Did the means and methods really not matter as long as the outcome was good?
‘We’re only saying this because we want what’s best for you.’
‘And what have you ever lost by doing what I told you?’
Alex frowned as the voices of his parents, which had tormented him like echoes, suddenly seemed to ring in his ears again.
The words he had endured since childhood still occasionally lingered around his ears like a curse, even in a world where no trace of them existed.
“It was all for the sake of our tribe!”
“Do you think the Dark Elf tribe could have survived until now without us?”
The words he was actually hearing sounded no different from those memories, making them even more unpleasant.
The others might not know how Alex had sent the Kraken away, but the elders, who knew about the Sacrificial Mark, certainly did.
Even after realizing that Alex had uncovered everything they had done, the elders continued making excuses without end.
The other Dark Elves, who did not understand the situation, began murmuring among themselves.
“Is that really all you have to say about secretly offering one of your own tribespeople as a sacrifice to the Kraken?”
Alex had given them a chance to confess on their own, but when they continued spouting vague excuses, he finally confronted them directly.
Now that everything had already been exposed, should they not simply confess what they had done and ask for leniency?
We’re sorry.
We were wrong.
It was our mistake.
Those words alone would have been enough.
What made matters worse were the excuses they piled on through pointless stubbornness and pride.
“Are you trying to tell us that choosing Aroha, someone no different from your own granddaughter, as a sacrifice was the right thing to do?”
Irritated by their words, Alex finally exposed everything without bothering to conceal anything.
One of the elders reacted to Alex’s accusation in a greatly flustered voice.
“Are you saying we did it deliberately? How insolent! Everything we have ever done was for the sake of the entire tribe! We have lived our whole lives that way!”
“If we show everyone the Sacrificial Mark carved into her body right here, are you still going to claim it wasn’t deliberate?”
The elder, who had been frantically arguing back, finally fell silent before Alex’s cold voice.
While everyone else looked bewildered and unsure of how to react, Aroha’s expression changed the most dramatically.
Despite limping, she shoved aside all the Dark Elves surrounding her and stepped forward with a grim expression.
“A Sacrificial Mark? You don’t mean… this, do you?”
Without hesitation, Aroha rolled up her sleeve.
A clearly engraved tattoo was visible on her forearm.
It was unmistakably identical to the mark Alex had carved into the Kraken’s severed tentacle.
Only Alex and the elders knew exactly what the pattern meant.
But every Dark Elf knew that the mark had been placed there recently, and that the elders had been the ones to give it to her.
“Old woman! What the hell does all this mean?”
“You said that was a symbol passed down to the Guardian with the strongest magical power on the island!”
The murmuring grew louder and increasingly agitated.
The Dark Elves who had begun to understand the situation protested all at once.
Watching the commotion, Alex added flatly.
“Then I suppose those Guardians never lived very long.”
One of the elders reflexively answered him.
“Of course not. They all died protecting the tribe….”
But even the elder realized the flaw in those words and stopped.
Until now, even if the Guardians of the sandy island died young, everyone would naturally have thought the same thing.
‘They died young because they stood at the front and protected everyone on this dangerous island.’
‘There was no helping it when they faced danger before anyone else. But theirs were honorable deaths.’
But what if cause and effect had been reversed?
What if they had been placed at the front of the tribe under the hollow title of Guardian because they were meant to die as sacrifices?
“The Kraken really did keep charging at Aroha for some reason.”
“Yeah. Something was strange… Even when the Chieftain blocked it, it kept going after Aroha anyway….”
The warriors who had fought together on the beach began speaking one after another in uneasy voices.
The Kraken’s attacks on the sandy island had always followed the same pattern.
After a single scene of chaos, it would disappear as if nothing had ever happened.
Because of that, it had been difficult to clearly recognize whether the Kraken had been specifically pursuing someone.
But this time had been different.
“…So that’s why it kept attacking.”
Everyone briefly fell silent at Makui’s murmur.
All three attacks had occurred wherever Aroha happened to be, and even the attacks that followed had relentlessly pursued her.
