Extra's Survival: Raising SSS-Rank Characters Is My Only Option

”Something was calling them there.”

Corr’s voice had become quieter, almost as if he were afraid that speaking too loudly might somehow draw the thing he had seen closer.

”It was not simply that they were moving in the same direction. They were being drawn there. Every creature we encountered was moving toward the basin, and the farther we followed them, the more certain we became that whatever was waiting there was the reason they had abandoned everything else.”

His hands rested on the blanket.

Then they began to tremble.

Corr looked down at them for a moment, as though he had only just noticed what they were doing.

”And it seemed as if they were bewitched by its existence.”

Nobody interrupted him.

The Far Watch Captain swallowed, and when he continued, his voice had become rougher.

”We watched them for two days. Thousands of creatures gathered together. Predators standing beside their prey, herds without leaders, creatures that should have been hunting or feeding simply standing still and staring in the same direction.”

His fingers slowly curled into the blanket.

”Then we confirmed something else.”

He stopped.

For the first time since beginning his report, Corr looked genuinely afraid to continue.

Kass noticed it immediately.

”Ansel.”

Corr looked toward him.

”Say it.”

Corr nodded once.

”We also confirmed the existence of the Slumbering Elder.”

The room changed.

It was almost imperceptible at first. Several members of the Council straightened in their seats, someone drew a slow breath, and Serapha Lund’s face lost what little colour it had possessed. Neriah Fold stared at Corr as though she had suddenly stopped hearing the rest of the room, while even Ulrich Vance, who had remained composed through every other detail of the report, became completely still.

Encrid looked around the table.

He had heard the name before.

Everyone on the Wall had. But that’s not how he knew the name - he knew the name from the novel.

The five elders of the great green forest.

They had been spoken of in old reports, in warnings passed between officers, and in stories told by men who had spent too long beyond the safety of the Wall.

The novel had also introduced the elders when the elves first became part of the story. Even then, it had compared them to some of the strongest beings in Astralis.

Encrid had not understood the weight of that comparison when he first read it.

Now, he did.

He understood why the room had gone silent.

This was not another powerful Roamer.

The Great Green Forest contained innumerable creatures, ranging from those that could be killed by a skilled hunter to beasts that required entire patrols to bring down. There were Roamers strong enough to tear through a village in minutes and others that even the strongest warriors of the Wall would avoid unless they had no other choice.

But among all of them, there were five beings that had been given a different name.

Elders.

Not because anyone respected them.

Because everyone feared them.

They were ancient beyond measurement, so old that nobody knew where they had come from or whether they had always existed within the Great Green Forest. Records disagreed about almost everything concerning them, including their nature, their origins, and even whether the five had once been ordinary Roamers before reaching a level of power that placed them beyond anything mankind could properly understand.

There was only one thing the records agreed upon.

An Elder was not something an ordinary army could fight.

A powerful Roamer might destroy a village.

A stronger one could overrun a town or wipe out a fortified settlement before help arrived.

An Elder could change the fate of an entire region.

If one entered the Empire and no one of comparable strength stood in its way, it could tear through an army, destroy cities, and continue moving long after the soldiers sent to stop it had become nothing more than bodies beneath its feet. Stopping one was not a matter of sending more men. It required the intervention of someone who possessed enough strength to stand against it, and there were very few such people in the entire Empire.

The Wall existed partly because creatures like these existed.

Not because the Elders regularly attacked.

They did not.

That was what made them so terrifying.

They could sleep for decades, sometimes for centuries, without moving, and the Empire would continue to exist without ever knowing whether they had noticed the world beyond the forest. But if one of them woke and decided to move, the consequences could be measured in cities rather than soldiers.

And now one of them was in the middle of a gathering of tens of thousands of Roamers.

Encrid looked back at Corr.

The scout’s hands were still trembling.

”Are you certain?” Neriah Fold asked.

Her voice was unusually careful.

Corr turned his head toward her.

”I saw it.”

”You are certain it was an Elder?”

”I am certain of what I saw.”

Fold leaned forward slightly.

”That is not what I asked.”

Corr’s eyes narrowed.

”You asked whether I am certain.”

”I am asking whether you are certain that you saw it correctly.”

The room fell silent again.

Corr stared at her for several seconds before answering.

”Yes.”

Fold held his gaze for another moment, then slowly leaned back.

She did not ask again.

Kass stepped forward.

”That is enough.”

Corr looked exhausted now. His breathing had become shallow, and the sedatives given to keep his pain under control were beginning to pull him back toward sleep.

Vance nodded toward the attendants.

”Take him back to the healers.”

Two men moved toward the stretcher.

As they lifted it, Corr’s eyes found Kass once more.

”Captain.”

”I am here.”

”Do not let them go into the forest.”

Kass’s expression hardened.

”I won’t.”

Corr seemed satisfied by the answer.

The stretcher was carried through the doors.

Nobody spoke as it disappeared from sight.

For several moments, the Council remained exactly as it was, staring at the empty space where Ansel Corr had been.

The report had ended.

The fear it had brought into the room had not.

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