This dense forest in the south may have another name as well—Elf Homeland, the birthplace of the elves, the land where they were born.

The elves who lived here were fairies untouched by the mortal world. They were born with beautiful appearances and every fine virtue in the world. That was how the outside world spoke of them, and the truth wasn't far from it.

But beauty like that would always draw the greed of other powers. If you only had beauty and no strength to defend it, you'd become someone else's meal. Yet anyone who tried to lay a claw on the elves ended up a dead soul beneath an elven dagger.

Otherwise, why do you think the elves had held their place in this vast forest for so many long years? Because they were strong. Strong enough that no one dared make a move on them lightly.

But no matter how strong they were, accidents could still happen. For a long time, the elves' low-key humility made some fools think they were tough enough again. So that bold group broke into the forest, wanting to savor elven beauty for themselves.

Then something even more absurd happened... they actually succeeded. A young elf lost her way in the deep forest. She was young, yes, but only in the sense of an elf's long years of mental growth. Her body had not developed slowly.

If elves born from trees were a miracle of the gods, then an elf born from a womb was the very source of destruction.

Those beasts lower than animals forced that young girl to experience what they called "pleasure." In the long years that followed, every time she remembered it, she was overwhelmed with pain.

When the elves heard of it, they executed those men. No one objected to that. But when it came to dealing with the young elf, they found themselves at a loss.

The elves were a pure race. They were born in purity, falling from the Tree of Life into the mud. Yet because they were pure, when they broke free of the fruit, the mud would not cling to them.

But a mixed-blood fetus conceived in an elf's womb no longer possessed elven purity. Such a child could not sense the true spirit of the wind and would be stained by endless mire. And an elf who swallowed that impurity could no longer hear the will of the gods, becoming an ordinary person.

The elders once said that the punishment for the fetus and the elf was fiercely disputed. Some elves argued that she should be executed. She had joined with an outsider and conceived a sinful child. Others wanted to spare her, saying the elf herself was innocent and only the child in her womb needed to die...

Of course, some elves pitied life itself. The guilty had already been executed, so there was no need to blame the elf dragged into the vortex, or the child in her belly.

The seemingly united elven race no longer seemed so united.

A few years later, humans tried to open trade with the elves. It was a major matter, one that required deep discussion among all elven factions. But for elves, a few years was too short. So the topic of discussion circled back to that elf and the child in her womb.

The conservatives originally held the upper hand and wanted both the elf and the fetus executed. But the faction that wanted them both to live took the young elf away and let her give birth in the wild to a child burdened with sin.

"And that... would be me."

"I was born with one half-pointed ear. I seem to have inherited the elves' divine power. Though calling it divine power isn't quite right. I can hear the voice of nature. But my mother can't. It seems everything that once belonged to her has now fallen to me."

"But there are differences too. My mother once told me that when she spread her wings, she could fly through the sky, riding the air currents beneath the heavens and above the white clouds. There was probably some exaggeration in that, but I think she was telling the truth. That childlike look in her eyes couldn't have been fake."

There were messy doodles in the notebook. They didn't seem to be from the same person. Most likely his airy-headed mother had scribbled them in. They didn't seem to mean anything in particular.

"To be honest, ever since I turned sixteen, I've always felt that the delicate, beautiful, petite girl before me wasn't really my mother."

"After I grew a little older, our roles completely reversed. I was clearly her child, and she was my mother. But her eyes held only purity, the purity of a child, without even a trace of impurity."

The writing became blurred for more than half the page here. It seemed to be about the writer's life experiences, and they were likely deeply wrapped around his heart. But now, they were hard to make out.

"I covered half my face and drifted across the continent. Because of my elven bloodline, I do not age, so I've seen too many meetings and partings... In the end, after going in circles, I returned here, to this place that can be called my hometown."

"Though I don't know what happened, perhaps time played a part. My mother was accepted back into the Elf Homeland. This is the happiest thing that's happened to me in fifty years. My mother has returned to her native land..."

"But as a half-elf, I'm still disliked. Elf Homeland doesn't exactly welcome me either. Still, they let me stay, out on the forest's edge. I'm already very happy with that. For the few hundred years I have left, I can stay here, see my mother every day, and live peacefully... until I die."

