Solo Leveling: Ragnarok - Chapter 261

Chapter 261

Whioo-

The illusion of the ice flower erased the forest, and this time, the very old memories that Silad remembered began to be dra

wn before Suho’s eyes.

It was a newborn baby.

[That’s me.]

It was a very young Shilad, fast asleep in the arms of an adult elf.

[And my mother.]

And behind it, the tall Elvenwood trees were swaying their branches ominously.

Silad muttered softly, glaring at the hideous monster disguised as peace.

Since when did it start?

[… … Before I was born, our elves were already being raised by Elvenwood.]

And this memory was a very painful memory that Scylla still held even after his death.

Spring, summer, fall, winter.

The four seasons that the elves experienced were not one year.

Sometimes it was brief, sometimes it lasted for decades.

But there was definitely an end someday.

The peace that seemed like it would last forever was inevitably met with winter.

One day, as the once fertile land gradually dried up and a bitter snowstorm swept through the bare forest where even the fallen leaves had fallen.

[As always, the ‘Year of Harvest’ came suddenly.]

Whoa-

Hey, run away!

[Winter is always sudden.]

The year of harvest.

One day, Elvenwood began harvesting the elves it had been raising.

[… … I was still young.]

Suho, who was watching the illusion, saw Silad’s expression.

Silad was facing his memories with bitter eyes.

WHEEWWW!

A bitter cold blizzard.

He saw his mother desperately running away across the frozen snowfield.

When I closed my eyes, it was still vivid.

Holding myself tightly in her arms, still a newborn baby.

The urgent face of a mother running away in a panic.

In that warm embrace, Silad looked at his young eyes that were staring blankly at his mother’s face.

and.

Phew-

-Ugh… … !

… … Even as her back was pierced by those hideous thorns, the mother’s trembling hands desperately handed her child over to another elf.

-You, you too… … .

… … The last voice of my mother as she was captured by the fallen spirits and dragged back to Elvenwood.

Those sad eyes that smiled faintly as they watched their child drift away in the arms of another elf.

Even with her blurred eyes, she still smiled at the child until the very end, that faint voice.

-Alive… … .

[… … You live too.]

All of those things were still vivid in Scylla’s memory. 1

Even at this very moment, when I am dead and in eternal sleep, forever and ever.

[That is the last I remember seeing my mother.]

Whioo-

Time passed quickly in the fantasy.

Silad.

There was a newborn baby there who had lost his parents and barely survived by being left in the arms of other survivors.

At the same time, the young elf, who had witnessed all of the tragedy with his own two eyes, settled down smoothly in the new village with the other adults, remembering all of the despair.

New home.

Within the fence of the newly sprouted Elvenwood.

Silad grew up and became a boy.

Became a young man.

I also made some friends.

Among them was Fores.

Silad learned magic and hunting techniques with his friends, and even competed with each other for the position of guardian of the village.

Looking back, it was peace.

Sunny weather.

The fresh scent of grass.

Every moment was peaceful.

But in all those moments, Silad’s friends never once saw Silad smile.

It seemed like he didn’t know how to smile at all.

It was natural.

Silad’s mother simply told him to live, but left without telling him how to live.

[Do you know that?]

Silad chanted beside Suho.

[Sometimes a bloody battlefield is better than a miserable peace.]

Silad was glaring at the illusion he had created with a fierce gaze.

Kkwaak!

Winter has come again.

Peace is over.

The elves were dying.

The survivors fled in panic.

-How!

Among them, Fores was howling.

-Why do we have to end up like this every time!

[Fores was the same as me.]

Fores, like Silad, was a newborn baby who barely survived in the previous village.

An elf who has experienced the tragedy of repeated winters.

[We have always felt wronged. Why do we elves always have to repeat this? Why can’t we escape this cruel fate?]

Silent anger bloomed in Silad’s eyes as he watched Fores howling in anger in the midst of a blizzard.

[So I stayed.]

Silard made a different choice than Fores.

In the middle of the village where everyone is scattered and running away.

In that bitter cold, blizzard.

Only Silad remained there, holding his weapon.

