Martial Elf

“Huuh…”

Breathing heavily, I exhaled.

As I concluded the Great Heavenly Art, the consciousness that had been observing within began to spread outwards again.

Feeling the universe within me become more solid, my half-opened eyes received light, engraving the starlight of the night sky onto my retina.

I successfully completed the first half of the Arayagong (阿賴耶功) I had woven for myself.

The reason for making only the first half was simple.

Having seen too many types of martial arts in my previous life, I couldn’t decide what kind of inner strength I wanted in the future.

Therefore, based on a type of vitality technique similar to the colorless, odorless Samjaeshinbeop, I focused solely on the purity of energy, nurturing my body and inner strength.

I also made adjustments for a breath technique that considered only sitting meditation, which was not something low-level martial arts usually took into account, and created a supplement that enabled Small Heavenly and Great Heavenly Arts.

So that there would be no problems later, no matter what I built up.

“Surely, the Great Heavenly Art isn’t bad, but it doesn’t give the refreshing feeling of the Great Heavenly Art.”

Releasing the lotus position that I had been maintaining since birth, I stood up and looked down.

It had been ten years since the embarrassing day of the Elves’ birth, a day I wished time would stop.

According to the will of the Earth Mother, the World Tree (which I agreed to call my mother), all Elves, including Araya and the first seven Elves born from the leaves, prepared to fulfill their roles as coordinators.

Demis promptly named himself and his brothers as High Elves and labeled the Elves born from the leaves as Leaf Elves.

And preparations to build the history of the Elves within the realm of the World Tree were underway.

Without a doubt, Demis and the brothers of the High Elves were competent.

As a result, at least within the realm of the World Tree, the Elves achieved accomplishments worthy of being called the starting point of civilization.

Villages had been established around the roots of the World Tree.

After Sarus created the measuring system, the precision of construction through design also improved.

This created various residences, and it became clear that in certain forested areas, houses existed even in the trees.

In the past ten years, the Elves had formed communities in various forest areas beyond the territory protected by the roots of the World Tree, coordinating the ecosystem.

‘If I compare it to the history of the Central Plains, is the current situation akin to the era of Fuxi or Nuwa, after the era of Pangu, in the time of the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors?’

While there might be other human races, at least for this species called “Elf,” the High Elves were a foundational existence.

‘A new life began quite grandly from the start.’

However, possessing such outstanding advantages didn’t mean everything was easy.

The problem, as you might expect, was that the Elves had nothing.

This species was newly created in this world by the World Tree.

In a state where there was no knowledge, history, foundation, or discipline, unlike Araya in my previous life, I wasn’t to correctly inherit the foundations laid by previous sages but had to create the very first history and culture of the Elves from scratch.

What the Elves had was just a solid and sturdy body.

‘No, can I even call it just a body?’

When viewed purely, this Elf species was astonishing in its basic physical performance compared to the universal humans of my previous life.

While not perfect, they entered a realm similar to the “Unmatchable” state spoken of in the martial world.

Specifically, it seemed to be less affected by external environmental factors.

Additionally, their limbs were long, and their muscles were agile and elastic.

Their joints were flexible, giving them a wide range of motion, and if I compared them with the representatives from that era who came to consult with me in my previous life as a masterless expert, they had potential that was by no means lacking.

Even more surprising was their sensitivity to energy.

Generally, in the martial arts world, talented children quickly learned to feel energy through an aura of enlightenment, which typically took about one to two weeks.

But Elves could naturally feel energy right from birth.

Unlike in the Central Plains, where I couldn’t properly feel energy due to severed meridians, I could feel the atmospheric energy as dense as the humid air during the monsoon season if I wished to.

Moreover, the first High Elves, including myself, even had unique eyes.

Although energy exists, it was fundamentally weak.

In order to visualize energy as a mirage in someone else’s eyes, it had to be condensed into a form of considerable density.

However, my brothers and I could easily see the energy floating in the air if we wanted to.

‘Really, just to live a long life with a healthy body is enough, but I truly received an overwhelmingly excellent body.’

With such different racial characteristics, our human structure wasn’t the same as before, but that wasn’t a significant hindrance for me.

The energy flowing within me was so dense that I could vividly feel the pathways through which the energy circulated.

In practice, handling energy was almost simultaneous with feeling it.

In the martial world, they would compare my talent to legendary figures like Bodhidharma or Zhang Sanfeng.

I had founded many martial arts as a masterless expert, but I had no martial arts I could use for myself, only giving away techniques to others.

However, now I could execute every inspiration and idea regarding martial arts that I thought of for myself.

Of course, the price for this new life wasn’t small.

I had to face this world with nothing.

Currently, the Elves’ realm had significant safety within the territory of Prigion, but everything else posed problems.

The first issue was clothing.

Now, we had animal fur and leather, and after wandering the world for ten years, we had found crops similar to the mana cotton of my previous life to start establishing a rough clothing system.

