Volume 6, Chapter 81 – The Elf Who Wanted Something to Eat

After one brutal night of fighting, dawn had finally broken through the smoke and haze. Golden morning light spilled across the ruins — painting the broken stone and bloodstains with a warm, gentle glow.

The lingering putrid aura that had hung in the air had already mostly dissipated, replaced by the clean, fresh scent of vegetation. Survivors emerged one after another from where they had taken shelter, faces filled with the quiet relief of people who had made it through — soft cheers and muffled weeping twining together in the early morning light.

Yet amid this slowly reviving world, Yelena — the Black Witch — looked as though every last ounce of strength had been wrung out of her. She had simply sunk to her knees on a street strewn with wreckage.

Her black combat suit was caked in dust and dried blood. The sharp crimson of her eyes had lost its usual edge, replaced by a deep, heavy desolation. Tears fell without warning down her pale cheeks, striking the cold ground below and shattering into small, scattered droplets.

She raised a hand and dragged it across her face — but the tears wouldn’t stop.

Yelena, who was always composed, who people called cold-blooded and unfeeling — she wept, freely and without restraint, for the first time anyone could remember.

The evil gods were gone. The Corrupted Beasts had perished. The miasma had cleared……This was the ending she, Bai Lianyue, and all the others of the Terrabond Lineage had long hoped for — and yet Yelena’s chest felt hollow, as though something had been torn out by force.

As the second-in-command of the Terrabond Lineage, she understood her foolish Big Sister’s plan all too well. After destroying House Solrog, Bai Lianyue would take the Celestial Blight and the Abyssal Lord down with her — returning peace and quiet to the world, once and for all.

Now, the Corrupted Beasts of all three Lineages had perished. The dense miasma that had encircled Yao Xing for a thousand years was beginning to clear. Which meant the Big Sister’s plan had succeeded.

And the Big Sister herself……was no longer in the world.

“Big Sister……”

Yelena’s voice caught in her throat, trembling with something she could no longer hold back.

“You really just……left like that……”

Because of House Solrog’s persecution all those years ago, Yelena’s parents had died young, and she herself had barely escaped being killed by the Divine-Graced Maiden under House Solrog’s control. It was Bai Lianyue who had appeared at the last moment, saved her, and taken in this daughter of her old friend, bringing her to the Veiled Domain.

She had given Yelena power, taught her to wield curse power, given her the strength to seek revenge against House Solrog.

More than that — Bai Lianyue’s existence had given her, who had lost everything, the feeling of having a home again.

The Big Sister — or rather, her “uncle,” as she sometimes called her — was a dense, unreliable scatterbrain who could never be counted on to handle things properly. But the care and affection she had for Yelena was utterly genuine.

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Over these thousand years, Bai Lianyue had become the only family she had left — a presence as close as a foster mother.

Now that the one who had looked after her for centuries was gone, the loss and grief crashed over her all at once, swallowing her completely. The cold composure she wore every day could no longer hold. Her shoulders trembled slightly, and the sound she had been swallowing broke free from her throat, uncontrollable.

“Big Sister……there was still so much I wanted to say to you, and in the end I didn’t even get to say goodbye. Hah.”

Yelena exhaled a long breath, heart full of regret.

Then —

A familiar voice drifted to her ear — warm, and just slightly airheaded — cutting cleanly through her grief:

―――――― “Yelena, why are you crying?” ――――――

Hm?

Big Sister’s voice?

I’m……actually hearing things now?

Big Sister is already gone……

At that thought, Yelena shook her head and didn’t respond.

Seeing this, the voice came again — this time carrying a thread of indignant pout.

―――――― “Yelena……why are you ignoring me……I’m upset……” ――――――

Wh——?

No. That wasn’t a hallucination.

The moment that registered, Yelena’s crying stopped dead. Her whole body went rigid.

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She snapped her head up — eyes still glistening with unshed tears — and her gaze locked instantly onto the figure not far away.

Ailiya was walking toward her, carrying a familiar elf girl in her arms — long hair in a gradient of emerald and silver-white falling loose, dark-red eyes still clear and bright. It was the very Bai Lianyue she had believed to be gone.

“B — Big Sister?!”

Yelena stumbled to her feet, legs unsteady, face flooded with disbelief.

