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The Empire of Beasts is a cursed nation where beasts live.
But Elynn is only aware of the latter part, and yet not quite.
As Elynn discovers a solution to save her younger sister from the annual offering to the...
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I'D BEEN GOING THROUGH the city's library books for four days. Even if the assortment here was broader, like I'd predicted, I'd found nothing.
The coins Chase had given me were running low. The accommodation and food in the city couldn't have been more priced up. And yet, on the fifth day of my arrival, I continued to wander through the same library like a desperate beggar in search of something edible. Crossing shelves I'd gone through multiple times over these days, hopelessly thinking that perhaps there was something important I'd missed.
Or maybe I didn't try hard enough. Maybe I should have travelled to the Empire of Beasts and begged whoever ruled the empire to spare my sister from whatever awaited her. But it would have been lunacy. If I'd travelled there, I wouldn't have survived a day in their world.
No human would survive. And my sister was going to die there or be used for Gods knew what.
What if I smuggled my family somewhere overseas? It wasn't like it hadn't been done already. Even if we were offering the youngest sixteen-year-old of the family, since it was unlikely that a younger one would be born when the age gap between them was sixteen years, it wasn't like it wasn't probable. Sometimes a baby was born into a family after one child had already been offered. Fearful that morphs would come and kill them just for it made people hide their newborns or smuggle them out of the Mortal Region. Nobody knew why morphs preferred such an offering system. After all, it made no difference. Every parent lost a child to the portal.
But paying somebody to transport my family... it would be costly, and where would I get the money? Smuggling them couldn't be feasible.
I almost kicked the bookshelf, wanting to scream with frustration.
How was I going to face Gen once I came back? She knew the purpose of my trip. She might not ask how it'd gone, as she questioned none of my research. But I could tell she still had faith. And if I didn't come back with something, the flame of hope still burning in her would go out.
There was still something I hoped I wouldn't have to go for, but I'd officially run out of possibilities... and hope.
I'd got wind of people selling their souls in exchange for their deepest, darkest desires to come true. I could sell my soul to save my sister. But first, I needed to learn how to make the Gods below listen to me.
I found myself in the aisle of books about Gods. In a matter of minutes, I held the book about the merciless Gods ruling below. I opened it and sought the keyword of the soul until the sound of psst interrupted me.
I let it pass my ears, but then another one followed.
I raised my head from the book and looked to my left. Right at the end of the bookshelf, a small head was poking from behind it. A short, dark-haired boy.
"Come," he said quietly, beckoning me to approach closer.
I frowned, doubting if I should listen to him. I checked around myself, expecting to spot his parents nearby, but I didn't detect or hear anything. Giving in, I returned the book and followed him.
