From Slave to King: My Rebate System Built Me a Kingdom With Beauties!-Chapter 184: What Are You?
There was nothing standing in the way of Byung and his goals now—the Stonehide alliance was sealed through combat and intimacy, Grishka’s loyalty bound to him in ways that transcended mere political arrangement, and the settlement thrived under capable leadership he had carefully cultivated. He knew where he needed to go: the black forest where trees grew twisted and dead, where the boundary between the known world and the dark continent blurred into something dangerous and uncertain. And Byung had made preparations with the meticulous care of someone who understood that poor planning killed as surely as any blade. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦
The real reason he had cleaned his room so thoroughly the day before—scrubbing surfaces until they gleamed, organizing belongings with military precision, ensuring every item had its place—was because he had planned to vacate it this morning. The space needed to be in order, ready for someone else to use or for his own return, whichever fate decided. It was a practical consideration, but also something deeper: leaving things settled, tying loose ends, the habit of someone who had died once and knew the value of proper closure.
Byung knew he needed his sword—not the functional blade he’d forged from scavenged materials, but THE sword that supposedly waited for him in darkness. And there was only one person who could help him retrieve the sword of the first goblin king: that enigmatic dwarf with skin like polished obsidian and eyes that burned red, who moved through shadows and spoke of things he shouldn’t have any knowledge of.
He didn’t know if those memories that sometimes surfaced unbidden—flashes of a crowned goblin wielding a blade wreathed in unnatural light, visions of armies kneeling before thrones—were real or fabricated by the system. Genetic echoes or manufactured motivation? The uncertainty didn’t change his course, but it gnawed at him nonetheless.
Byung also knew he needed to travel light because he had no idea how long he would be gone. The dwarf’s timeline was deliberately vague, suggesting days or weeks or longer. So he carried only essentials: waterskin, dried provisions, his bone daggers, minimal armor for mobility over protection.
The dwarf had told him to meet at a location described only in cryptic geographical poetry, but surely Byung wouldn’t know how to get there precisely to begin with. So he expected the dwarf to pop out of the blue at any moment during his journey, materializing from shadow or earth to guide the rest of the way. That seemed to be how the creature operated—controlling when and where encounters happened.
He journeyed for approximately four hours through increasingly wild terrain, leaving familiar foothills behind for forests that grew darker and denser with each mile. The sun climbed but seemed dimmer here, light struggling to penetrate the canopy. Finally, Byung stopped beside a stream to rest and refill his waterskin, kneeling on moss-covered rocks.
But for some eerie reason that raised every instinct honed through survival, he could feel eyes on him. The sensation was unmistakable—that weight of observation, the prickling awareness of being studied by unseen watchers. Byung froze, water dripping forgotten from his chin as his enhanced senses swept the forest. Trees. Bushes. Birds. Everything normal, yet wrong.
He knew there was no way this could be the case, or he would have sniffed them out already. His evolved olfactory system could detect scents from hundreds of yards, identify species and emotions from pheromones, track individuals through crowds. Even the dwarf, who remained hidden from elven magic through ancient runes, had a scent—or more accurately, a deliberate absence that registered as anomaly. But here? Nothing. Just forest air, pine sap, damp earth. No trace of another living being.
Yet something threw him off about all of this—an inconsistency that made his skin crawl.
What did the dwarf mean when he said "it" picked him? The phrasing implied the dwarf knew something about the system, or at least had an idea of what was going on with Byung’s transformations. But how? Byung had thought it was just a system—a convenient game-like interface that tracked his growth. But things were beginning to look a lot more complicated, layers of mystery suggesting something older and stranger than simple reincarnation mechanics. Byung called out into the void, his voice carrying through trees with deliberate challenge.
"I know you’re there! Show yourself!" The words echoed and faded. He didn’t actually expect anyone to answer—this was psychological warfare, refusing to be prey that cowered unaware.
And just as he expected, there was no response. Silence settled back over the forest. Birds resumed calls. Wind whispered. Nothing replied.
Byung sighed, laughing at himself as he shook his head. He couldn’t believe he had thought someone was actually looking at him seriously enough to shout at empty air. Stress and paranoia making him jumpy. He stood to continue—
But then the silence came. Different. Wrong. Every bird stopped mid-call. Wind died completely. Even the stream seemed to quiet. The world held its breath.
Byung sniffed the air sharply, pulling deep lungfuls and analyzing with enhanced perception. There—a subtle change, lasting only a second before fading. It wasn’t the dwarf’s absence-scent but something elegant. Floral but not flowers. Refined. Carrying notes of starlight and ancient trees and something that made his hindbrain scream: camouflage magic.
Magic? Byung’s mind reeled because magic should not exist in this world—at least not the way legends described. Yet this scent carried undeniable arcane weight.
Acting on pure instinct, Byung stomped the ground with all his strength, channeling enhanced power through his leg. The impact created a shockwave, dust particles exploding upward in a cloud that hung suspended. And in that brief moment when dust caught sunlight and revealed disturbances in air itself, a figure appeared briefly—a shimmer of broken invisibility, the outline of a slender form standing ten paces away.
Then the spell reasserted and the figure vanished again. But Byung had marked the location.
He moved faster than thought, enhanced speed carrying him across distance in a blur. His hand shot out, fingers closing around a throat—slender, delicate, but solid. The moment physical contact was made, the spell shattered like glass. Invisibility dissolved completely, revealing his observer.
"What are you?" Byung demanded, grip firm but not crushing, confusion flooding his features as he stared at what he held. This was a new species entirely—nothing encountered in this world or remembered from his previous life.
She stood perhaps five and a half feet tall, willowy and graceful in ways that seemed almost inhuman. Skin pale as moonlight. Hair a cascade of silver-gold catching sunlight like precious metal. Eyes—pointed, almond-shaped, glowing faintly—were twilight violet. Pointed ears peeked through her hair, and features so perfectly symmetrical they looked carved rather than born. She wore robes of forest green that seemed to shift colors subtly, and carried herself with the poise of royalty despite his hand at her throat.
An elf. Byung was holding an elf—one of the legendary reclusive race that Rodell’s reports mentioned only, the civilization that commanded magic and refused contact with lesser races.
Her violet eyes met his golden ones without fear, studying him with the same intense curiosity he felt. And when she spoke, her voice was melodic, accented with something ancient.
"I could ask you the same question, goblin who is not quite goblin. What are YOU?" And before Byung knew it, arrows rained down from above forcing him to unhand the elf but would he be able to react in time to dodge the hail of arrows?
