The Paranoid Elf Queen Turned Me Into Her Sister

Volume 3, 18~I am Waiting for the Day We Meet Again

Everything happens for a reason.

“Guaaahhhhh!” Black mist poured into Caroli Budien’s seven orifices, and his sharp screams gradually became distorted and broken, no longer resembling a human voice, but like roars climbing out from an alien abyss.

“Captain, Captain??” This sudden change panicked the imperial soldiers and mages present, causing them to forget Teresa and Yimi for a moment.

“Today is created by yesterday, and tomorrow is created by today. Every cause must have an effect.” Piece closed her eyes, softly chanting in the chaos, letting the wind brush against her pure, flawless silver hair.

“A drop of water will eventually overflow the bucket’s rim, and errors will eventually accumulate and erupt.”

“No one can resist the laws of history. A massive structure collapsing and disintegrating is just a matter of time.”

Sensing the danger, Teresa hugged Yimi, lightly tapping her feet on the ground. Stepping on the shoulders of a few panicked soldiers, she reached Piece, and without a word, wrapped her arm around Piece’s waist. Holding one person in each arm, she leaped onto a nearby sand dune like a dragonfly skimming the water.

“The cultists escaped, quickly go catch them!” The responding deputy officer immediately ordered the soldiers. However, before he could fully issue the command, a hand claw stained with corpse spots and flowing with black blood grabbed his entire head from behind.

The deputy officer’s expression froze at the final moment of extreme terror. His head was forcibly ‘picked’ from his neck like a fruit.

The monster that Caroli Budien had become drooled a liquid thicker and more vibrant than blood, stuffing the deputy officer’s head into its gaping maw as if feeding.

This exploding, bloody scene stunned the soldiers who were used to dicing with death.

The two commanders of the legion, one suddenly turned into a monster and went mad, the other became Mami senpai. The entire legion had lost its commanders, effectively losing its backbone. Coupled with witnessing the horrific death of their leader, whose upper body without a head looked like a fountain, morale collapsed, and fighting spirit wavered.

The monster Caroli Budien had become was twice as large as before. He was mounted on a tall horse, his legs unseen, as the horse beneath him had merged with him.

His body was completely black, with barbs covering his arms and skin. Even his hair stood up like the hard quills of a porcupine. Black cuticles, like armor, grew on his chest, abdomen, and head. His eyeballs were gone, leaving only a pair of empty sockets.

His expression remained fixed at the moment before death. Extreme pain had twisted and stiffened his face. Despair emanated from his empty seven orifices. His features were distorted, like a horrific doll.

The horse beneath him also became like him, tainted by despair, thus bringing despair to everyone.

In short, both the man and the horse looked like they were wearing masks of pain.

Teresa put Yimi and Piece down. Yimi’s reaction was relatively normal, still shaken. Piece, who had been at the center of the storm earlier, still maintained her posture of clasped hands, praying, as if the disaster was always one step behind her.

“Piece is truly unafraid in the face of danger.” Teresa commented noncommittally. “Just now, that monster’s spear was less than three centimeters from your head.”

Piece opened her eyes and looked at the slaughtering monster. “Is Dylin worried about my safety?”

“Otherwise?”

“Why worry about me?” Piece seemed not to understand. “My mission is not yet complete. Death is far from me.”

“The truly dangerous ones are you.”

Alright, Teresa was pretty much used to Piece’s enigmatic way of speaking by now.

Below, Caroli Budien, possessed by the Corpseblossom and turned into a monster, became indiscriminately cruel, beginning to slaughter his former subordinates without distinction.

This chilling and ominous aura made Teresa feel a sense of dread.

“Piece, why did that imperial officer turn into a monster?”

“He shattered the Corpseblossom.” Piece was concise. “No one begged him to do that, nor did anyone deliberately guide him. Everything was his own doing.”

“Someone like him, with such arrogant and barbaric style, was bound to have problems sooner or later. Losing his life because of it today is only logical.”

“You didn’t tell me that the Corpseblossom would turn people into monsters.”

“Yes, but you wouldn’t do that, would you?”