[I felt wronged. So I made a promise. I would never repeat it again.]

A large number of thorn roots descended on Shilad, who was looking up at Elvenwood with a venomous expression.

Breaking through the ice floor.

Through the snowstorm.

[If my end is already decided, at least I will choose where I die.]

Swish! Swish!

The fallen spirits also came rushing in.

Evil spirits with their faces turned upside down, once members of the same village.

Hungry spirits who have not yet claimed their bowls.

Against all those enemies.

No, against everything in the world.

[… … I didn’t run away.] 1

Shwaak-!

Grrrrrrrr!

In that thick snowstorm.

Silad fought and fought without rest.

In that place where everyone else had fled, only Silad remained and fought alone.

[We fought day and night. We even forgot about hunger. In the first place, the passage of time had no meaning in a blizzard. We fought so frantically… … .]

Towering.

[At some point, no one attacked me.]

Whioo-

All the enemies had disappeared.

A cold and bitter winter.

In that bitterly cold blizzard, only Silad stood alone on the desolate snowfield.

And Silad couldn’t help but burst into laughter when he discovered something too late.

Suho, who was watching the illusion from beside Silad, also opened his mouth when he noticed the sight.

‘… …Elvenwood is frozen to death.’

[Yeah. Isn’t that ridiculous?]

At Suho’s words, Silad burst into laughter and responded.

[That great Elvenwood froze to death. Much faster than I, who was just struggling to survive. It couldn’t stand the cold. The cold… ]

That was all there was to it.

There was a mixture of emptiness, ridicule, and resentment on Silad’s face as he muttered endlessly.

Looking at it another way, it seemed like she was forcing herself to hold back tears.

That’s it…

Having barely managed to survive, Silad dragged his wounded body towards the frozen Elvenwood.

And then he started beating the frozen tree like crazy.

There was no purpose.

Just until his anger subsides.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

For several days.

Continue on.

He didn’t stop until Elvenwood was torn apart.

[But I still couldn’t get over it. So I dug up all the frozen ground and pulled out all the roots hidden underneath. And this time, I chewed up and swallowed all the roots.]

Clang, clang.

The expression on Silad’s face as he forcibly chewed and swallowed the remains of Elvenwood was already half-mad.

How can one be in one’s right mind?

His entire body was covered in wounds, having been worn out by a long battle.

The blood from his wounds had frozen like frost in the bitter cold, leaving his skin cracked and split.

In some ways, it was a much more gruesome sight than that of a fallen ghost, and it wouldn’t be strange if he died soon.

But Silad was still alive.

Even this bone-chilling cold was nothing to him.

Rather, he couldn’t collapse even more in order to spend his entire life mocking Elvenwood, who couldn’t stand such cold weather.

[So I decided to stay in that town after that. Since there was no reason to leave in the first place.]

And the moment he left that land to escape the cold, he also felt that he was no longer worthy of laughing at Elvenwood.

[So I just sat there. It was cold, but as I lived there, I realized there were many advantages.]

What are the advantages?

It was so damn cold.

But elves were a race that adapted to their environment… … .

[That’s how I became the ‘first ice elf’.]

The first ice elf.

It was much later that Silad, who survived the bitter cold, became the next monarch.

Only after the current elven monarch died in the war between the rulers and the lords, could Silad finally become the next lord.

But at that time, he was still young and young.

If you think about it, it wasn’t even a proper revenge on Elvenwood.

All he had accomplished was holding out until Elvenwood froze to death.

He made up his mind.

[I decided that one day I would become the lord of the elves and find all the elvenwoods and uproot them. And I finally did it. As soon as I became the lord, I uprooted all the elvenwoods I could see.]

Of course, there were elves who opposed it.

However, since the decision of Shilad, who had already become the monarch, was absolute, all the elves gradually adapted to the harsh land where Elvenwood had disappeared and became ice elves.

And the starting point is the first snowfield where Silad survived.

Elvenwood was the first village to be rebuilt on the dead, cold lands.

But ironically, the elves who lost Elvenwood were very weak.

The spirits who had lost their center of gravity no longer listened to the elves’ requests.

