Solo Leveling- Ragnarok-Chapter 284

Fall had arrived. The crimson leaves twirled and drifted down, their numbers growing by the moment until they painted the entire sky in hues of red.

[Sillad warns of the coming of fall.]

The season always came suddenly, lingering only briefly before vanishing just as swiftly.

[Sillad informs you that the humans have accelerated the coming of fall.]

He was right. It was far too early for the season, as if time had sped up tenfold. The leaves that were green and vibrant just the night before were now drenched in red and falling to the ground.

To some, the sight may have seemed beautiful, even mesmerizing. But to those with knowledge of the Elvenwoods, it was a deeply unsettling omen. These leaves weren’t merely changing color—they had drunk deeply of blood, growing so heavy with it that they finally surrendered to gravity.

To the elves, fall was the harbinger of destruction. It was the season to flee before they were devoured. That was the case with every Elvenwood that Sillad had experienced. Álfheimr was just an Elvenwood by a different name, and it was experiencing the same cycle.

The blood-drenched leaves blanketed the city called Paradise. On the streets now painted the color of spilled blood, the first signs of destruction had appeared.

Suddenly, the roots of Álfheimr burst from the red earth, lashing out at the villains locked in battle.

“Gah!”

“Wh-what the hell?”

Razor-sharp, tentacle-like tendrils erupted from beneath the earth, skewering bodies and greedily draining them of their life force.

“W-wait! Stop fighting! Álfheimr has gone mad— Aaagh!”

The villains froze, their fights forgotten as horror set in. They clawed at the roots plunged through their bodies, trying desperately to pull them away, but it was already too late.

The entire ground was buried beneath a sea of fallen leaves, making it impossible to tell where the next set of roots would emerge. Even the sharpest, most perceptive villains were powerless to anticipate them. These were not ordinary leaves, after all.

“Young Monarch! These leaves seem to interfere with the senses!”

Beru had immediately discerned the leaves’ true nature and called out to Suho with a warning.

Suho understood at once. “Right... My senses are dulled. These leaves have turned the entire city into a perception-warping barrier.”

Everyone in the city was now ensnared in an invisible trap. If even Suho with his heightened senses was affected, the villains stood no chance. One by one, they fell, helpless against the roots that impaled their bodies and drained them of their power.

As Álfheimr fed, it reclaimed the power of the very fruits it had given them. The tree here was bigger and stronger than any Elvenwood that Suho had ever seen, and the roots devoured the villains’ power far faster as a result.

“R-run... Eugh!”

“Oh god!”

The villains scattered, desperate to escape. However, more and more fell, their bodies shriveling into lifeless husks.

As they fled for their lives, they were forced to confront a horrifying truth—the same truth that had dawned on all elves before.

“No way... Has this been the plan all along?”

The villains had finally realized that Álfheimr was no longer on their side. Perhaps it never had been. They were just food, livestock that had been fattened and primed for later consumption.

Screams rang through the city. Above their heads, the crimson leaves still drifted gently down, obscuring their vision in a veil of red. It was a breathtaking sight.

However, not everyone was meeting a helpless fate.

Shing!

A crescent-shaped burst of energy sliced through the air. The red leaves swirled violently in the wake of the blade, revealing a figure amid the storm—Haseul the Harvester, wielding her enormous scythe.

“H-Haseul!”

“The harvesters...!”

The villains who had been fleeing caught sight of her and felt the stirrings of hope.

The harvesters who had been gathering fruit on the bank’s request were launching a counteroffensive. Having climbed the great tree’s trunk daily to collect its bounty, they knew how to navigate its treacherous roots, and they deftly dispatched them.

The bank employees who had offered them the collection jobs were doing the same. They had always received their wages in fruit. Some had sold the fruit for coins, but most had consumed far more than the average citizen. They seemed somewhat immune to the effect of the leaves, perhaps because of that latent power inside them.

But even in the midst of this nightmare, greed persisted.

“Goddamn it! Get away!”

“W-wait! We need to get those fruits first!”

Some of the bank employees spotted fallen fruit scattered among the leaves, and their eyes gleamed. They had experienced the fruit’s effects firsthand, so gathering them was an instinct as natural as breathing.

Some of them died in the process of going for the fallen fruits, but most managed to avoid the roots as they stuffed their pockets.

[Sillad clicks his tongue.]

The deceased Monarch seemed to experience powerful sadness as he watched all of this unfold. The autumn that the elves had suffered was visiting the humans in the end. Though they were a different species, witnessing this tragedy again was far from pleasant.

Suddenly, there was a new voice.

“Goddamn it! Already?!”

The bank president, who had visited a different country through a gate, had returned to the city. He ground his teeth as he realized what was happening. He had tried to rush back as fast as he could, but the Russians had been insatiably greedy, and that had created delays.

Even so, this was absurdly fast for things to go south. Just this morning, everything had been fine.

It’s all because of that goddamn “Beru!”

If that damned rookie hadn’t entered the city the day before, none of this would have happened.

But there was no helping it now. Since things had reached a head, there was no going back. It was time to let nature take its course.

“After all the work I put in, starting this city from scratch...”

Running his hands down his face, the bank president let out a sigh of pure exasperation. He then began shoving every fruit he had purchased from Russia into his mouth. There were quite a few, but he swallowed them without even chewing.

As he did, his body began to change. His skin hardened, transforming into a dry, bark-like shell. His muscles and tendons twisted into gnarled wooden fibers. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

“Sir...!”

The employees belatedly spotted their leader and came happily flocking to greet him.

