Valtar almost felt a deep lust rising from within for the devastatingly beautiful dark elf. Thankfully, after the system activated the mental defense mechanism, he came back to his senses, and his expression, which was of slight fear, turned cold instantly.
The dark elf leader, seeing no response from him and his cold demeanor, chuckled and said, "I suppose you should at least have this much willpower to get the job done. Otherwise, who knows what more shit I had to prepare."
Still seeing no response from him, she found it strange but did not linger on it and said, "Do you know why I saved you?"
Valtar said calmly, "Something you need me to do?"
"Correct, a smart one, aren't you?" She replied.
"Let me introduce myself properly. I am Elmyra, leader of the 2nd bow unit of the Dark Elven tribe. You are?"
He stated, "Valtar. What do you want me to do?".
Elmyra first asked about what Zhao said to him about leaving the forest.
Valtar frowned upon hearing it and said, "He said I can only leave exactly 30 days after the day I entered the forest, and I have 2 months to leave. After that, I won't be able to leave."
Elmyra laughed aloud at hearing this ridiculous nonsense, then asked Valtar, "How did you enter the cursed tribe?"
Valtar became more confused and said, "I remember I was running away from something, and I was extremely thirsty. I found a tree that had a flow of water coming from its insides. I drank that water, passed out after that. Then Old Man Zhao took me into the tribe—or saved my life, I suppose. And what do you mean by the cursed tribe?"
"Alright, then let me tell you the truth about this wretched forest. The real name of this forest is the Hidden Forest. The real name of the tribe that is in the east is the Cursed Tribe. Everyone who enters the forest forgets what they are chased by, and they are all chased by the Guardian Wraith of the forest."
She continued, "The moment they enter the forest, their bodies feel extremely dry, and they see the tree that has water flowing from its insides. The moment they drink that water, they are forever bound by the forest. They can never leave the forest unless they meet specific conditions."
The moment Valtar heard all of these alarming revelations, his entire being was filled with dread as he thought of the events after he started running from the battle between those powerful beings.
At that time, he was continuously running for about 40-50 minutes, or probably an hour—maybe even more. He wasn't sure. Now, thinking about it, it was indeed weird. Though he did start running to get away from that place, despite their battle being quite far away, there wasn't a reason to run for more than 30 minutes, to be honest. He shouldn't have run more than that either because his body was already in a near-death state. It was simply suicide to force his body to keep running any longer than that, yet he did. Not to mention, the forest almost seemed like it appeared out of nowhere for some reason.
Right after entering the forest, the system only gave him 2 minutes to drink water, as if every last drop of water from his body had evaporated dry instantly or something.
Then, to miraculously and inexplicably find a water source so conveniently, and then being picked up by a kind elder who took care of him and took him to a tribe village.
What truly happened at that time was that after running from the battlefield, at a certain point, the guardian probably found him and started chasing him towards the Hidden Forest. Valtar, with his life on the line, ran frantically and entered the forest, and the events after occurred.
'Of course, how the f*** didn't I realize it sooner?'.
Then he proceeded to ask the system if all of his guesses were true.
[System version 1 has not been fully activated and is only running basic operations. As such, it has not been able to protect the host from external influences. The events did occur as guessed by the host.]
[Host is too weak.]
He couldn't help but be pissed off at the system's snarky remarks but calmed down and asked Elmyra, who was watching him with amusement as he figured things out, "What if you're lying about the fact that I can't escape?"
She laughed again in response and said, "You can check it yourself later on if you can escape or not back in the eastern area. Shouldn't you be asking me something else?"
Valtar then asked the real question, "What are the requirements to escape? And why can't people go out after drinking water from the tree? And are you guys the same?"
Elmyra then took on a serious expression as she stated, "The conditions to escape for each tribe are different from each other. So yes, all the tribes are trapped. As for reasons like why we are trapped and why the wraith only brings outsiders to the east tribe, we don't know."
She continued, "For you to escape, there are 2 conditions. First, kill the previous outsider and leave only one person of the tribe alive and kill the rest. The order in which you do both tasks doesn't matter. However, if you complete one task, you have to complete the other within the same day."
Valtar was calm despite her giving him such a dreadful task of killing the very tribe that helped him but asked again nonetheless, "What are the conditions of the Dark Elven tribe to escape?"
She looked at him intently in response and said, "To help the outsider escape."
Then paused for a moment and stated, "And then kill the eastern tribe."
Valtar took a deep breath and analyzed everything she said. He thought to himself for a few seconds, 'There's absolutely no way that's all that is required to escape. There are too many suspicious points.'
Right then, the system's robotic voice sounded within him,
[Issuing quest]
——————-
[Major Quest: Obtain The Legacy of the Hidden Forest and Escape]
[Rewards will be issued upon completing the quest]
He was slightly stunned as to why these things were popping up at this moment. Why wasn't it sooner when he entered the forest or something? Just these quest notices would've been enough for him to find out a lot of things.
"It seems you can't depend on this faulty thing too much. When you have to do something, you've got to do it yourself," he said to himself.
System [,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,]
To interrupt his unnecessary inner monologue, Elmyra came forward and revealed some more information, like how the previous outsider tried to kill Zhao when he first came in, but for some reason, was killed by Zhao instead. Zhao, not knowing any information about the forest, only later found out that he was forever trapped here. He actually tried to inquire about how to escape from us many times, but since we knew there needed to be another outsider for the conditions to be met, we did not reveal any information.
Valtar caught onto the main point and asked, "Your tribe's condition is actually to help the last outsider to escape? Revealing any information was naturally counterproductive, and you had no reason to do so."
Elmyra stated that was indeed the case.
Valtar had some more doubts, like why did Zhao allow him to come to the western lands? Shouldn't Zhao kill him the moment he entered the forest if he wanted to be freed? Or does Zhao not want to be freed? The story Zhao told him about falling in love with a tribe woman was probably a total lie. Doesn't he know that the dark elves will reveal this information to him?
Elmyra replied calmly, "He doesn't know the exact conditions for the Dark Elven tribe to escape the forest, and we don't know if he can still escape or not—or if he doesn't want to escape, but that's unlikely. The most likely scenario is that his conditions may be slightly different now that he failed to escape once."
"How can the conditions change, and how do you know all this?" said Valtar.
"There's a special scroll in each tribe that states relevant information for the tribe to escape. It mostly resides in the tribe leader's hand. The previous eastern tribe leader has been disabled for a long time, and the one who has been controlling the tribe of the east for a long time was Zhao."
After a strange turn of events took place, she came even closer to Valtar and kissed him on the lips forcefully. She sent her long tongue inside as both of their tongues fought each other. Valtar wanted to resist, but the moment her tongue went inside his mouth, he felt his mind going numb from pleasure. He almost lost his mind.