The Six Kings who ruled the Great Forest.
Among them, the Elven race under the Forest King held a small but established nation spanning the southeastern to central reaches of the Great Forest.
Its name was the Ethereas Mage Kingdom.
Protected to the south by the Bleached Bone Swamp and to the north by the Crystal Valley, and commanding a formidable knight order besides, this nation was genuinely impregnable.
Through the fierce power struggles that raged among the Six Kings, it had maintained a long and peaceful equilibrium.
And yet——
“Wh-what is that……!?”
The observation post built along the Bleached Bone Swamp.
One of the soldiers keeping watch over the wetlands had spotted a peculiar group.
At the front marched what appeared to be armored giants.
They each carried an equally enormous shovel, drawing gravel from carts trailing behind them and filling in the wetland, section by section.
Behind them, a massive wheeled vehicle appeared and packed down the filled-in ground.
What they were doing was anyone’s guess — but something unusual was happening, that much was clear.
“H-hey! Wake up, there’s something strange out here!”
“……What?”
The lookout immediately roused the other soldiers who had been resting.
The others were slow to respond to the sudden alarm, but quickly noticed the strange sight before them and startled.
“What is that?”
“Goblin engineering corps……?”
Lately, goblin activity under the Goblin King had been intensifying.
Rumor had it that one of the Goblin Lords had been defeated by Kobolds.
It was hard to believe at first, but they’d probably been lured into some kind of trap.
The Elves’ assessment of the Kobolds was that while they were no match for Goblins in brute strength, they outstripped them in cunning.
The goblins, stirred up over who would succeed the fallen Lord, were consequently in a belligerent state.
Some of them had been crossing the Bleached Bone Swamp and intruding on Elven territory.
The aim was to capture Elves and present them to the king, earning themselves a little more standing.
Not that such petty scheming from such simple-minded goblins ever amounted to anything but getting scattered by the Elves — but.
“Those giants……could they be Orcs? Has it come to pigs and goblins working together at last?”
“The size is similar, but the build is wrong. And those two hate each other.”
“They do both share a passion for Elven women, disgusting as that is. Their interests do align there.”
“Maybe — but they’re too stupid to actually cooperate.”
The Elves debated back and forth in front of the strange unknown group.
While they argued, the unidentified party continued closing the distance steadily.
“Let’s establish who they are first, then report.”
“Right. ……Invisible!”
They immediately stepped out of the post and activated the spell.
Their forms dissolved into the surrounding scenery, lost in the mist.
——Mid-tier light magic: Invisible.
A rare spell that bends light to conceal its caster.
It didn’t make them perfectly transparent, but this was the Bleached Bone Swamp, perpetually veiled in fog.
Unless someone already knew they were there and looked with great care, they wouldn’t be found.
As long as they made no sound, they’d be safe……or so they thought.
“……There is a heat source.”
It happened just as the giants passed and a peculiar self-propelled vehicle came into view.
A cool female voice rang out, and the vehicle came to a stop.
An ornately decorated door swung open, and a woman stepped out from inside.
——Beautiful.
She stepped down soundlessly into the wetland, her skirt spreading softly around her.
From her features she appeared to be human, but she was beautiful enough to hold the Elves rapt.
Black hair flowing with a silken sheen, crimson eyes, skin like white porcelain.
And above all, features of an otherworldly perfection.
A face composed entirely of the golden ratio — her mere presence in that spot was a work of art.
“Elves, I believe? Come out.”
Either the light magic wasn’t working on her, or she simply didn’t need it.
The woman fixed her gaze on where the Elves were and called out clearly.
But the Elves held their position, waiting to learn a little more about her.
“I’ll say it once more. Come out. I know you are there.”
Wanting to make clear she had confirmed their location, the woman raised her hand and pointed directly at them without wavering.
With that, slipping away was no longer a realistic option.
The Elves had no choice but to release the spell and reveal themselves.
“……Who are you? Why have you come here?”
“I am Makina, attendant to the great Master Viktor. As for why we have come — I will let Master explain in his own words.”
The woman who had called herself Makina gave an elegant bow and directed her gaze to the vehicle.
A man stepped out from inside.
Somewhere in his early twenties, by the look of him.
Neatly dressed, but — in stark contrast to the woman whose beauty was almost alarming — he was a person of rather unremarkable presence.
If they hadn’t been told in advance he was the master, they might easily have assumed the woman was.
“Nice to meet you. My name is Viktor — the lord of Isvall, the city just ahead.”
Viktor, who would later bring great change to the history of the Great Forest.
And Isvall, the city built by his golems.
It was the moment both names appeared on the stage of history for the first time.