Withered, yellowed vines hung down, covering the rotting wooden structures. The entire ruin was frozen in the oppressive stillness of a place untouched by foot for a long time.
Alger and a few sailors wandered through less than half of the ruins in the bleak winter surroundings, still finding nothing of value.
"Captain, wave after wave of adventurers has been through here—what could possibly be left for us?" Finally, a sailor in his thirties broke the silence, his patience wearing thin.
This struck a chord with the rest of the companions, who echoed in agreement:
"A place we found without much effort, others could easily locate too."
"Right, right, right—we should just keep going after the Fosacans!"
"Captain, are you trying to set up a base here?"
Alger slowly swept his gaze across the group, and under the weight of his stare, the sailors ceased their complaints and chose to comply.
After several seconds of silence, he spoke:
"I plan to use this place to ambush the Fosacans.
"First, let's survey the terrain and see if it's suitable."
With this excuse, the sailors roused themselves somewhat, and the group soon ventured deeper into the elven ruins.
As they walked, Alger suddenly felt a stir of intuition and instinctively turned to look behind a massive tree.
The soil there bore faint traces of disturbance, no more than a year old.
Alger withdrew his gaze, pretending to have noticed nothing, and casually looked elsewhere.
After finishing their exploration of the elven ruins, they made their way back to the new camp.
By now, evening was approaching and the forest grew ever colder. After Alger and the sailors finished dinner, they left two men on patrol and each retired to their own tents.
The biting wind moaned through the trees, setting the bonfire flickering. Alger, who had already been planning to slip away from camp at midnight, suddenly heard a faint, ethereal song drifting from somewhere in the distance.
The melody was wispy and ethereal, like a lady softly humming a lament, pouring out the sorrows of her heart.
This involuntarily brought Alger's thoughts to the past—to his mother, long dead, and to his childhood, fraught with bullying.
An unspeakable grief surged through the depths of his heart, and instead of snapping to his senses immediately, he sat there for several seconds before suddenly bolting upright with a deep frown, cocking his ear to listen.
This time, he heard nothing. That lingering melody seemed never to have existed at all.
Alger narrowed his eyes, grabbed a thick jacket and threw it on, then stepped out of his tent and walked over to the bonfire.
The two sailors on night watch had just finished a round of patrol and were warming themselves by the fire.
"Anything unusual?" Alger asked in a low voice.
The two lean, strong sailors shook their heads simultaneously:
"No."
Alger's brow relaxed somewhat, and he turned, intending to make a round of inspection on his own.
Just then, something caught the corner of his eye:
Those two sailors were standing too close together.
If they were ordinary pirates, this would be nothing unusual. But the men under Alger's command were all sailors who had received formal training from the Church of the Storm. They certainly knew that in this kind of environment, patrol members needed to maintain a certain distance from each other — not too far, not too close. They had to be able to see their companion, yet also prevent being taken out by a single attack.
Alger took two steps forward without any change in expression, then turned his head as if casually and asked:
"Anything normal?"
He had altered his earlier question, making it quite bizarre.
The two burly, solid sailors shook their heads in unison, their expressions unchanged as they replied:
"No."
Nothing... Alger nodded slightly, a hint of relief on his face:
"Very good."
He immediately turned and walked slowly into his own tent.
The moment the sailors' gaze was cut off, Alger instantly drew "Blade of Venom" and the "Gargoyle Monocle," then opened his mouth, ready to break into song.
Just then, that ethereal, sorrowful melody appeared once more, echoing right beside Alger's ear, piercing into his mind.
It was an extraordinarily ancient ballad, singing of extreme grief and melancholy, causing what felt like pale, phantom arms to sprout within Alger's spirit body, constantly tearing at him from within.
Alger's expression twisted. Slick, dark fish scales emerged one patch after another on the surface of his skin. His tangled, deep-blue hair — unkempt as seaweed — stood up strand by strand, each one growing abnormally thick.
The thoughts that had originally existed in his mind were disrupted by the song, shattered by the pain, and could no longer take shape.
Alger collapsed, writhing and squirming on the ground, looking less and less like a human, on the verge of losing control.
Suddenly, the song stopped, and a voice tinged with faint indifference reached Alger's ears:
"There is some elven bloodline...
"So be it. Make good use of Shatar's Beyonder characteristic."
Alger slowly climbed to his forehead drenched in cold sweat, only to see that a figure had appeared inside the tent at some unknown point.
It was a woman with lustrous black hair, delicate features, slightly pointed ears, deep and fathomless eyes, and soft, elegant contours. She wore an ornate, archaic long dress, and despite her lack of height, she still radiated an air of lofty superiority.
"...You are the Elven Queen, the 'Calamity Queen' Gahnsom?" The thought flashed through Alger's mind, and he took the initiative to ask.
The woman was toying with an exquisitely engraved golden goblet as she spoke in a flat, indifferent tone: