After Surviving the Apocalypse, I Built a City in Another World-Chapter 1918: The Pseudo-elves (Part 1)

While investigations about the incoming forces and preparations against them were ongoing, the members of Althea’s team—now about to rest after dinner—received a guest.

It was none other than the Grandmaster Zenno.

They were not quite sure what to expect from the visit. Master Hoffen often visited mostly for Althea, Master Cheman mostly for the children, but Grandmaster Zenno was most usually in a laboratory or with another team exploring something.

There were a lot of things, studies, investigations, and deals happening in parallel, especially in the Research Center, some of which were expedited because everyone knew they might be heading to a big war soon.

There was one letter sent weeks ago, and had only received a response today, and the recipient went straight to the Gaia Team’s villa when he did.

Zenno was hosted well, and some of his favorite snacks and tea were served. The old alchemist took a sip of his favorite tea, turmeric black tea with cinnamon. It went very well with sesame crisps.

Crack!

"Yum."

He only noticed people were staring at him after he finished his third crisp.

He cleared his throat. "Ahem. I’m here because I received a reply from my associates in Holt City."

They straightened their backs at this. They had a few people connected to Holt, but it was such a massive place that these connections varied in relevance to them, and it also depended on the topic.

For example, Orion’s main contacts were the Glens as well as a few minor nobles and royals. Zenno’s were the old people who generally didn’t participate in the social scene anymore.

Basically, for news about current events, they’d ask Orion. On the other hand, for more ’historical’ (possibly obsolete) knowledge, Zenno would know better.

And what they got Zenno to investigate...were the children’s case. They hoped to learn more about their powers, what their situation was like, and if there was any danger to them, whether in the short term or the long term.

The Grandmaster Alchemist naturally didn’t disclose who he was asking for, though the risk was still high because they knew where Zenno was, and if they asked anything of Cauis, the guy would definitely answer honestly.

Still, so far, Holt had not shown any sort of hostility to them, and they were very vague anyway, as if much of his question was theoretical.

"Because our information is veiled and vague, what I gathered might not be completely applicable. However, all knowledge is knowledge, and some of it might be useful."

"Okay, let me start with how I framed my question. I asked as if the dwarves got me to inquire about it, and dwarves have been a relatively mysterious race, so it makes sense." Most people didn’t know any dwarves; if they did, they wouldn’t be close enough to discredit his words.

"I told my Holt friends that the dwarves had encountered a child with the same condition as your children, far away from here." He specifically mentioned the far North, which was relatively isolated from their area because of the various mountain ranges that made travel more difficult than usual.

"I told them that these were young people, less than ten years old, and exhibited some special powers like levitation and teleportation."

It was quite a session, and he received a barrage of letters asking him for more details. He provided them with quite a bit of what he knew.

"The closest answer they had was that they were called the pseudo-elves, the descendants of the elves. It’s very diluted, though."

Garan flinched, while Althea narrowed her eyes. To be honest, she did have some thoughts of her own, along with what her husband had told her about his vague dreams.

If the children were pseudo-elves, then that meant the two of them were as well. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

Suddenly, some of the oddities growing up made a bit of sense. Her closeness to plants, having an almost instinctive feel of them, as well as her abnormally quick healing.

That explosion that hit her when she was a child...she vaguely remembered actually getting injured. Fallen building debris had protected her from most harm, but she was definitely injured—gravely, at that.

Similarly, growing up, her husband’s physical prowess had, more than once, been tagged as ’inhuman’. Some people even asked for his blood, wondering if there had been some sort of mutation that had happened.

Was Xeno...their world, after all? Were they actually aborigines?

"What happened to the Elves, grandmaster?" she couldn’t help but ask, but her curiosity was no longer purely scholarly. Suddenly, it was something personal.

Zenno felt the change in atmosphere. Specifically, her tone of voice. His eyebrows rose. "What do you know?"

"That they perished more than a thousand years ago, which eventually gave birth to the system."

"Yes, according to the books, the world had almost ended back then," Zenno nodded. "Do you know the origin of the beasts?"

They all shook their heads, just knowing it caused tragedies and an apocalypse, but their actual origin was a mystery. Zenno kindly explained.

"They are products of explosive demonic aether—aether that had been contaminated by the excessive bloodshed the world saw. Back then, tens of thousands died every day from war, murder, and countless endless fights.

"It got to the point that the world itself was about to implode on itself."

"The Elven elders used their own life force to calculate what they had to do to save the world. Sadly, the sacrifice was incredibly big. However, since it was their world and they could very well perish along with it, they decided to do it anyway.

"Every pure blood elf died, just to give birth to the force that would serve as the watcher of the world."

"Rather, the system was something that required absolute pure energy. Those with enough elf blood perished, as if their lives were automatically absorbed."

Their hearts clenched at this thought. One could imagine an entire civilization losing their lives in a snap, including the young, just to give the world a chance.

Zenno looked at the couple with deep eyes. "Those with mixed blood also lost their elven powers, losing half their lives in the process. Many died from weakness as well."

"This left only the most diluted descendants alive— the pseudo-elves."