Even after Makui repeatedly blocked its attacks, the Kraken had stubbornly continued targeting Aroha alone.
Anyone could see that something was wrong.
The elders had also realized what was happening, so they hurriedly broke the silence and began shouting over one another.
“Then! What exactly were we supposed to do? Were we supposed to let everyone die?”
“If sacrificing one person could save everyone, would not anyone gladly do the same?”
“Answer me! If your single life could save the entire tribe, would you not sacrifice yourself?”
The elders stubbornly continued spouting frustrating arguments.
If they thought it was such a righteous method, then they should have sacrificed themselves first.
The fact that they had not done so surely meant there was selfishness hidden beneath their reasoning.
Why could they not simply acknowledge their own desires?
Why did they insist on dressing them up as though everything had been done for someone else?
As if criticizing them for what they had done was somehow an act of ingratitude!
Alex’s gaze sharpened as he prepared to say more, but someone grabbed him.
“That’s enough.”
It was Makui, who had remained quiet and watched the situation until now.
“You have already proven your sincerity. So… from here on, this is something we have to resolve among ourselves.”
Alex paused at his words.
The realization struck him that he had become somewhat emotional after suddenly dredging up unnecessary memories.
His head quickly cooled.
Makui was right.
There was no need for Alex to involve himself any further than this.
There was no reason to overlay this situation with memories of parents from a world he had already left behind and had been trying to forget.
‘…I’ll probably never see them again anyway.’
How he survived in this world was what mattered most to Alex now.
Once he dismissed those emotions as pointless, exhaustion suddenly washed over him.
“Thanks to you, we have learned of a serious problem within our tribe. We owe you a considerable debt.”
At Makui’s words, Alex willingly stepped back.
His objective had always been to form an alliance with this tribe on terms that did not disadvantage him and make use of them in the battles ahead.
He had originally only intended to solve their nutritional deficiency, but unintentionally, he had become a far greater benefactor than expected.
This should be more than enough to secure an alliance favorable to him.
There was no reason for him to learn every intimate detail of their internal affairs or solve those problems for them as well.
“Are you saying this is somehow our fault now, Makui?!”
“Enough!”
At the anxious elder who still could not read the situation and continued protesting, Makui glared at the elders.
Alex merely patted Makui on the shoulder a few times and withdrew.
“Did I not say that was enough? I would prefer that we show no more disgraceful behavior in front of an outsider.”
Makui spoke in a voice straining to suppress his anger.
Alex knew how Makui had broken down in the game, so he passed him with an even stranger feeling.
While Makui was barely maintaining his composure, Aroha—who had survived unlike in the game’s original events—was furious enough for both of them.
“Why aren’t you saying it’s not true? You’re not even denying it… so why the hell are you standing there acting so shameless in front of me? I trusted you, Elders!”
Aroha looked ready to physically charge into them.
As Alex moved past the two siblings, Makui’s low voice reached him from behind.
“Alex. Once… this situation has been resolved, let us speak further about what you wanted.”
Get some rest for now.
Makui’s voice had become comparatively friendly toward him.
Alex nodded and continued walking.
Behind him came Makui’s shouting, no longer bothering to pretend to remain calm in front of Alex, mixed with the uproar of the other tribespeople.
What the elders had done was a grave wrongdoing and certainly would not be easy to forgive, but somehow, they would resolve it themselves.
Even throughout the hundreds of playthroughs where Carcosa and the Dark Elves had been enemies, they had always been a tightly bound tribe.
‘I should worry about my own problems.’
There were still far too many things Alex needed to think about, so he left the commotion behind and headed toward the Dark Elf village.
Thinking about how to extract as much benefit as possible from what he had gained was the most productive thing Alex could do right now.
***
Three days had passed since Alex departed for the Barbarians’ island.
Elizabeth had spent those days rather busily trying to conceal the Lord’s absence.
Not long after Alex left, quite a commotion had occurred far out at sea.
Whether because of its aftermath or for some other reason, Magical Beasts had begun moving in various places afterward.
