his presence. As the man recited words filled with quiet fury, no one could do anything but wait to be swallowed by the storm.

Some tried to hurl insults at this man who sought to kill them, but they were the first to die. Necks snapped, and the blades of dark mist created by the storm sliced through flesh, crushed bone, and carved through organs.

Elena, the poor Elven girl, just watched. Without even dreaming that this man—who was raging in her stead—would flip her fate as a human toy 180°, she continued to gaze at him.

A thin stream of moisture escaped her cloudy eyes. The eyes of the Elf who had sought salvation began to regain the light she thought she would never see again.