While Emily was fully enjoying her prey and playing with it, Nikol quickly went to meet other girls to check on them and assure they are safe.
Even though he was confident about them, didn't mean he had no worries. It was a familiar feeling for Nikol as he felt like this for his sister almost every day when they used to live together.
"Lydia, Is everyone ok?" Shouting from far away, Nikol reached the place where everyone was staying, they looked rather happy for some reason as most of them had smiles on their faces.
He quickly took a look to see what was happening only to see some small girls hugging elves tightly like they were craving warmth and love. It was a heartwarming scene to look at, so he got close to take a good look.
"These are-"
"They are the kids who went missing, I'm really glad we were able to rescue them," Zenda showed the best wholesome and beautiful face, she had in their entire trip looking at her elven children tightly holding others.
"Me too, I'm glad they are ok," Nikol thought this will be over the moment they rescued these kids but unexpectedly, Zenda dropped another bomb.
"Some of them are not here, what happened to others?"
Their happiness didn't last long as Zenda quickly went to meet the rescued kids to take the information.
She quickly questioned them only to hear some bad news. According to them, the dark elves took some of their friends and went away and they never came back.
"Zenda!"
Nikol noticed Zenda's face. It was dark, and the smile she had on her face disappeared rather fast as she couldn't be happy, when even if one of their kids got injured.
"I'm ok, let's just search for them," With renewed motivation, she quickly took some more information from the elven kids but they soon heard Alva's freaked-out voice.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhh~" Her voice vibrated throughout the camp like an echo making everyone flinch as soon as they hear it.
Nikol and Zenda both quickly ran in her direction thinking she got attacked by someone. It wasn't hard for them to find her as they followed her voice.
"It came from this room, right?" Entering the creepy-looking wooden building, Zenda questioned as she tried to find the source.
"Yeah, be careful when opening the door," Nikol didn't want to walk into a trap, so he decided to be extra cautious. He was worried about Alva but he knew if he went down by a silly mistake, it won't be good for anyone.
*Bamm
Zenda pushed the door after analyzing it for a bit to see whether it was a trap. After confirming that it wasn't both of them entered the room where Lydia and Alva were standing but soon their eyes went in a totally different direction.
"What the" Upon laying her eyes on the shocking scene in front of them, Zenda's body went numb.
Nikol wasn't any different as he looked at it with disgust and sadness.
In front of them, there were a lot of dead bodies but almost all of them missed something. Some didn't have heads making them look like creepy dolls and some lacked legs or hands.
"These are dark elves," Getting a little close to dead bodies, he carefully looked at them. He noticed some unusual-looking black lines in their body but he decided to ignore them for now as these bodies are too much of a mystery to them.
"Why would they kill their own race?" Nikol was confused. Alva quickly recovered from her initial shock and joined Nikol.
"Well, they are vile creatures, so I don't think it's that strange,"
Still, they couldn't believe what they were seeing. It would at least make sense if these were not dark elves but now they were confused.
"Wait!" Zenda suddenly shouted as she got close to the corpses.
Nikol and the others were confused but when they saw the shock in Zenda's eyes, they knew this isn't something good.
"Zenda, what happened?" Lydia felt uneasy seeing all this, she wanted to leave this room as soon as she can but, she waited for Nikol.
"These are-" Zenda's voice started to tremble like a vibrating tuning fork showing how affected she was by this incident. This was the first time Nikol actually saw the horror in Zenda's eyes.
Suddenly Zenda closed her mouth like she was trying to vomit and ran out of the room. Worried about her, Nikol and others also followed her.
Emily also joined them as she saw Zenda vomiting outside the building. She quickly joined Nikol with a worried face.
"What happened?" Emily questioned Alva but she also had no idea what was happening.
"I don't know, there are some messed up dead bodies of dark elves inside the room, as soon as Zenda saw them she started to act different,"
Nodding at Emily confirming Alva's words, Nikol slowly reached and helped Zenda as he started to pat her back supporting her to calm down.
