How Could the Villainous Young Master Be a Saintess?

Vinny used [Congealed-Ice Shackles] to pull himself across to the other side. For ordinary people, a broken bridge really could stop them in their tracks, but to a transcendent, a broken bridge was practically meaningless.

Once Vinny reached the far side, he felt that the scenery around him had grown noticeably hazier. Visibility had dropped sharply, apparently because he was already close to Eternity Forest.

Dense fog spread out ahead of him, making the place look like a primeval forest no one had ever inhabited.

Vinny walked forward and found that the deeper he went, the thicker the fog became. By the time he got farther in, visibility had dropped to less than thirty feet. He felt that if he kept going like this, sooner or later he would not even be able to see the path under his feet. He might trip over something and not realize what it was until after he had fallen.

He pulled the golden leaf Ronilei had given him from inside his clothes, and the instant it came out, the dense fog dispersed. The road ahead slowly emerged into view.

Once he could see the surroundings clearly, Vinny noticed that there were many broken suspension bridges scattered along the banks. The real number of bridges here was far more than the single one he had seen earlier. There were many others nearby, but at a glance these had clearly been put together by private groups rather than built officially.

Vinny remembered that the broken wooden sign by that first bridge had once been written in both Elvish and the language of the Ancient Empire with the words: “Beyond the suspension bridge ahead lies Eternity Forest.”

These other bridges were not nearly that refined. Some of them were nothing more than a single giant log laid across from one bank to the other.

Not long after the fall of the Ancient Empire, the elves had cut off the bridges connecting their land to the human world. Even so, it seemed that still had not stopped plenty of humans from hoping to make a fortune off the elves.

As for what happened to the humans who came here without a golden leaf...

That was hard to say.

With the golden leaf clearing the way, Vinny was finally able to tell his direction. He kept moving forward, heading the opposite way from where he had come.

Even if it had not been shrouded in fog, this forest would still have felt unusually distinct. It was as if, for hundreds or even thousands of years, very few people had ever set foot here. The entire forest carried a bizarrely singular atmosphere, and even its scent seemed filled with some kind of ancient weight.

“Hm??”

When he reached a fork in the road, Vinny spotted something ahead and stopped.

“Human Restricted Area Ahead. Anyone entering without permission is forbidden to proceed. You will bear the consequences yourself.”

A wooden sign bearing those words hung from an old tree wrapped in tangled vines. It was written in human script, not Elvish, so it was obviously meant specifically for humans to read, and a lot of the strokes were visibly off.

This had obviously been written by an elf, and Vinny had no idea whether it was deliberate or not, but the one who wrote it seemed only half-literate in human language. Or maybe the writer simply had not cared enough to do it properly.

Judging by how worn it was, the sign had probably been hanging there for a very long time.

Maybe this was the elves’ way of making their attitude clear. They did not care about humans at all. So for humans who overstepped the rules, for humans who trespassed into their territory, they absolutely would not show any mercy either.

There were three branching paths, and Vinny had no idea which one to take, so he pulled out the golden leaf again.

Can this thing point the way too?

The golden leaf lying in Vinny’s palm trembled, then flew into the air, its tip pointing toward the middle path.

“Is that telling me to take the middle one?” Vinny asked hesitantly.

Naturally, the golden leaf could not speak. After pointing the way, the golden light around it disappeared, and it quietly settled back into Vinny’s palm.

Then middle it was.

With the leaf guiding him, that had to be better than blundering around like a headless fly.

Vinny headed onto the middle path.

The farther he went down it, the deeper in it became. Up ahead, part of the path vanished into the undergrowth.

CRACK.

Vinny suddenly felt himself step on something hard. At first, he thought it was a branch, but when he lowered his head, he realized it was not a branch at all.

It was a bone.

A human bone.

“?!” Vinny stared in shock.

These had to be the remains of the humans who had trespassed in here on their own.

But...

Vinny frowned. Were elves really this heavy-handed? They had just left human bones lying around at the front entrance of their own home? Even if it was meant as a warning, this was still way too much, wasn’t it??

With how proud and elegant elves were, how could they possibly allow something like this to be left scattered across their own front yard? Wasn’t that bad luck if nothing else??