“The threat of this flower dying is far greater than letting it live.”

“How long can that monster live?” Teresa gazed at the centaur-like monster that had created a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood in less than a minute. Allowing such a thing to exist on the continent was a threat no matter what.

“If it isn’t killed, I think it can conquer until the end of this continent.”

“Because he didn’t differentiate himself, but shattered the Corpseblossom and was attached by the massive resentment contained within the flower, you cannot expect him to retain the self-consciousness of a sentient being. At most, he can only be considered a monster dominated by extreme negative emotions.”

“This kind of monster is the most troublesome. Fearless of pain, unwilling to engage in any exchange of interests with anyone, it will only be dominated by this vast hatred until it fights to the death.”

“Dominated by resentment, is that very terrifying?”

“It seems Dylin still doesn’t understand.” Piece looked towards the distant fortress. “Humans have seven emotions and six desires; they will be angry, annoyed, sad, and cry. The reason these negative emotions do not perpetually exist in a person is because there is ‘something’ that slowly absorbs these negative emotions.”

“This world is built upon the corpses of the Seven Saints and has a powerful self-regulating system. The Corpseblossom exists to absorb and draw in negative emotions.”

“This flower has been growing for hundreds of years and was not discovered by others due to various factors. Do you know how much resentment is contained within it? How many grievances? How much unwillingness? How much regret?”

“Such a massive amount of negative energy is simply too much for a self-consciousness to manage. This is an ‘accelerator’ formed by the push of the world’s laws, something that cannot be resisted by a single person, a city, or a power.”

“Accelerator? Accelerate what?” Teresa asked.

“Who knows, perhaps it’s just accelerating the demise of the human empire, or perhaps, it’s accelerating the demise of the entire light-aligned races.”

“Just like the Demon Race invasion back then, ending with the complete defeat of the light-aligned races.”

“However, last time there was still room for a comeback. This time, it might not be the case.”

Teresa slightly clenched her fingers. She couldn’t allow such a dangerous thing to continue existing in this world.

But against this monster, ordinary methods might not work at all.

If that was the case...

Teresa thought of Sacred Oblivion. If Sacred Oblivion could cut down anything, could it send this monster, which shouldn’t exist, into oblivion?

“Do you want to interfere with this matter? I suggest you don’t.”

“This is the result of the world’s laws pushing forward. If you stop it, it’s no different from fighting against the laws.” Piece seemed to see what Teresa was thinking at a glance and said calmly.

“Stopping this monster is a very dangerous thing.”

Hearing this, Teresa looked at Piece with a hint of surprise.

Since meeting this mysterious, reticent girl, Teresa felt that the other person was always in absolute neutrality. She was like an observer, merely offering opinions without doing anything that would interfere with the course of history.

“You might have a way to deal with this monster, but merely destroying its physical body is meaningless. Without the Corpseblossom as a carrier, the massive resentment cannot be stored and will seek a new host. Perhaps the next target will be you.”

By this time, the centaur monster had cleaned up the scene. From the top to the bottom of the entire legion, from mages to cooks, no one escaped. They were all slaughtered.

Yimi’s face looked somewhat pale witnessing this scene. Although she knew these soldiers weren’t good people and the legion commander was even worse, such a bloody sight still made her instinctively uncomfortable. She looked away and covered her aching forehead.

There was nothing left alive for it to kill. The monster roared, its hooves wreathed in冥火, charging towards the distant fortress. Its figure cut through the plain, leaving afterimages, and emitted an ear-splitting breaking sound.

Immediately after, a devastating rumble poured into their eardrums. The four sides of the distant fortress collapsed, like a castle in the air losing its support, crumbling in a cloud of dust. The huge commotion echoed across the sky.

Kanz City, which was already just an empty shell, now had no standing structures left. By the time Teresa and the two others arrived, few sections of the city walls remained standing.

The monster was gone.

This vast country was probably going to become unstable very soon.

Pat.

Suddenly, she felt someone tug at her hair. A pang at the root. She turned around and found that Piece, who had been standing behind her without her notice, had pulled out a strand of her hair.

