Chapter 6: The Forest Shakes

“What? Why.”

“If you’re going to eat another candy, you have to give me another piece of information.”

“If you took two, you give two. If Luti gave three lollipops, the demon had to give three pieces of information.”

“You really are an insolent human, aren’t you?”

“A promise is a promise. Even if you’re a demon, you should keep a promise.”

The demon flared up and put his hands on his hips. Then he used his tail to lift himself with a whoosh and made the nasty expression unique to demons.

“You foolish human who doesn’t know what really matters! How dare someone like you defy Sorotel?!”

In human language, there was a saying like this. A thief’s own feet ache. Luti had never used such a saying, but they were sure they knew when it was used.

“You didn’t do anything.”

They almost clicked their tongue. But they didn’t. The demon suddenly shot fire from the tip of his tail with a fwoosh

“You must have thought I was pathetic!”

“No. That’s not it…”

“I’ll burn you to ashes!”

The demon, who had been happily eating candy, suddenly got angry. As if candy was candy and a demon was a demon, he burst into flames and suddenly yanked Luti high into the sky. It was the same situation as yesterday.

Their clothes flapped against the leaves and tore. Their hair was swept in one direction as if they had fallen into water, and they rose into the sky without even being able to open their eyes.

They couldn’t even breathe, so they clutched only their empty bag. Then at some point the demon stopped and spoke.

“Insolent human. Look at that.”

The demon pointed to a curve on the left. It was an area called Mungge Tree, where short trees grew thick with leaves. Large animals and humans who had gathered to hunt them were crowded there.

“That place…”

“Yes, it’s always the place where loud noises come from, where bones and flesh splatter. Humans catch large animals for food, collect their oil to burn in winter, and skin them to make clothes.”

“That’s just the way of the forest.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. Here, look.”

The demon pulled his hand. Luti was dragged toward the Mungge Tree with a whoosh and shouted, “Ow!” The demon pulled them by the waist instead of the wrist. The demon, now pressed close to Luti, said,

“Do you see it?”

They didn’t know. It seemed visible and not visible at the same time. They hadn’t risen as high as the Cheonchu tree, so they could roughly see, but it was their first time looking down from the sky, so they couldn’t tell what was what.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to look at.”

“I suppose not. You’re only a human, after all.”

The demon spotted a bird’s nest and tossed Luti onto it. It was the empty nest where a large Moa bird had lived.

“By now, crows and Moa birds should be pecking at the traces of the death struggle between humans and animals. But the birds are gone. Those hyena-like creatures vanished without a trace. Look, they’re not even where you’re sitting, are they?”

Luti looked around the place they had been thrown onto and noticed. It was a nest, empty, with only what looked like baby bird feathers piled up.

“They left with their chicks in their mouths.”

“……”

“They saw something. Not a scene of humans killing animals, but something else. What do you think it was?”

They didn’t know. Luti stared stubbornly at the ground stained with animal blood. But their mind wouldn’t work.

“Intrusion.”

“Intrusion?”

“Someone came in here. And did something in here. It was something the forest did not permit, and to hide it, they threatened everything around here. That’s why the birds left. Even those sly crows.”

How much did the demon know? What was he seeing and sensing?

“How do you know that?”

“I’m a fast-footed fellow. And unlike other demons, I know how to keep a promise.”

The demon said he had walked along the path of the water snake. He said he had seen humans gather something and disappear. They appeared on black horses with black silver ornaments and left at dawn. It was clearly the look of people fleeing after finishing something they should never have done.

“So what did you see?”

“I don’t know yet. They were men in black uniforms. They reeked of blood. They were definitely not from Yondo.”

They were different. No, their very nature was different. Yondo was a country that made armor and studied it, but it had nothing to do with war. It was a country of scholars and researchers. Somehow it had come to treat Helter as its suzerain and sold armor, but it had not always been that kind of country.

After the chancellor took office and connected with the Helter royal family, they merely gathered armor and materials needed for war. They were not people with dangerous elements.

“Then Helter?”

“It could be the western countries excluding Helter.”

“…Western countries excluding Helter?”

It was something they had never heard. A phrase that appeared nowhere in the books Luti had read.

“Do you think this world is made up only of this forest, Yondo, and Helter?”

The demon’s eyes grew dark. His tone was certain, as if he truly knew many things.

