Chapter 5

The distance he sensed was roughly three hundred meters ahead.

Even for an elf in his home ground, the forest, detecting a presence three hundred meters away was far from normal.

“Mother, please rest for a while. I’ll just take a quick look.”

“Very well… but don’t go by yourself. Wait for me. No matter how talented a Sentinel you may be, you’re still a child who hasn’t gone through the coming-of-age ceremony.”

“…Yes. And it’s not like I’m alone, anyway.”

With that, Eldmir reached out and seized Atir by the scruff of his neck.

— Yelp! Let me go! I’m staying by Essyria’s side!

“Shut up.”

Ignoring Atir’s protests, Eldmir leapt into the trees.

Settling into a vantage point, he focused on the area where he had sensed the presence.

— You cursed brat. What could possibly threaten you here that you’re dragging me into this nonsense? Let go of me this instant!

“I told you to be quiet. They have sharp ears. Be silent.”

— Bah, you’re like rotten firewood soaked for three hundred years…

Eldmir let the spirit’s grumbling wash over him, switching instead into observation mode.

“What are they? Four cats, none of them look old enough to be adults. And the dog—no, a wolf. Practically a barbarian warrior, but he’s already half-dead.”

One ragged wolf-beastman swathed head to toe in bandages, and four small cat-beastmen.

The oldest didn’t look more than fifteen, and the youngest couldn’t be more than seven.

One curious thing: none of their wounds seemed to come from elven weapons.

“Huh. So they weren’t fighting us? No… it looks more like—”

Orcs. They had fled from orcs.

“Figures…”

— What? What did you find? Let me in on it.

“Nothing. Ugh… so embarrassing.”

The legend of Sherlock Elf Eldmir solving mysteries… did not exist.

— …Don’t know what’s going on, but I can tell you’re drowning in self-loathing again. Why now, you contrarian brat?

“I said it’s nothing. Anyway, doesn’t matter. At least we’ve confirmed they aren’t enemies of our kind. The question is… what do we do now?”

Eldmir muttered vaguely, half to himself, half like he was asking advice. Atir answered flatly.

— Whatever the case, they’re intruders who’ve sneaked into the forest. Don’t waste your mental energy on useless sentiment.

“……”

At that moment, Essyria’s presence drew carefully closer behind him.

“How is it?”

“You’re here already? You should have rested longer.”

Eldmir glanced at her in concern, surprised she had arrived so quickly.

Essyria only smiled softly.

“I’m not so old yet that my own son needs to worry over my health.”

Far from looking old, she appeared so young that strangers might mistake them for siblings. Who would believe she was a widow with a child? Such was the grace of elves.

Eldmir coughed, collecting himself, and lowered his voice again.

“Mother, about those theories I mentioned earlier…”

Scratching the back of his head, he let out a sigh of self-mockery.

“They were just delusions. I was way off. Yeah.”

“Delusions?”

“Looking at their wounds, none are from elves. They were hurt by orcs—scimitars, glaives… and not a single arrow injury. Since our people use bows, that rules us out.”

Of course, elves’ primary weapon was the bow.

“So they were fleeing for their lives from the orcs. Avoiding us too, since to them we’re potential enemies. They must have been sneaking as carefully as they could.”

Elves rarely attacked first. By convention, they were a non-aggressive race unless provoked. There were exceptions, but generally that was the rule. Still, that didn’t apply to beastmen, with whom elves had clashed repeatedly.

Especially that wolf warrior—Eldmir recognized the outfit. He’d seen beastmen dressed like that fighting Sentinels from neighboring villages. To elves, they were practically enemies by default.

“So their village was destroyed by orcs?”

“Seems so.”

That would explain their cautious passage through the forest in such miserable condition.

The cat-girls seemed relatively unharmed, probably shielded by the wolf, but the wolf himself was half-dead.

One leg was mangled beyond repair, forcing him to limp along only with the girls’ support.

For him to keep their trail so well hidden even in that state—Eldmir had to admit he was the real deal.

“At first I thought they’d been trained to leave no tracks. Turns out it’s just cat instincts, and that wolf… even half-dead, he hides his presence like a master.”

— So what now?

“…Not sure.”

Eldmir had pursued them thinking they were sworn enemies, only to find pitiful victims of orc brutality: four young cat-girls and one wolf warrior who had risked everything to protect them.

If this were just a game, the choice would’ve been simple: kill them or spare them. Eldmir’s past self had never agonized over such decisions. NPCs were just data, tools for gameplay, nothing more.

But this wasn’t a game anymore.

“……”

He had slaughtered countless lives in the game. Monsters, NPCs, even random villagers for no reason at all—sometimes out of boredom, sometimes for bounty, sometimes by accident. That was the kind of game it was.

But this world had become reality.

— Hey?

To kill someone… that had been his torment for the last twenty years.

Two decades since he accepted that this wasn’t a game but reality, and that he was a player trapped within it.

He knew what was coming: racial wars, monster waves, demon invasions, dragon raids, endless massacres. All those grand “events” from the game, only now they were his future.

“Well, it’s not that hard.”

— What isn’t?

“Killing.”

For someone who had lived nearly twenty years as a reincarnator, murder was only a matter of growing numb.

He no longer feared it, nor hesitated. Survival demanded it. His countless battles as Eldmir had already proven it.

Shaking his head, he muttered,

“Killing them feels wrong… but sparing them feels wrong too.”

He forced aside his tangled thoughts and refocused. Even if these particular beastmen weren’t hostile now, they were destined to clash with elves. That wolf was clad in the attire of warriors who had already fought his kin.

Logically, killing them now was the safer choice.

“And yet…”

Was it their appearance that made him hesitate? Or that the cat-girls were so young? Something about killing them sat poorly with him.

“Eldmir, those children haven’t harmed our kind, have they?” Essyria asked quietly.

“Not yet. But think of the past and the future. Will beastmen ever not harm elves?”

He knew the logic. The inevitable racial war would pit beastmen against elves until the elves were crushed. In Omega World, no matter the player’s choices, one story remained fixed: the elves were always the first race to fall. And beastmen played no small part in that outcome.

But Essyria replied calmly,

“There are only five of them. Four are children not even of age, and the lone warrior is crippled beyond hope. Do you really think sparing them will harm our people?”

Her words carried the weight of a century’s wisdom.

And Eldmir couldn’t exactly deny it. His worries were about the beastmen as a whole, not these five before him.

Just then, the wolf warrior whispered something to the cat-girls. They shook their heads violently, tears streaming down their faces.

No doubt he was telling them to leave him behind.

It was a moving sight—an injured warrior laying down his life, and young girls weeping for him.

“Hmm. I don’t know much beastman tongue, but I caught a few words: princess, homeland, orc, escape, revenge… Looks like those girls are princesses.”

Princesses, huh. Eldmir felt no special reaction.

Beastmen were prolific breeders. Sending royal offspring away as hostages or for political marriages was nothing unusual. These “princesses” were probably no different.

‘Unless they really did escape from Kelvan… but surely not.’

Beastmen’s coming-of-age was done in pairs, male and female, who then became lifelong mates. Later, the strong ruled with multiple spouses, but that came after.

So this wolf must have had a mate, perhaps even children—especially given how prolific his kind was. Yet here he was, protecting four unrelated cat-girls instead.

That could only mean they were more important than his own kin. For a loyal beastman warrior, that meant one thing: they were royalty, or the children of his liege.

Still, Eldmir’s fleeting thought was simply:

‘Four princesses? What’s with that gender ratio?’

A trivial, passing fancy.