“You have a white hair, I helped you pull it out.”

“???”

Facing Teresa’s expression that screamed ‘Do you think I’m an idiot?’, Piece silently put away the pulled hair, pretending as if nothing had happened.

Elves could have white hair??

In all her life, Teresa had never heard of any Elf race other than Moon Elves and Grey Elves growing white hair.

She wanted to say something, but seeing Piece’s expressionless face trying to get away with it, she ultimately remained silent.

“What are you doing with my hair?”

“This strand turned white.” Piece was impervious.

“...Forget it.” It was just a strand of hair, giving it to her was fine.

“Piece, your previous little wooden house isn’t safe anymore. Do you want to come with me?”

Piece shook her head. “I can’t leave. My mission is not yet complete.”

To this day, Teresa still didn’t understand what Piece’s ‘mission’ was. She knew that even if she asked, Piece would just spout a bunch of profound and cryptic riddles, deliberately making it hard to understand.

“You will understand.”

“When you meet all of the ‘me’, you will understand.” Piece gazed deeply at Teresa. “However, if that day comes, I will no longer be me. Perhaps, I will forget everything that happened with you.”

“All of the, you?” Teresa seemed to grasp something, yet didn’t fully understand. Before she could ask further, Piece had already turned around, preparing to leave.

“We will meet again. Farewell for now.”

“Piece, could you please tell me how to release these resentments?” Although the continued existence of the empire was irrelevant to Teresa, she had a vague, inexplicable feeling deep down. She felt as though she had faced a similar problem sometime in the past.

“...If it were you, you would definitely understand.”

“Me?” This nonsensical sentence also left Teresa puzzled.

Piece had already walked far away, leaving only Teresa and Yimi.

“...Let’s go too.” Although still filled with confusion, Teresa took Yimi’s hand again.

Yimi looked back at Piece, who was gradually walking away, then looked at Teresa.

On this journey, not only had Teresa recovered some memories, she felt as though she had also grasped something intangible.

Unlike the rumors, this Elf Tribe traitor helped when she encountered injustice and felt dejected and lost over the lives and deaths of a group of humans. These emotions didn’t seem fake.

So the question arose: Would such an Elf truly betray her own kin??

Gold Elves treasured their kin so much that doing something like that was inherently somewhat unbelievable.

Yimi began to doubt whether she had remembered the wrong person or the wrong events.

But...

Why, specifically regarding this aspect of memory, did she remember it so clearly and thoroughly??

Her heart was still undecided, but gazing at Teresa, Yimi knew that her feelings for Teresa had undergone a drastic change since their first meeting.

Perhaps, there were truly only two Gold Elves left in this world. If that was the case...

Their figures gradually became obscured by a gust of sand and smoke, finally disappearing without a trace.

What they didn’t know was that in the distance, Piece, who had walked away without looking back, turned around when they turned away.

Her eyes, which usually lacked sparkle and emotion, were filled with affection, gazing devotedly at the figures disappearing in the distance.

She picked up the strand of hair she had taken from Teresa, like a golden thread, and held it up, aligning it with the scorching sun in the sky.

“So that’s how it is...”

“In these long years, you have reincarnated three times...?” The silver-haired girl’s eyes looking into the distance were filled with a tenderness and fondness she had never shown before.

“I never thought we would meet again in such a situation, such a future, such a form.”

“We will have a day to meet again, but for now, neither of us is complete enough...”

She held the strand of golden hair to her chest, as if embracing a lover she hadn’t seen in a thousand years.

“She should have met the other ‘fragments’,” the silver-haired girl slowly raised her eyes. “That day won’t be too far off.”

Standing there hesitating for a long time, the silver-haired girl finally took reluctant steps and turned to leave.

“Hmm?” Teresa, who had already left the ruins of Kanz City, glanced back with a feeling, but saw nothing.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” She shook her head at Yimi’s question, and the two continued walking forward.

“Where are you going next?”

“...To find answers.” Teresa gave a very vague answer. She now had a clear goal, but was like someone lost in a desert, only able to slowly grope around, bumping into obstacles everywhere, seeking the answers she desired.