"Golden Tree?"
Frieren sat wrapped in a blanket, still half-asleep.
Beside her, Fern was helping tie her hair with practiced familiarity.
The corner of Shane's eye twitched as he tried his best to ignore the obviously reversed caretaker dynamic.
"Yeah. According to Kraft, it's a legend passed down among elves. Your oral history, basically. I wanted to know more about it."
Frieren sounded unconcerned, mumbling lazily, "It's just a bedti story grandmothers use to lull children to sleep. Nothing worth talking about."
"Whether it's really just a bedti story is hard to say..." Kraft refuted quietly from the side.
"A history that leaves behind no traces... even if it truly was history, what difference would it make?"
As soon as Frieren said that, the light in Kraft's eyes dimd slightly.
It was true.
The history of elves had long since faded into ti.
"Even so, I still believe it was real history. Or rather... I want to believe it was."
"Elves are the longest-lived race, yet none of our history remains in this world. Don't you think that's sad?"
As he spoke, Kraft looked toward the crackling fire in the hearth and softly began to sing.
"[Beautiful Golden Tree, you are our warm and gentle nest. Songs and dances brought us joy, books and magic made our eyes shine bright. My beloved holand of tenderness, above the Golden Tree, dragons once ca to rest, and birds sang freely in its branches. O great Golden Tree, together we bathed beneath the holy warmth of its light, until endless pale whiteness buried us all...]"
The sorrowful lody echoed through the cabin.
For a mont, nobody spoke.
Even Frieren no longer looked indifferent. She stared at Kraft, lost in thought.
To those born later, distant history always beca little more than bedti stories. But without history, how were future generations supposed to understand who they were in the present...?
When the song ended, a trace of sadness lingered in Kraft's expression.
"Ti buries many things, whether people or objects. Those who once truly existed in history eventually beco nothing more than 'fairy tale-like' figures in the eyes of later generations."
As he spoke, he looked toward Shane.
"When we first t and you called by na, I was genuinely happy."
"In this world, there's probably nobody left who rembers who I am. Before long, I too will beco one of those 'bedti stories' Frieren talked about. Hahaha... though honestly, I might not even get the chance to beco a bedti story."
"So at that mont, I even thought that dying together with you might count as a 'perfect ending.'"
Shane, who had just been imrsed in the lancholy atmosphere, instantly went speechless.
"Can you not say terrifying things like that? I'm not interested in dying yet."
"And besides, for a long-lived guy like you to spend every day dreaming about heroic deaths on the battlefield really isn't healthy."
Faced with Shane's complaint, Kraft simply grinned.
anwhile, Stark silently nodded from the side.
"I can actually understand what Kraft ans. I felt the sa kind of emotion from Master before. Maybe for aging warriors, that really does count as a 'beautiful ending.'"
Aging warrior?
Kraft nearly choked and started coughing.
"Mr. Stark, please don't encourage Mr. Eisen's way of thinking!" Fern frowned.
Raised by a priest, she cherished life deeply and couldn't agree with such pessimistic ideas.
"Lady Frieren, in the song, the kingdom was eventually buried by 'pale whiteness.' Does that 'pale whiteness' refer to snow?"
"..."
Frieren rubbed her chin thoughtfully.
"In the elven language, symbolic descriptions like that are pretty common. For example, 'light' can refer to the sun. So if 'pale whiteness' refers to snow, that interpretation does make sense."
Stark's eyes imdiately lit up.
"Then doesn't that an the final elven kingdom might be buried beneath snow? We're already in snowy mountains right now. Could there be elven ruins around here?"
To be fair, Stark's guess instantly caught everyone's attention.
Fern glanced at him and responded firmly.
"Idiot."
The others shook their heads and dispersed, each returning to their own business.
Only Stark remained standing there, completely baffled.
"Hey..."
As Shane walked past him, he patted Stark on the shoulder and kindly explained.
"If it were just an ordinary snowy mountain, there are countless places like that across the Northern Plateau. Obviously, it can't be that simple. A blizzard powerful enough to bury an entire kingdom would need to be at least millions of tis stronger than what we're seeing now."
"Hmm... probably sothing on the level of the thousand-year frozen snows near the Demon King's Castle at the northernmost edge of the continent."
"Besides, the elven kingdom probably existed over ten thousand years ago. There's no way we'd just conveniently stumble into it."
After that, the blizzards in the mountains continued on and off.
Trapped inside the cabin, there wasn't much the group could do.
Whenever Fern and Frieren were awake, they would read grimoires together. Over the course of several days, the two practiced a rather bizarre spell: a magic that could make fallen hair grow back.
It was a spell Frieren had found in Count Granat's library.
Back then, the Countess had been rather reluctant to part with it.
Fern absolutely loved the spell. She always thought Frieren's hair was far too thin, and every ti she brushed it and saw strands falling out, her heart ached. Now there was finally a way to solve the problem.
The first ti Shane saw the spell successfully work, his eyes lit up.
He focused intensely, trying to identify related magic attributes from the grimoire, but even after staring so hard his eyes nearly crossed, he still failed.
The failure left him extrely frustrated.
anwhile, Stark ended up living the most fulfilling life among them all.
Since he had been the only "weak person" to suffer hypothermia during the blizzard, Kraft designed a strict rehabilitation plan for him. From morning till night, Stark was dragged through endless training: push-ups, squats, sit-ups... just watching it made Shane's legs go weak.
Whenever Stark collapsed from exhaustion and wanted to give up, Kraft would conveniently remove his shirt, revealing his perfectly sculpted muscles.
The sight made Stark's eyes shine with excitent. For a warrior, a body tempered through countless hardships was irresistibly attractive.
Of course, this particular motivational thod earned plenty of clicking tongues from Fern and Frieren nearby...
Occasionally, when the weather cleared, the group would leave the cabin and wander around the nearby forest.
After snowfall, small animal tracks could sotis be found in the woods. They would follow the footprints, trying to guess what creatures had left them behind. Whoever guessed correctly would earn a complint of "Amazing."
A rather pointless little pasti, but enjoyable nonetheless.
Before they realized it, more than two months had passed.
And nearly half of their supplies had already been consud.
"We need to go out and find more food. At this rate, we probably won't last until spring next year."
Hearing Shane's words, Stark unfolded the map Kraft had given him and pointed toward a location in the mountains.
"There's a barrier lake here. How about we go fishing?"
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