Chapter 250 — Solethilin of the Golden Hair

At this distance a human could see nothing at all, yet from the hazy forest and the mist drifting above it he could pick out almost every thread of cooking smoke and every startled bird flushed into flight; from these he could make a rough judgment of how many human settlements lay within his field of view, and roughly how large each one was.

After a spell of observation, the high elf ranger leaped down from the boulder and gave his order, brief and to the point: "It's safe here. Rest for thirty minutes."

The Typhon soldiers at once found cover where they stood and made the most of the time to ease their backs and legs, drink, and eat. Elite they might be, but even the most elite unit can't be made up entirely of extraordinary-class fighters like Solethilin; the Typhon Empire's mightiest legions were still ninety percent ordinary men, and for this band of barely a dozen to include one high elf ranger, three low-ranking knights, and a mage was already a startling proportion of extraordinary fighters—yet even low-ranking extraordinary fighters still needed rest under such conditions.

As the soldiers recovered their strength, they discussed in low voices all they had seen and heard since entering the Dark Mountains. This death zone that rumor painted as utterly devoid of life was not, in their eyes, as terrifying as the legends made it out to be. They had indeed run into some monsters warped and deformed by magical influence since entering the mountains, but no despair-inducing foe had appeared; rather, it was the steep terrain and certain poisonous plants that proved more dangerous.

Everyone knew they were skirting the edge of the Gondo Wastes, but so long as they kept away from the southern foot of the range and did not face the Black Forest directly, the pressure of the Wastes gave them no great cause for alarm.

A knight-class warrior took out his mapmaking tools and marked the key forks and the direction of the mountain paths on that rough hand-drawn map, while a comrade beside him produced a small metal cylinder pierced with tiny holes. He opened it and released from within a pitch-black "flying insect." With a faint chirr, the black insect shot up into the sky like lightning and swiftly vanished from the soldiers' sight.

This thing that looked like a flying insect was in fact the product of mages' frenzied experiments. A trace of thin monster blood gave it extraordinary flight speed, and it could be trained by hand. In scattered operations by small squads like this, a trained messenger insect made it convenient to confirm each squad's situation and position—a highly useful thing.

Solethilin glanced up at the direction in which the insect had vanished, then drew his gaze back and leaned against the rock, resting with his eyes closed. His overly androgynous face was shadowed by his long golden hair, so that someone who didn't know better might at first glance take him for a dashing female warrior. Yet not one of the Typhon soldiers resting nearby would dream of underestimating this slender-looking elf ranger, for this ranger's great name was known far and wide.

"Solethilin of the Golden Hair"—so he was called throughout Typhon's mercenary circles, and the name was plainly tied to his golden hair. Yet only those who knew something of the silver elves would understand the name's true meaning, and the formidable power it stood for.

The silver elves were an ancient race dwelling in the south of the continent. These children of the forest, whose blood ran closest to the ancient "primordial elves," differed from humans in many ways. Beyond their special cranial nerve structure and the elven sorcery that went with it, another trait of the silver elves was that their hair color changed as their power rose. A silver elf in a non-combat state had golden hair, but as they roused the power hidden within, the potent magic would let elemental force seep into their hair; once a silver elf brought forth seventy percent of their power, their hair would turn wholly silver-white and their fighting strength would climb straight upward—until they ceased their surge of power.

From this came the name "silver elf."

Yet no one had ever seen "Solethilin of the Golden Hair" after he raised his power past seventy percent. He always faced his enemies with the calmest, coolest bearing; even before the greatest of challenges, his golden hair had never once changed.

And from this he had earned that most singular title.

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