- The Elves Enter the Battlefield
The asphalt tore and split, and the stems of man-eating plants shot up.
Thor quickly looked around, but he could not see the plant’s main body. Its roots and vines seemed to have spread underground, allowing it to burst out from anywhere.
Even though they were quite far from the terminal building, the man-eating plants were still erupting from the ground.
“Fall back! We’re retreating for now!”
Han Dosu shouted.
Still maintaining their stealth magic, the group each activated propulsion magic and leapt back.
No one had forgotten Han Dosu’s warning never to go near the man-eating plants.
They all knew that Han Dosu was a capable mage.
If someone like him said there was no way to deal with them, that meant the man-eating plants were truly that formidable.
Sure enough, the plants were seizing control of the space in an instant.
They stretched their stems upward and to both sides, but that was not all. Growing at an absurd speed, they soon bloomed and formed pouches.
Even glimpsed only in passing through the darkness, the flowers and plants were beautiful—but every part of them was a terrifying man-eating weapon.
The group hurriedly moved away, trying not to look directly at the flowers.
‘Fall farther back quietly. Circle wide to the right.’
Han Dosu signaled again.
The man-eating plants were not the only problem. Tentacled monsters were swarming all around them.
The tentacled monsters had such keen senses that they could detect a presence just from someone approaching, so they had to avoid even opening their mouths to speak.
Dozens of tentacled monsters had already gathered around the spot where Balder had spread his barrier.
On top of that, man-eating plants were breaking through the ground all over, expanding their territory.
‘Wow, the ones that showed up here really aren’t easy.’
Thor moved with his breath held, carefully observing the movements of the tentacled monsters and the man-eating plants.
Unlike the chimeras, all the strange lifeforms at Incheon Airport were enormous, and they had already proliferated far too much.
The ashen energy was spread powerfully through the area, the tentacles had excellent senses, and the man-eating plants even used mental magic.
Moreover, with the mages outnumbered, continuing the battle seemed almost reckless.
But the mages must have been fighting in situations like this all along.
They could not simply give up just because their chances of winning were slim.
‘As planned. Focus on taking them down one at a time. Target the one on the far right. Approach quietly.’
After moving far enough to reach a place where the man-eating plants had not broken through the ground, the group followed Han Dosu’s hand signal and approached the tentacled monster at the very end.
As expected, despite their stealth magic, the tentacled monster sensed them approaching and extended its tentacles.
‘Attack!’
They attacked in the same way as before.
Heimdall first cast mental magic to paralyze the tentacles, and immediately afterward Thor’s lightning and Balder and Han Dosu’s flames poured out.
Even as the attack struck true and the tentacled monster writhed, burning black-red, no one cheered this time.
They all simply got out of the area as quickly as possible.
Even if they hid themselves and made no sound, the enemies could infer their location from the point where the magic attacks had been cast.
As expected, tentacles lashed like whips into the spot the mages had just left, mercilessly striking the ground.
‘To the rear. Retreat!’
Thor’s group pulled far back again.
The tentacled monsters were moving all tangled together at once, making it difficult to pick out and attack any single one of them.
‘Wait for a moment!’
‘Wait until they scatter.’
It was then. Suddenly, bright light poured in from the direction of the terminal.
When they looked back, several large trucks were approaching the terminal. Every vehicle had its lights blazing.
After being in the darkness, the sudden flood of bright light was so dazzling it was hard to look at.
Strong mana waves could also be felt along with the movement of the trucks.
They were not ashen, but clear, bright mana waves.
“What is that? Have reinforcements arrived?”
“Did the local mages come to support us?”
“No, but why are they charging toward the terminal with their lights blazing like that? It’s dangerous!”
Only then did Thor’s group open their mouths, each saying a word as they advanced slightly.
They could afford to, because the brightly lit large trucks were drawing not only their gazes, but also all the attention of the tentacled monsters.
The tentacled monsters were all extending their tentacles toward the terminal and moving.
The man-eating plants that had wrapped themselves all over the terminal building also showed interest, stretching their stems long toward the approaching trucks.
“This is really dangerous.”
“Who are those people? We need to go tell them.”
“Let’s carefully cross the runway.”
Just as the group began moving that way, the large trucks stopped at a suitable distance from the terminal.
Then a voice came from the truck at the very front. It was coming through a speaker.
With its blazing lights, microphone, and speakers, the lead truck appeared to be a broadcasting vehicle.
“Yasin! We elves have come. We could no longer stand by and watch the atrocities of a black mage, so the elves have stepped forward. Mages! We elves will help you now. Yasin is also an enemy of us elves. He killed countless elves at Chairman Vanaheim’s mansion. Fellow citizens! Please watch us. We elves will fight!”
The person shouting was Freyja, the elf member of the National Assembly.
Her face appeared on the screen attached to the side of the truck.