“You……you didn’t die?”

Bai Lianyue, cradled in Ailiya’s arms, tilted her head slightly to the side, her voice carrying that gentle, slightly blank quality:

“Why would I die?”

“No, I mean — if you didn’t take those two evil gods down with you, how could you have eliminated them completely?”

“Take them down with……me? What……does that mean?”

Bai Lianyue pressed a hand lightly to her lips, wearing that expression of complete, genuine incomprehension.

Looking at the elf girl like this, Yelena blinked — and then gradually pieced together what had happened.

The Big Sister had……overextended her power?

Gone into “fluffy puppy” mode?

She met Ailiya’s gaze, asking with her eyes.

Ailiya understood what Yelena was asking, but all she could do at this point was offer an apologetic smile, reach over to pat Bai Lianyue gently on the back, and say to the thoroughly bewildered Yelena:

“The full situation would take a while to explain. The short version is — she’s alright. By the way, she’s been up all night, so she’s starving. Could you get her something to eat, Yelena?”

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Yelena was still standing there in a daze, thoughts tangled.

But looking at the Big Sister curled up in Ailiya’s arms with those pouty, adorable eyes — Yelena decided to hold her questions for now.

She didn’t fully understand what had happened, but the Big Sister was alive……and that was enough.

Besides, after a fight that intense, it would be strange if she weren’t hungry. She needed to replenish her energy.

The fluffy-puppy-mode version of Blockhead Big Sister could get a little dangerous if she stayed hungry for too long.

And so, Yelena activated the teleportation array on her bracelet.

As the blue magical circle completed its construction, a massive missile core radiating soft blue light materialized — a Rashiel missile, dense with highly refined purification energy. The great weapon the Westivian Covenant had once developed as an anti-evil-god deterrent. The irony, of course, was that the so-called ultimate weapon had long since become the evil god herself’s favorite snack.

Since Rashiel cores carried their own purifying energy and could rapidly replenish power, Yelena had prepared several hundred of them stored away in reserves — precisely for situations like this, to keep the Big Sister fed in emergencies.

“Big Sister, here you go.”

Yelena moved to hand the core to Bai Lianyue.

But the instant she touched it, Yelena’s brow furrowed.

??!

She pulled her hand back. The dark-haired girl’s expression became very strange.

She couldn’t……lift it. The core……was too heavy.

It was in that moment that another reality fully registered. Though those like Yelena who had been granted power had not died the way most Corrupted Beasts had upon the evil god’s passing —

The power Bai Lianyue had bestowed on them was gone as well. The Yelena who stood here now was no longer the terrifying Black Witch she had been — just a witch with an ordinary human constitution.

On the other side, Ailiya seemed to have noticed Yelena’s situation. She said softly:

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“Let me do it, Yelena.”

“Mm.”

Ailiya drew a hand-chop across the outer casing of the core, splitting it open, and retrieved the glowing blue energy source inside, holding it out toward the elf girl.

“Here, Lianyue — it’s your favorite ‘ice cream,’ okay~”

But contrary to Ailiya’s expectations, Bai Lianyue glanced at the core — and her brow wrinkled. In those dark-red eyes, for the very first time, an unmistakable expression of distaste appeared. She actually leaned back slightly away from it:

“Don’t want that. It doesn’t taste good.”

Both of them blinked at once.

Yelena’s frown deepened immediately.

Was this really the same Big Sister who could never get enough of Rashiel missile cores?

Before Yelena could collect herself, Bai Lianyue was already counting on her fingers, earnestly listing her requests in that slow, unhurried voice of hers:

“I want a burger — the kind with a thick patty and lots of cheese. And tonkotsu ramen, the broth has to be rich, with a soft-boiled egg. And a steak — medium, with black pepper……”

A thin thread of drool had even appeared at the corner of her mouth.

One after another, the names of dishes from the human world tumbled out of her — and as each one was spoken, the elf girl’s expression grew more and more animated.

As for the Rashiel core — Bai Lianyue didn’t so much as glance at it again.

Watching the Big Sister like this, Yelena was quiet for a brief moment. Then she spoke, her voice carrying a layered mix of emotions:

“I think……we should probably run a full physical examination on the Big Sister first.”