Chapter 92: The Dryads' Hypothesis
Hit by the Dragon Shout at point-blank range, the Elf's entire body blurred for a moment, then dispersed into countless motes of dust. She only managed to leave behind one sentence:
"Why were you not crushed?!"
Arthur didn't answer the Elf's question, simply smiling as he offered a final solace: "Rest in peace."
He had sensed something was wrong with this place ever since the Unrelenting Force lifted the pool water: the grand scale, the empty content, and the illogical physical and magical rules. All signs pointed to this being a mental domain, and a rather crudely constructed one at that.
According to Triss's book on illusions, such a primitive method of constructing a mental domain would have to be traced back at least to the earliest days of magic. Otherwise, even if he were several times stronger than he was now, he would never have foolishly jumped into the pool.
In a mental domain, unless one side's level of psychic control is obviously superior by an entire tier, it is generally more effective to use the materialized form of psychic power for attacks.
That Elf Wraith, having taken a hit from the Unrelenting Force, knew she couldn't match his strength, yet she still pinned her hopes on that ancient technique of crushing Arthur's will with the residual memories in the skulls... He didn't know if she was ridiculously stupid or simply had no other recourse.
Digesting a large number of memories in a short time can indeed cause extreme pressure, but who stipulated that something handed to you must be processed immediately? Wouldn't it be better to simply create a virtual storage warehouse with psychic power and process it slowly later?
Arthur merely pretended to be overwhelmed, and the Elf Wraith took the bait.
Again, the Elf Wraith was not only far inferior in psychic strength, but her method of application was also completely crushed by this cunning little bastard, who possessed countless more years of accumulated experience.
There's no getting around it—people always have to move with the times, and Wraiths are no exception.
As the Elf Wraith dissipated in frustrated reluctance, this mental space underwent a drastic change. The pool with the exposed floor, the broad, empty cave, and the Giant Oak, hard as jade, all burst into blood-red flames. In the blink of an eye, they turned to ashes, vanishing completely in a matter of seconds.
A massive light storm surged up from beneath the Giant Oak, which Arthur then absorbed into his body. His stamina rapidly recovered, and the severe stinging sensation in his forehead also dissipated—that was the after-effect of using the Dragon Shout twice in quick succession.
Unexpectedly, although the Elf Wraith was a bit foolish, her Soul Energy intensity was quite high, giving him more than any other monster he had hunted before.
Speaking of which, this surge of Soul Energy wasn't Arthur's only gain—after being ground down by those memory floods, his total psychic strength and quality seemed to have significantly increased. Even using the Unrelenting Force twice didn't deplete it.
The Elf Wraith was truly... too generous.
Arthur lifted his head, letting the moonlight and splashing water droplets fall onto his face. The memories that had been obscured by that mysterious force rapidly returned. The ever-present psychic will he had felt earlier had now silently dissipated.
There was no cave floor beneath his feet, but a naturally polished burl on the Giant Oak. Standing on the burl and looking forward, the streams on the ground appeared to converge, but in reality, they remained seven distinct currents, crisscrossing before tumbling into the bottomless underground river.
Drip, drop...
As the seven streams rushed, every once in a while, exactly one splash of water from each stream would collide and fuse in mid-air, falling into the silver goblet placed before Arthur—it was now perfectly full.
It seemed like a coincidence, yet it felt carefully designed.
"So, this is the real Water of Brokilon…"
Arthur leaned closer and saw a line of recessed text engraved on the side of the cup:
[DuettaeanaefcirranCaermeGleddyv.Ynesseth]
"What is all that written language?"
As soon as this doubt arose in Arthur's mind, the familiar script reappeared before him, conveniently overlaying the recessed text:
[The Sword of Destiny has two edges. You are one of them.]
"Interesting…" Arthur rubbed his chin. Could his presence in the Heart of Brokilon today truly be an arrangement of destiny? Was he fated to be entangled with the dryads?
He closed his eyes and sank into his mental world, dedicating his full effort to processing the sealed residual soul memories.
Ten thousand residual soul memories sounded like a large number, but facing Arthur's ever-increasing psychic strength, they were processed in just a few minutes.
The memories contained within the canine and lizard skulls were mostly completely chaotic and contained no intelligible information.
However, the memories within the human skulls provided Arthur with quite a bit of information.
These humans had no connection to the modern kingdoms scattered across the Northern Continent. Instead, they had migrated here from different worlds during an event known as the Conjunction of the Spheres.
Based on their former worlds, the Elves divided them into two types: the 'Dauk' people, who lived in the broader Northern Continent—from Redania and Kaedwen south to Cintra; and the 'Vozgor' people, who were relegated to the more barbaric and climatically harsh areas around the Dragon Mountains, which is today the collection of far-northern kingdoms led by Kovir.
In the distant ancient past, the two human groups were aware of each other's existence and occasionally interacted.
Until one day, they were gathered in Brokilon by an Elf and had their lives taken by wicked green light magic.
Lilit (Lìlìt), was the name these residual souls used to refer to that Elf.
"Lilit…" That name sounded familiar.
Ah, yes. One time, Dandelion, while drunk, wasn't showing off his usual tedious rhymes and poetry, but his erudition instead. One of the legends he mentioned was that of 'Lilit.'
It was said that Lilit was a powerful and tyrannical sorceress. When the sun was devoured by darkness, she would rise from the eternal abyss to bring destruction to all of humanity.
"That makes sense then…" A look of realization surfaced in Arthur's eyes. That Elf Wraith probably had another name; it was only in their despair that the owners of these residual souls associated her with the world-destroying sorceress, leading them to call her Lilit.
Hiss. Suddenly, it doesn't feel so unfair that the Elves are being chased all over the world...
As for the dryads, Arthur became even more convinced that they were originally bred by the Elves to be 'Super Archers':
First, the demand: Elves were individually superior to humans in all aspects, but due to their low reproductive rate, even minor casualties in wars with outsiders left them gravely weakened. They naturally had a massive need for cannon fodder.
Second, the dryads and Elves were nominal allies, yet the dryads seemed to have a strange closeness to, even subservience towards, the Elves. So much so that Red-Kite's slight reservations about the Elves' behavior were considered treason.
Finally, even human sorcerers could create elite units like Witchers. It wasn't impossible for the Elves, whose magical attainment was still far beyond that of humans (a consensus in the magic community), to conjure up dryads.
Piece by piece, these scattered fragments of information clearly pointed in one direction: the dryads were the Super Archers created by the Elves. For some unknown reason, however, the Elves lost control over the dryads, and the relationship between the two gradually began to equalize.
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