Chapter 37: Chapter 37 — The Festival of the Hunt VIII
The ashen-gray woman’s fist cut through the air with a violent hiss.
Thanks to my gacha-enhanced stats, I managed to jerk my head back at the last millisecond. The impact passed mere centimeters from my nose, unleashing a blast of icy wind that raised the hairs on the back of my neck. She had fully intended to rip my head off.
"Wait, wait! I’m not an enemy!" I exclaimed, taking an awkward leap backward while raising my hands in surrender.
But the aggressor showed no intention of listening. With inhuman speed, she drew a short dagger of gleaming bone and aimed it directly at my throat, forcing me to retreat to the edge of the spring.
From the water, the other woman—the one who had been bathing—hastily covered herself with her tattered garments and stood up, watching me with a mixture of surprise and suspicion.
"Move. If you breathe too hard, I’ll slit your throat right here," the short-haired one spat, her voice dripping with icy hatred.
With few options and the blade’s edge grazing my Adam’s apple, I was escorted a few meters farther, toward a hidden clearing among the rock formations where a third woman waited.
When I saw her, I nearly forgot I had a weapon pressed against my neck.
It was Lady Alba. And damn it, observing them up close changed the entire picture. The incredibly long and pointed ears, the skin the color of fine ash, the hair of an almost mystical silver-gray, and those eyes of molten amber... They weren’t simple monsters or mutations. They were dark elves. And damn it, they were fucking sexy.
Especially Lady Alba. She wore a simple tunic, but the fabric clung to mature, generous curves that would bring anyone to their knees. She had that serene, imposing, and experienced gaze that immediately betrayed her status as a leader. A tremendous and absolute exotic MILF in every sense of the word.
"What do we have here, Dana?" Lady Alba asked, her deep, velvety voice resonating through the clearing.
"A peeping tom, Lady Alba," replied the short-haired aggressor, pressing the dagger harder against my skin. "I caught him spying on my sister at the spring. I demand permission to cut out his tongue and throw him to the scavengers."
"Hold on! This is all a misunderstanding!" I interrupted immediately, breaking into a cold sweat. "I was just taking part in the hunting festival in the village below. I got sidetracked chasing prey and ended up here by accident. At no point did I intend to see you naked, I swear. I didn’t know there were... dark elves living in this area."
The moment those two words left my mouth, the atmosphere in the clearing froze completely.
The short-haired elf, Dana, opened her eyes wide, and a blind fury distorted her beautiful features. The edge of her dagger sank a millimeter into my neck, making me let out a pained grunt.
"What did you just call us, surface filth?" Dana roared, her bloodlust rising to critical levels. "I’m going to kill you!"
Shit, I screwed up, I thought, swallowing hard with difficulty. Apparently, the term "dark elves" was a taboo, an insult, or something extremely offensive to their culture in this world.
For an instant, the adrenaline tempted me to say to hell with it all. My mind flew straight to the gacha system. If I summoned the Tenazcrya Heroine’s Bow or used my stats to the fullest, I could disarm Dana in the blink of an eye and finish off all three before they could blink. The system made me ridiculously strong. But immediately, a mental alarm stopped me cold.
What kind of stupidity would I unleash if I killed them? They were a hidden race. If I murdered their warriors or their leader, their kind would most likely declare total war against the inhabitants of Prusna. Thousands of innocent people, including Lia, Samira, and Chimera, would be caught in a massacre because of me. The risk wasn’t worth it.
So I held back. I forced my muscles to relax, put on my best frightened puppy-dog face, and pretended to be completely defenseless and in serious trouble. Although, to be honest, with a magical dagger grazing my jugular, the danger of her finger slipping was still damn real.
"Dana, enough," Lady Alba ordered, raising a hand with elegance.
Dana growled but took a step back, keeping her amber eyes fixed on me. Lady Alba approached slowly, her generous attributes swaying subtly with each step, and stopped mere centimeters from me. Her perfume, a mixture of wildflowers and damp earth, flooded my senses. She looked me up and down, evaluating me.
