Lord: Starting from a Goblin Nest

”Year 258 of the Hailan Empire—this was already when the Hailan Empire had begun to decline. Under the leadership of Baron Saran Laine, we came to this place, prepared to open up new territory and preserve the embers of the Empire’s survival.”

”It seems they knew long ago that the Hailan Empire wouldn’t last—the first large-scale resistance and slave rebellions against the Hailan Empire didn’t happen until after the year 281.”

”They say Elves aren’t very sensitive to the passage of time, so that’s probably part of it,” Ron said, stroking his chin. ”Perhaps their leaders sensed the problem much earlier but dragged their feet until then to act, and the rebels were even slower on the uptake.”

”Who knows? I’ll have to ask my mom about that. She’d definitely know more about it than I do.”

”Then there’s this next part—’We arrived here in early autumn. To avoid detection, we did not choose the safer periphery but instead ventured deep into the Delusional Land. Though life is more difficult here, no other races or opposition parties will find us.’”

”’In early 260, we established Green Swamp Town as a new territory of the Empire. To avoid being discovered, we chose not to use Casters to build the town on a large scale. Instead, we used old-fashioned methods. This cost us twice the expected effort and the sacrifice of some of our people. But it was all considered worthwhile.’”

”’This land is too far from home, but it hides many, many secrets. If we can unearth them and discover why all the powers that have set foot here ultimately met their doom, perhaps we can deduce a way to make the Empire last for millennia! Baron Saran was one of the main proponents of this idea, and the only one to put it into practice. May his name be remembered for all eternity!’”

”That last part was a complete pipe dream,” Aive said, looking at the text with a scornful laugh. ”He wants to avoid detection, but he also wants to last for millennia. He wants all the good things in the world for himself, doesn’t he?”

”This Baron Saran Laine, do you remember anything about him?” Ron asked.

”A little, but not much,” Aive said after thinking for a moment. ”The Laines are the royal family of the Hailan Empire. Their crest is the Double Lion Crown. They once had a child prodigy named Saran.”

”But that Saran was very short-lived; he died prematurely around the age of eighty or ninety. Although Elves mature physically at roughly the same rate as humans, an adult Elf must possess not only physical maturity but also worldly experience. Therefore, Elves are generally declared adults around the age of one hundred.”

”So don’t look at me like that. That’s just how it is with Elves. Saran was indeed recorded as having died prematurely in the official records, but now it seems that fact was deliberately concealed.”

Aive continued to decipher the text on the stone slabs, line by line. It was incredibly simple for her; she was even faster and more accurate than human scholars who studied the Elf Language, or for that matter, Elf scholars who studied the Human Language.

This was because she had possessed three native tongues since birth: the Elf Language, the Human Language, and the Common Language. These languages presented no obstacle to her. She could effortlessly switch between them at any time to find the most accurate and easily understood translation.

The stone slabs roughly told the following story: A group of Elves from the Hailan Empire foresaw the possibility that the Empire would be overthrown. They attempted to harness a powerful, mysterious, and unknown force to fight against the tide of history. To this end, they came to the Delusional Land, bringing with them some of the Empire’s greatest treasures in stages, hoping to use them to suppress, tame, and reverse the power here.

These great treasures came in three batches: one brought in the year 258, another sent at an unknown time in between, and a final batch sent by the Empire’s loyalists as it was on the verge of collapse—this last one included the stone slabs, the keys, and other Magic Items, including the Weaving Introduction.

”So, those things weren’t the Hailan Empire’s trump card, but rather the ’trump card’ they hoped would allow them to play their actual trump card,” Aive said, finding her own words a bit of a tongue-twister.

”Look at the end here. The inscriptions are clearly more rushed than the earlier ones: ’We should not have used that stone slab. The Baron was too clever for his own good!’”

”’Any power on this land, for whatever reason, will experience a period of rapid development. But there is only one outcome: to become nourishment for the darkness below! When a civilization is deemed ready to be food, those beings will awaken, flip the whole land over, and begin their feast, leaving only scraps behind!’”

”’We have failed the trust of the Empire and the Supreme King, Baron...’”

Aive’s voice came to an abrupt halt. She looked up at Ron with no small amount of regret. ”That’s all there is.”

”I was just thinking, that ancient tomb we found when we first arrived... could that have been the tomb of this child prodigy, Saran Laine?”

”It’s possible. With a gap of only a hundred years, the Baron mentioned at the start and the one mentioned at the end are probably the same person.”

”But if it’s really like the slab says, then why would he have had time to build a tomb?” Aiksuuri’s voice chimed in.

”Don’t look at me like that. I can’t read the Elf Language. All these years, I’ve just been guessing what these slabs say. Today is the first time I’ve learned their actual contents,” the young Black Dragon muttered, looking at the others.

’So what the hell have you been ”studying” all this time?!’

’Right, you’re from the Dragon Race, you’re so great. You can live for twenty-two hundred years, happy now?’

For Aiksuuri, a brief mistake or deviation meant nothing. Even as a Young Dragon, he could just laugh it off.

But for the short-lived races, a few years of mistaken learning could have lifelong consequences—like a misunderstanding as simple as a typo or a mispronounced word.

”Generally, Elves don’t even build lavish tombs, let alone build one in a very dangerous place at a very dangerous time. A so-called ’genius’ like Saran Laine would be even less likely to make such a mistake. So I’m more inclined to believe he had a reason for doing it.”

”Like protecting the stone slabs, for example.”

”But, as is the tradition in the Delusional Land, the various powers here rise and fall, ebbing and flowing. His tomb couldn’t possibly withstand the test of time and all sorts of plunderers, to say nothing of his own kin, like Ming Datiss, being among them.”

”So by the time we got there a hundred years later, there was nothing left. Only that one slab survived, thanks to its hiding place and a coincidental fall.”