But it didn’t matter.

They were no longer friends, so a hierarchy was needed.

-Obey me, you lowly and cowardly spirits.

After becoming the Lord of the Cold, Shilad uprooted all the Elvenwood and began to hunt down the spirits that were scattering away from him.

[The spirits don’t die. But if you catch them and freeze them, that’s the end of it.]

Silad poured out all his resentment and curses on the spirits he had captured one by one.

– Spirits, freeze. Be trapped in the bitter cold and suffer forever.

The curse was an elemental spell containing all the resentment of Shilad, the first ice elf to survive the cold.

-Just as you have made my people like that, you too will live an infinite number of years, neither alive nor dead.

At the same time, it was as if they had been toying with the corpses of dead elves and turning them into corrupted spirits.

They too were cursed to be locked in a frozen prison forever, neither alive nor dead, and become slaves to Silad.

Grrrrrr!

The giant ice giants born in this way trembled before Shilad and swore submission.

Their howls were the pitiful cries of the spirits trapped within.

[Ice Golem]

Suho was seeing the name of the prison right before his eyes.

And then I remembered.

A quote from a philosopher I’ve seen somewhere.

‘We are all fighting our own war.’

And when I first met the dead Silad in this pure white world.

I recalled the illusion of a forgotten timeline that Silad had shown me.

In that fantasy, Silad… … .

He was whispering in an extremely cruel voice while thrusting a frozen blade into Sung Jin-woo’s heart.

-Is this it, human? Then you will not be able to see. The moment our army arrives on this land. At that time, your human corpses will form mountains, and your blood will form rivers.

It was the worst curse that Silad, the king of the Yetis and the lord of the cold, could do.

-But this country where you were born and raised will be different. I will personally freeze all the people of this land and make them suffer forever.

At the same time, it was a ‘real’ hell that Scylla knew best and understood more desperately than anyone else.

-… …They will live for an infinite amount of time, neither alive nor dead.

Fallen spirits who live for an infinite amount of time, neither alive nor dead.

no.

The life of the elves themselves, who were taken away from them by Elvenwood and its spirits.

-… … Hate me endlessly in death like that.

Remembering the hell they had personally endured, Silad poured out as many curses as he could towards the dying Shadow Lord.

-… … That will also be my pleasure.

And that was the only sacrifice that could save him and comfort his mother’s smile who died, and his compatriots who died so resentfully next to him.

-Why! Why do we have to suffer like this every time!

Before I knew it, the illusion had returned to the image of Fores running away, crying sadly.

Looking at that sight, Silad muttered with a sad look in his eyes.

[Yes. I too felt wronged. I wanted to make other people experience the hell that our elves live in. That was the least I could do for my compatriots who had already died. But now that I think about it… … .]

Silad’s eyes gleamed as he watched Fores’ next memory.

[… … Fores, this guy seems to have found a different way than me.]

Silad, who survived the winter on his own.

Forest, who was also a high elf, had to run away from the countless winters that occurred.

The fates of these two ended in completely different endings.

Silad eventually became a monarch and fought proudly against his enemies, fighting on the battlefield until his death.

Even though the ending was defeat, he was a warrior who accomplished the task of thrusting his blade into the heart of the great Shadow Lord with his own hands.

But Fores was different.

-You are a creature born with a pitiful fate.

… … !

Suddenly, in the illusion of the ice flower, someone appeared in front of Fores, who was crying.

‘… … !’

At that moment, Silad and Suho’s eyes flashed simultaneously.

stigma!

Unidentified beings with golden stigmata floating above their heads in the form of a halo appeared before Fores.

But unfortunately, their faces were not clearly visible because they were obscured by the dazzling light emitted by the stigmata.

Because this appearance was Fores’ memory.

Fores did not dare to raise his head, overwhelmed by the holy light they emitted.

But even in the midst of all that, he saw something.

-Can we help you out a little?

It was a smile that was as beautiful as it was cruel, and it appeared on their lips.

It was their hands that were extended affectionately to me when I was in despair.

And that hand, without even waiting for an answer, without hesitation, gouged out Fores’s two eyes.