Chapter 149
Chapter 149. The Prince’s Return (3)
Sea elves are made of a curse.
When Arurion was young, Grandmother Samnaren used to say that.
Grandmother Samnaren, a High Elf, stayed aboard the royal vessel and educated the children.
She expressed a curse-like regret toward the sea elves who would suffer a pitiful fate.
[As the price for stealing the most beautiful branch of the World Tree, you have been cursed.]
[You will be exiled forever and wander the sea for your entire lives.]
[You will forget the Mother Tree.]
[You will forget the nobility of the elves.]
[You will forever circle between struggle and peace.]
Arurion asked.
[I didn’t steal anything.]
[I know. But the sins committed by your ancestors are atoned through you.]
He remarked that it was quite unfair.
[Your life is made of that. Things that do not exist, the royal status you possess, the languages you learn, the lack of hardship in what you eat and drink, and even the No. 1 Wing Vessel that you will one day inherit from your father.]
[An heir is a word that encompasses all of those positives and negatives.]
The responsibility of being born into royalty.
[Then I should see the branch that is the source of the sin.]
It was kept in the royal secret vault. A branch of the World Tree that shimmered in brilliant iridescent colors, appearing as countless hues.
Someday, that branch would lead the sea elves into the future.
However, the king was murdered, the queen disappeared, and the beautiful branch of the World Tree vanished along with them.
And all the High Elves left the sea elves.
They had wandered the seas for hundreds of years.
Many things happened. Brothers fell into discord, and to obtain Wing Vessels, they hunted sea dragons and used their hearts as power sources.
The sea elves split apart. As vast as the sea was, they spread to many places.
They could no longer understand one another and gradually turned into different factions.
Even so, until now, they had remained loosely connected under the name of sea elves.
Arurion gradually lost certainty about where he belonged.
He had no conviction. He merely preserved the waters under his control and managed part of an island.
And one day, after the Heaven and Earth Resonance occurred, he fell into a deep sleep.
“Please wake up now, Your Highness. Isn’t it time to stop oversleeping?”
The one who woke him was his adjutant’s voice. Ellarion spoke as casually as ever, and Arurion responded just as naturally.
“Let me sleep a little longer. The sea’s a mess anyway, so I can’t go outside…… huh?”
“Have you regained your memory now?”
“How long was I asleep?”
“It seems to have been about ten years.”
“I slept as long as a hibernating bear.”
Humans often measured the passage of time for sea elves by their own standards, but even for sea elves, ten years was ten years.
“The stars are twinkling in the sky. What is this, these shortened limbs? I’ve become a child.”
“This is a dream. And above us, it seems the gods are fighting.”
Flashes of fire burst in the void, massive meteors fell, and it even felt as if the sun itself was descending.
When the battle ended, two beings appeared. One was Samnaren, and the other was a man he had never seen before, yet somehow didn’t feel unfamiliar.
“That is Lord Yul.”
“Ah. You said this was a dream, right?”
He no longer found it strange what form his orca friend had taken.
His body, which had been that of a boy just moments ago, had already returned to its original form.
Fragments of memories from within the dream surfaced. The first was when he had become a child and received instruction from Samnaren.
That had clearly been about how to handle dreams. It was the basics.
Back then, he had heard about the ability to manipulate form.
“Grandmother Samnaren, did you return me to my original form?”
“Hmph. I negotiated with that brat. I said I’d only bring you here while you’re asleep.”
Samnaren had returned to her High Elf form and clicked her tongue.
Yul shrugged his shoulders.
“It’s been a while, Aron.”
“Yul, you have my thanks. Thanks to you, I was able to awaken from the dream.”
At the name he hadn’t heard in a long time, Arurion gave a faint smile.
“I heard you docked at my island without permission to avoid the aftermath of the Heaven and Earth Resonance. Given the urgency of the situation, I’ll overlook it.”
“Much appreciated.”
From his perspective, it had only been a short time ago, so Arurion smiled again.
After the brief reunion, Arurion turned his head and looked at Samnaren.
“There is something I wish to ask. Where is that branch?”
“The branch?”
As everyone showed confusion, Samnaren spoke.
“It is sealed beyond the Eternal Sea. Within this dream, I found the greatest blacksmith. A forger of dreams. He stepped forward and processed that branch.”
“That is the atonement for sin. It is not something that should be here.”
“The dream forger processed the branch and turned it into a crown. The first strand was placed at the front, symbolizing mortality; the second was placed on the left, symbolizing immortality; the third was placed on the right, symbolizing eternity.”
“I’m not interested in the symbolism of that crown.”
“Keep listening. And the crown of the World Tree made by the dream forger was meant to be worn by you, the one who will come to rule all these dreams.”
“You haven’t changed, Grandmother Samnaren, forcing things upon others that they do not want.”
Arurion was smiling faintly, but he looked rather terrifying. Samnaren spoke with a sullen expression.
“This is why I preferred you as a child.”
“Grandmother, the one standing before you now is not a child. I am a prince, born with the duty to take responsibility for all the sea elves.”
Arurion negotiated calmly. Though he held no sword, he appeared more threatening than anyone else.