"Yes, you heard that right. A few hundred years. My lifespan isn't as long as an elf's, but to ordinary people, it's absurdly long. Elves at my age would only just be awakening emotionally, but because I inherited sinful Blood, I could already do complex calculations when I was young..."

"Mm, I've gone a little off track. Let's stop here for today."

...

What followed was some useless grumbling. Things like what he ate today, who he met, how cute Mother was, and how she seemed to have finally figured something out today, making her no different from a human girl in the bloom of youth...

Part of it had been soaked through with water and couldn't be read clearly.

"Today, the trees outside seem unusually lush, and the weather is very hot."

This seemed to be a record from a month ago, noting some unusual changes. The notebook, once plain and dull, suddenly became meaningful to Night Frost.

As for the elf girl, she cared even more about what had been written earlier. The person who wrote this notebook seemed to have some connection to her. She gently stroked the pages, dried by magic, and a faint shimmer unexpectedly welled up in her eyes.

Could she be the mother written about in these pages? Such a young mother... Night Frost sighed inwardly as she looked at the elf before her.

"He didn't come out of the forest." (Dragon Tongue)

The elf girl opened her eyes. Her tears were a little hard to hold back. She lightly touched the page with her finger. The cold writing seemed to carry a faint warmth.

As her gaze moved downward, her voice began to tremble.

"Today, the grass outside the door is taller. The sun isn't right either. It seems closer to this place. Is summer coming early?"

But on second thought, spring hadn't even arrived yet, so where would summer come from? Though this place was humid and hot to begin with, and winter was never that cold.

"Just like yesterday, the vegetation here has grown even more lush. I can't hear their voices at all. It's as if they have no life."

"They can devour the Blood of living beings and grow even more rampant because of it... This is probably a pest of the forest. I can't ignore it. I tried to deal with those plants, but every time I got close, they vanished without a trace."

There was a drawing of the plant in the notebook. It was a thin, vine-like plant. It was still somewhat different from the plant Night Frost had seen beneath the sea. The ones in the sea had grown far too thick, so much so that they were completely unrecognizable compared to before.

"I've never seen such a 'sinister' plant... Calling them plants doesn't feel right. They're closer to Monsters. Based on the experience I've gathered over these past centuries, this thing is dangerous. A powerful lord needs to be informed so it can be purged."

"But no one is willing to believe me. And even if they do, that trust fades with time. No one can find those things. They've hidden somewhere no one knows. As for the lords, they can't even hear my appeal—"

"The elves live for an incredibly long time. Some of them have no sense of time at all. With all kinds of delays and obstacles, news that was already blocked became even more cut off... Until three months later, that plant appeared beneath the elf tree. Only when the elves fell into chaos did they finally, slowly, turn their eyes toward it!"

Much of the writing was criticism of the elves' flaws, though that was only a small part. More of it was concern for his mother and the collection of recent information.

Because he carried sinful Blood, he understood the importance of time more clearly. Perhaps a century of life had dulled his sense of it, but picking it back up wasn't difficult.

"The guards have started moving... There are reports that the evacuation has begun too. In just three months, those vines have grown to this extent. They've replaced the elves as the king of this region..."

"My mother is among those being evacuated. The Monsters that appeared will likely bring an unprecedented disaster. The elves in the upper ranks aren't so stubborn that they can't see that. I just hope my mother can live in peace..."

"I, who bear sin, can only spend my whole life repaying that sin."

Between the lines, the elf girl couldn't see any intention of leaving on his part. Tears wet the paper. It seemed she had gotten the answer she wanted. Was this the reason she had come back to the elven forest?

Night Frost's guess was correct. The flower-like elf before her, who looked absurdly young, was without question the mother of the notebook's owner. As expected of the elven race, you couldn't tell their age from their appearance at all.

"I want to go in." (Dragon Tongue)

"He treated me very well... He said he was my child, though I don't think that's true." (Dragon Tongue)

She pulled the notebook into her arms. As she recalled the century she had spent with him, that deep sense of ease from within her blood rose naturally.

Night Frost could understand that feeling. Perhaps her own parents were somewhere in this world too. At this moment, she was closer to them than ever.

"I understand that feeling... Let's head back and rest first. If you're not in good condition standing before this forest, then don't even think about going deeper into it."

The carriage slowly rolled toward the grasslands, heading for the human city-state pointed out to them.