I Became a 10,000-year-old Elf

“Yes, your identity has been confirmed, Miss Lina.”

Registering as an adventurer wasn’t particularly difficult. To allow anyone to start regardless of their past, they only asked for basic information like name, hometown, and weapon of choice.

And after that, Lina became an adventurer under her own name. While anyone can become one, officially gaining this status also comes with corresponding responsibilities.

Once registered, the status remains, so unless you change your identity, there’s a clear possibility of punishment if you cause trouble.

“What if someone recognizes me?”

“I hear there are many adventurers who have two jobs… or rather, concurrent positions. You can just explain it that way. Besides, you’re said to be from another region, right?”

Lina still seemed uneasy, but in my view, it was an excessive worry. She was brought from another city in place of Ethan’s unpaid debt, so she hardly knew anyone in this city anyway.

“Now let’s go. To hunt.”

All preparations were complete. We passed by the other adventurers crowding around and left the city, heading towards the hunting grounds to catch magical beasts.

‘It’s become much more dangerous.’

Even in my time, there were areas with few people once you left the urban center. Now, without cars or electric lights, it was even more pronounced.

The unique civilization called mado-civilization was comparable to modern Earth in some aspects, but the disparity was extreme.

This area was officially owned by the city on paper, but in reality, almost everything outside the city was pure wilderness.

People gathered to live in cities and villages, creating farmland around them, and the uncultivated land became the domain of magical beasts.

These magical beasts, said to retain the ferocity inherited from their ancestors, were clearly incomparable to mere bandits.

“If there were no magical beasts in that era, it must have been the epitome of peace. Amazing…”

Lina marveled when I told her this story.

She said it must have been incomparably peaceful compared to now, where one needs to be thoroughly prepared to travel long distances on the road.

“It was like that for a time.”

I couldn’t deny it. The world I knew wasn’t completely peaceful either, but at least there was no worry about being attacked by monsters while traveling.

Such worries only arose after the appearance of the Tower. People now experienced from birth what we only started to face after the Tower’s emergence.

“By the way, I’m not sure if we’ll be able to find magical beasts right away. I’ve heard that adventurers spend most of their time looking for prey.”

Lina muttered as we walked along the road outside the city, looking around at the surrounding forest.

It was quiet with no other people in sight, probably because it was one of the side paths leading to a nearby village, slightly off the main road. After all, magical beasts weren’t so abundant that you’d trip over them.

“Don’t worry.”

I chuckled at her concern. An earth spirit popped out from the ground I was looking at and pointed somewhere with its short arm.

It had found and indicated the position of enemies in contact with the ground. With this all-purpose navigation, we could pinpoint and catch our targets in this vast area.

“This way.”

I took Lina’s hand and entered a rougher, narrower forest path than the side road.

However, unlike Lina who quickly became short of breath, I didn’t feel particularly tired. Rather, the deeper we went into the forest, the clearer my mind became and the more energized I felt.

‘It’s thanks to absorbing nature’s power.’

The abundant nature around was giving me strength.

For someone like me who was born and raised in the city all my life, the bustling city wasn’t bad, but the environment my newly reborn body craved was actually a place like this.

It wouldn’t be bad to come out for forest bathing like a picnic occasionally. It was clear that communing with spirits would be much more efficient here as well.

“Is that a magical beast?”

As a result, we were able to encounter an enemy quite soon. A clearly grotesque-looking monster emerged from a burrow and growled at us.

The creature with a pale, skinny body devoid of hair, unusually long arms, and baring sharp teeth was one of the common magical beasts they called Rakes.

“Eek! It’s coming!”

As the creature from the shadows approached with gleaming eyes, Lina cowered in fear. She looked like she might cry at any moment, but this was all I had expected from her anyway.

“Kill it.”

I commanded the earth the moment the creature lunged at us. Simultaneously, the ground we were standing on rumbled, and something burst out explosively from all directions, pouncing on the creature’s body.

“—!?”

The creature was pierced through its chest, belly, and back by sharp stone spears that jutted out from all directions, without even time to scream. The difficulty itself was only slightly harder than the tutorial slime. A very appropriate level of difficulty.

I smiled at the clearly faster increase in spirit communion compared to when standing still. It seems this method was correct after all.

“Let’s collect the spoils. They say we need to bring something back to get credit for our work.”

As the Rake’s life ended, the stone spears returned to the ground, and the upturned earth became pristine again. Only the horribly torn corpse lay on the ground, bleeding.

“I had only heard that elves were… masters of archery…”

“It seems that’s how the elves of this era are.”

Lina’s face, blankly staring at me, showed that she hadn’t expected me to be this strong. Feeling a bit proud, I watched as Lina collected the spoils from the creature’s corpse.

Since I could detect where enemies were in a fairly wide range, we continued to find magical beasts and kill them at a rapid pace.

‘They said there were only small fry, and it seems to be true.’

Near large cities including Suan, all magical beasts except for the numerous weak ones had been prioritized for elimination. This area was just the right difficulty for beginners like us.

“–, —.”

“Huh?”

It was when we were about to wrap up today’s training to head back that the earth spirit alerted me to the approach of a being other than a magical beast.

I turned my head in the direction the earth spirit pointed. Naturally, my ears under the hood twitched along.

Someone was approaching us, suppressing their presence.

* * *

“Don’t move! We’re the city guard!”

“We’re here to find an illegally restored artifact! Open the door!”

“Waaagh!?”

A group of guards suddenly descended on the mansion. Shouting to open the door while simultaneously breaking it down, they quickly arrested everyone inside the mansion and pinned them to the floor.

Acting on Mayor Wilren’s orders, they had tracked an artifact sold on the black market and raided its owner.

“W-what is the meaning of this! Y-you already took back the artifact, didn’t you!”

“…What?”

However, when the mansion’s owner and head of the merchant group, pinned face-down on the floor, pleaded, Knight Rakum, who led the guards, was greatly surprised.

“A day ago, someone claiming to be a knight sent by the mayor showed their identity badge and took back the artifact! They said if we didn’t hand it over willingly, they’d drag us to headquarters for interrogation, so we gave it to them right away! If I had known that artifact was so valuable, I wouldn’t have bought it in the first place!”

“That’s impossible. We… Damn it!”

Rakum frowned at the merchant’s words, who seemed genuinely upset and confused.

The thought that they were one step too late crossed his mind.

“I don’t understand. Who on earth knew about this in advance and took the artifact?!”

“We can’t know. It seems there was someone who recognized the artifact’s value after all. For now, take this man away. We need to interrogate him thoroughly to find out what happened in the black market.”

Sighing at his junior’s bewildered words, Rakum had the merchant taken away.

The talked-about artifact that had appeared in the black market had thus vanished without a trace.

“…”

And there was someone secretly observing the city guards who had arrived too late. Standing at the window of the adjacent building, he quietly turned away as he watched the sobbing merchant being dragged to the knights’ headquarters.

“What’s the possibility of the guards picking up the trail?”

“It’s not impossible, but unlikely.”

“Good, the item has safely left the city.”

He reported what he had seen and heard. His superior nodded with satisfaction.

“Then, is this mission complete?”

“No. There’s still one more thing. The Master wants to know who exactly restored that artifact.”

However, the superior then assigned a new mission.

“It’s an item that would take over 20 years for a nation-level power to restore. Does it make sense for such an item to appear in the black market without any warning?”

“Then who could possibly…”

“Finding that out is your mission. Investigate every sliver of possibility within our capabilities. We will spare no support.”

Under the hood, vertically split pupils glinted.

Seeing this, he silently bowed his head. Once an order is given, there’s no choice.