Solo Leveling: Ragnarok - Chapter 122

Chapter 122

“Wow! It’s Sirka!”
Bouts of excited voices rang out.
“Sirka!”
“Sirka’s back!”
With the return of Sirka who went missing, All the ice elves came out to greet her.
The excitement lasted briefly.
The moment they spotted the stranger next to Sirka, their demeanor immediately turned hostile and battle-ready.
“Intruder!”
“It’s an intruder!”
“Intruder alert!”
Fshhhhh!
Bows and Arrows. The sharpened daggers all pointed towards Suho.
And Sirka jumped between them to wave her arms around.
“Stop! Don’t fight! He’s not an intruder! Look! He’s ChaCha’s son!

“What?”
“ChaCha?”
“ChaCha’s son?”
The hostility turned to confusion, and everyone looked towards Suho.
“Huh?”
One after another, confusion turned to realization with widened eyes.
“Huhhh?”
“Uhh? For real?”
The ice elves looked towards the ice sculpture at the entrance of the town then back at Suho’s face repeatedly, mouths agape.
“Wow! He really takes after ChaCha!”
“Look at those eyes!”
“The nose too!”
“Scent too!”
“What’s the son’s name? SungSung?”
“You idiot! ChaCha’s son is named Sung Suho!”
“Sirka, are you being real?! He’s really ChaCha’s son?! Where did you find him?”
The explosive hostility changed within a blink of an eye to a festive atmosphere.
To the point where it felt useless to have been preparing to get ready to face the ice elves before entering the glacier dungeon.
While Sirka stood in the middle, proudly boasting how she found Suho.
Suho stood along her calmly to observe each ice elf.
‘……They’re all young.’
Of course, the lifespan of ice elves must be different than that of a human’s. But only looking at the outer appearance, they all looked to be in their early to late teens.
None of them looked over 20.
‘There’s no adult.’
There was another oddity.
‘They’re weaker than expected.’
At that, Beru also let out a bewildered expression and whispered.
[Most of the ice elves that I know were of A ranks, at the minimum, B ranks. But the ones here are…….]
“B rank at most, down to D ranks. There’s no A ranks.”
[They’re too weak.]
Sirka nodded after overhearing the conversation.
“Couldn’t be helped. All the able warriors died during the war. The ones here are the ones who were either too young or weak to participate.”
During the war between the Rulers and the Monarchs from the beginning of time,
The ‘King of the Frozen, Monarch of Blizzard’ who used to rule these lands took every ice elf that met the criteria into the war.
Of course, it was an honor to be the soldier of the king for the ice elves, and it was a warrior’s goal to die in a fierce battlefield.
And it’s not like the ones who remained had no tasks.
They too had just as important a mission to complete.
And that was to foster the newborns into the next generation.
To create excellent warriors ready for battle.
In order to continue the battle against the Rulers.
“……And that’s us. The children born during the war.”
Those newborns grew up to hold the bow and arrow, and daggers.
To become a proud warrior after their parents.
But Suho found a contradiction from Sirka’s explanation.
“Only the weak remained, you say…. But among the weak must’ve been adults. So why can I only see children?”
“……It was never like this. The day that the spirits of Echo Forest wreaked havoc, most of the tribe’s adults died then. Only one adult remains to this day.
Echo Forest.
At that, Suho’s line of sight naturally led to his mother’s ice sculpture.
In that place…….
Was Cha Haein, ‘dancing’ with two daggers. A scene of an active battle was sculpted.
And behind her was a great dragon, with its wings spread as if to protect her.
It was a wonder to have sculptured such intricate sculpture out of ice.
“I’m guessing that my mother used to use daggers?”

Infamous Scans

Translator: Anom
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“Yeah. We lent her the daggers of our tribe because she said that she doesn’t have a weapon. And that’s when ChaCha became our savior.”
Cha Haein who descended from the blizzard sky on top of the dragon.
When she arrived in this frozen forest.
The ice elves were in great danger.
“For some reason, all the spirits from the Echo Forest poured out into our town.”