Vinny guessed that these human poachers most likely had not been killed by elves at all. They had probably gotten lost in the dense fog, lost their sense of direction, and in the end run out of food until not a single one of them made it back out.

The empty bags lying farther ahead confirmed his guess.

Vinny rummaged through one of them. Only a water flask was left inside. He shook it, and there was still a little water in it, but not a scrap of food remained.

Before they died, these humans seemed to have gone mad. They had starved to the point of insanity, and once hunger reached that stage, everything started to look like food.

Including the companions traveling beside them.

So...

Vinny looked at the intertwined skeletons and could roughly imagine what those people had gone through before they died.

They had most likely starved to death one by one. And because this stretch of the path was hidden by the grass and normally went unnoticed, their bones had never been cleared away.

If that was the case, then the elves had probably not been coming out this way for a very long time.

Since there was no need for contact with humans, they had stopped leaving home altogether and simply remained in the world of the elves, living a self-sufficient life.

Then was it possible that among the elves born in this era, quite a few had never even seen a human before??

Vinny mulled that over as he kept walking.

The forest ahead grew even denser. It was almost all shrubs now, and there was not even a visible path anymore. If he had not had the golden leaf to disperse the fog, there was no way he would have been able to make it through here either.

No wonder Eternity Forest had remained peaceful all this time, untouched by the wars outside. This fog alone was a natural barrier. Anyone who came in would get lost. If luck was bad enough, they would never make it back out.

They would leave their lives here too.

No, it was not even just the fog.

Vinny felt that he was already lost.

This was ridiculous.

He wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked around at the surrounding scenery, which looked exactly the same in every direction, with not a single feature to distinguish one stretch from another.

It reminded him of the primeval forests from his previous life. Those had been the same. Unless he planned to live by chewing grass, he did not think he would be making it out of here alive.

At this point, never mind finding the way into Eternity Forest—even if someone asked Vinny to find his way back out right now, he would not be able to do it.

He did not even know where he had come from anymore.

Or from which direction.

Vinny suspected that even dozens of high-tier fire spells would not be enough to burn this forest clean.

“Looks like the owner of this forest isn’t too happy to see me,” Vinny muttered, arms crossed as he stared ahead with a deep frown.

He had no idea how far he still was from the elves’ settlement, let alone whether he was doubling back and straying farther and farther off course.

Before, he had joked that he looked like some kind of smuggler. He had thought that no matter what, he had entered here properly this time, so the least he could do was say hello to the people of the place.

Now it looked like he would not even get that chance.

He had not seen a single soul.

He had been walking for this long and had not spotted even one elf hair.

Vinny was starting to get hungry. Under normal circumstances, as a transcendent of decent realm, hunger ought to come very slowly as long as his mana reserves were full.

Damn it.

He had no idea how long he had already been walking through this rotten forest.

If the Moon Elves lived in this forest too, then Vinny felt there would be no tribal raiders left to talk about. He absolutely did not believe those savage tribesmen could ever fight their way in here. A few would enter, a few would get lost, and in the end both riders and horses would run out of food and die here to the last.

Those Wood Elves that had been attacked before were probably hunted only after they had left this place.

Covering his face, Vinny kept walking. This place was a green hell. Vines, trees, and thickets blocked off his whole field of view, but he could hardly set it on fire for real, could he?

Earlier, when he had talked about burning the place with fire magic, that had only been a figure of speech.

If he actually did it, that would be a very different matter.

Looking up, Vinny noticed that he could not even see the full sky here. The huge vines and trees covered everything overhead. Even if he turned into Vanessa, he probably would not be able to fly out.

“Sorry, but can I trouble you one more time?” Vinny sighed as he took out the golden leaf again.

This time, however, the golden leaf gave no response at all.

“Your elders said they wanted to invite me over for tea, and this is how you treat a guest?” Vinny raised a brow. “Whether you welcome me or not, I’m still your guest, aren’t I?”

Vinny let out a long sigh and could only keep moving forward. As for which direction was actually correct, he had no idea. There was not even a road here, so all he could do was go by instinct.

“Hm??”

Just as Vinny was about to pass a bend hidden behind a wall of vines, something in his clothes started trembling.

