As the metal carriage made its way to the Elven Prison, a disturbance stirred within its walls. To be precise, it stirred within an elf named Pinaka, who sat watching his fellow prisoners eat.
Hunger.
It consumed him, gnawing at his body. The dim light of the prison flickered, its only source a flame tongue coiled around a soldier’s arm. The scent of fruit lingered in the air as the elves' bodies digested their meager rations.
And the more he breathed it in, the worse it became. The hunger was only increasing.
A meter away, a soldier stood, watching with twisted delight. Those who worked in this place were rarely of sound mind, and this man was no exception.
But Pinaka’s focus wasn’t on him—it was on his own hands. His thumbs, once raw and bloodied, had scabbed over. A strange itch was beginning to intensify around his wound, urging him to remove the bandage and scratch over the scabs. He resisted, forcing himself to act. Weakly, he reached out, his fingers trembling as he grasped the soldier’s ankle. His voice came out in a whisper, ragged and desperate.
“Please…some food… I beg you!”
His breath hitched and gasped in exhaustion, his eyes pleading in desperation. Beneath it all, however, his index finger made contact with the soldier’s skin as Pinaka tried to form a connection with the soldier’s body similar to how he made one with the seeds before. Just as he had once entwined his will with the seeds, coaxing them to grow, he now sought to find a connection within the soldier’s flesh. It was a gamble.
—Thump! Thump!
A strange feeling began to swell up in Pinaka. But before he could pinpoint—
“Let go!” the soldier scoffed, shaking him off and slamming a boot into his face. Turning away, he strode toward the pillar.
“If you don’t want to go hungry, be on time tomorrow,” he said with a chuckle. “Don’t whine when you’re the one who chose sleep over food.”
“Please…” Pinaka gasped again, but the soldier ignored him.
He remained sprawled on the floor, the picture of weakness. In truth, he was calm, his senses were occupied in absorbing the scents of every being in the prison. Be it the elves or the human soldier.
‘My authority is over hydrocarbons. Therefore, I should be able to extend an Elf’s senses throughout the hydrocarbon spectrum. Be it a piece of wood, or a lump of living flesh.’
The hunger was consuming his mind, but that was exactly what he needed at the moment. He knew the body’s senses would reach their sharpest when pushed to the extreme—usually in a life-or-death crisis. Right now, his starvation was forcing his olfactory senses to their absolute limit, creating a sense of awareness beyond anything he had ever experienced.
For him, what stood before him were not elves or a human. But sacks of hydrocarbons that can move. ‘Technically, they’re all food, as long as my stomach can digest their flesh. And then, when I touched the soldier, I surely felt something.’
For just an instant, he had felt a flicker of familiarity—like he could… control the soldier’s body. The sensation was brief, vanishing almost as soon as he noticed it, but it was enough. Enough to confirm that whatever he was trying to do, he was doing something in the right direction.
He focused on the soldier’s scent. Breaking it down, he began to analyze every smell: A strong citrus scent. A mixture of pork, lime, garlic… and a faint trace of ammonia.
It was interesting to note that he could clearly distinguish the numerous scents interwoven in the air. Pinaka could only attribute it to an innate trait of being an elf.
As if to test this hypothesis, he instinctively picked up Mahnaka’s scent, having spent the most time beside him since his birth as an Elf.
‘He smells like petrichor and pineapple.’
Petrichor—the earthy fragrance that accompanied the first rain after a long period of dryness—was a scent common among elves, mostly paired with a faint note of fruit. But the key word here was most.
And this was true, because while analyzing Mahnaka’s scent, he came across another elf’s scent which was quite distinct. In fact, while most elves had a scent similar to Mahnaka’s, this elf stood out amongst all.
‘It’s a mix of petrichor and rotting wood. And it’s the faintest scent among everything here. Even if I had stood right next to him, I wouldn’t be able to pick it up. It’s only in this state that I have been able to catch a whiff of it.’
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Since he was lying down, it was hard for him to see who this elf was, and he wasn’t curious enough to risk creating a seed of suspicion in the human soldier’s mind. Thus, he remained immobile.
Once he had observed most of the elven scents, his attention shifted to the food that the human soldier had distributed amongst the elves. The soldier has distributed fruits. And these fruits carried an unmistakable note of decay.
‘They aren’t fresh. He inhaled deeply, dissecting the smell further. These fruits will start rotting in a matter of hours.’
It wasn’t surprising. In fact, it perfectly aligned with the soldier’s behavior so far. It would have been strange for him to suddenly display apathy or pity toward the elves.
