Chapter 53
“Good work.”
As I was about to return carrying the head of the King Walking-Water Deer, Hotulusil appeared from somewhere and spoke. I hurriedly hid the blood-soaked scythe. If he asked me to pay for it, I’d be fucked.
“Yes. Have the others all been dealt with?”
“The Bonodier you caught was the boss. Once they realized their leader was dead, they scattered and fled. It’s a common trait among wild animals.”
“No loyalty? What a bunch of bastards.”
But people aren’t all that different. Hotulusil only showed up now after doing nothing this whole time, too. Maybe this bastard was fundamentally a fuck-elf as well. What the hell did he keep his damn magical ability for, to boil soup?
The fuck-elf said this while looking at the fallen water-deer boss.
“It’s been so long since Bonodiers actually attacked us. Unsettling things have been happening one after another lately. It seems the heavenly energy is in disarray.”
“I see.”
I wasn’t particularly interested in talk about heavenly energy and whatever. Otherworldly divination was less useful than a winter weather forecast for Gangwon Province. Its accuracy was low, and it was full of vague, airy expressions.
I waited for an appropriate moment, then brought up what I wanted to say.
“Mr. Hotulusil? I’m truly sorry after receiving your kindness, but I think I’ll have to return tomorrow after all.”
“Hmm. Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine. But I’m worried about my companion.”
I wanted to visit a temple, if only because of the incident with Frang’s uterus popping out. Besides, I had more or less finished organizing my paper.
This paper was completed faster than any paper in my life. After all, master’s students working in the field who have trouble attaching supporting evidence just make up armchair theories and write their papers.
The university would review it before submitting it to academia, I supposed.
“Understood.”
Hotulusil gave permission surprisingly easily. Honestly, I’d expected him to bitch about why we were leaving. As I felt a little surprised, Hotulusil said,
“I’ll stamp the quest as completed by tomorrow morning. I’ll also note that you killed the Bonodier leader and brought the situation under control early.”
“No, seriously?”
The client himself was going to write that he was satisfied with the quest. That would surely help a lot with promotion too.
“Sweat and blood must be rewarded. The elves of Tatarnia never forget a favor or a grudge.”
“Heh heh. Thank you.”
With a single sentence, Hotulusil went back and forth inside me between fuck-elf and good-elf. It was a somewhat ominous-sounding creed, but it was a belief that benefited me, so I let it slide.
“I’ll give you some time to rest. Wipe off the blood and come find me again.”
Hotulusil said this indifferently.
“I have something to give you.”
***
As instructed, I roughly cleaned my dirty armor and weapons with water from the well. When Frang saw my sword covered in blood, she brought out the maintenance tools.
“Nord. Mr. Hotulusil called for you, right? Leave the weapon maintenance to me and go.”
“Ah, thanks.”
I felt a little sorry to impose on Frang again, but I decided to take her up on the offer.
Blood had splattered into the gaps in my arm guards, and cleaning it took a lot of time. I hurried, since if Hotulusil got tired of waiting, he might not write anything flattering on the quest form.
Tat-tat-tat─.
I hurried over to the hut Hotulusil had told me to come to. As befitted the home of a slave-farm owner, it was hardly a cozy-looking place.
“You came.”
When I entered, Hotulusil, still wearing his straw hat indoors, was waiting for me. He said this while tapping ash from his pipe,
“Take this. It’s a personal reward from me.”
As he said that, he held out a scroll. Unlike the item I’d bought from old man Gentric on the first evening, it was made of fairly high-quality paper.
“Pardon me, but may I ask what it is?”
“It’s how to learn <Summon Cloud>.”
“……You mean it’s a spellbook?”
What came to mind was the magic Hotulusil had used the other day.
The sight of him making clouds appear in the sky and bringing down rain. The amount of mana would be different, so it would be difficult for me to imitate, but a spellbook that could teach me that magic?
Fuck, was this expensive? As I awkwardly held the tightly rolled paper, Hotulusil rose from his chair.
“It isn’t an impressive spell. You can buy it from the Mage Guild if you pay. But it’s very useful for farming.”
“For farming?”