Her beauty was so striking it made one’s eyes snap open just by looking at her, and even Thor’s group, foreigners as they were, knew that face well.
It felt as though the darkness that had filled Incheon Airport had cleared all at once.
Now that they looked, the seven trucks were packed with elves. There seemed to be easily hundreds of them.
“Oh! Isn’t that Freyja, Korea’s elf assemblywoman?”
“What is going on? The elves are actually coming onto the battlefield?”
“Exactly. Are Korean elves elf mages?”
Compared to other nonhuman races, elves were welcomed in many countries.
Most of them possessed outstanding beauty, were intellectually gifted, and their bearing was elegant and gentle, so they were rarely ostracized by society.
On top of that, elves had been wealthy from the time they immigrated to Earth.
Not only had they brought ample resources from their own dimension, they also possessed an exceptional ability to extract resources from Earth’s forests.
They were a race treated well and endowed with abundant mana, but even so, they had not been able to covet the position of mages.
Earth’s entrenched privileged class, the mages, had no intention of yielding even that place to the elves.
Although elves were, in truth, an outstanding combat race, those circumstances were why they almost never appeared on battlefields.
So what was happening now?
Thor’s group could not help feeling glad that allies had appeared, while at the same time puzzled and worried.
“By the way, they’re broadcasting live right now, aren’t they?”
“Mm. Looks like it.”
While the tentacled monsters swarmed and the man-eating plants stretched out their stems, the elves were drawing attention by broadcasting live.
If the black mage at the top of the control tower was indeed Yasin, as Freyja had said, then he was surely watching with interest as well.
Perhaps that was precisely Freyja and the elves’ goal, but in any case, a goal only had meaning if they survived first.
“Observe the situation and protect the elves.”
Han Dosu gave a new order.
The group had now approached to within about a hundred meters of the line of trucks.
Everyone carefully watched the situation as they slowly approached the elves.
For an instant, a black wind swept over the top of the terminal building. It seemed the black mage had manipulated something.
Then white flowers began to bloom on the stems of the man-eating plants stretching toward the trucks.
“Be careful! Don’t go near them! Don’t look at the flowers!”
Han Dosu shouted.
The next moment, Balder and Heimdall clasped hands and spread a barrier together. It was a mental barrier to prevent them from falling under mental magic.
It happened so suddenly that the group could only focus on protecting themselves; they could not do anything for the hundreds of elves up ahead.
But the elves were unharmed.
Unlike ordinary humans, they did not fall under the plants’ mental magic.
On the contrary, the elves began suppressing the man-eating plants.
“O man-eating plants, wither! Let your flowers fall, and your stems droop!”
Freyja’s voice rang out through the speakers, and at the same time, the elves in the trucks all extended their mana waves toward the terminal.
Then something astonishing happened.
The stems of the man-eating plants that had been stretching forward so vigorously went limp, and the pure white flowers, green stems, and leaves all turned yellow in an instant and withered.
“Oh! That’s amazing.”
“Is that the elves’ mana?”
“They’re the race of the forest, all right.”
They could hear the elves murmuring something like a chant. It was in the language of another dimension, untranslated into any language of Earth.
As the mana waves continued stretching toward the terminal building with the chant, the man-eating plants covering the building rapidly withered and shriveled.
After a short while, the form of the terminal building began to appear again.
It truly was an extraordinary elven magic.
“To the right! Attack the tentacled monsters!”
The problem was that the airport did not contain only man-eating plants.
While they had focused solely on the terminal building for a moment, the tentacled monsters had been extending their tentacles.
They were already enormous tentacles, but now they had grown even more brutally long, covering the runway floor densely as they stretched toward the trucks.
“Rain of lightning, pour down!”
“Crimson Flame Explosion!”
Thor’s group abandoned even their stealth magic and focused on attacking.
The tentacled monsters looked as though they might flip the trucks over whole at any moment, so they had no choice but to draw their attention toward themselves.
The group’s strategy succeeded. As expected, the tentacled monsters’ attention shifted to them.
Soon, tentacles stretched in from every direction as if dancing.
“Careful! Fall back!”
The tentacled monsters were enormous and extremely powerful, and even when parts of their tentacles burned from lightning and flame, they paid no heed and kept advancing.
The mages retreated backward while continuing their attacks.
They had no choice but to pour out sheer volume.
But they were outnumbered. There were far too many tentacled monsters.
“Ugh!”
In the end, one long tentacle wrapped around Balder’s body.
“Balder!”
While Thor poured lightning into the tentacle wrapped around Balder, another tentacle stretched in from behind and began coiling around Thor’s body.
At that moment, an extremely powerful mana could be felt from somewhere.
A cold wave of mana shot forward and swept through the area.
A frost-like chill passed between the tentacled monsters and the mages. Then, immediately afterward, the tentacled monsters’ movements stopped all at once.
They had frozen solid.
“……Odin?”
He had come.