"You have a very loose tongue, foreigner," Alba said, maintaining a strange calm. "I will give you one chance to talk. Explain yourself."
Seizing the opening, I spilled the entire story at once. I explained in detail that I was an adventurer participating in Prusna’s Hunting Festival, that I had just taken down a Hiyak, and that I was simply exploring the upper rocky terrain without knowing this territory belonged to them. I was as respectful and sincere as possible, omitting, of course, the fact that I had frozen up admiring the beauty of the elf in the water for a few extra seconds.
When I finished my explanation, the clearing fell silent. Lady Alba stared at me for a long, agonizing moment. Then the corner of her lips tightened, and the apparent tranquility on her face crumbled for an instant, revealing a contained fury that chilled my blood. She had been holding back her anger from the very beginning.
"I will believe you this time, hunter," Alba declared, her voice dropping to a cold, cutting tone. "But listen to me well: do not look at any woman of our species with those filthy eyes again, or I assure you, you will end up very badly. Your life will depend on how far you stay away from us."
"Perfectly understood. It won’t happen again," I replied, nodding with the utmost seriousness.
"Dana, let him go," Alba ordered, turning her back.
Dana reluctantly withdrew the dagger from my throat. She leaned toward me, stopping mere centimeters from my face, and shot me a glare so murderous and loaded with bloodlust that I could have sworn the air around us grew heavy.
"If I see you around here again, I’ll pull your guts out through your eyes," she whispered with venom before vanishing among the rocks along with the others.
---
I left that clearing practically running, letting out a monumental sigh of relief as soon as I was at a safe distance. I rubbed my neck, checking to make sure I wasn’t bleeding.
Good heavens, that was close, I thought as I resumed my course for the hunt, venturing into a new area of the mountain range.
As I walked, dodging thickets and loose shale, my mind kept circling back to what had just happened. Dark elves! The existence of that race in this world changed the rules of the game. If they were here, it meant the world was far vaster than I had imagined. I would probably run into more races and, consequently, more MILFs just as exotic, beautiful, and dangerous in the future. The infinite gacha was about to get very interesting.
Of course, the inevitable dilemma presented itself: Samira. How would she react if she found out about this? I knew perfectly well that she wouldn’t mind if I brought another MILF into the group; after all, we shared a fairly open mindset in that regard. But the code of honor dictated that I should ask her permission first. With Chimera, things had been a bit tense at first due to the monster girl’s wild and possessive personality, and Samira wasn’t a big fan of extremes. Curiously, thinking about the short-haired elf, Dana, I realized that her cold, strict, and territorial attitude closely resembled Samira’s when she went into defensive mode. Maybe they’d even get along. Or kill each other. With the women of this world, you never knew.
My fantasies about an interspatial harem were abruptly interrupted.
ROAAAAAAAR!
A thunderous roar shook the mountain’s foundations, sending several birds shooting out of the few nearby trees and triggering a small rockslide to my left. The sound was massive, deep, vibrating directly against my ribs.
What the hell was that? A giant lion? Some alpha predator beast? I wondered, curiosity instantly overriding common sense.
I adjusted my grip on my sword, crouched down, and crept up a steep slope leading to a deep rocky canyon where the noise had come from. I peered carefully from behind a giant boulder, expecting to see a territorial Predator-rank monster.
What I saw left me in absolute and complete shock. My jaw nearly hit the ground.
Below, at the bottom of the canyon, there was no large feline. There were two fucking giants. Two colossal humanoid creatures, easily fifteen meters tall, with thick hides and brutish faces. But the most bizarre part of the scene wasn’t their size—it was what they were doing.
They were playing.
And their "toy" was an imposing winged feline creature, surrounded by living roots and flashes of energy sprouting from the ground around it. The giants were tossing the creature back and forth as if it were a damn rag ball, laughing with thunderous guffaws that echoed off every stone wall.
I stood frozen, processing the scale of what I was facing. The hunt had just escalated drastically.
Comments