Chapter 295 — Kin?

Su Jilin had inadvertently stumbled onto a sore memory, and his vexation grew so acute that his teeth practically began to ache. Yet to those around him, that vexation read as "the elf huntress deep in distress, her brows knit tight." Her cascade of golden hair caught the lamplight and reflected it like a dream, casting a hazy shadow across the "huntress's" face—so flawless it looked like a scene from a famous painting. The adventurer who had just been shooed aside, along with a few mercenaries, immediately itched to come close again and make conversation. But just as they were about to move, a slender figure settled beside Su Jilin ahead of them.

"Well now, sister, looks like you've run into trouble?"

At the clear, pleasant voice, Su Jilin felt a small jolt of alarm: before that voice sounded, he had not noticed anyone approaching him at all!

Another Amber?

With a trace of wariness, he looked toward the source of the voice, and found sitting beside him a female silver elf—a kinswoman he did not know, though she too looked like someone who had wandered the human world for many years.

She had pale golden hair much like his own (damn it, hers must be real), but her figure was somewhat more delicate. She wore a thick, warm druid's short robe, an amulet of oak and jade beads strung about her neck, and at her waist a short sword for protection and a hardwood staff. The short sword was of human style, so Su Jilin judged that this female elf had also spent a long time wandering human society.

Elves newly out on their wanderings were mostly unaccustomed to the crude weaponry of humans, but after a few years they would... simply because they could find nowhere to repair their own elven gear, they began to adapt to human weapons.

While Su Jilin was sizing up this unfamiliar elf, she had already greeted him with familiar ease: "How lovely to see kin here. My name is Belna Lightwind, of the Lightwind family of Whitestone City. And you?"

"Sol. Family tradition—my surname isn't to be mentioned during my trial years," Su Jilin said offhandedly, giving his false identity while swiftly guessing at this elf's origins and purpose. After all, elves able to adapt to the cold northern climate were few, and none of the elves he knew in these parts included the girl before him. "Is there something I can help you with?"

"Huh? Not you helping me—I think I can help you," the lively-looking elf girl said, breaking into a delighted laugh at Su Jilin's words. "I heard just now. You seem to be heading for the monitoring station, but you're fretting over how to get through the checkpoint, right?"

"That's so," Su Jilin nodded. "I went elsewhere on business before, and by the time I came back the checkpoint was under lockdown, so I hadn't had time to get the certification papers... If I go looking for a guarantor now, it'll probably take a long while."

"Isn't it so. The Typhon folk are very nervous now—as if what attacked their fortress were humans and elves rather than monsters," the elf who called herself Belna said with a frown, but she soon smiled again. "But it's no matter. I have a pass here, and I can bring one other person along. Shall we go together?"

"You have a pass? And can bring an extra person?" Su Jilin's brows drew slightly together. "How did you get it?"

"I came over from the Typhon side on business. The lockdown happened to be starting just as I arrived, so I got my pass taken care of along the way. Getting a pass from that side of the border is much easier than from this side," Belna explained. "As for why I can bring an extra person... I originally had a friend with me, and my pass was for two. But she ran into some sudden business and went to Ansell; she certainly won't be back before the pass expires. I'd already resigned myself to going back alone—and then I found kin fretting over a pass. Well? Shall we go together?"