Elena had been abandoned.  
It wasn’t that she was labeled a failure in her father’s heart.  
She was truly abandoned by him.  
By the elves.  
She was cast out of the forest and stripped of her status as the chief’s daughter, reduced to a mere slave.  
Her father had forsaken her.  
The elven chief had abandoned her.  

Her body bore scars, cuts, and lash marks. Shackles bound her wrists and ankles, and a collar was locked firmly around her neck.  
These shackles were so solid and relentless that escape felt impossible; no solution came to her mind.  
Her father, who threw her out, had conspired with the high-ranking humans in the nearby village to sell her off.  
Elena remembered her father’s last words to her with chilling clarity:  

"You wanted to leave? Fine, go and crawl outside like the dog you are. You’re no longer an elf, not my daughter, and certainly no longer of this forest.”  

With those words, her father turned and walked away, ignoring her as humans approached to cage her like an animal.  
Elena longed for him to look at her, even if only once. If he’d shown her any affection, how much of a difference it could have made. Yet there she was, remembering a memory that never existed, broken beyond repair.  

Her dreams shattered before her eyes as she was ogled by humans who assessed her, lifted her shackled frame, and took her somewhere—to a square, where they placed her on display.  
Holding up a board with words only humans could understand, they read off her gender, age, race, and origin one by one, coldly calculating a price for her body.  
The writing on the board was certainly numbers. Though she didn’t fully grasp the concept, Elena recognized it as currency.  

The middle-aged man who’d been leading her along stepped back, allowing others to approach.  
Men and even some women lifted their boards, bidding, their gazes far from clean.  

It was vile and disgusting, more revolting than the elves or even her father.  
The stories her friends in the forest had told her about humans—were they all lies? How dirty, nauseating, and hideous they seemed.  
No words besides “vile” and “disgusting” came to her mind. Nothing else could describe their lecherous smiles.  

“… Disgusting…”  

In that moment, Elena’s light faded.  
Her eyes, which had once sparkled with hope, grew dull and lifeless, as if sinking into an abyss from which they would never again shine.  

She hated her father for bringing her to this hell.  
She hated the humans—their leering smiles, their lustful eyes evaluating her as a mere object for their desires.  

Elena hung her head, her once-bright gaze now downcast as she looked at the people before her—so different from what she had imagined.  
They ogled her, even arousing themselves as they appraised her, with her value quickly climbing from hundreds to thousands, then tens of thousands.  
Those who couldn’t keep up with the escalating bids sighed in disappointment and slumped back into their seats.  

With each rise in her price, a part of her soul died.  
Would she be sold and used as some human’s toy? Or perhaps a sex slave?  
She had heard humans’ lust was stronger than that of other races. They were said to surpass even succubi in their lustfulness, with at least twenty out of every hundred humans capable of surpassing a succubus in perversion.  

Such thoughts made Elena feel all the more humiliated and disgusted.  
She resigned herself to her fate, lowering her shackled arms as she watched the grotesque, bearded men raise her price, eager to possess her.  
She bent forward, her head bowing so low it nearly touched the ground, as if she could collapse at any moment.  
Her legs trembled, weak and unsteady.  

Then, suddenly—  

*Crash!*  

A loud shattering sound echoed.  
Elena, too drained to even turn her head, remained slumped, lifeless.  

The people around her, however, could not hide their shock, stumbling backward as they pushed at the air, eyes wide with terror.  

“Haa…”  

A voice rang out, deep and rough, almost coarse for a man, yet somehow carrying a certain dignity.  
But the tone and demeanor were unmistakable—swaggering and arrogant, as though the speaker cared little for appearances.  

“What the hell’s going on here?”  

A young man, dressed like some third-rate thug, appeared, scratching the back of his head in a careless posture, his leg propped up arrogantly.  
Slowly, Elena lifted her head.  
As she did, the crowd, cowering in fear, desperately tried to bow their heads in submission.  

A thick, dark mist swirled around the stranger, a dense aura suffocating the air, yet the people seemed too terrified to recognize the source of the oppression as they bowed, desperate to avoid his wrath.  

Elena’s eyes, dull and lifeless, took in the figure of a young man with striking beauty.  
Even compared to the elven men she’d grown up with, he was exceptionally handsome, with an air of natural elegance.  

Though his actions were strange, Elena was too broken to care.  
Her deadened eyes gazed at the half-demon who exuded a sinister aura.  

Noticing her stare, the young man—Keyal—tilted his head, a curious expression crossing his face.  

Elena simply looked at the handsome man before her, who returned her gaze without doing anything else.  
A faint, almost imperceptible smile lifted her lips.  
For the first time, she felt a flicker of gratitude toward someone.  

Why?  

Because he was looking at her—just as she was.  
With no change in his expression, he cocked his head in curiosity at her smile, raising an eyebrow slightly.  

At the very least, he saw her as a person.  
Without any depravity in his gaze, he simply looked at her as another living being, no different from himself.  
And that brought a spark of joy to Elena, whose heart and soul had already been broken. Even if just for a moment, she felt thankful to him.  

Unlike the vile parents who had used and dirtied her for their own satisfaction, treating her as a mere puppet—  
He had shown her none of the same hideous intentions.  
He was the only one in this place who saw her as a person.  

Scarred and chained, her wrists and ankles bound in metal, with a collar that seemed impossible to ever remove,  
She had been a pitiable elf, bound to endure the filthy, perverted gazes of the onlookers before this man had arrived.  

The young man’s gaze grew serious.  
It seemed he, too, recognized her plight, the cruel fate forced upon her.  

He turned his gaze, looking at the humans who, in a desperate bid to survive, now tried to flee or kowtow in submission.  
He regarded them with the same disgust Elena had felt.  

The mist around him thickened, creating a swirling vortex so fierce it seemed to tear apart everything nearby.  

“You filthy bastards. Even if this is just a game…”  

His powerful voice deepened.  

“In my eyes, you’re not even human.”  

Grinding his teeth, he began to unleash his rage in Elena’s place.  

Some of the onlookers, weeping and groveling, even tried standing on their heads to plead for mercy.  
But such actions didn’t faze the man.  

With a chilling, quiet voice, he spoke each word of his wrath, his presence so overwhelming that they couldn’t move, simply waiting for the storm to consume them.  

The first to die were those who dared to insult him, who intended to spew vile words at the man filled with furious rage.  
Their necks snapped, their flesh sliced, bones shattered, and organs shredded as the thick mist whipped around them like deadly blades.  

Elena, the poor elven girl, simply watched.  
She had no idea that this man, who raged on her behalf, was about to completely change the fate she had resigned herself to as a mere human’s plaything.  

A faint glimmer trickled down her once-dull eyes.  
The light of the elf’s hope—long lost and impossible to recover—was beginning to return.