But when the High Elves first received names from our mother, we had nothing, not even a single piece of clothing.

With memories of my previous life, even though the Elves were born naked, they didn’t consider it a natural state.

The desire to cover their modesty existed in both genders.

The problem was that there were initially no suitable materials to conceal themselves.

We had no tools to make clothes, nor any fibers to use for sewing.

When Araya temporarily wove leaves to cover our modesty, the other Elves began to follow suit.

After that, the issue was food.

Given our birth circumstances, I wondered whether we would need to eat at all, but that wasn’t the case.

While immortals can sustain their existence on Qi alone, no matter how high the energy sensitivity of the Elves was, they were not beings that existed at that level.

Nevertheless, it was true that great masters could last on only small amounts of food like wall rice, and I thought that the energy-sensitive Elves ate significantly less compared to those of the Central Plains, but we still required a certain amount of food.

When we ventured out to the forests blessed directly by the World Tree to find food, we first truly experienced this world.

As expected of a world filled with the energies of heaven and earth, there were enormous, powerful, and fast threats lurking everywhere in the form of formidable flora and fauna.

Everything embodied the primal nature where size held value.

Moreover, although they couldn’t compare with my mother, there were also spiritual beings that deviated from ordinary rules of life.

Among them, there were those who posed significant danger to us as they were not friendly towards Elves.

‘It was indeed perilous.’

While the Elves were an exceptionally potent species, most were in the forms of adults, yet if you looked deeper inside, they still had nothing.

If they were to be compared to a military force, they would be a ragtag army with good equipment but lacking in skill.

According to my mother, Elves are generally too few in number to thrive, so we couldn’t afford to lose from the start.

Thus, initially, the food sourcing fell to me and Palas to take responsibility for all the Elves.

The first encounters of life and death.

Since we were part of the forest, survival was a battle.

It was also during this time that we created techniques not for human combat but to hunt great beasts.

Later, I attempted to pass down this technique to the Leaf Elves, but seemingly because it relied too heavily on practical and instinctual aspects, no one could learn it properly.

Thus, I had to create a separate technique for transmission, which was somewhat troublesome, but I was happier about it.

In the myths of the Central Plains, if Shennong conveyed fire and pharmacology to humanity, perhaps I would be remembered here as the one who imparted the first martial arts to the Elves.

As I contemplated that perhaps in some distant future, the name Araya might remain as the name of a great sage beyond the stature of Bodhidharma and Zhang Sanfeng, my heart fluttered.

“Mother, are you awake?”

I murmured to the night sky, knowing well that my mother could hear me.

“I am awake, Araya.”

The same warm feeling from when we first met was carried through my mother’s essence.

The difference from that time was that there was a softness, reminiscent of the relationship between a human mother and child, rather than a rigid conversation between a deity and its creation.

It may be childlike yearning for maternal affection that I lacked in my previous life, but during these one-on-one encounters, my mother treated me comfortably.

“It’s been ten years since then.”

“Indeed.”

“The village created by Demis and my siblings is gradually expanding, and if those I can feel within my territory are all there are, then there are no longer any threats from skilled Elves nearby.”

Elven energy sensitivity was originally high, and while High Elves were even more so, in my case, when combined with martial arts, I may be pushing it to say, it had been trained to an entirely different level, which continues to grow steadily.

At this point, if I wished to sense any existence about four Ron Elte (km) ahead using the standard measurement system created by Sarus, I could.

In terms of diameter, it would be just under 8 Ron Elte (8 km), right?

Perhaps I alone can fully sense our mother’s being, including all the High Elves.

This conclusion was drawn from ten years of exploring every realm.

If I were to describe it with the senses of my human life, the Elves had effectively ‘conquered’ forests spanning hundreds of Ron Elte.

Accepting the silence positively, I continued speaking.

“The beings that excessively disrupt the balance of the ecosystem have already been controlled to a certain extent by Palas and me a few years ago, and those who have learned the techniques I created are gradually increasing their areas of management on their own… New children are being born as well.”

The Elves, initially born from my mother, now were capable of giving birth to life independently.

Just like ordinary humans from my previous life.

“Moreover, the magical abilities that Sarus has organized are now providing sufficient power to our Elves.”

“My strength is no longer an essential element. Therefore…”

I slowly raised my finger, pointing beyond the forest.

“I wish to see another world.”

The new life I acquired was refreshing every day.

Living a life that relied on others, where I couldn’t survive without help—those days of shedding tears over recurring pain without narcotic herbs.

In contrast, the current life may be less than half of my previous existence, yet it has arrived with a density more than tenfold, even a hundredfold.

Above all, the power that my mother created and refined gave freedom to all my actions.

Not as a coordinator Elf, but as a human from my past life, or perhaps due to lingering feelings from that life, desire kept growing.

I wanted to see and feel more of the world.

And I wanted to show the world the power I had honed.

Having finished speaking, I looked up at my mother’s towering form, staying there for a while.

My mother’s essence was conveyed to me.

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