After welcoming Raquel, I left her to Long Wang to show her around and teach her the rules of the place, before she started learning how to brew pumpkin coffee and bake pumpkin pies from Xiao Jiu. I had a mission to accomplish, and it was related to Raquel's own request, after all. As an elf, she wouldn't want to see Yggdrasil corrupted by her demonic brethren.
"Yes, please stop them at all costs," she told me when I said that Sylvie, Silvia and I needed to go. I nodded.
"Oh, before I go, though, there's something else." I raised a hand and tilted my head at Raquel. She blinked, puzzled.
"What is it?"
"Didn't you promise to tell me something about upgrading the World Tree fragment dungeon core? You said you will share the information in return for being hired by my dungeon."
"Oh, right." Raquel actually looked sheepish. She really forgot about the deal, huh? I was glad I remembered it, or I would be cheated. Well, Xiao Jiu would definitely appreciate the help, and I was sure I would be making use of her scouting skills in the future. "When you reach the top of Yggdrasil, you'll probably find special types of leaves. You just need one, though, but they are a particular type called Nine Leaf Clover. Just as the name says, there are nine leaves, each representing a realm that extends from Yggdrasil. Well, ignoring the myth, all nine leaves are imbued with very dense mana, which makes them the perfect ingredient to upgrading your World Tree fragment dungeon core."
"Oh, thanks for the information." I nodded gratefully. If Raquel hadn't told me about it, I wouldn't think to search for something like that. "I'll try to acquire at least one!"
"I've heard of the Nine Leaf Clover," Sylvie said, her eyes wide. She turned to me excitedly. "I believe there's also where the Sylphs reside. We can search for both of them together when we reach the top of the World Tree."
"Sounds like a plan!" I agreed enthusiastically before I turned to Raquel. "All right, take care! I'll be back! If you need anything, just holler or inform Long Wang. He'll pass the message on to me."
Our newest member gaped at me, still unable to come to terms with the way I handled my dungeon. But I didn't care. I was already teleporting myself and the fairy sisters back to Yggdrasil. We stumbled a bit when we arrived back on the World Tree, disorientated by the sudden spatial dislocation, but managed to recover quickly. Straightening myself, I went around the tree and reunited with Myria and the rest. She looked up and smiled.
"Just in time. We were about to end the break. What happened?"
"We had a guest," I explained. Even though Myria would love to have come along, she wasn't a summoned spirit with a contract with me, so I couldn't teleport her in and out of the dungeon like I could with Sylvie, Silvia and Long Wang. For some reason, because Sylvie and Silvia were fairies, I could make a contract with them. No, they aren't Ultimate Species or whatever. And I was a little different from a beast tamer. I was a summoner. Hell, I wasn't the same as a taming master. My name wasn't Park Jin Sung, after all.
"A guest?"
"An elf, but with dark skin, white hair and yellow eyes. Not a dark elf." I briefly filled her in on what happened, and my decision to hire her as a waitress and bartendress. Myria raised an eyebrow, but she mercifully didn't question me.
"That sounds like an inelegant solution to her predicament."
"Well, I can't think of any other ideas at the moment."
Myria sighed and rubbed her forehead. "When this is over, I'll pay your dungeon a visit and speak to her. Maybe I'll be able to figure something out."
"Sounds good to me. I'll be counting on you then."
"What are you guys talking about?" Eliza asked, rising to her feet after making a few last minute checks. I was glad to see that she was no longer tired. Everyone had rested a bit. Even though the fairy sisters and I had moved around after I teleported us to my dungeon, we had benefited from the rich spiritual qi, as well as the bonuses that my dungeon provided. If you recall, inhabitants of my dungeon recovered much faster, about 100% faster if they were resting in my dungeon.
"Nothing. Just had a bit of fresh air."
Eliza narrowed her eyes skeptically, but she didn't pry. Instead, she gathered all of us to proceed to the next elvish enclave. The next stop was much higher up, and we found ourselves scaling to a height where the current portion of the World Tree was now submerged in clouds. I had no idea when we had gotten this high up, but I guess every progress counted.
It also helped that we skipped a lot of the other enclaves between here and Viridian Village. Apparently, the dark elves and their allies had pulled back when we began defeating their forces lower down, and they were now stretched thin after suffering heavy casualties. They no longer had the strength to attack all over Yggdrasil, and had to concentrate their remaining forces in the higher reaches of the World Tree.
Furthermore, more human parties and even elven parties consisting of elves born outside of Yggdrasil arrived to help. Here, I saw that the elves were just as diverse as humans in terms of race, ethnicity and skin color. There was a party of dark-skinned elves who looked to be the same race as Raquel, having the same white hair and yellow eyes. No matter their skin color or hair color or eye color, the couple of things the myriad elves had in common were their arrogance and pointy ears. I watched them from afar as they crawled all over the World Tree like ants, their features only visible when I magnified the lenses of my glasses.
"There's so many of them," I marveled. "To think that there are so many elves who aren't from Yggdrasil…"
"Yeah. They have heeded the call and come to our aid." Eliza nodded with a faint smile, but I could tell there was conflict behind that delicate expression. When she caught my look, she sighed. "I am ashamed to admit it, but there is…discrimination against the outsider elves. Even though we are all of the same species, it appears that there are those among my brethren in Yggdrasil who do not welcome the other elves."