“In this world, there are countries bigger and stronger than Helter. Beyond the land of cold lies a great empire. The men of that empire don’t even consider Helter worth dealing with. Because they are dragon slayers.”

There was a great empire that could not even be compared to Helter. There was an empire ruled by an emperor whom Helter could not even oppose, and knights with terrifying abilities served that emperor. Those knights slew dragons that could shake the entire human world, enjoyed eternal wealth, and were treated like gods. Sorotel knew this exactly.

“The king of Helter is insane.”

The little demon’s eyes again held a dark, mad light.

“And Helter will collapse before long.”

For over ten years, Helter had taken countless countries through one-sided invasions. The king, whose eyes held the same madness as Sorotel’s now, sent out knights and soldiers to capture and torture the kings and lords of nearby small nations. He killed and enslaved the serfs living on that land to secure supplies and money for war. It was excessive exploitation and excessive killing. Everyone seemed mad, and Yondo, dancing to that tune, would surely go mad before long too.

“The world is changing.”

“……”

“The forest must know that. Perhaps it will begin to strike back from now on.”

Strike back. They couldn’t tell who was striking back against whom. Luti was a smart and wise child, but they were still too young to understand everything in the world. They only understood that the world was changing and the forest would one day have to accept that change.

“I don’t know what’s what.”

At Luti’s words, the demon opened his mouth with a kraah and pretended to eat them.

“You foolish human. That means don’t be scared of mere red ants. Understand?”

“……”

“The master of this place abandoned the house and ran away. You know what that means, don’t you?”

The masters of this place were humans and animals. The master of this house would have been the Moa bird. But if they disappeared. Then the animals and humans wandering here were all killed…

Their eyes suddenly flew wide open. As Luti fell into shock, finally understanding the meaning, the demon said,

“Do you finally understand?”

“The forest won’t forgive them…”

The forest never forgives. But if they had tried to cover everything up before the forest noticed, and if those men in black uniforms were completely different from the Yondo people they had known until now…

That could perhaps shake the forest. No, it seemed like things they had never seen would happen. Suddenly they got goosebumps. Their whole body trembled, and they even felt the illusion that they had seen the men in black uniforms themselves.

“I want to go home.”

“What, scared already?”

“No, I just started feeling bad.”

It was true. It felt as if the illusion had become reality. They were scared and terrified, and they wanted to hurry home. According to Ru, rain clouds would gather, so they had to drink hot soup and get into bed.

“Let me down.”

Luti reached out toward the demon. They reached out while quickly rolling their frightened eyes, but the demon did not move.

“I said let me down?”

The demon was strangely quiet. He only stared into Luti’s differently colored eyes, which stood out even more because of their pale white face.

“Soro…!”

“You.”

They were mysterious eyes of blue and purple. He had known them well, but today the difference in color was clearer. The large eye sockets, and the eyes, nose, and mouth filling the small face, looked not like a human but like a doll in a well-drawn picture. The long, thick eyelashes and transparent skin, the hair like a pink whale’s tongue, and the frightened, wandering pupils seemed far sweeter than candy.

“Were you always made like this?”

The quiet demon reached out and grabbed the small face. When the soft skin touched his fingers, the demon’s eyes curved up strangely. He wanted to gouge out those differently colored eyes and put them in his mouth, enough that his hand reached toward the eyes that had been staring since earlier. No, he was overcome by the feeling that he wanted to stuff the human called Luti into his mouth and never show them to anyone.

“For a human, you look incredibly sweet…!”

He couldn’t finish. The forest suddenly shook.

It was an unexpected vibration. The strong vibration echoed again and again.

“Aagh!”

A scream burst from Luti as they lost their balance. When Luti’s body, inside the Moa bird’s nest, was about to fall from the vibration, the demon’s black hand quickly caught them.

“Stick close to me.”

“Demon! What’s going on?!”

Something pitch-black swarmed beneath the trees. It was not black clouds or a flock of crows. They were men wearing black cloaks. They had not left before erasing all traces. They had returned. Sorotel’s black eyes glinted. They had not left because they could not erase the traces. There was no need to clean up. They were going to come back, so they had left it and been away for a while.

“Sorotel!”

Then the ground rumbled again and the forest shook. Rocks broke, and the flowing rivers surged up into the air. A man’s voice climbed up through the trees.

“I will Kill them all.”

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