It was obvious that the girl was weak, but unlike in RWO, Nacht had no display showing her the girl’s stats. She had no idea what her HP or MP was, let alone her hunger, stamina, or any other status effect. Her dragon eyes had shown her that the girl had lost much of her life force, but that was all she knew.
“She’s struggling to breathe... Hey, you! You’re not going to die on me, are you?!” She listened to the girl’s heart. It was still beating, but it sounded like it might stop at any moment.
What should I do? she wondered. Should I use a special potion? Or if she’s sick, maybe a Yggdrasil Leaf? Or a Spirit Elixir for enervation? I could give her a Hermit Peach to restore her hunger... Nacht was shaking silently. This was hitting her harder than she’d thought it would.
“No!” Nacht cried. “I won’t let it end like this!” She would not let their meeting be in vain. There was a way to save her, something that was guaranteed to work. It was something she could only use twice—an ability she had never ended up using in-game.
Nacht hesitated, but only for a second. She held the girl tight and brought her face close to her own. Her heart was pounding. It felt like it might burst. Her face was bright red, and it only got redder the more she thought about what she was doing.
She touched her lips to the girl’s and kissed her, sighing softly. This was the trigger to activate her Dragon-Bound Servant Origin Skill. Her very soul began to release its power like a gust of wind, tracing light-green patterns of magic that spread out in an intricate geometric design—a magic circle. The girl’s body began to glow. And as the power of her pure white soul became Nacht’s, Nacht saw into her dreams.
~ ‡ ~
When did she first notice that she was different?
Aisha was turning twenty this year, but her body and face were those of a child. It was as if she had simply stopped aging. She looked like she was ten years old.
She was a weak girl, unsurprisingly, and her memory was terrible. On top of that, she slept long hours every day, sometimes giggling like a child as she dreamed. For some reason, she could understand the words of spirits, but if she told her friends that, they would just give her dirty looks. So Aisha learned to stay quiet and keep her head down.
The truth was that Aisha was half-elf. Elves were said to live for thousands of years. Their sense of time was fundamentally different from that of humans. Early on in an elf’s development, they spent much of their time asleep, heightening their sensitivity to the natural world and slowly building their tremendous magic power. It was a stage of growth that lasted an average of forty to fifty years. Only then would they begin to physically mature—a process that took another forty to fifty years before they reached the level of development of a twenty-year-old human. After that, their aging seemed to completely stop. Elves barely grew old, remaining youthful in body until the moment of their death. Or so Aisha’s father had told her. The only people in the pioneer village who had known Aisha’s mother Floria were her father and the previous mayor.
Things had been well enough when Aisha’s peers were still young, but once she had reached ten years of age, the gap had started to become more and more obvious. By fifteen, everyone had become an adult while Aisha was still a child.
People spat heartless invective at her. They called her a useless failure, an unlucky child, and even a monster. It shouldn’t have taken the adults any special knowledge to understand that this was just the result of Aisha’s ancestry, but in such a small village, the people had no experience with other races. They were in no mood to look after a nominal adult who couldn’t do any useful work.
But Aisha had another problem—her diet. This was another reason the people of the village treated her so cruelly. She couldn’t stand the smell of beasts. No matter how hard she tried, she simply couldn’t stomach the meat they ate at the harvest festival. Milk didn’t suit her palate, nor was she a fan of eggs. All she would touch were grains, beans, and greens. The only thing she enjoyed eating was the fruit her father brought back from his hunting trips.
She was slow to mature, a picky eater, unable to work, and slept all day. She was a burden and a nuisance. That was how she considered her life in that village, yet live she did.
“Don’t worry, Aisha,” her father told her. “Take your time and grow up at your own pace. I’ll watch over you until you do. I promise.” He supported her well, and she was able to reach nineteen years of age thanks to him.
Aisha’s father had once been an adventurer. He was an invaluable asset to the village—the guard, the best hunter, and the best pioneer. As long as he took care of her, she had a place to live.
One day, without warning, a plague struck the town, and her father grew terribly ill. The fate of a family that lost its breadwinner was cruel. They ran quickly through their meager stores. Aisha kept looking after her father while he struggled with the illness, but it was only a matter of time. When they ran out of food, his condition worsened, and nobody offered any assistance. Nobody would help them.
Aisha bowed and groveled, begging again and again for them to please, please help her father. But it seemed that the gossip around town was that she, the unlucky child, was the cause of the disease.
That was what finally made her understand. They wouldn’t help because they hated her. Because she was a useless girl.
On his deathbed, her father spoke to her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I won’t be able to protect you any longer... I wasn’t able to keep my promises. Not to you, and not to Floria. I love you, Aisha. Forgive me...”
When he was gone, Aisha no longer had a place in the village. She was cast out, and so she fled into the woods. She walked on and on just to survive, trying to find it in herself to curse all of it. The villagers, the disease, her mother, the bandits, the world...
But she couldn’t. Aisha couldn’t bring herself to hate them. The only one she managed to hate, the only person at whom she directed all her anger and resentment, was herself. What should she curse if not her own pitiful weakness? And soon, she would be with her father.