Chapter 7: The Whole Armada Empire is in Flames! (7)
The frantic escape from the orphanage was merely the prologue to a much longer, quieter struggle. Abellion had run until his legs gave out, pushing deep into the uncharted territories of the "Blackwood," a forest infamous in the novel for being a death trap for the unprepared. But for Abellion, the threat of monsters was preferable to the suffocating destiny of a villain.
After a month while Abellion's parents spent their time finding him, Abellion spent his month building his house using the woods he cut on the trees in the forest he is hiding of.
The first few weeks were a brutal lesson in primitive survival. He slept in a hollowed-out log or a makeshift tent, shivering through the damp nights, clutching his knife. But the mind of the former mafia underboss demanded order, structure, and security. He wouldn't live like an animal; he would live like a king in exile.
He used his stolen gold to acquire high-quality tools from a traveling merchant on the forest's edge—an axe, a saw, a hammer, and bags of nails. Then, the real work began. He targeted the Iron-Bark Pine trees, known for their durability. Felling them without magic was agony. His young hands blistered, bled, healed, and calloused over. Every swing of the axe was a defiant scream against the plot that tried to enslave him. He dragged the logs by sheer will, using leverage and primitive pulley systems he devised from ropes and vines.
"Woowee, finally I finished building my own house."
Abellion stood back, wiping a mixture of sweat and sawdust from his brow. The structure in front of him wasn't a palace, but to him, it was more majestic than the Imperial Castle. It was a single-story cabin, squat and sturdy, built to withstand the crushing weight of winter snows and the inquisitive claws of forest beasts.
The house is simple; it has a bedroom, kitchen, dining hall, and lastly a room where he kept the skins of the boars and bears he killed as for the preparation of winter.
He walked through the heavy oak door. The interior smelled of fresh pine and woodsmoke. The kitchen featured a stone hearth he had laid himself, stone by stone, using river clay as mortar. The dining hall was modest—a hewn table and a sturdy chair—but it was civilized. The bedroom was his sanctuary, raised off the floor and lined with dried moss for insulation. But the storage room was the heart of his survival. It was already beginning to fill with the resources he would need: jars of preserved berries, hanging bundles of drying herbs, and the stretching racks where he cured the hides of the animals he hunted.
"Welp, I guess it was worth staying on the tent before so I could really plan to build and finally building my own home." He glanced out the window at the crushed patch of grass where his flimsy tent had once stood. It looked pathetic now compared to the fortress he had erected.
"Home sweet home."
He ran a hand along the rough wall. This was his. No plot armor, no inheritance, no magical gift. Just blood, sweat, and stubbornness.
Time in the forest moved differently. It wasn't measured in hours, but in seasons of hardship and growth.
The scene shifted where Abellion is already 16 years old after 6 years of hiding.
The boy who had fled the orphanage was gone. In his place stood a young man forged by six years of relentless pressure. Abellion was now tall, his frame packed with dense, lean muscle that coiled under his skin like steel cables. His golden-blond hair, the mark of the Hero's lineage, was tied back in a utilitarian knot, and his purple eyes scanned the tree line with the cold, predatory focus of a wolf.
He wore armor of his own making—layered leather taken from the Great Boars of the forest, boiled and hardened until it was nearly as tough as iron, yet silent.
Abellion spent his years training himself not because of the plot of the story but for the survival of the forest because this forest is full of monsters.
The novel had described this forest as a mid-game zone, filled with creatures that could tear a standard knight in half. For an unawakened teenager without mana, surviving here should have been impossible. Abellion turned that impossibility into his curriculum. He couldn't overpower them with magic, so he outthought them. He learned to move silently, to mask his scent with mud and crushed herbs, and to strike vital organs with surgical precision.
"I really need to train more because if I didn't spent my years on training I wouldn't survive for 6 years here."
He was currently sharpening his spear—a heavy, dark-wood shaft tipped with a jagged piece of adamantite he had salvaged from a dead adventurer's corpse years ago. He tested the edge against his thumb, drawing a thin line of blood. It was sharp enough.
He unconsciously rubbed his chest. Beneath the leather armor lay a map of his failures.
Abellion still remember that fight where he got a x like scar on his chest, the cause of that is non other than a big grey wolf who attacked his home 3 years ago.
