Chapter 260

Perhaps Fores had no intention of answering, or he was in no state to speak. His soul had been reduced to a fragile ice flower, incapable of producing words.

“One way or another, I’ll find out,” Sillad declared.

He reached out and seized the flower with force.

“I’ll wring it out of your soul if I have to.”

A frosty wind blew from his lips.

[Sillad activated the skill: “Frostbloom Illusion.”]

Frostbloom Illusion was the spirit manipulation skill that Sillad had previously used to show Suho an image of Haein in the Grave of the Dragons.

Icy wind coiled around the delicate flower, binding it tightly like a rope.

Suddenly, a system message appeared.

Ding!

[This will recall the traces imprinted on this soul.]

[Would you like to accept?] (Y/N)

Suho stared at the prompt.

What’s this?

“Accept it,” Sillad commanded sternly. “This fool, despite his current pathetic state, was one of the strongest high elves vying for the Monarch’s seat alongside myself. It is no trivial matter that this happened to him.”

“Traces imprinted on a soul... Does that mean we’ll see his memories?”

Suho asked through his thoughts.

“Yes. I may be dead, but I can still wield this much power over the elves I once ruled.”

The icy energy of a being who once ruled an entire dimension emanated from Sillad.

Suho instinctively turned his gaze toward a presence beside him.

He and Sillad were not alone in this world. Sillad’s chosen successor, Sirka, had also been drawn into this ethereal space.

In the midst of this raging storm, Sirka was trapped in transparent ice, her eyes closed. Time itself seemed to have frozen around her.

“Do not worry,” Sillad assured Suho. “I have frozen her only momentarily. She will be safe for the time being.”

The spirit storm’s true target wasn’t Suho—it was Sirka. Having failed to claim the hunter’s body, the spirits had turned their focus toward her.

From their perspective, she presented an ideal vessel. She was an elf, just like the high elves they had once occupied, and she was directly descended from Sillad, a former Monarch.

“Sirka cannot yet handle this many spirits. The moment the ice breaks, she will be devoured. Now accept.”

Suho already knew he would.

“I accept.”

As he nodded, an illusion began to bloom from the ice flower in Sillad’s hand.

Suho fully came to his senses. He was now no longer in the storm, but standing in a vibrant forest. The air was thick with the scent of fresh grass and blooming flowers, and the scenery was a lush green.

Frostbloom Illusion had painted the surroundings in even greater detail than the last time he experienced it. Elves laughed and played among the trees, and elegant treehouses dotted the landscape.

These details continued to emerge one by one, then the final piece of the vision appeared: a towering tree at the heart of the forest.

Suho studied it and asked,

“Is this... Elvenwood?”

“Yes. This is the Elvenwood I once occupied, in any case.”

A cold breeze swirled beside Suho as Sillad’s face materialized in the air. The Monarch gazed at the forest with a wistful expression.

“Originally, ‘Elvenwood’ referred to that tree in the center. We elves were nomadic by nature, always settling around an Elvenwood.”

Suho tilted his head. This sounded contradictory.

“You lived around the tree?

But if you were nomads, you would have been wanderers, right?”

“We did wander when the land became a wasteland.”

“A wasteland?

What does that mean?”

“Watch. It will begin soon.”

As Sillad spoke, a chilling wind swept through the forest.

Time accelerated, and the once lush scenery began to wither. Spring, summer, autumn, winter—the seasons passed in rapid succession until the forest decayed and dried up. The clothes the elves wore grew thicker and warmer.

In the end, nothing remained but the extreme cold.

Yet even then, there was one constant in the scenery: the Elvenwood tree.

“An Elvenwood is a spirit tree. It provides the ideal environment for elves to live in. Around it, the power of spirits and elven spirit magic grows stronger,” Sillad explained.

He continued, “But nothing in this world is eternal. There is no such thing as endless power. An Elvenwood absorbs all the nutrients from the land around it, and when the surrounding landscape has been drained dry...”

There was a rushing noise from underground.

“It feeds on the elves.”

A sudden scream pierced the forest. The Elvenwood, now skeletal and starved, had extended its roots to attack the elves.

Suho frowned.

“So it’s a friend to the elves when the land is plentiful, but when the land is bare, the elves serve as an emergency food supply?”

“An emergency food supply... That is an apt description,” Sillad muttered bitterly. “Yes, you are right. I am loath to admit it, but there is a possibility that we elves were intended to be food for the Elvenwood from the start.”

Elves were dying helplessly as they watched the scene. Their bodies withered away as they were pierced by the tree’s sharp roots and drained of their nutrients.

