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Hearing the footsteps of several people behind her made her feel strange. Her expression turned awkward.
“Why? As expected, are you uncomfortable? Shall I give you a piggyback?”
When Cahill asked eagerly as he had been looking at her face as she walked, Holly shook her head and turned away from his relentless gaze.
‘When I first left home, I felt lonely and scared…’
She was sad and lonely because of her parents, who abandoned her and left debt behind. She was afraid of the Torimas gang that followed with blazing eyes. However, she blunted those feelings as she was swept away while traveling with Cahill.
In addition, it was reassuring enough that she did not have to blink an eye at tolerable threats.
‘…I’m glad I met Cahill.’
A small smile crept across Holly’s lips. Seeing her smile, Cahill was puzzled but also smiled.
Finally, the four of them reached the end of the green village. It was dark, like a deep tunnel with tall trees densely packed. Holly swallowed nervously. In other words, Lauriue, which strictly forbids human invasion, was also called the ‘Forbidden Sanctuary.’
“Can we really go in?”
Lauriue, which meant the mountain range where the elves, the tribe of the forest, lived together. They said that their land was different.
The story of a person who stumbled on the wrong foot and never returned or returned with only bones and skin remaining, like their whole body had dried up of blood. That was why people called the road leading there the ‘Forest of Death.’
‘…I don’t know if it’s a rumor created and spread by the elves to block access.’
She hadn’t heard of a ‘human’ who had actually been to Lauriue. Even Lyla, the elf who had a crush on Holly, didn’t tell details of the elves’ hometown.
“As long as there is a token of promise.”
Seeing her and speaking, Cahill held out a hand to Adam right away. Heaving a deep sigh, Adam rummaged through his pockets.
“What would you have done without me?”
He was arrogant and criticized Cahill for abandoning him, but he did not lift an eyelash.
“I’m not going.”
Anyway, the coming-of-age trip was not in Cahill’s mind from the beginning. In the first place, Adam kept the token to keep him from separating from him, but Cahill abandoned the men along with the token.
“Would you like to see it?”
As Cahill snatched the box containing the token from his hand, he held it up for Holly, who couldn’t even look closely lest it was disrespectful.
“No, that precious thing…!”
Even though he was frightened, Adam was not able to attack Holly because he was paying attention to Cahill. Her eyes narrowed. While she didn’t think much of it, her curiosity grew quickly when she saw Adam fret over it.
The box containing the token looked plain without any patterns. Holly grabbed the bottom of the box without hesitation and opened the lid.
As she checked the contents, doubt spread in her eyes.
“With this, even a human can enter and leave Lauriue?”
She pressed the token carefully with her fingertips. The token was a leaf that looked like it would crumble if touched incorrectly. Cahill’s outspoken behavior made Adam concerned.
“What does this prove?”
It seemed that even if she picked up just one long-dried leaf, it would be indistinguishable from this one. Cahill shrugged his shoulders as if it didn’t matter.
“It is the leaf of a tree that only grows there. The tribe of the forest cannot step on even a withered leaf and cherish it.”
‘The World tree…!’
Horrified to learn the identity of the common-looking leaf, Holly quickly returned it to Adam. Adam, who got the token back because of his foolishness, quickly closed the lid of the box and put it back in his pocket.
“How did you get that precious thing?”
‘…Maybe he was a distant relative of elves or something like that.’
She glanced at Cahill with her eyes weighing his relationship with the elves. His foreign appearance was enough to be said as beautiful.
‘I heard that all elves are quite beautiful…’
His strikingly beautiful appearance exuded a mysterious aura. Although not as much, Badin and Adam possessed a rare beauty as well.
“The Kingdom of Aisen and the tribes of the forest have a long-standing agreement.”
“Agreement?”
Cahill opened his mouth, glad Holly’s eyes were focused on him.
“They give us the herbs we need, and in return, we lend them the ability to defend them against human invasion.”
“How?”
“Containing the snow storm in a storage stone.”
“What is a storage stone? Is it different from the magic stone…?”
She blinked at the unfamiliar word.
The word ‘storage stone’ had been spoken by Cahill when he was bragging about Holly to Adam. At the time, she hadn’t even thought to ask, suppressing her shame.
“You don’t even know what a storage stone is… ack!”
When Adam shook his head with an expression that he didn’t even want to deal with him, he immediately covered himself and curled up.
“You can think of a storage stone as a vessel that can hold power or magic.”
Cahill smiled prettily at Holly, covering Adam with his body from her vision. He acted so naturally that it was hard to imagine that he had just kicked someone.
“What’s the difference between a magic stone and a storage stone?”
“Magic stones contain magic from the beginning, and storage stones contain the ability you want to put in an empty stone.”
Cahill frowned and stammered, perhaps finding it unfamiliar to explain. Holly was stunned when she learned the function of the storage stone.
‘It contains the same power that Cahill uses?’
Her mind recalled the white wind that had torn people to pieces.
‘With that much strength, no one can come out alive.’
Holly thought that the real danger might not be this ‘forest of death’, but the snowstorm in the storage stone.
“Even if you have a token, you have to be careful in the spirit’s forest. It’s the realm of the spirits, so even the elven elder can’t help it.”
“Spirit?”
As her eyes widened, Adam’s lips pouted.
“Do we have to take this ignorant woman around?”
Adam seemed to know how to ask because she didn’t know what a spirit was, just like she didn’t know about the storage stone. Holly snorted. There were very few visitors coming to Cenuoria from the closed Lauriue, but she had met one of them, Layla’s spirit.
“If it’s a land of spirits, there must be plenty of spirits, right?”
“Maybe? Still, we might not even see it.”
“Why?”
“It’s because spirits don’t show up easily, and even if they do, there are very few humans who can see them.”
Holly narrowed her eyes. A spirit the size of a finger was always hovering around Layla while she was eating in the dining room. Come to think of it, the fairy looked at her, whose eyes twinkled exactly where the spirit was, curiously.
“I’ve seen spirits before…”
Even Bardin, who had been quiet, pretending not to be part of the group, suddenly gazed at her with interest.
‘Look at this. There’s nothing Holly can’t do, right?’
When Cahill lifted his chin as he looked at the men with just that look, she didn’t know why he was so smug.
Her cheeks heated up in embarrassment.
‘I can only see…’
As he tucked her flowing hair behind her ears, the heat that warmed her cheeks from the cold touch slowly cooled.
“Hmmm. Still, you can. I’ve also been to the land of the spirits.”
It was a place that she only saw and heard in fairy tales as a child.
‘If I tell him, who will believe me?’
A new smirk escaped Holly’s lips. Cahill, who was staring at her face, took her hand.
“Let’s go to the desert together.”
She then glanced at her hand and looked up at Cahill’s face.
“Desert?”
It was a trip around the whole continent anyway, so he would have to go to the desert.
‘Still, why the desert now? Isn’t the desert the last destination…?’
Holly blinked her eyes with a puzzled face.
“If you go to the desert, you might find what you want.”
Her eyes widened as she looked at Cahill. He wasn’t talking about her parents, who had run away after leaving huge debts.
“The place where you were born, let’s find it together. If we do it together, we’ll find it faster.”