Future Knight [EN]: Chapter 51

퓨쳐나이트 51화

16. The Choice of the Survivors

The hellish night had passed, and the sun shone on the earth as unfailingly as ever.

Then, the terrible scenes of the previous night were starkly revealed to the survivors.

The once-lush forest of the Elves had been transformed into a desolate expanse stretching for dozens of kilometers.

The trees of the once-rich forest were now reduced to skeletal stumps, and countless corpses were scattered all over the ground.

Most of them were victims of the Red Marsho’s missile strikes.

The missiles not only claimed countless lives but also altered the very terrain of the area.

The Elven village, once so beautiful, had vanished without a trace.

Of the nearly 50,000 Elves who had gathered there, barely 3,000 survived.

The surviving Elves gathered in the desolate clearing where their village had once stood and wept.

No hope could be found in the eyes of those who had lost their families and homes.

At the center of them were Arteon and Elladion.

They were the only two of the five elders who had survived.

“You’re safe, Elladion.”

Arteon, seeing the surviving Elladion, wept and greeted him warmly.

“I am sorry, Arteon. I could not protect the village and the Gigantes [giant war machines].”

Tears streamed from Elladion’s eyes, who had held back tears even in the face of his disciples’ deaths.

“No, I am grateful that you returned alive.”

As Arteon and Elladion wept, the Elves gathered in the plaza began to wail.

As if the sky was weeping with them, a drizzle began to fall on the destroyed forest.

* * *

The Elves, having collected the wounded, were terrified of the Dark Elves who would strike again in the evening.

They had no confidence in stopping them with their remaining forces.

Kang Chan suggested to the Elves that they go to the spaceship he had arrived in.

He thought that if they hid in the spaceship, they would be safe because there was a barrier created by Zikyon.

Arteon and Elladion agreed with his words, and the Elves began to move towards the Red Marsho, which was far away.

It took almost half a day to arrive because they had to lead the wounded.

The Elves who arrived at the Red Marsho laid their tired bodies down inside the barrier.

Meanwhile, Edeline and Zaijen, amazed by the grandeur of the massive Red Marsho, were speechless.

As time passed and the sun began to set, an Elf on guard shouted loudly.

“Arteon! A huge army has appeared from the east!”

Arteon and Elladion, hearing the guard’s words, quickly climbed onto the Red Marsho and looked at the army the guard had mentioned.

As Elves, they had incredibly good eyesight and could see far into the distance without binoculars.

In their eyes, they saw a vast number of soldiers crossing the ruined forest in the distance.

It was a group that seemed to number in the tens of thousands.

The Elves were briefly shaken by their appearance, but Arteon was able to relax when he identified who they were.

They were the Dwarves, who were allies.

Gafeld von Krackcion, the King of the Dwarves, had personally led his elite forces to support the Elves.

Dwarven heavy infantry, armed with sturdy armor, and barbarians carrying massive battleaxes were marching towards the Elves’ old village, boasting a formidable presence.

However, their arrival was already too late.

Krackcion shook his head in disbelief as he looked at the desolate surroundings.

“Good heavens, how could this happen…?”

The Elven forest, once more lush than any other forest, had disappeared without a trace, and only a desolate land stretched endlessly as far as the eye could see.

In addition, there were countless corpses everywhere.

The smell of burnt corpses permeated the air, causing the Dwarves, who had a very sensitive sense of smell, to grimace.

“What on earth happened in one night to turn the once-lush Elven forest and village into such a miserable state?”

He had been through many battlefields, but he had never seen such a wide area devastated overnight.

The scene before him looked like a battlefield that had been ravaged by decades of fierce warfare.

“I never knew the power of the Green Elves was this great…”

A magic circle appeared before the Dwarf King, who was chilled to the bone, and soon Arteon appeared.

The Dwarf King, upon discovering Arteon, let out a sigh of relief and greeted him.

“Oh! Arteon! You’re alive. Are you hurt anywhere?”

“I’m fine. But the forest and the children…”

A tear fell from Arteon’s eye.

Krackcion, watching Arteon quickly hide his tears, felt nothing but sorry.

“If only I had come sooner…”

“No, Krackcion. I am truly grateful that you came all this way. You must all be exhausted from coming all the way here, but we have nothing to offer you.”

Krackcion raised her, who was bowing her head in gratitude, and said.

“Don’t say that! Aren’t we comrades on the same boat? Of course, I had to come! Let’s hurry to our underground kingdom, Mine Kingdom. It’s too dangerous here.”

Arteon deeply thanked Krackcion for his words and expressed his gratitude once again.

“The Elves will never forget this grace.”

In the past, the Elves and Dwarves were not on good terms.

The Dwarves’ fanatical greed for mines often caused friction with the Elves, who possessed vast forests that were a treasure trove of resources.

However, helping each other in the face of a common enemy became an opportunity for them to become so close.

Everyone hurried to treat the wounded and busily prepared to leave for the Dwarves’ kingdom, Mine Kingdom.

Even if they used the portal connected to the Elven forest, it would take about a day to reach the Dwarves’ kingdom, so the Elves busily searched for food, water, and means of transportation to move the wounded.

Kang Chan leaned on Zaid and watched them.