It was a Dire Wolf Alpha, a beast the size of a horse with intelligence to match. It had ambushed him during a blizzard, crashing through his door. The fight had been a nightmare of teeth and claws in the dark. The wolf had pinned him, its claws raking an 'X' across his chest, shredding muscle and skin. Abellion had survived only by jamming a burning log from his fireplace into the beast's open mouth, driving it back long enough to impale it with his spear.
"If it weren't because of my years of experience of fighting I would be inside of the monster's stomach."
That night had taught him the most valuable lesson: hesitation is death. He had spent weeks recovering, sewing his own flesh with bone needles, shivering with fever. He emerged from that fever dream harder, colder, and deadlier.
Abellion sighed and said "Let's just continue."
He stepped into his clearing, beginning his daily kata. He thrust the spear, spun, and slashed, his movements blurring. He wasn't practicing for a tournament; he was practicing for the kill.
His solitude was a shield, protecting him from the chaotic plot of the world outside. But shields can be broken.
Then Abellion heard a scream.
It cut through the ambient sounds of the forest—the wind in the leaves, the distant bird calls—like a jagged knife. It was undeniably human, and terrifyingly close.
"HEEEEELLLLPPPP!!!"
Abellion froze mid-thrust. His purple eyes narrowed. Abellion the look on the direction and confuse why he is hearing a persons voice since he knew he is the only person of this forest which is full of monsters.
Rationality told him to ignore it. Humans meant trouble. Humans meant the Empire, the Hero, the plot. But the scream was followed by a sound that made his blood run cold—the deep, earth-shaking roar of a Razorback Bear.
'What the fuck is that?!'
Curiosity warring with caution, he grabbed his gear. Abellion then dressed up and proceed to go on the direction where he heard a screamed. He moved through the underbrush like a phantom, making no sound, a ghost in his own domain.
After a while running, Abellion found the area and there he saw a girl not just a normal girl but an elf.
She was backed against a sheer cliff face, trapped. And she was stunning. Pink hair and green eyes and Abellion blush. Even with his discipline, the sheer, ethereal beauty of the Elf hit him like a physical blow. She looked like a porcelain doll dropped into a muddy trench.
'Damn she's beautiful and hot.' While hiding on the bushes watching as a monster cornering her. He shook his head violently, purging the thought. Now was not the time for teenage hormones.
The girl was waving a slender, ornamental sword that looked like a toothpick compared to the monster in front of her.
"Get away from me you damn brute" waving her sword on a big bear.
The bear was a nightmare made flesh. Standing nearly ten feet tall on its hind legs, it was a mountain of muscle and matted fur. The Bear roared on her face as a triumph because the bear didn't eat for days and since he found a woman he instantly subdue it and is celebrating because he could eat and satiate his stomach.
ROAAAAARRR!
Spittle flew from its jaws, landing on the girl's pale face.
"Eeek" The elf eek in panicked because of the scream and then tell the bear to spare her life. Her composure disintegrated completely.
"Plss spare my life don't eat me, I'm not tasty I swear, also if you eat me you will get killed too because I was poisoned."
Abellion laugh on the woman trying to tell a damn monster to spare her life and even lied out that she is poisoned. It was absurd. Did she think the bear understood common tongue? Or cared about food poisoning?
But then his sharpened senses caught a detail. Then Abellion saw her right hand full of black. The veins in her arm were standing out, black as ink against her pale skin.
'That's a poison! That poison I remember that, it was used before to try killing the protagonist but why she had that poison?!'
Abellion's mind raced. That was the Necro-Blight, a magical toxin pivotal to the later arcs of the novel. It shouldn't be here. It shouldn't be on a random Elf.
'What the hell is going on with the timeline?'
Before Abellion could continue thinking, the bear lost patience. The bear lunging the woman.
"NOOOOOO!!!!" The woman couldn't do anything but scream because she cant defend herself while being poisoned that's why she just closed her eyes.
Abellion didn't decide to move; his body simply executed the kill protocol he had drilled into it for six years.
SLASH!
Before the bear could lunge the woman Abellion took a single step and appear above on the bear and slashed the bear's head using the spear he always used and killed the bear without any effort.
He launched himself from a tree branch, using gravity as a weapon. His spear drove down through the base of the bear's skull, severing the spinal cord instantly. The massive beast collapsed mid-lunge, dead before it hit the ground. Its heavy body slid to a halt inches from the Elf's boots.