The president, no longer looking even remotely human, commanded them with dull, unnatural eyes. “This place is done for. We’re leaving. Now.”

“But shouldn’t we take some of the fr— Agh!”

The president stabbed the heart of the man who had dared question him, killing him instantly. Glaring at the rest, he said, “Not another word. We leave now. If the executors show up, we are done— Sh*t.”

A terrible realization struck him, and he quickly looked up. Amid the branches of Álfheimr, which were now completely bare, there were five fruits. They bulged grotesquely, swelling up.

“What... What are those?”

“Are those... fruits?”

The employees looked up as well, confused. These were nothing like the Álfheimr fruits they had known. They were much bigger. They almost looked like... eggs.

“F*ck! Run!”

The bank president leaped into motion like a coiled spring. At this point, it was every man for himself. He could not afford to help his employees.

Seeing him flee with such urgency, the employees immediately understood—something was terribly wrong. They bolted after him as fast as their legs would carry them.

But it was too late. The grotesquely swollen fruits, bulging as though ready to burst, finally gave in. Like balloons popping one after another, they erupted in rapid succession.

And from within them, the executors were born.

They were called “executors” by the humans, but they were nothing like humanoid figures. What spilled forth from the ruptured fruits was winter itself. Sillad would have described it as “bitter cold.”

Whoosh!

As soon as the fruits loudly burst, a violent blizzard swallowed the city whole. In an instant, the crimson autumn turned white.

“Oh my god! Sir!”

“What’s going on?”

“What do you think? It’s the executors!” the president cried. “If we don’t escape now, we’re all going to freeze to death! Survive if you can!”

With that, he vanished into the blizzard—but his bloodcurdling scream soon rang out from within the whiteout.

The remaining employees who had followed him turned around before breaking into a frantic retreat. In that brief second, they had caught a glimpse of something in the snow—a hulking figure gripping the president’s severed head in one massive hand.

[Spirit of Extreme Cold]

[Spirit of Extreme Cold]

[Spirit of Extreme Cold]

[...]

At last, Suho laid eyes on the executors’ true forms.

“So they were spirits all along?”

His gaze sharpened, his senses screaming in alarm.

Just how much nourishment had they sucked from Álfheimr until now? The sheer power radiating from them was leagues beyond any spirit he had encountered. They had absorbed an unfathomable amount of energy from the Elvenwood, so simply calling them “spirits” no longer did them justice.

“No! It cannot be!” Beru cried, urgently calling for Suho’s attention.

While the shadow ant waged war alongside Jinwoo in the Outer Universes, he was always accompanied by angels, the soldiers of the Rulers. As such, he realized what was going on as soon as he saw the executors being born.

“Young Monarch! This is very similar to how angels are born from the World Tree!”

“What?” Suho asked, stiffening.

The World Tree, rooted in the depths of the Sea of the Afterlife, fed on the souls of the dead to bear fruit. Among those fruits, special ones with the greatest amount of energy gave birth to angels.

It was hard to believe the same thing was happening with Álfheimr—an Elvenwood. The only difference was that this tree had fed on bodies rather than souls. It had raised the living beings around it to feed upon, and the most special of its fruits had given birth to these Spirits of Extreme Cold.

Is the Elvenwood mimicking the World Tree, or are the trees of the same species to begin with?

The questions burned in Suho’s mind, but right now there was something more urgent to tend to.

Beru pointed a claw at the spirits and shouted, “Now that I think about it, angels are no different from spirits in a broader sense! That means those spirits are also...”

They were on a similar level to the Rulers’ soldiers. Only five of these monstrous fruits had burst, but the result was a blizzard that seemed ready to freeze the entire planet.

Suho began to see warning messages in quick succession.

[“Extreme Winter” has begun.]

[Debuff: “Extreme Cold” has been activated.]

[Your movement speed slows down continually.]

[Your attack speed slows down continually.]

[The effects of debuff: “Extreme Cold” will stack over time.]

It was a true calamity. The warning sounds blared in his ears just like when he had entered the Sea of the Afterlife.

However, things were different this time. The flames that burned from the Heart of the King of Dragons immediately covered Suho’s entire body.

[“Heart of the King of Dragons” negates the effects of debuff: “Extreme Cold.”]

Even in this frozen wasteland, his body radiated searing red heat.

This heat seemed to greatly irritate the Spirits of Extreme Cold. A harsh wind roared as they spoke.

“Who is this?”

“Who dares defy us?”

All at once, the five spirits turned toward him. As soon as they were born, they had begun to instinctively steal the heat from the living things around them.

The spirits swelled, their massive bodies merging with the raging storm. Their forms were enough to fill the entire sky.

“Winter shall take its course.”

They encircled Suho, ready to deliver upon him the same winter that had long plagued the elves.

However, Suho was grinning.

“So what do you think?” he asked, smiling as if he was glad that things were going well. “Are they worth using?”

Instead of answering his question, Sirka gave a rather unexpected response. She stretched, looking extremely refreshed.

“Ahh, that feels good!”

She was within a blistering blizzard, and she could not see a thing in all this snow. This was the accursed, cruel winter that had plagued the elves from the beginning of time—but she didn’t care. As a child of winter, she had been born into and learned to walk in such a world. Suho had the Heart of the King of Dragons to help him with the cold, but she needed no such thing.

“This feels like home.”

With a bright, fearless grin, Sirka inhaled the frigid air, savoring it.

[Sillad bares his teeth in a smile.]

Sillad had been the first ice elf, and now his successor was grinning from ear to ear as she dashed toward the source of the blizzard. Her steps were dainty as she moved over the snow.