»»————-　★　————-««
[Echo Forest]

This Forest was the sanctuary that is said to be a place of death. A sanctuary that not even the ice elves would come out alive after stepping in.
But it used to be called something else.
As the ‘Forest of Trials’.
The Echo Forest used to be a place for the ice elves to take the ‘Trials of Warrior’ to get acknowledged as a proper warrior.
But even that trial happened in the outer regions of the forest, never in the depths.
Further in, it’d be a place of no return from being lured by the spirits of the Echo Forest.
“You get lured by the spirits?”
“Yeah. The spirits of Echo Forest have no physical form. And that’s what makes them more scary. They can turn into any form they want. But even that is difficult to discern from real to rake.”
“……I’m not sure if I get that explanation.”
While Sirka was explaining the legends of Echo Forest, the surrounding atmosphere continued its festivity.
The ice elves were preparing a small welcoming party for Suho.
“Party tonight!”
“Welcoming Party for SungSung!”
“Stop calling him that! His name is Sung Suho!”
All that hostility of first impression disappeared and was replaced by an energetic glee.
One elf was creating an ice sculpture for Suho at a corner.
While another elf brought out the fruits that they were saving for a special occasion.
And another elf was…….
[Tsk Tsk! Young Master prefers meat! Also, got any mana stones I can eat?]
Beru was actively participating in preparing for the welcoming party.
Sirka continued on explaining while the festivities ensued.
“The spirits were beings that never left the Echo Forest.”
Geographically, the forest of ice elves and the Echo Forest were right next to each other.
Even so, as long as no one went beyond the boundary of the spirits, they posed no threat.
“At least, that’s what we thought until ‘that day’.”
‘That day’ in which the skies of the frozen forest ripped apart from dimensional rift.
Perhaps influenced by the abnormality, the spirits of the Echo Forest went berserk.
As soon as they left the Echo Forest, they started indiscriminately attacking every ice elf that came within their reach.
To the remaining young ice elves, with no strong warrior to protect them, it was a disastrous moment.
“It’s been a few years now. Back then, we were even weaker than right now.”
“And that’s when my mother rescued you all?”
“Yeah. ChaCha was truly a sight to behold.”
Cha Haein who suddenly appeared on top of the dragon, and asked the ice elves to lend her a sword.
The moment the daggers were in her hands.
“Skill, Sword Dance.”
Sirka reiterated the name of the skill that Cha Haein taught her.
She moved as if she was dancing, and drew beautiful and fast arcs with the two daggers.
Fwoosh! Slash! Whoosh!
As if dancing to a fast tempo piece, She cut down the spirits with an overwhelming force.
At the sight of such beautiful dance, the ice elves tried to give her the nickname of ‘Dancer’ at first.
But she forbade anyone calling her that from embarrassment. Thus giving birth to a new nickname.
“So that’s how she became known as the ‘Dragon priestess’.”
“……And she’s not embarrassed with that one?”
“Kaisel liked that one. So she begrudgingly ended up accepting it.”
And like the nickname, in Cha Haein’s battle, the black dragon Kaisel was always present.
At Suho’s confused expression towards Kaisel, Beru quickly stepped in to explain.
[Kaisel used to be called Kaisellen as the ride of White Flame Monarch Baran. To add on, it used to be a S rank monster.]
“S rank monster?!”
Suho’s eyes widened.
Mother awakening as a S rank hunter, riding S rank monster.
It felt too different than the mother he knew who led a normal life back home.
“Anyways, thanks to ChaCha and Kaisel, the spirits went back to the Echo Forest. And she remained here for a while to teach us how to fight.”
“You learned to fight from my mother?”
“Yeah. Because all the adults who raised us died that day. So the one who protected us from another potential invasion of the spirits is ChaCha.”
And this was the reason why the ice elves considered Cha Haein their savior.
Teaching the remaining ones how to fight, and took it upon herself to ensure the safety of the children…….
“ChaCha is a mother to us all.”
Within that bright smile of Sirka, Suho felt a trace of longing.
“So then after that, my mother…….”
“Yeah. Like I mentioned earlier, she went inside the Echo Forest with Kaisel, saying how she can smell something odd. And she hasn’t returned until today.”
“Odd scent?”
“Umm. How do I explain this? Like us, ChaCha is really sensitive to the scent of mana.”
Sirka sniffed Suho’s scent.
“Suho, You have a really nice smell. This is also how I immediately recognized you to be Cha Haein’s son.”
Cha Haein shared many things about her family while spending time with the ice elves.
“ChaCha said this before. That her son smells really nice just like his father. So if her husband comes here to look for her, then to tell him this instead of fighting.”
“Tell him what?”
Sirka replied with a serious face to Suho’s question.
“……That she found the place where ‘Gray Snow’ falls.”