That reaction felt like—

Vinny hesitated for a moment, then took the emerald-green Soul-Heart out from inside his clothes. At that moment, the Soul-Heart burst into bright light and trembled violently in his hand.

“Milian?” Vinny called tentatively. “Are you awake? Is there something you want to tell me?”

There was no way to know whether the Soul-Heart had actually heard him, but after Vinny spoke, it shook even harder.

“? So that means yes?” The Soul-Heart could not speak, so Vinny could only judge by its reactions. “Milian, how are you right now? Why can you still respond to me? Are you okay?”

The Soul-Heart kept trembling.

Vinny could not understand what was going on—

Until he nearly stepped into empty air.

“Ah?!”

A few small stones tumbled off the edge of the cliff below. Grabbing at the vines near the edge, Vinny dragged himself back up in shock, his heart pounding wildly.

“What the hell?!” Vinny stared down into the thick fog below. There was no bottom in sight, and no telling how deep it went.

So behind that bend... there had been a cliff??

Vinny looked at the emerald Soul-Heart lying nearby, still trembling, and finally understood.

Milian had known the direction he was heading led straight to a cliff. She had sensed it and hurriedly warned him that there was danger ahead.

“Milian, thank you.” Vinny picked up the Soul-Heart and thanked it. “You saved me again.”

The Soul-Heart flickered a few times, though he had no idea what that was supposed to mean.

Don’t tell me she’s saying something like, ‘Without this princess, you really can’t do anything right,’ huh?

Vinny thought that was extremely possible.

“There isn’t even a map of this place. I’m just crashing into walls like a headless fly,” Vinny muttered. “Even the cliffs are hidden under all this vegetation. By the time you realize you’ve stepped off one, it’s already too late.”

The Soul-Heart fell quiet, but then it flickered again after a moment.

“Milian?” Vinny felt the Soul-Heart tremble and stared in surprise. “Are you saying... you want to guide me?”

The Soul-Heart trembled twice, giving him the strange impression of someone nodding twice.

Then, in the middle of his palm, the Soul-Heart rolled forward.

“So you want me to go this way?” Vinny followed the direction Milian’s Soul-Heart indicated.

With Milian’s Soul-Heart leading the way, Vinny finally managed to get out of that green hell.

He felt like he had been circling the same place over and over, with no idea whether he had been moving forward or backward the whole time.

In a place with an ecosystem this untouched, it was only natural that there would be all kinds of bizarre lifeforms that did not exist outside. Vinny had already seen quite a few. He had even spotted a python several yards long.

Thankfully, none of those things had noticed him. Otherwise, Vinny would have been forced to hurt some of the local residents here.

If possible, he would rather not do that.

After leaving that green hell behind, another bridge appeared ahead.

This time, though, it was a stone bridge.

Looks like I’m there.

Vinny glanced back. He had no idea how long he had walked or how far he had gone. All he knew was that by now, the sun had already set.

Beyond the stone bridge stood a statue—a beautiful elven woman wearing a long elven robe and a flower wreath. She stood on one foot, one hand lifted toward the sky, her eyes closed, as if singing the praises of something.

That should be the god the elves worshiped.

The Mother of Earth.

Also called the Mother of All Forests—the god who governed all nature and all life.

The Soul-Heart stopped trembling.

That meant he had reached his destination.

Vinny stepped onto the stone bridge. Looking at the sky, he still felt like not that much time had passed, but it was already dusk now. Daylight had nearly vanished.

Once he crossed the bridge, the scenery before him suddenly opened wide, and Vinny felt as though he had stepped into some hidden paradise, some fairyland sealed away from the world.

And when he fully passed over the stone bridge, he discovered that behind him, dense fog had already rolled in again, completely sealing off the road he had come by.

How strange.

Vinny had just started to step forward—

When the hairs on his body stood on end.

The instincts and experience he had beaten out for himself between life and death told him immediately that trouble was coming.

He stepped back.

An arrow buried itself in the ground right by his foot.

It looked like the arrow had only been meant as a warning and a threat. It had not been aimed to hit him.

“Human, tell me—how did you come to be here??”

A cold female voice rang out, though its owner was nowhere to be seen. Then an elf woman in ranger attire, longbow in hand, dropped to one knee before him.