Chapter 339 - 306: Now This is Treasure Hunting

Chapter 339: Chapter 306: Now This is Treasure Hunting

"It’s not so bad playing on my own."

As he spoke, Valles couldn’t help but recall scenes from his childhood.

His kind and gentle mother would always stand up for him whenever he was bullied.

She would always shield him behind her, cursing out those other Elves.

Even though those Elves knew they were in the wrong for picking a fight for no reason.

But when he heard the whispers of "half-breed" behind their backs...

Valles couldn’t help but feel wronged.

He didn’t actually care that much about being insulted himself.

But he couldn’t stand seeing his mother get dragged into this pointless internal strife time and time again just to protect him.

Being pointed at by her own people behind her back, being isolated, being ridiculed.

That feeling was far more painful than being humiliated himself.

"Later, when I grew up... I didn’t want to stay in the village anymore, so I just left to gain experience."

"If I left, Mom would have an easier time. She wouldn’t have to worry about me all the time."

"So you were forced to leave home... No wonder you’re always moping," Gray mumbled, a blade of grass in his mouth.

"That’s not exactly it... When I first left Cloud Sleep Valley, I was actually pretty happy. I felt like I was finally free."

"But the more I traveled, a strange feeling started to follow me... Because humans would always see me and say in surprise, ’An Elf.’"

Valles touched his own ear.

"And when I occasionally ran into actual Pure-blood Elves, they’d treat me with contempt, as if I were some kind of monster."

"Tsk... That’s a tough situation." Recalling the look Aidi had given him in the tavern, Zelir felt a wave of discomfort.

"Elves aren’t like Beastmen... Beastmen don’t care about pure blood. A little bit of this blood mixed with a little bit of that, it doesn’t matter to them."

Valles said.

"As long as you have their blood in you, the big Beastman family is pretty welcoming... They’ll even treat you like a brother, drinking and eating meat with you."

"But neither the Elves nor the humans see me as one of them."

"So I’ve always wondered, if I’m not an Elf, and I’m not a human..."

A trace of confusion flickered in Valles’s chestnut-colored eyes.

"Then who am I?"

The atmosphere seemed to grow heavy, and the party walked on in silence for a while.

"Human, I’d say?" Zelir said suddenly.

"What?" Valles didn’t understand at first.

"You should count as human, right?"

Zelir said.

"Just now, when you were describing the difference between Elf Mages and Human Mages... you called the Elves ’they’ and the humans ’we’."

"That means in your own heart, you already identify as human. A subconscious choice of words like that doesn’t lie, does it?"

"Is that so..."

Valles froze. He hadn’t even realized the pronouns he had just blurted out.

"Alright, stop dwelling on it."

Gray patted Valles’s shoulder. "And don’t think so badly of the father you’ve never met."

"Trust me, a playboy wouldn’t make it to the remote lands where Elves live. They’d much rather be having fun in a tavern."

"Besides, that’s just how love is. When that flutter of excitement hits, you can’t fight it."

"You mean the ’flutter’ in his lower body?" Valles frowned.

"No, I mean the flutter of two people truly in love."

Gray gestured in the air with his fingers.

"You said yourself how wonderful your mother is—kind and gentle. So she must have had good taste... Otherwise, how could just any man have caught her eye?"

"Maybe at the time, your parents thought love could conquer all, that it could even overcome differences in race and lifespan... But in the end, reality was too cruel, and they were forced to separate..."

"And you know how smug those stuck-up Elves are. How could a human live among them for long?"

"Maybe he was forced to leave, or maybe he chose to disappear to protect you and your mother."

"Even if the ending wasn’t perfect, the time they spent together... they must have truly been in love, right?"

Gray said, "If that’s the case, then that’s enough."

"Besides, you turned out pretty great, didn’t you?"

"You’re talented, healthy, and your Fighting Qi even has special Attributes... Your father deserves some credit for those inherited traits. You should be grateful for the life you have now."

After Gray’s speech, Valles fell into thought.

He lowered his gaze and, after a long moment, let out a soft snort.

"You’re pretty good at giving pep talks, aren’t you..."

Despite his words, a faint smile spread across Valles’s lips.

Zelir and Marcus also chuckled and shook their heads.

As the party ventured deeper into the first level of the ruins, the surroundings began to show some unusual changes.

The vegetation didn’t grow denser; instead, the suffocating green finally began to recede.

The wildly growing vines and giant ferns gradually thinned out, allowing other sights to come into view.

Broken stone pillars, collapsed archways, and mottled statues half-buried in the earth.

These things looked like silent witnesses to the end of an era, lying quietly in the ruins.

There was an inexplicable air of solemnity.

In a clearing in the woods, the party found traces of Demon activity.

There were several lines of huge footprints pressed deep into the soil.

The footprints, longer than a man’s palm, were cloven-hoofed in shape. The soil at the edges had been squeezed outward by the weight and had long since dried and hardened.

"Th-This is!"

Zelir’s eyes lit up. "These are Minotaur tracks!"

The party had seen tracks like this before, during the Minotaur extermination commission in Oak Village.

They were identical.