At the End of the Hidden Greenery - Chapter 301

Jiwoo hadn’t expected Quilon to bring it up himself, and her voice rose slightly in surprise.

“Only Narkreed and Lugarmel know about it here.”

So not everyone knew. It had been an incident in which they had lost brothers, too… Would it be rude to ask?

‘But I want to know…’

As Jiwoo thought this, Quilon seemed to read the question in her expression and lowered his eyes somberly.

“…I’m sorry. I don’t remember very much either.”

Once he said that, Jiwoo couldn’t bring herself to ask any further.

They continued on for quite some time.

Eventually, Shaen came to an abrupt stop.

Jiwoo had thought his breathing was rough simply because they had been running for so long, but once she saw what lay ahead, she realized that wasn’t the only reason.

“Oh, hello!”

Someone noticed the approaching group and called out loudly.

It took Jiwoo a moment to locate the source of the voice because he was much lower than she had expected.

The man was buried in the ground, with only his upper body protruding above it like the trunk of a tree. He looked as though someone had tried to bury him alive and stopped halfway through.

“Kist! What the hell happened to you…?!”

“Shaen, good timing. Since you’re here, take down my last words for me.”

The man called Kist greeted Shaen with familiarity, but the moment he noticed Jiwoo and the others behind him, his brow furrowed with hostility.

Jiwoo had learned that those descended from the roots generally had dark skin, pale body hair, and unusually vivid eyes that gave them a fierce appearance. Kist, however, had dark brown hair and pale brown eyes so muted they almost appeared whitish.

“And who are those strays?”

“They came to help.”

“They came to help? Hahahaha!”

Kist apparently found that so amusing that he threw his head back and laughed.

“Hah! That’s a new one. You people have that much time to spare? What, do you have two or three lives each?”

“We come all this way to help and he still gives us shit.”

Kelvar grumbled with a scowl.

“Fine, then. How exactly are you planning to help?”

Whether Kist simply didn’t care about Kelvar’s harsh tone, or found him laughable because he could tell Kelvar was relatively young, he only laughed again.

Propping his elbows on the ground, he rested his chin in his hands. Then, without changing position, he pointed downward.

“I can’t feel anything below here right now.”

“You mean you were injured and became paralyzed?”

“No. I got caught.”

Jiwoo had heard about being ‘caught’ by a dimension several times now, but she still didn’t understand exactly what that meant.

“Cut off. Sliced clean through, I’m telling you. If you pull me out of here, all my guts will probably spill out. Want to see?”

For someone describing his own gruesome death, he sounded absurdly casual, as though this were nothing more than a particularly tasteless joke.

Or perhaps he was simply that accustomed to death.

“You’re saying everything below your waist has been severed? Then how are you still…”

“Ha!”

Kist barked out a derisive laugh.

“Hey, Shaen. Where did you find these idiots…”

That was as far as he got.

Jiwoo suddenly found her vision covered, and her entire body stiffened in surprise.

Thud!

A vicious impact followed.

“Mind your manners.”

Narkreed’s low voice reached her ears.

A moment later, Jiwoo could see again. Kelvar had covered her eyes so she wouldn’t have to witness the violence that had just occurred.

“I don’t give a damn if you lot fight among yourselves until somebody dies, but can’t you do it where Jiwoo can’t see?”

Jiwoo pieced together what had happened from the scene before her.

Kist’s head was tilted slightly to one side, and the glare visible through his disheveled hair was murderous. Meanwhile, Narkreed stood there shamelessly tapping the ground with the toe of his boot.

Apparently, Narkreed had kicked the head of a man who had only his upper body sticking out of the ground.

“Hey, if I weren’t stuck like this, that’d be one thing. I just don’t have time to deal with the likes of you right now, so consider yourself lucky.”

Grinding his teeth, Kist gestured for Shaen to come closer.

Meanwhile, Jiwoo clasped her hands together and tried to calm her pounding heart.

She had spent so much of her time within her own group that she hadn’t witnessed many serious clashes in El Ragneil before. Yet lately, she seemed to be seeing harsh words and violence exchanged far too often.

“Darling, after making you witness something so dreadful… perhaps we really should have come by ourselves…”

“…Then who would deal with the void? That would just mean standing around watching these guys die.”

Kelvar offered the most sensible response.

“Oh? Wouldn’t that be entertaining?”

Silevion laughed as though agreeing with him, although strictly speaking, that was hardly agreement.

But there was another reason Jiwoo had fallen silent. An injury that had severed him at the waist.

Kist had even said that if they pulled him free, his organs would spill from what remained of his upper body, yet there didn’t seem to be another severed half anywhere.

“What do I do…? I’ve never treated an injury that severe.”

Back when Jiwoo had worked as an Akarna, she had treated all kinds of injuries and illnesses. She had once managed to regenerate a severed finger, but she had never been able to restore an entire arm after amputation. All she could do in such cases was heal the severed stump cleanly.

If what Kist said was true, then even if her power rapidly healed the wound itself, it wouldn’t restore his body to normal.

That left another question. How was he even alive in that state?

“It should be all right.”

“What? How…?”

Quilon, who had been closest to Jiwoo because he had carried her here, stepped toward Kist.

“Explain what happened.”

So even Quilon, who’s polite to everyone, speaks casually to people from other groups.

“As if you’d understand even if I explained it~”