Kang Chan’s eyes, staring blankly at the others like a person with loose screws, were filled with immeasurable sadness.

His heart was no different from the desolate, burnt-out Elven forest.

Emptiness washed over him as if a large hole had been torn in his chest.

He looked up at the sky powerlessly and shed tears.

‘Jeina… what should I do? I don’t have the confidence to live alone without you… what should I do now?’

As he was shedding tears of sorrow.

Ellika, who was watching him from afar, let out a long sigh.

His appearance, shedding tears of sorrow in the face of Jeina’s death, was so pitiful.

She had vaguely guessed that the two were not just close friends, but she learned today that they were truly in love.

Ellika, watching Kang Chan in agony, wanted to comfort him by his side, even if it was just her.

‘Oh my… what am I thinking…’

Just thinking about it made Ellika unable to control her pounding heart.

Besides her, there was another woman who was staring blankly at him, and she was Edeline, the princess of the Bisman Empire.

‘How can he be so beautiful…’

“Princess, I have finished preparing to leave. Princess?”

Zaijen put down a large bundle containing the food needed for the journey and spoke to the princess. However, the princess, who was fascinated by Kang Chan’s crying appearance, was not in the right state of mind to respond to Zaijen’s words.

“Princess? Princess!”

Zaijen raised his voice, and Edeline finally came to her senses and turned her head in surprise.

“Why, why are you suddenly shouting!”

Zaijen sighed as he looked at Edeline, who was angry.

“Princess, what are you staring at so intently? Are you perhaps looking at Kang Chan sitting over there?”

“I, how dare you! This lady was merely contemplating how to report this incident to my father!”

Edeline was still in her pajamas, with black soot all over her face.

She was so flustered that even her earlobes turned red, but even in the midst of all this, she couldn’t give up pretending to be haughty, and she fanned her face diligently with a broken fan.

Zaijen watched her silently and thought for the first time that she was cute.

Zaijen slowly turned his gaze away from her and looked at Kang Chan.

Behind Kang Chan stood the Gigantes, so massive that it overwhelmed his gaze.

‘An overwhelming swordsmanship that overwhelms me, a relationship with the dragon without hesitation, and the owner of a monstrous Gigantes that forcibly repatriates even the Spirit King with a single blow. Moreover, the Green Witch said that those terrifying fire arrows that created this hellish landscape were also his doing… what is your real identity?’

Zaijen put his curiosity aside and hurried to prepare to leave for Bellalen.

The Dark Elves would attack again at night.

So they had to get out of here as quickly as possible before the sun went down.

As Zaijen turned to leave for the journey, Elladion and Arteon, along with the Dwarf King Krackcion, came to Kang Chan together.

The fact that the three people, who must be the busiest with the evacuation preparations, had come at the same time clearly meant that it was for a very important matter.

Kang Chan quickly wiped away his tears with his sleeve and greeted them.

“You must all be very busy, what brings you here?”

“Ah, it’s not that, Krackcion here said that he would collect the destroyed Gigantes and start reproducing them again. He wants to take Kang Chan’s broken Gigantes with him to repair it. So we came together to ask for your favor.”

It was clear that his Gigantes meant Red Rabbit.

But even if they took Red Rabbit, there was zero chance that they could repair it.

“I’m sorry, but you can’t fix this.”

When Kang Chan flatly refused, Krackcion, who was standing behind Arteon, jumped in front of Kang Chan and grabbed Kang Chan’s hand.

And he said in an earnest tone.

“H, hey! Young friend!”

Kang Chan was startled when a large, hairy dwarf suddenly grabbed his hand with a calloused hand.

The moment he saw the face of the dwarf who grabbed his hand, Kang Chan felt an even more unbearable sense of disgust.

Krackcion’s cheeks were flushed red like peaches.

Moreover, his eyes were shining like a calm lake.

“Why are you doing this?”

“W, won’t you please entrust me with the repair of this Gigantes? Huh? Huh?”

Kang Chan began to get annoyed as he kept bringing his extremely disgusting face closer.

“This is not a Gigantes! Something terrible will happen if you touch it carelessly.”

He doubted whether they could even disassemble Zaid, the culmination of modern science, but if they opened Zaid’s body carelessly, something uncontrollable could happen.

If they mishandled the small nuclear fusion reactor, which was Zaid’s power source, the leaked radiation would turn their kingdom into a land of death.

If helium-3 caused a chain reaction, their kingdom would disappear from the map forever.

“This is the most beautiful machine I’ve ever seen in my life. I swear on the name of the Dwarves that I will never touch the body! So please allow me to repair even the severed arm, please.”

Kang Chan hesitated at Krackcion’s repeated desperate requests.

Zaid’s broken right hand could no longer be used.

But he couldn’t just leave it alone.

He would definitely have to repair it anyway.

But Kang Chan himself was not confident in repairing it.

He was a soldier, not an engineer.

Then something flashed through Kang Chan’s mind.

That was the reason why he struggled against that ridiculously strong black Gigantes.

Unlike his Zaid, that Gigantes could use Aura Blades [blades of energy formed by manipulating mana].

Not only that, but so did his master who was on board the Elven Knight.

The Gigantes could handle mana like the pilot.