None of the elves present noticed.
From the moment the "kidnapping" occurred, the little elf held captive by Lin Gui had been unnervingly calm.
There was no struggling, no crying out.
She even quietly adjusted her posture while Lin Gui was speaking, making herself look more like a proper "hostage."
Lin Gui’s letters were not, in fact, unread by all.
At the very least, Clotina had looked at one—the letter that appeared to have been sent to her by her father.
The reason it hadn't triggered a sign-off notification was because Clotina had only read a portion of it.
But that small portion alone had delivered a massive shock to this little elf, who had always harbored a deep hatred for humans.
In the letter, her father did not shy away from the evil of humanity.
He described the nobles and merchants who hunted elves; he described the filth and cruelty of the slave markets.
But immediately after, he had written these words:
"...But Clotina, my little star."
"Do you know? Those who are chained and sent to the auction blocks... are not just elves."
"There are also ordinary humans who possess no power and no gold coins..."
"The lives of their children are taken on a whim by nobles, and their wives are forcibly carried away by lords."
"They labor like beasts, yet they don't have even a single piece of black bread to show for it."
"They... hate those 'high and mighty' humans even more than we do."
Her father's letter was very long, recounting everything he had seen in Blackwater City both before and after he became a ghost.
He wrote of the fury of the souls of the human lower class and their hatred for the nobles and those in power.
He told of how they had torn apart and devoured the soul-body of a captured slave merchant, piece by piece.
"I used to think all humans were the same."
"Now I understand... it isn't the entire race that is at fault."
"The fault lies with this city-state apocalypse; it has unleashed the monsters within the hearts of those humans in positions of dirty power."
"As for the commoners who yield to those monsters and coexist with them just to survive, they are not much different from us."
At that moment, Clotina's worldview was shaken.
She thought it might be a trap.
However, the elven script and her father's familiar tone within the prose were impossible to forge.
Her father had even included secrets in the letter that only he and Clotina knew to prove his identity.
There was the poem Clotina had written to commemorate her mother.
There was the redwood longbow her father had prepared for her coming-of-age ceremony.
And the birthmark she had been born with.
Clotina was certain this was her father's letter.
But the content within was far too contradictory to the concepts etched into the elven laws.
It was far too detached from tradition, subverting everything the elders taught.
This had made her hesitate to keep reading.
At the end of the revealed section, the letter mentioned a human messenger mage.
He had black hair and black eyes, and was followed by a beautiful human girl.
Her father seemed to want to testify on his behalf to their kin.
He wrote that this human was not like those other detestable people.
Her father even felt he was kind to a fault, to the point of being bothersome.
For only 7 copper, he helped ghosts he had no relation to by crossing dangerous Forbidden Zones to deliver letters.
Initially, her father had thought the man had some grand ulterior motive.
However, through conversation and silent observation of his interactions with other human commoner ghosts, her father had seen only sincerity and... exhaustion.
The sincerity was evident in his interactions with the commoners.
He lacked even a shred of the arrogant contempt a practitioner ought to have toward ordinary folk.
He was like the boy next door, just an ordinary person.
He had a bit of a sense of humor and would voice his indignation on behalf of the commoners regarding their past suffering.
Then, he would use a torrent of vicious, poisonous language—which even her father found terrifying—to attack the relatives of the nobility, associating them with various beasts.
At times, her father felt his words were far too wicked and heretical.
And yet, they resonated deeply with the surrounding commoners.
Before long, they would be mingling effortlessly.
As for the exhaustion, it was because most human commoners had not practiced cultivation during their lives.
As a result, they couldn't write letters themselves and had to rely on this human mage who could see them to act as a scribe.
There were thousands upon thousands of letters.
Every day, that human mage would see off his last customer with a heart on the verge of a breakdown.
Her father seemed to especially want to introduce this human mage to her.
But Clotina hadn't dared to read any further.
Her father didn't know that the sympathy he expressed for the mage and those humans was a terrifying thing among elves.
If the Elder Council of the Elven Forest found out, or if she was reported by a kinsman, having her name expunged, being stripped of her race status, and being exiled from the elven homeland would be the lightest of punishments.
The elves' hatred for humans wasn't just talk; it was written into the Code of the World Tree.
It had never changed since the start of the Dark Age.
In particular, the tribe belonging to Clotina and her father was the Shadow Clan, which served under the Night Elves.
And the Night Elves had always been a target of suspicion and marginalization among the elven tribes.
This was especially true after the High Elves' betrayal.
Clotina didn't dare read on; she couldn't accept her father becoming a painful traitor who betrayed their kin by sympathizing with humans.
She had wanted to destroy the letter, unable to imagine how her other compatriots would view her if they saw it.
However, before Clotina could act, she was kidnapped by the very mage her father had called kind.
His act of kidnapping her to threaten her kin was exactly the same as those other hateful humans.
But...
Given his nonsensical words and what could only be described as clumsy acting, it instead made Clotina believe the claims in her father's letter.
Perhaps this human really was kind; perhaps he simply wanted to finish delivering these letters from afar.
Under Lin Gui's guidance, the letters flew before the eyes of every furious elf.
Lin Gui, the human mage, appeared to be guiding these elves to sign the so-called Slave Contract Letters by way of a sign-off.
And right at that moment, a patch of shadow flickered back and forth on the snowy ground.
Clotina knew this was a secret signal given to her by the Shadow Clan warriors.
Every Night Elf born at Deepwood Outpost began training and practicing from a young age.
And Clotina was considered a standout among the younger Night Elves.
Naturally, she knew exactly what this signal meant.
The warriors were in position. As long as Clotina could evade the most lethal blow, they would be able to kill this human mage.
Now was the perfect opportunity.
Clotina looked at the mage, noticing that the wooden stick pressed against her had loosened at some point.
For a moment, she actually fell into a state of conflict.
She looked up and peered into the human's gray eyes.
Forcefully suppressing the fear in her heart, she saw frustration and weariness.
Thinking of her father's description of him in the letter, she was suddenly overcome by emotion. Ignoring the rescue attempt of her kin, she instinctively cried out a warning.
"Watch out! There's danger behind you!"
"I know."
"Eh?"
Clotina froze.
He knows?
"Eh...?"
She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
She simply stared up blankly, looking into Lin Gui's gray eyes so close to her own.
There was no surprise there, no panic, and not even a hint of unexpectedness.
There was only a type of... calm that suggested he had expected it all along.
Lin Gui didn't even turn his head.
He merely tilted his face slightly, catching a glimpse of the direction behind him with the corner of his eye.
Then, he looked down once more, his gaze falling on Clotina's face.
His tone took on a hint of... well, how should it be put?
It was like an adult looking at a child doing something foolish; it was a bit helpless, yet carried a note of warning.
"Little one."
Lin Gui’s voice was very soft, audible only to her.
"It’s best not to do that sort of thing in the future."
"In case I really was a bad guy..."
He paused, his gray eyes looking straight at her.
"You would have staked yourself, and your kin, all on a single throw."
Clotina was completely stunned.
She had warned him at the risk of being seen as a traitor by her kin.
It was because she believed her father's words, a result of a sudden, inexplicable impulse.
But he... already knew?
Not only did he know, he was "educating" her in return?
Rate on N.U.
