Even though it wasn’t fair to treat a newborn child like this, seeing as the child herself had no way of choosing her parents, such concerns rarely mattered even if the adults themselves knew that the child was innocent…
“Dead…that’s…fine too…” Moranthal muttered to himself, in what looked like an attempt at persuading himself. Having received the baby from the woman, he turned around, eyes still in a daze, and left.
“You…” The woman couldn’t understand what he was going through now but she clearly saw that he wasn’t in the right state of mind either. She hurriedly asked: “Where are you going?”
“Me?” He turned around to face the woman and then paused for a second before saying: “To find Ancarin.”
If there was still anyone in the village who would accept Elona’s child, it would probably be those at the Demoness’s Abode.
With that in mind, he carried the wolfish infant towards the Demoness’s Abode. Once that was done, he still had Elona’s burial to settle. After all, there was probably no one left in the village who gave a poop about her death. In their minds, the villagers were probably thanking their lucky stars that the village air had just gotten cleaner.
……
Now that Ancarin had safely delivered her baby, it was time for Reyage and his sister to take their leave.
“Sister Ancarin, Sister Regine, it’s time for Sere and Big Brother to leave.” Jezsere bade her farewells upon confirming that Ancarin was in a stable state.
Still on the bed and hugging her newborn daughter, Ancarin smiled gently at Jezsere before nodding her head and saying: “Sere, do you really have to go? There’s still a lot I have to learn from you regarding magic.”
“Sister Ancarin, your magical talents have outstripped that of Sere’s, there’s really nothing left for Sere to teach you. All that remains is to keep expanding your mana pool, Big Sister. Besides, if we stay here for too long, my Big Brother is worried that our clansmen will come looking for us here. That’s why we have to leave.”
The reason why Jezsere was on the run from her clan right now was because she had abandoned her duty. Rather, it would be more accurate to say that she was just protecting herself.
The Dark Elves worshipped the Spider Queen Lolthe who was also one of the evil gods of this world. She was a heartless, murderous and lustful divinity. Legends had it that she always appeared in the form of a spider so she was given the title of Spider Queen.
Given that their target of worship was lustful and loved murder, it only made sense that they shared her interests. The Dark Elves were infamous for being an assassin race and had the terrible reputation to go with it as well. In part, that was because ever since they appeared, they had been responsible several genocidal actions towards the weaker races.
The Dark Elves loved to torture and enslave creatures of the other sex, this applied to both male and females of the Dark Elf race. At times, this extended to those of the same sex as well…in short, they were an extremely lustful race.
In order to strengthen their race’s power, the Dark Elves not only forced their warriors to undergo cruel training, they also picked out several females of their race to mate with strong magical beasts. While the success rate of such a mating was often low, that could be easily solved with numbers. As long as one had enough females to throw at that problem, the number of successful births naturally increased.
Through extensive research, the Dark Elves discovered that the rate of success was highest when they mated with magical beasts related to spiders. Moreover, the result of such a union was far superior to that of a natural birth. As such, the Dark Elves viewed the birth as a sacred gift from their Spider Queen and that deepened their fervor towards her.
Children born between a Dark Elf and a magical spider beast were all half humanoid and half spider. Their top half remained humanoid while their lower half was completely that of a spider’s. Simply put, they looked like what would happen if you glued a legless Dark Elf and a spider together. Amusingly, these hybrids were known as Spider Elves.
Spider Elves had genders as well. They possessed an intelligence lower than that of magical beasts but higher than that of ordinary beasts. These Elves perfectly retained the talents of their spider parents, possessed an impressive level of strength and were also able to speak simply. However, they weren’t able to procreate.
Because of that, the Dark Elves had to keep supplying females to mate with spiders if they wanted to maintain a sufficient fighting force of Spider Elves.
In reality, a sizable portion of female Dark Elves had a rather unconcerned attitude towards such a role…in fact, someone even derived a sense of pride from it. Due to their worship of the Spider Queen Lolthe, spiders became the emblem of the clan and were often treated as children of the Spider Queen…in other words, mating with a spider was like mating with a child of a divinity…besides, with all the strange fetishes they had, sometimes mating with a male Dark Elf was no longer able to satisfy them…
The whole reason why Jezsere was fleeing was because she didn’t want to become a sacrifice for such a ritual. While it was true that most Dark Elves treated the whole mating ritual as sacred…there was still that small pocket who didn’t think along those lines. There were still those who rejected the carnal and base desires of their race.
