Chapter 382: The Story After (14) [Side Story, Part 14]

“Amazing,” Ketal murmured.

He stepped into the house and could not help but voice his admiration. It was a refined residence, luxurious yet restrained, tasteful rather than gaudy. A house like this stood alone in the middle of a forest, a short distance away from the elven sacred ground.

“Was there always a place like this?” Ketal asked Arkemis. “I do not remember seeing it before.”

“It was probably built recently,” she replied.

Her expression twisted slightly as her gaze drifted to the center of the room, where a massive bed dominated the space. The bed was extravagant, its frame and sheets dyed in passionate colors that did not suit the elves at all. It was so large that even five adult men could have lain there side by side without issue.

Your Majesty, is this not a bit too obvious?

Arkemis thought.

She clicked her tongue inwardly. It was not hard to guess what Karin had been thinking. The realization made her cheeks feel hot. Still, Karin’s intent lined up perfectly with her own wish. For now, she decided to accept it.

All right. I will do this,

Arkemis thought as she clenched her fist.

“Arkemis,” he said, turning to her. “You mentioned you had something to talk about.”

“Before that,” Arkemis said, “would you like some wine?”

She went down to the cellar, retrieved a bottle, and gave it a little shake as she came back.

“That sounds good,” he said, smiling.

They set out a few simple snacks and poured the wine into their glasses. Ketal inhaled the aroma, then took a sip and let out a soft sound of appreciation.

“This is excellent,” he said.

It was unlike any wine he had tasted before, in quality and depth both.

Arkemis spoke with quiet pride.

“It is a secret wine of the High Elves,” she said. “Quite literally a thousand-year-old vintage. We brew it to commemorate the birth of a child from the World Tree.”

“Is it really all right for me to drink something like that?” Ketal asked her.

“If it were not for you, the World Tree would have burned and vanished,” Arkemis replied. “Drink as much as you like.”

“In that case, I will not hold back,” Ketal said with a grin.

He drank, savoring the taste, and as the wine warmed their throats, their conversation gradually deepened.

“Ketal,” Arkemis said. “What do you think of this world?”

“I enjoy it,” he answered immediately. His reply came without a moment’s hesitation. “I enjoy it very much. For me, it is a world like a jewel.”

“What do you enjoy the most?” she asked him.

“There are many things,” he said. “First of all, I enjoy seeing new sights—the ones I always dreamed of seeing.”

The fairy sanctuary, the human kingdoms, the Dungeons, the elven sacred ground, the Mage Tower, and the dwarven cave—being able to witness with his own eyes the fantasy world he had yearned for brought him a joy beyond words.

“And I enjoy learning,” Ketal went on. “Learning and understanding new things.”

He had dug into magic and studied alchemy. He had trained in swordsmanship. He had explored Dungeon structures and delved into the nature of Myst. Each and every one of those processes was a pleasure he could not compare to anything else.

“Meeting new people is enjoyable as well,” he said. “The lord of Barcan Estate, Swordmaster Kain, merchant leader Milayna, and High Elf Arkemis.”

𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

She could not help but smile in satisfaction when he spoke her name.

“Of all of that,” Ketal continued, “what satisfies me the most is that all of you accepted me.”

“Accepted you?” Arkemis repeated. “What do you mean?”

“As you know, I am an outsider,” he said quietly. “A being of the Demon Realm.”

He was a barbarian of the White Snowfield. The world’s inhabitants had rejected him as something that did not belong. Yet even that description was not quite enough. Beings from the Demon Realm still belonged to this universe. They were alien, but not truly foreign in the deepest sense.

However, he was different. He had been a human from Earth. A person who had not been born in this world at all. In the truest sense, he was an intruder in this fantasy, a foreign contaminant forced into a place where he did not belong.

“I have always thought of myself as a foreign body in this world,” Ketal said. “I never forgot it.”

“You felt that way?” she asked him, startled.

She had never imagined he carried such worries. The Ketal she knew had always seemed bright and full of energy, acting exactly as he pleased, laughing and speaking freely.

“I simply chose not to show it,” he said. “But the thought was always there.”

He wondered whether this fantasy had truly accepted him and whether he was not simply forcing himself into it. Those doubts followed him everywhere, like a shadow cast at his heels.

“But despite that, all of you welcomed me,” Ketal said.

After he defeated the Primarch and finished clearing the aftermath in the White Snowfield, he returned to the continent. Milayna, Arkemis, the Tower Master, and Helia welcomed him back, and the bonds he had formed in this fantasy world celebrated his return.

It had made his chest swell with warmth. The feeling had been similar to the one he had experienced when he left the White Snowfield for the very first time and stepped into the wider fantasy world he had dreamed of.

“It is all thanks to you,” Ketal said, bowing his head politely. “You have my sincere gratitude.”

Arkemis flailed her hands in panic.

“No, Ketal,” she said. “We are the ones who should be grateful. If not for you, this world would have been destroyed long ago.”

“If you think of it that way, I am glad,” Ketal replied, smiling faintly.

The mood softened, tinged with quiet emotion. Arkemis swirled the wine in her glass and slowly began to speak.

“Ketal,” she said. “I am similar to you.”

“Similar?” he repeated.

“Do you remember my wish?” she said.

“I do,” he replied.

She had wished for friends and for a family. For that wish, she had left the elven sacred ground and come out into the human world.

