Saving The Monster Race Starts With Breeding The Elf Village

The sudden seriousness in Luca’s voice caught everyone off guard.

One moment they had been admiring their collective masterpiece, basking in the warm glow of accomplishment, and the next, that familiar tension had crept back into the air.

But they obeyed.

One by one, the elves stepped away from the wall, casting lingering glances at their drawings.

Pride shone in their eyes—pride in what they had created together, in this chaotic beautiful testament to their community.

Little Fefe waved goodbye to her stick-figure family.

Lulu blew a kiss at her overly glamorous self-portrait.

Even Leona found herself staring at her horrendous creation for a moment longer than she intended.

They gathered behind Luca, forming a loose semicircle, waiting to see what would happen next.

Luca too gave the wall a long look. His expression was sorrowful, almost as if he was seeing it for one last time, memorizing every detail.

Then he turned to face them, and a brilliant smile spread across his face.

”You know.” He said, his voice warm with genuine appreciation. ”You all absolutely blew it out of the park.”

The elves blinked, tension easing slightly.

”I asked you to do some simple portraits. Nothing fancy, just a quick representation.”

”But you?” He shook his head, still smiling. ”You went way beyond what I asked. I mean, just look at it.”

He gestured at the wall, at the riot of colors and shapes and styles.

”Look at how beautiful it is. How vibrant. How full of life.” His voice softened. ”Even if someone was completely depressed, completely lost all hope—if they saw something like this, they’d have to smile.”

”It just radiates warmth. Love. Community. And I can feel it from here like it’s the sun.”

The elves stirred, pleasure replacing their confusion.

Giddy excitement rippled through the crowd.

It was beautiful. Not because it was perfect, but because it was them. All of them, together.

”In fact..” Luca continued, pointing at one young elf near the front. ”It looks so good that I can barely tell the difference between you and your drawing, Peta.”

”You drew it so well that I don’t know which one is real and which one is art!”

The girl giggled, covering her mouth with both hands.

”And you, Agada!”

Luca pointed at another.

”I honestly think you might have a twin now. Two of you—one here, one on the wall!”

She too beamed, nudging her friend proudly.

Then his eyes landed on Leona—

—and she immediately stiffened, suddenly self-conscious.

Her portrait—the doodle that was somehow even worse then the ones the little kids drew—stood out among the drawings like a wolf among sheep.

Luca stared at it. Then at her. Then back at it.

Until finally—

An awkward expression crossed his face.

”Ah...”

He said while looking a little sheepish like he didn’t know what to say until finally sighing and apologetically saying,

”Well. I want to say the same that I said to the others Leona, but I think I most definitely know which one’s the real deal with yours.”

”...If I said anything else, it would be too blatant of a lie.”

Laughter erupted from the crowd, while Leona’s ears burned bright red.

Luca grinned, then straightened up, his expression shifting back to something more serious.

”What I’m trying to say...” He continued. ”...is that you did such an incredible job that it’s almost like you’re all standing there.”

”Like that wall contains all of you—your spirits, your personalities, your place in this village.”

Then his smile faded.

”But what if I told you...” He said quietly. ”...that this gun I’m holding—this small, unassuming thing—could turn that beautiful picture of harmony into absolute disaster in less than ten seconds?”

The elves exchanged glances. Disbelief flickered across many faces.

”Ten seconds?” Someone murmured.

”To damage a painting?”

Luca shook his head slowly. ”Not damage. Obliterate. Destroy. Smash into smithereens.”

Elves exchanged uncertain glances. Some frowned, trying to process his words.

Others looked at the wall—at the sturdy wooden planks, the thick layers, the solid construction.

He had to be exaggerating. Right?

After all, the wall was strong.

They had felt the wood when they were drawing—solid, dense, quality lumber.

An arrow shot at close range would barely penetrate.

Even an axe would take several powerful swings to cut through a single plank.

And the wall was fifteen meters long.

How could anything destroy that in seconds?

One of the older elves, a woman named Seris who had lived through the age of mana, spoke up hesitantly.

”Hero...in the old days, with powerful magic, maybe something like that was possible.”

”But now? With no mana? That wall is solid wood. Even if that...gun...thing can shoot harder than a bow, destroying the entire wall?”

She shook her head slowly.

”I don’t think it’s possible.”

Murmurs of agreement rippled through the crowd.

It wasn’t disbelief in Luca—they trusted him.

But this? This seemed beyond reason.

Luca simply smirked.

He didn’t argue. Didn’t explain. Didn’t try to convince them with words.

Instead, he turned toward the wall.

Under everyone’s gaze, he raised the gun to his chest. His movements were practiced, efficient—shoulder braced, cheek pressed against the stock, eye lining up with the sights.

His thumb flicked the safety off.

His finger found the trigger.

And then—

BOOM!

The sound was unlike anything they had ever heard.

It wasn’t just loud—it was violent.

A thunderclap compressed into a single instant, a crack that seemed to split the air itself.

Every elf in the clearing screamed and clapped their hands over their ears.

Their sensitive hearing, adapted to the soft sounds of the forest, was utterly overwhelmed.

It felt like being struck.

But the sound was only the beginning.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The gun roared again and again, each shot following the last so quickly they blurred together into a continuous explosion of noise and fire.

Luca’s body absorbed the recoil smoothly, the barrel tracking across the wall in a controlled arc.

And the wall—

The wall was dying!

Where the bullets struck, wood didn’t just splinter—it exploded.

Great chunks of plank flew outward, torn apart by forces the elves couldn’t comprehend.

Holes appeared and immediately grew larger as more rounds punched through, each bullet carrying enough energy to pass through multiple layers of wood like they were paper.