"Eh, it's a pretty common story all over the world," Morten said dismissively. He shrugged and exchanged a glance with me. "Happens in humanity as well. To the point where wars are waged over them, or an entire race enslaved because of their skin color or birthplace. I guess that's not unique to humans."
"I'm not surprised," I muttered. "Even in the animal kingdom, you have beasts exiling or being hostile to others of the same species just because they are different. Creatures born with abnormalities tend to be outcasts. An albino wolf being ostracized from its pack, for example, or white furred wolves breaking off to form their own pack, competing against other packs. Or you have different hives of ants warring against each other because of territory and resources, though how can they tell each other apart? Color, pheromones or other indicators of difference. As long as there is an Other, conflict will inevitably occur. There's much philosophical debate about how humans are the only species capable of evil or discrimination or whatever, but that's a wildly inaccurate anthropocentric point of view that doesn't take into account the cruel things animals and insects do to each other."
Everyone stared at me with their mouths wide open, and I began to feel embarrassed.
"Sorry, ignore me. I rant too much."
"Yeah," Wesley Snyder agreed, unable to keep his exasperation out of his voice. "Nobody asked."
"I certainly didn't expect to be lectured to," Wilhelmina muttered with a shake of her head and a roll of her eyes. "Especially in the middle of a battle to save Yggdrasil."
"Let's not waste any time and continue moving," Eliza said, ignoring my existence for now. We had paused for a break, much to her chagrin, and she was impatient to keep us moving. "It's going to be night soon, and it'll be dangerous to move about in the dark."
"Is it because they mostly come at night?" I asked snidely. "Mostly."
As expected, no one caught the obscure reference, and I was completely ignored once more. Sylvie spared me a sympathetic glance as she walked beside me, but she was the only one. Myria, on the other hand, was mulling over it.
"I'm pretty sure I heard that quote before."
"It's from a sci-fi movie we watched," I reminded her. She nodded, a light in her eyes.
"Oh!"
"Can we stop talking about movies and focus on the journey ahead?" Eliza snapped, her temper fraying. We shut up and followed her lead up the slope. The visibility was getting worse because of the dense condensation around us, forming wisps of clouds that draped around the World Tree like a shawl. We had to stick together or risk being lost.
"Wait." Sigmund stepped forward and drew his sword. With a huge swing, he blew away the clouds and cleared the area of anything that might obscure our view. We all stared at him in awe and he shrugged. "I just thought this will make things easier. But we should hurry, though. The low temperature this high up will cause the moisture in the atmosphere to condense soon. Let's get to our destination before the clouds form again."
Now that the clouds had cleared, I had a better view of our surroundings. This high up, the bark was lathered in moss and mold that drank in the moisture and could survive in the cold. They grew into exotic shapes, tendrils reaching out like tentacles to lap up the clouds. There were a few flowers here and there, surprisingly enough. I didn't think they would bloom in a place like this, and in such vivid colors ranging from pink to yellow to blue, but against all odds, they proudly displayed their beautiful petals to the travelers of this path.
"We're not far now," Eliza assured us, even as the skies dimmed when the sun slowly set. I scanned the vicinity and saw that the looming darkness wasn't solely because of the approaching night. Our destination seemed set in a cluster of branches that had grown closely together, almost like floating islands converging in a point where their edges collided. Much like Murkwood, one of the enclaves had settled along a branch that was growing underneath the shadows of the other intertwined ones, almost as if it was cast in perpetual gloom. Despite the ominous pall that hung over the village and the forest that surrounded it, the fir trees growing across the length of the island sized branch with stubborn tenacity, Eliza looked delighted. "There it is! Noctwood!"
I could hear a flutter of flapping wings and caught sight of a flurry of birds exiting the canopies of the trees, flocks of black-feathered beasts taking to the air.
"Ravenous Ravens," Sylvie said quietly. "We have to be careful. They are very hostile and will attack any living thing. They are known as the harbingers of doom, and the eyes and ears of the gods, ready to enact their will and deliver judgement upon those who fall short."
"They are just cruel spirit beasts that revel in torture just like the dark elves," Eliza hissed. "To think that Noctwood has been infested with them…we'll need to exterminate them. No wonder the elves there sent us an urgent request for aid. If they have been attacked constantly by these foul beasts, then they will be vulnerable to the inevitable raid from the dark elves."
"Do you think it's possible that the dark elves are using them to gather information throughout the World Tree?" I asked, studying the spreading flock of Ravenous Ravens from afar and resisting the desire to shoot them down with my arrows. That would alert them to our presence and provoke them to attack us. I wasn't that reckless nor was I selfish enough to put my friends in danger.
"It is possible." Eliza nodded and glanced around to catch sight of the embracing wisps of cloud returning to curl around us. "The clouds are forming once more. Let's make use of them as cover to mask our approach to Noctwood, and then we'll meet up with the elves living there and get an overview of the situation here."
"Good idea," Wesley said, creeping up with his party to stay close to us. Sigmund, as always, silently took the rear. I followed after them, never straying far from Myria, Sylvie and Silvia, while Morten accompanied us because we were his responsibility. As we moved up, I noticed a flutter of white and brown within the forest.
Seemed like the Ravenous Ravens weren't the only spirit beasts in Noctwood.