In truth, Jezsere’s family was of this kind as well. They held strength in the highest regard and rejected such carnal desires. To them, such debauchery was nothing but a disgrace. Normally, such a household wouldn’t have wanted their child to mate with a spider as it was a shameful thing to be a part of. However, the problem was that Jezsere wasn’t able to contribute in any way to the clan’s strength. Rather, she didn’t perform well enough to justify the clan spending more on her.
Within her clan, Jezsere was famous for being worthless. Her cowardly personality made her vast magical reserves utterly pointless, with no combat strength whatsoever to back it up. Thus, she was cast aside because no matter what world it was, those who had no power would never receive a fair treatment.
With her abysmal motor skills, she clearly couldn’t become a warrior or assassin. And even though her magical talents were exemplary, her personality made it such that whenever she tried to summon a Devil, she ended up placing herself in danger. After all, Devils were never one to bother with reason, and betraying their summoner was basically their bread and butter.
Devil summoning magicks had always been a double edged sword for Occultists. That was because they had no way of knowing what kind of Devil they would end up summoning. More importantly, the time and resources needed for the summoning rituals increased with the power of the Devil they summoned. Proportionally, the attitude of the Devil got a lot worse when they were significantly more powerful than their summoner.
Combined with the fact that Jezsere didn’t have the required combat strength or personality to match her mana reserves, she basically would have been dead by now had it not been for Reyage protecting her all this while…
In order to make use of this waste of resources, the clan decided that her fate was to be that of a spider mating machine. That was in spite of the fact she was also the matriarch’s daughter…also known as a clan leader. Normally her status would have spared her such a cruel fate but it so happened that her mother had a ton of children, roughly 34 in total…
The Dark Elves hated traitors above anything else. No matter what corner of the world they ran to, the Dark Elves would doggedly track them down and make them pay the price.
Having doted on her little sister since birth, Reyage naturally wasn’t content to see her become a mate for some spider. Thus, he secretly spirited her away from the clan and came to hide in the human world. With how much time they had already spent in the Demoness’s Abode, he was truly afraid that their clan had discovered their hideout.
“Let’s go, Big Brother.”Said Jezsere before politely bowing towards Ancarin. “Sister Ancarin, Sister Regine, thank you for having us all this while but Sere has to go now. Please take care of yourselves.”
Having said that, Jezsere was just about to leave with her brother when the brother in question stopped. His pointed eyebrows furrowed as he swept his gaze over Ancarin and Regine: “That horn, can you let Sere have it?”
For the normally mute Reyage to make a request like that, it was clear to see how much Jezsere meant to him. The horn he spoke of was naturally Mo Ke’s; the one which was severed by a wind blade during the fight with Duran. As of right now, it was an important item of worship for those of the Demoness’s Abode. Reyage made such a request solely because of her sister who was unable to fight or summon a Devil properly.
In contrast to that, there was the matriarch of their clan, in other words, Jezsere’s mother. While Jezsere might have merely been one of over thirty children, her ineptitude still reflected badly on not only herself, but her entire clan as well. Thus, her mother had no choice but to offer Jezsere up to the spiders. Given the choice of a perpetually useless daughter or a somewhat useful daughter but with a diminished standing, she chose the latter…honestly, this was all a matter of reputation and not motherly love.
“Sister Sere is a Five-stars Occultist, am I right?” Ancarin asked, choosing not to answer Reyage directly. “In truth, we want to summon the Master as well but the Master seems to be in a problematic zone. Furthermore, the mana and sacrifice needed to summon the Master has gotten too big. We’ve tried once already but it ended up failing. Just based on my efforts alone, it won’t be possible to summon the Master yet. However, since Sister Sere is a Five-stars Occultist, summoning the Master shouldn’t be an issue. If it’s possible, can Sister Sere summon the Master for us?”