Pinaka slowly opened his eyes while lying on the coarse floor. Feeling quite satisfied with the deduced information. However, at this moment, his eyes landed on someone, pulling all his attention to the one elf who had intrigued him the most since his birth —the one hammered into the pillar at the center of the prison.
Pinaka took this moment to observe this elf and his current state in detail.
The Elf had been nailed high up on the pillar, suspended twenty meters above the ground. Embedded in his chest was a fang, radiating an intense, bloody scent.
‘That might be how they’re safely extracting the blood’, Pinaka thought. Blood naturally coagulated upon exposure to air, forming clots to prevent excessive loss. ‘In fiction, Vampires were often depicted as bats, but—if I compare them to fellow bloodsuckers like mosquitoes, then things start to make sense.’
Mosquitoes secreted anticoagulants, preventing blood from clotting as they fed, allowing them to store it in liquid form. Leeches operated in a similar manner, ensuring their meals remained fluid. If the same principle applied here, then the fang embedded in the Elf’s chest wasn’t just an instrument of pain—it was an extraction tool.
‘It’s drawing his blood without letting it coagulate, preserving whatever unique properties it holds.’
He then focused on the scent coming off the elf.
In the next moment, Pinaka froze. The Elf exuded a dense, overwhelming scent—a mix of petrichor and something resembling fresh grass. The moment he inhaled it, an image surfaced in his mind, unbidden yet undeniable.
The World Tree.
Suddenly, something clicked. ‘I understand now.’
On Gangnea, as Mahnaka had explained to him, every Race possessed an Authority—fundamental power unique to their kind. And these Authorities also have physical manifestations, and for the Elven Race, it was the World Tree. These manifestations interacted with their surroundings and generated byproducts known as Relics.
The fruit of the World Tree was one such Relic, born of the Wood Authority. It possessed the ability to regenerate the body of the consumer, ‘But it’s limited to the Elves. And that’s likely why I see the World Tree when I focus on this elf’s scent. They must be force feeding the World Tree’s fruit to this Elf, but why? Wait, this elf is a ‘potion factory’, does that mean the humans are extracting its blood because it now has some regenerative properties of the World Tree’s fruit?’
Mahnaka knew about a total of three Relics—the Elven Race’s, the Human Race's, and the Dwarven Race’s.
Wood Relic of the Elven Race—World Tree Fruit!
Fire Relic of the Human Race—Sun Stone!
The Sun Stone functioned as a fire battery, capable of storing an immense volume of fire. It was with the arrival of the Sun Stones that Humanity’s dominance began.
Pinaka recalled the memories from when he had been conscious within the World Tree—memories of a time when he had witnessed a group of Humans burning the Elven King. In those fragments, he distinctly remembered a pearl-like object in the possession of Humans, using which they unleashed massive fireballs beyond what their natural abilities could have allowed.
Relics were a game-changer, not in just wars but for an individual as well. And as Pinaka inhaled the scent emanating from the Elf nailed to the pillar—a scent rich with the essence which can be most likely of the World Tree Fruit—his understanding sharpened.
‘If my thoughts are correct, the World Tree and its Fruit must hold the secret to level up. Maybe I can reach Level 2 if I get my hands on the World Tree Fruit?’
It was a bold and audacious thought.
‘Is it my hunger?’ Pinaka shook his head, ‘No, it’s my own will.’
The hunger was surely making him delirious, but he quite welcomed it. His current state—on the brink of starvation—was perfect for deciphering the power system and exploiting it to his advantage.
He hadn't eaten a morsel since birth. If things continued like this, it was only a matter of time before hunger consumed him completely. But the moment he ate, the moment he gave in, he would lose his heightened senses and become no different from the other Elves.
‘I might not even feel this sense again, I must take advantage of my current stage. Not like I am going to be fed anytime soon anyway.’
As the Elves finished their meager dinner and began shuffling back to their cells, some cast hesitant glances in his direction. A few wanted to help him but didn’t dare act—the soldier was still nearby, watching.
Pinaka remained sprawled on the floor, unmoving. Taking advantage of the commotion, he focused his eye on the Elf with the strange scent from earlier, tracking his every movement as he disappeared into the crowd.
And then, just before the last of the Elves vanished into their cells, recognition struck him.
His eyes widened.
‘So, it was Zetaka.’
His other neighbour.
…
Gangnea Daily Article #11
Knowledge is power. And On Gangnea, knowledge literally translates into power.