“At times like these, not even the spirits will come to our aid. Are the spirits friends of the elves? Hah. Those who claim such nonsense are one of two things.”

Sillad’s eyes burned with fury.

“They are either naive young elves with no understanding of the world...”

“Or they’re spirits themselves, huh.”

“Correct.”

The lifeless bodies of the elves, drained completely, began to stir. They rose to their feet, swaying unsteadily like zombies.

“The Elvenwood takes what’s inside,” Sillad continued, “but the spirits want the husks. Because we lived so closely with spirits as they pretended to be our friends, our bodies were uniquely attuned to their energy.”

In order to use spirit manipulation, it was necessary to have a close affinity with them. Bodies with such an affinity became perfect vessels for spirits.

[??]

Suho’s eyes shifted to the name tags hovering over the elves’ reanimated bodies. They were marked with question marks just like Fores had been.

I get it now,

he thought.

The question marks seemed to indicate that the system could not determine their identity. They had become something unrecognizable, neither elf nor spirit.

Even as Suho watched, other spirits were competing with those already inside the bodies, eager to take the husks for themselves.

“No wonder they don’t have a name. The spirits are in a constant struggle to take the bodies from each other.”

“Names, you say? Speaking of names, you humans seem to call us ice elves ‘White Specters,’” Sillad mused, stroking his chin. “Based on that, perhaps these should be called ‘Fallen Specters.’”

The system dinged.

[??] → [Fallen Specter]

The name tags changed, adopting the title Sillad had bestowed.

But it did not really matter what they were called. All that mattered was the creatures’ goal.

The elven bodies, now controlled by spirits, stumbled out of the barren forest, slaughtering every living being they encountered. Then they pulled the bodies back to their settlement.

“Are they bringing nutrients back to the Elvenwood?”

“Yes. You might say that it’s a symbiotic relationship. Each uses the other for its own gain. We elves were no different, to be honest. Take a look.”

Suho realized that not all of the elves had been killed and turned into Fallen Specters. Sillad gestured toward those who had managed to escape the wrath of the rampaging Elvenwood and were fleeing desperately for their lives.

Suho spotted Fores among the survivors, breathless and running with all his might. This vision was a projection of his memories, which explained why he was shown in close-up as he fled alongside the other elves.

However, Suho’s surprise didn’t stem from the fact that he had recognized Fores. Each of the escaping elves, including Fores, was clutching a fruit in their arms.

“That fruit... could it be?”

“Yes, it is the fruit of the Elvenwood. You might call them seeds, to be more precise.”

“Are they seriously planning to plant more after everything they’ve been through?”

“I told you. It’s a symbiotic relationship.”

Sillad was looking bitterly at the image of Fores as he ran away.

“Despite the danger, elves cannot survive without an Elvenwood. The spirits are no different. The Elvenwood and the spirits will maintain an appearance of friendship, at least until all other sources of food are gone.”

Fores, narrowly escaping with his life, eventually arrived in a new land. He sought out the richest soil he could find, dug into the ground, and planted the fruit he carried.

As he used spirit manipulation above the soil, a new Elvenwood sprouted. The tree grew rapidly, consuming the nutrients of the fertile land with astonishing speed, and a new elven village was born around it.

Suho nodded in understanding.

“So this is why you call yourselves nomads.”

“Yes,” Sillad affirmed. “We must always be on the lookout for the next fertile region if we are to plant another Elvenwood.”

The vision sped up again, showing the cycle repeating itself.

The new village, painstakingly built by the elves, was soon drained of life. The same pattern unfolded—the tree attacked the elves, Fallen Specters were born, and Fores escaped with another fruit in search of yet another land. He planted the seed in fresh soil once more, and the cycle began anew.

As Suho observed the endless repetitions, a question began to form in his mind.

“Sillad, why don’t I see you in these memories?”

These memories all belonged to Fores. According to Sillad, Fores had been his competitor, so Suho couldn’t understand why the dead Monarch wasn’t among the survivors.

Sillad grinned darkly.

“Why was I not among them? Why, that is very obvious, I should think.”

The expression on his face was one of obvious confidence.

“I did not run like the others.”

“What?”

Sillad continued, his voice brimming with pride, “I was the only high elf who refused to flee when an Elvenwood rampaged. That is why I, Sillad, am known as the Monarch of Frost and the King of the Snow Folk.”

A biting, icy wind swept through the illusion at that very moment.

“Friends with the spirits, they said?”

Sillad scoffed at the notion, his teeth bared in a mocking smile.

“A Monarch does not seek the friendship of spirits. A Monarch

rules

them.”