The greatest problem among them was the Mimics in the Old Quarter, which kept gathering in the direction of the lord’s castle.
“Put your strength into your stomach when you swing… Hey! Watch it!”
But Elizabeth had no need to panic.
Alex had given her instructions beforehand, so Elizabeth began giving the still-inexperienced guards practical combat training.
The excuse of “training” was more than enough reason to clear the entrance to the Old Quarter, where the weakest Mimics had begun gathering first.
Elizabeth’s shouting thundered throughout the Old Quarter.
Everyone had plugged their ears with wax in preparation for the Siren’s song, which might be heard at any moment, so she had no choice but to yell.
“Keep! Your heads! On straight!”
Right then, one of the guards happened to disturb a Mimic shaped like an enormous grand piano.
For complete beginners who had only just grown accustomed to holding swords, they were astonishingly bold.
With a sigh, Elizabeth quickly grabbed the back of the guard’s armor, yanked him away, and stepped in front of him.
She wanted to lecture him, but the guard’s ears were plugged with wax as well.
Elizabeth simply gave him a murderous look that promised they would discuss this later and drew her sword.
“How much extra pay am I supposed to get for this?”
Grumbling about Alex disappearing after leaving all the work behind, Elizabeth swung her massive sword.
But before Elizabeth’s blade could reach the Mimic, a violent bolt of lightning crashed down onto it.
The Mimic froze from the impact, then split in half in a burst of blue light, spilling a surge of black blood.
“Everyone doing well?”
And emerging through the gap was Alex, accompanied by the familiar divine power gathered around his sword.
The lightning had certainly been surprising, but Alex had already made such a habit of shocking everyone that no one particularly cared about something as minor as lightning anymore.
“What the hell! Our Lord’s wasted away to half his size!”
Elizabeth’s booming voice spread through the area, and the guards stationed farther ahead came rushing over in a group.
“Lord!”
“Lord?!”
“Why are you coming from that direction, Lord?”
Alex immediately frowned at the sight.
Thankfully, it seemed his absence had been more or less concealed, but he was somewhat displeased to see everyone gathering around.
I clearly told them to plug their ears tightly before coming out here in case the Siren attacks, didn’t I?
“How the hell can all of you hear me? Didn’t you plug your ears properly? I told you—”
“Oh, here we go. The nagging!”
Elizabeth covered her already blocked ears even more tightly.
At the sight, Alex forgot what he had been about to say and snorted with amusement.
It was something he already knew, but after spending even a short time away on the sandy island, he felt certain of it.
To Alex, this Domain of Carcosa was no different from a familiar space of his own.
Even if it had only been inside a game, he had spent thousands of hours here.
Returning made him feel an almost absurdly vivid sense of belonging.
This was, in every sense, his Domain.
His territory.
[Ominous Compass]
[Time Remaining : 124 : 40 : 12]
[The Ominous Compass is currently pointing east.]
Unfortunately, however, this was no situation in which he could afford even a moment of relief.
Alex glared briefly at the system window, which seemed to keep emphasizing itself as though determined to drag his thoughts back to reality.
“…Looks like I have quite a few people to introduce.”
Continuing to speak, Alex stepped slightly aside before the people and soldiers of his Domain.
“We’ll have to make the formal introductions once Hamilton and everyone else are gathered.”
As Alex moved aside, someone who had been hiding beyond an alley in the Old Quarter cautiously revealed herself.
Her dark blue-black skin was too unnatural to be mistaken for a simple tan, and the tips of her ears were pointed.
She was a woman with strangely colored eyes and hair.
As Elizabeth stared at her in surprise, several more presences emerged from behind the woman.
“Aroha, Chieftain’s Representative of the Dark Elf tribe. And….”
Behind her appeared the young Dark Elf warriors, their expressions mixing curiosity about the unfamiliar place with wariness.
Elizabeth looked over the seven warriors and made a peculiar expression.
More precisely, it was the face of someone trying to decide exactly what expression and words she should use to greet them.
It was the historic first exchange between two forces that had once been enemies and would have become enemies again in the future.