Abellion landed lightly atop the carcass, wrenching his spear free with a wet squelch.
'Damn after years of training I finally can kill a damn big bear without any damn effort.' He felt a surge of cold satisfaction. Six years ago, he would have been lunch. Today, he was the apex predator.
Meanwhile the woman open her eyes expected she is in heaven already but when she open her eyes she is still on the damn forest but then she saw a head of the bear infront of her and screamed again.
"AAAAGGGHHH!!!!"
"Damnit stop screaming already, you literally calling the monsters to come here so stop screaming alright?!" Abellion shooked the woman's body so she could stop screaming already. He gripped her shoulders, his bloody hands staining her pristine travel cloak.
The woman nod and then stop screaming. She stared at him, wide-eyed, trembling like a leaf.
Abellion wipe her face using his upper shirt, because of the blood of the bear he killed was sprayed onto her face. He was rough but efficient, clearing her vision.
After wiping her face Abellion ask the woman "What's your name, who are you and why you are fucking here this is literally the forest which is full of monsters?"
The woman didn't answer that but she asked him "Why you are here then if this place is full of monsters?" Her fear was giving way to aristocratic confusion.
"Hiding of course" Abellion replied and continued "Also I ask you a damn question first do you want to get stab?" He pointed the bloody spear tip at her nose.
"Eeeekkk!!" The woman shrieked again because of the threat and then said "All right, all right."
"My name is Olivia Damserette De La Ymiria, princess of the elves."
Abellion felt the ground drop out from under him.
'What, she is Olivia that Oliva?! Isn't she the hidden major villainess of the epilogue after the events of the novel, as far as I remember she become a villainess to avenge her race because of that Tyrant Emperor, who order an edict to slaughter all the elves because of a damn fake prophecy which is was instigate by one of the evil gods. Then why she's here?'
This was a catastrophe. She was the Elven Princess destined to burn half the empire down in 20 years after the events of the novel. She wasn't supposed to be here. She wasn't supposed to be poisoned. By saving her, Abellion had just drop-kicked the original plot into a ravine.
'Act like you don't know her Abellion, act like you don't know her.'
"I see" Abellion just nod.
"Don't you believe what did I say?" Olivia expect the human infront of her knows her.
"Nope I don't know you, if you are a princess then I couldn't give a fuck about it, just leave here before another monster finds you, come I'll guide you to a nearby town here."
Olivia shook her head and replied "No! I decide to hide here, please don't bring me back on that town, the one who poisoned me was there."
Abellion groaned internally. The assassins were nearby. If he sent her back, she died, and he lost a valuable source of information. If he kept her, he was inviting trouble into his sanctuary. But looking at the black poison in her veins... he knew he needed to understand this deviation.
Abellion sighed if he save her he will become part of the plot but he couldn't just abandon her on that town if the one who poison her was there and what's worse the poison she's carrying is fatal.
"All right fine" Abellion sighed and he just let her stay with him for a while.
"Really?!" Olivia ask in happiness.
"Yeah, yeah come I'll let you stay to my house and heal yourself for days or how many months you want to stay ofc."
"Thank you, thank you" Olivia kneeling on the man because of the offer.
"Let's just go, come before we will be eaten here" Abellion then lift the girl in a princess carry. He scooped her up effortlessly. She was light, frail from the poison.
"Eeeiiikkkk"
"What the hell are you doing?! Why are you carrying me?" Olivia ask.
"If I don't carry you then you will struggle to stand up, you are poisoned right?"
Olivia realized her mistake just nod and then replied "Thank you."
"What?!" Abellion ask.
"I said thank you, you dense idiot"
"I'm not dense!" Abellion blushed because truthfully he is not dense.
'How dare this woman called me dense?!'
Abellion sighed and continue to walk while still princess carry Olivia. The walk back to the cabin was quiet, save for the crunch of his boots on the leaves.
'This is the first time a guy do this to me!' Olivia speaking to her thoughts while blushing. She rested her head against his chest, listening to the steady, calm rhythm of his heart. It was a sound of strength, of safety. For a princess who had been hunted, poisoned, and nearly eaten, this rough, rude, violent boy was the first thing that felt safe in a long time. Even through the pain of the poison, she felt a strange warmth bloom in her chest, a complication Abellion had absolutely not planned for.