And the beautiful portraits—all those faces, all those drawings, all that love and warmth and community—were being ripped apart.

A painted eye disappeared into splinters.

A smiling mouth vanished into a crater.

A carefully drawn hand was torn to shreds.

The elves watched in frozen horror as their creation, their collective masterpiece, was systematically destroyed before their eyes.

Some screamed. Some wept. Some simply stared, unable to process what they were seeing.

The wood they had thought so strong, so durable, was being smashed into smithereens.

The wall that would have stopped arrows and resisted axes was being chewed apart by invisible forces traveling faster than sound.

And Luca didn’t stop.

He kept firing, kept destroying, kept proving his point in the most brutal way possible.

The gun roared and roared, spitting fire and death, until finally—

Click.

The last round was spent.

Silence crashed down like a physical weight.

Smoke curled from the barrel. The smell of gunpowder filled the air—acrid, sharp, completely foreign.

And where the wall had stood, there was nothing.

Nothing but scattered debris. Wood chips and splinters littered the grass.

A few sections at the far ends remained intact, untouched by the barrage—deliberately spared, perhaps, to show what had been lost.

But everything else was gone.

The portraits. The faces. The love and warmth and community.

Obliterated.

Destroyed.

Gone.

And they realized, with dawning horror, that this devastation was the work of the so-called gun that Luca now held loosely at his side.

Just moments ago, they had been laughing at it.

Mocking it.

Calling it tiny and stubby and insignificant.

They had dismissed Luca’s warnings as exaggeration, as the kind of dramatic storytelling heroes were prone to.

Now they understood.

That small, unremarkable device in his hands—the one that had produced those deafening thunderclaps—had obliterated their beautiful wall in seconds.

Not hours. Not minutes. Seconds.

And perhaps the most terrifying part was that he had done it so effortlessly.

When you swung a sword, you felt the resistance.

When you threw an axe, you felt the weight leave your hand.

When you drew a bow, you felt the strain in your muscles, the effort required to send an arrow flying.

But Luca had simply...pulled a small curved piece of metal with his finger.

And the world had exploded.

No effort. No strain. Just a tiny movement, and destruction on a scale they couldn’t comprehend.

And as if that weren’t horrifying enough, some of the elves on the platforms had noticed something else.

They pointed with shaking fingers at the trees beyond the ruined wall.

”L-Look! The mini arrows—whatever he shot—they went through the wood!”

”They kept going!”

”They hit the trees behind!”

Everyone looked.

Sure enough, the trees that had stood innocent and unaware behind the wall now bore fresh wounds—deep gashes in their bark, splinters hanging loose, some smaller trees nearly snapped in half.

The bullets had torn through fifteen meters of solid wood planks and still had enough force to damage the forest beyond.

If those had been bodies instead of wood...

No one finished the thought. They couldn’t.

Instead, the elves stared at the gun in Luca’s hand like it was a demon given form.

Some began to edge away, putting as much distance between themselves and that weapon as possible.

Others simply stood frozen, unable to look away from the destruction.

And then Luca turned around.

The moment he moved, all hell broke loose.

”NO! NO! DON’T POINT IT AT US!”

”PUT IT AWAY! PUT IT AWAY!”

”GET BACK! EVERYONE GET BACK!”

”THE DEMON WEAPON—DON’T LET IT FACE US!”

Screaming. Panic. Elves dove in every direction, throwing themselves to the ground, scrambling behind trees, shoving each other out of the way in their desperation to escape the line of fire.

The crowd that had been gathered behind him literally parted down the middle, creating a wide empty space that no one dared occupy.

Luca blinked at the chaos. Then, to their absolute bewilderment, he started chuckling.

”Relax, everyone. Relax.” He held up the gun, but carefully, barrel pointed safely at the sky. ”The gun is completely empty. No bullets left. And I’ve engaged the safety—see this switch? It means it can’t fire even if someone pulled the trigger.”

He demonstrated, pulling the trigger with the safety on.

A harmless click sounded.

”See? Nothing to fear right now. And I’m not pointing it at anyone.”

The elves didn’t understand half those words, but they understood his tone. Calm. Reassuring. Safe.

Slowly, shakily, they began to relax.

Not completely—their eyes still darted nervously toward the weapon—but enough to stop screaming and running.

Luca’s chuckle softened into a gentle smile.

”Now that you’ve seen what a gun can do...”

”...do you understand why I panicked earlier? When Fefe was holding it?”

The effect was immediate.

Horror dawned on every face as the realization crashed over them like a wave.

Fefe. Little Fefe. She had been holding this thing.

This demon weapon.

She had been carrying it through the crowd, pointing it around, her little finger resting against that curved piece of metal.

If she had pulled it, if her curious little finger had just tightened at the wrong moment—

The clearing would be a bloodbath right now.

Realising this, every elf who had made fun of Luca for being scared of a ’little girl’ suddenly went very, very quiet.

Their faces paled. Some looked physically ill.

”She was pointing it at me.” One elf whispered, her voice hollow. ”When she lifted it up again...it was pointing right at me.”

”I was standing right next to her earlier.” Another breathed. ”If she had—if it had gone off—”

”I would have been a goner.” Someone finished.

Fefe herself, still in her mother’s arms, buried her face in her mother’s neck and started to cry—not understanding exactly what had almost happened, but feeling the terror radiating from everyone around her.

Her mother held her tight, as she realized how close her daughter had come to massacring her own people.

Luca waited, letting the realization sink in.

Then he asked,

”Now do you understand that I wasn’t joking? That this weapon could cause absolute annihilation?”

”Or do you still want to call it insignificant and ugly and mock it?”