“I am a mutant among the High Elves,” Arkemis said. “To those who feel no sense of connection to anyone, I was a strange aberration.”

No one had understood her. Only the High Elf Queen, Karin, had accepted her, and even that had not been true understanding. To Karin, Arkemis had been like a foolish child who needed looking after.

Arkemis had not been able to bear it. The sacred ground of the elves had been a prison to her. So she had fled, leaving the sacred ground behind and heading out into the wider continent.

“But even there, I did not achieve my goal,” she continued.

To the people of the continent, she had still been a High Elf, a mysterious being who belonged more to fairytales than daily life. They would open their doors to her, speak with her, and share conversations. But they had never formed the kind of bonds she wanted.

“Milayna is the closest I have to a friend,” Arkemis admitted. “But she carries the weight of her family. She may think of me as a friend, but it stops there. There is no deep bond.”

In the end, she reached a conclusion. Friendship alone could not fill the emptiness within her. She needed family. She needed a child. And the one she hoped for as her partner had been Ketal.

However, those words would not leave her tongue. The sight of Ketal listening so quietly made her feel strangely self-conscious. The pressure built until she panicked and steered the conversation elsewhere.

“K-Ketal,” she said. “What about you? Did you find what you were missing among the barbarians of the White Snowfield?”

“I am not sure,” Ketal replied, his expression turning thoughtful.

“At first, I was an outsider to them,” he said. “They watched me and pushed me away. But as time passed, I became one of them. We lived together, and before I knew it, they believed in me and followed me.”

That was how he had become their chieftain.

“I had a sense of responsibility as their chief,” he said. “But that was all. I did not feel any real bond. There was no feeling of family.”

“I see,” Arkemis said softly.

Her eyes brightened. If that was true, then she could be his first real family. She was about to finally speak her true feelings when Ketal continued, almost as an afterthought.

“Well,” he said, “there were physical relationships.”

“What?” Arkemis blurted.

“Inside the White Snowfield, the cold is extreme,” he explained. “Surviving there is not easy. To ensure survival, it was necessary to increase the number of tribe members.”

For the barbarians of the White Snowfield, physical relations were not something unusual. They were a natural part of maintaining the tribe.

“Uh... what?” Arkemis whispered, her mind going blank.

“I have had relations a few times,” he said calmly. “Not many, but a few.”

“Wh-what...?”

The man she cared for had been with others. Arkemis’s thoughts scattered.

Half-stunned, she forced herself to ask, “Did you... get married?”

“Married?” Ketal repeated. “We never held any such ceremony. As I said, those acts were nothing rare in that place.”

The barbarians belonged to a tribe. Within that concept, they shared everything. Possessions, and even themselves.

“By the standards of the outside world, it would probably seem quite promiscuous,” he said. “But for them, it was simply a way to survive.”

“Then... you did not have a wife?” Arkemis asked him.

“I did not,” Ketal answered. “And I only did such things a few times, in the very early days after I came here. Once I understood where I was and what this world was, I stopped entirely. Even brushing off the ones who clung to me after that became bothersome.”

He spoke with an air of disinterest, as if recalling a distant memory that no longer mattered.

Arkemis finally began to regain her composure. When she thought about it, it was not so strange. Creatures living in harsh environments often survived through methods that seemed incomprehensible from the outside. This was simply one example of that.

It’s... still shocking,

she thought. However, the important thing was that no deep, emotional bonds had come from those encounters.

More importantly, if even Ketal himself called those days his

earliest

period in this world, then they had to have been so long ago they felt almost like a previous lifetime. It might even have been before she was born.

In the end, nothing had really changed. Her task remained the same. Arkemis steadied her breathing and calmed her heart.

“Ketal,” she said at last. “You remember the wish I told you about before, don’t you?”

“I remember,” he said.

“That wish has finally come true,” she said.

“Oh?” Ketal’s eyes widened. Then his face split into a broad smile filled with delight.

“That’s great!” he exclaimed. “My sincere congratulations, Arkemis! You finally achieved your wish. It seems the iridescent powder I gave you truly did have meaning.”

“Yes,” she said. “Without it, I doubt I could have done it.”

Arkemis smiled from ear to ear as she explained the theory behind her work. Her explanation was complex and layered, but Ketal, armed with knowledge from his previous world, understood it without much difficulty.

So it is something like an artificial womb,

he thought.

“Congratulations,” he said again. “You have finally gained the power to realize your wish.”

“Thank you,” Arkemis replied.

She took a slow breath, then looked him straight in the eye, her expression set with determination.

“I want to create a family,” she said. “Ketal, I want someone bound to me. Someone who will stay at my side, just for me. And I want to bear that person’s child. I want to leave behind my blood, my lineage, and live in this world with him.”

“That is a beautiful ideal,” he said. “I agree with it wholeheartedly.”

“And... in order to have a child, I need a partner,” she continued. “Ketal, do you remember what I told you before? Once I achieved my goal, I said I had something serious to say to you. I asked if you would listen.”

Back then, he had told her that he would listen for as long as she wished. Ketal paused, and realization flickered across his face as he looked at her.

Arkemis forced herself to push past her embarrassment and finally spoke the words she had been holding back.

“I want you to be that partner,” she said. “You, Ketal, barbarian of the White Snowfield.”