"Zenda, calm down," He waited a little bit, Nikol was worried about this sequence of events. He knew if something can freak out the almighty commander of the elven race, it can't be something good.
She quickly took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment, but when she opened her eyes, she said the most confusing words.
"They are elves,"
"What?" Everyone except Emily shouted in surprise. Since Emily didn't see anything, she had no idea what was happening even tho Nikol and Alva explained things to her.
"What do you mean by that? How can they be elves with that black skin?" Lydia was the one to question her unbelievable words.
"I don't know, I know some of those girls, I'm not mistaken, they are elves, believe me," Desperation in her voice was apparent enough for everyone to believe her, but still this information was too insane and absurd.
Other elves also gathered around them with worried faces, seeing their commander's strange look.
"Nikol, I found this inside that room, have a look at it," Emily who entered the room to see what they are talking about, came back with a piece of paper which looked like it was a treasure map but not because of it having a map or anything, It looked so dirty that Nikol actually hesitated to touch it.
"What's this?" Lydia and Alva also peeked to see what it was about.
"From Duchess of Iblis," Lydia read the header of the letter written in rather rough handwriting.
"I don't know how to read this, even though I can speak without no problem with you guys, I don't know how to read these letters," Nikol tried to take lessons from Usha but, it was too hard for him to learn it.
"I can understand, when I was small even I had a hard time learning these things, you will get there don't worry," Alva motivated him but all of them knew this wasn't the time for their wholesome moments.
"This is from one of the cursed duchesses we hear so much about,"
"What does it say?" Zenda also joined the discussion. She knew being sad forever won't do anything for the victims or the people that are depending on her.
"Let me see, 15 transformations send immediately, kids or adults," Everyone showed a confused face hearing the content of the letter.
"That's what it says," Lydia also finished reading it as she passed it to Zenda.
"Transformations? Kids?"
Everyone went silent for a minute as all of them looked like they had something to say but they were rather reluctant to do it.
"Isn't this about kidnapped kids? But what is transformation?"
"Those dead bodies, they were dark elves' dead bodies but I know some of their faces as they used to be elves," Zenda answered Alva's question.
"Does that mean?"
"Yeah, they are doing something to kidnap kids and transform them into dark elves," Zenda felt angry and frustrated. She was about to explode as she realised the evil and vile work of these dark elves but she didn't want to go berserk and ruin everything for everyone.
"This is too evil,"
"I guess it must be the work of this cursed magic," Nikol assumed as it was the only thing that came into his mind, that can do something this disgusting.
"I won't forgive them, they didn't only kidnap our girls but they dismembered and played with their bodies," Zenda said in a whispering tone. Nikol didn't even try to comfort her this time as he knew nothing he can say will make things right. Instead, the only thing he can do is find these dark elves and smash their heads like watermelons.
Still, he was a little worried about Zenda's mental state as she started to whisper like a mad woman.
"We can get more information from their commander, but-" Lydia quickly glanced at the wooden pole which was guarded by many elves.
"It doesn't look like we can question her anymore, she's gone insane," All of them felt weird seeing Lora laughing. No one, not even the humans who knew the taste of Nikol's extraordinary package could guess how a tree branch would feel great inside their precious place.
"To enjoy being penetrated by a tree, she's really disgusting and a hopeless pervert,"
"Then our only option is that two captured dark elves,"
Zenda nodded her head as she decided to go back instead of staying in the camp. She determined to come another time to take all the dead bodies since she must give a proper burial to her kin even though they went through a transformation.
As soon as everyone got ready to leave, they suddenly heard the sound of swords clashing indicating a fight was happening nearby.
Worried about other elves they quickly went to support them thinking they are under attack only to see a single dark elf fighting with so many elves at the same time. What surprised them most is her movements which looked more fluid and agile than anything they saw from normal dark elves.
'A dark elf? but she looks a little different for some reason'
Thinking about how to deal with this problem, Nikol approached the area where the battle was happening.