“Me trains under you in dreams? Very well. But first, return that branch, the one that was processed, the sin that caused the sea elves to wander the seas forever. You were not the one who stole it, were you?”
“Of course not! When your father died, the sea elves fell into chaos. I was merely keeping that branch safe, so no one could steal it…….”
Samnaren took out the treasure from within the void of the dream. It shone with such a dazzling array of colors that it was hard to believe it was a branch of a tree.
The crown was adorned with numerous gems, and most striking of all were the three towering branches.
“I had originally intended to give it to you when your dream training was complete.”
At that point, Yul and Ellarion were able to grasp the situation and context to some extent.
Arurion had also explained it to them.
Even amidst the chaos, Samnaren had taken the atonement for the sin.
It had been wrong, but when the rightful owner, Arurion, demanded it, she handed over the item.
“Even if it has been turned into a crown, an atonement for sin is still an atonement for sin. I will call that crown the Crown of Atonement.”
“……If that is what you wish, then so be it.”
“I will return to reality and save all the sea elves. I won’t forget to train in the arts of the dream world. And I’ll make sure to get eight hours of sleep.”
Samnaren agreed to release Arurion peacefully. Yul and Ellarion escaped using the Dream Anchor, and Arurion opened his eyes.
“A spring?”
“It is the Healing Spring, Your Highness. The place we searched for so long in the southern Archipelago Ocean.”
“Is this the Archipelago Ocean?”
“No. This is the Great Azure Ocean.”
“So far north…….”
Yul, arms crossed, spoke.
“It’s good that things worked out, but Samnaren’s attitude is pretty lousy.”
She had turned Arurion into a child to try and gaslight him, training him in dreams.
And on top of that, what was it—the branch of sin? She had taken that item into the dream and processed it however she pleased.
Even though it originally belonged to Arurion, she had kept it stored away somewhere.
And she hadn’t even released Arurion, so it could only be called sheer self-righteousness.
“……She’s always been like that. Grandmother is stubborn and doesn’t really read other people’s thoughts well.”
“Are all High Elves like that?”
“No. Only Grandmother Samnaren is like that. But still, she is my real grandmother.”
No matter how narrow-minded and self-righteous someone in your family might be, there’s nothing to do but understand and move on.
“But she returned it when I asked, didn’t she? That is enough for me.”
In the awakened Arurion’s hand was the Crown of Atonement.
“In this day and age, no sea elf understands why we live in the sea. But someone has to tell them.”
“Want me to explain the situation outside first?”
“Yes, please.”
Yul first explained the state of sea elf society as he had seen it.
“So, the princes have entered a full-scale civil war?”
“That’s right. And in the middle of it, a Rejection Phenomenon is occurring. The cause is the collapse of the World Tree.”
“The World Tree… that must be the original tree of the branch our ancestors stole. Grandmother Samnaren called it the Mother Tree.”
“The World Tree was in the Arctic. Those called frost elves lived there. After the Heaven and Earth Resonance, coincidentally, a dragon named White Crux summoned a subordinate who possessed magic capable of collapsing the World Tree. And then it was destroyed.”
Yul recalled White Crux’s subordinate. But that werewolf wasn’t a mage powerful enough to destroy the World Tree.
(T/N): Hmmm. The Banshee Queen Clata is the one who froze the World Tree. So there still someone other than her who destroyed the World Tree?
He was a formidable warrior, but not one with that level of power.
‘Then that means among White Crux’s subordinates, there’s a powerful mage.’
He didn’t know who it was. White Crux had ultimately never sent another subordinate to attack Yul.
‘I’ll need to head to the Arctic later and find out.’
While he’s at it, he could also speak about the Divine Light Spire and stop by Norspelskard.
In any case, returning to the matter at hand, Yul explained the root of the situation, as well as the frost elves who had died while preserving the only mistletoe that had grown on the World Tree.
“Then the frost elves could be considered a kin of our ancestors. But they were annihilated, and the branch…….”
“That branch was planted on the Island of Boundaries. It might grow someday and eliminate the Rejection Phenomenon of the sea elves.”
The one most shocked by this explanation was Ellarion. He had been listening quietly, but suddenly spoke in astonishment.
“You’re saying it can remove the Rejection Phenomenon?”
“Since the collapse of the World Tree caused it, if the World Tree grows again, it should be fine.”
Arurion turned to Ellarion. He only knew of what had happened over the past ten years through hearing about it.
“Is that something special?”
“It is equivalent to curing an incurable disease that no mage has ever been able to solve. Even the possibility alone is extraordinary.”
“It’s been a while since I’ve seen Ellarion this surprised. Anyway, I understand. Thank you, Yul.”
“No need to thank me. The sea elves who came to my island are my subordinates, so you can’t take them.”
“I have no intention of doing that. Nor do I intend to act arrogantly, insisting that all sea elves must be under my command. Anyway, shall we head back now?”
As Arurion rose from the milky-white Healing Spring, Ellarion approached and draped a cloak over his naked body.
“But where is this place?”
“An orca village deep underwater.”
“……Oh! Oh?”
Looking at the black orcas visible beyond the Healing Spring, Arurion spoke.
“So the orcas of the Great Azure Ocean have black skin!”
“That’s not it.”