“Because that magic can create rain clouds. Magic is a combination and transformation of formulas, you see.”
Hotulusil pointed at the scroll.
“Adding <Water Creation> to <Summon Cloud> makes a rain cloud, and combining it with <Sleep> makes a <Sleeping Cloud>. Combining formulas like this is the foundation of magic. Once you understand the principles, it isn’t difficult.”
“I heard combining magic was difficult.”
The claim that it wasn’t difficult was fucking bullshit. The reason advanced magic was considered difficult wasn’t just that specialized textbooks and equations included runic script; factors like that played a part too.
Low-level magic was at the level of basic arithmetic, but advanced magic in the more difficult stages required strong calculation skills and memorization.
“That’s true for magic that uses incantations. But simple magic activated with short incantations is easy to combine too. You’ll understand once you try.”
“Um…… I understand for now. But why are you giving this to me? Do you want me to try using it for farming?”
“Yes. I hope you’ll try growing even a small vegetable patch. You learned <Water Creation> from your companion, after all. Try it out, and if you become interested in farming, come to our farm.”
It was something like a recruitment offer. But more than the offer itself, I was bothered by the fact implied by Hotulusil’s words.
“Wait a moment. Don’t tell me you were secretly eavesdropping on us?”
I had learned Water Creation on our first night. Was this gay bastard targeting me from the very first night, hiding around our tent? When I openly showed my disgust, Hotulusil, unusually, slightly frowned.
“Don’t be foolish. I happened to hear it. An elf of Tatarnia can catch sounds from a thousand li away.”
Fuck, was that possible? He wasn’t a desert hare. Was he lying?
Maybe the disbelief showed on my face, because the straw-hatted Somus added a few more words.
“Just as you, being from Mongolia, have good eyesight, I can easily hear disturbances occurring around this hut. I merely heard the conversation you had with your companion.”
Another place name I was hearing for the first time. The bastard’s mouth had never once produced the word Kitai, yet the name of some unheard-of country rolled off his tongue smoothly.
Could information about Kitai be slow to reach the Britannian sphere? Maybe, since they treated it as the New World, he wasn’t interested in that culture and kept using its old country name. Like how the etymology of Korea is ‘Goryeo.’
But more importantly, I’m not from there. Stop mistaking me for one.
“Farming gives life a sense of purpose. Perhaps because we’re both peoples of the wilderness, I find myself wanting to recommend it to you as well.”
As he said this, Hotulusil took off his straw hat.
‘……Fuck?’
At the sight of the crown of his head revealed beneath the sunlight shining in, I braced my stomach and carefully controlled my facial muscles.
──This straw-hat fuck-elf had no hair on the crown of his head.
─Whoosh.
Despite his flowing blond hair, a gleaming white scalp showed around the crown in a five-centimeter radius, just like a fucking queue hairstyle.
‘No, fuck, was that why you wore the hat?’
Fuck, who told you to get a Brazilian wax on your head, huh?
Without noticing my desperate efforts to control my facial muscles, the queue-haired bastard casually looked out at the wheat field.
“Maybe even we elves of Tatarnia, who chose to live in the wilderness… perhaps we unknowingly miss the plants of our homeland.”
“I…… see.”
No. What you miss isn’t the plants of your homeland; it’s the hair follicles on your scalp.
“Well, never mind. Go on and get back to work. The corpses scattered across the field should be mostly cleaned up by now.”
The elf of Alopecia put his straw hat back on and spoke. I merely nodded with an impassive face and fled outside.
That damn blond middle-part sinkhole bald bastard. Why the hell did he reveal his baldness in the middle of a serious conversation? It came out of nowhere, and I nearly died trying not to laugh.
I’m saying it again: elves as a race were utterly impossible to understand.
***
We returned to Sargadis on the fifth day.
Without detouring, we went straight to the guild and collected our quest payment.
“Here’s 20 coppers for four days of work.”
Charr-r-r─.
The 20 coppers went into our pockets. Both Frang and I filled the wallets we’d brought until they felt satisfyingly heavy.
If metal currency in this world had one unique advantage, it was that its weight gave greater psychological satisfaction than banknotes when you had a lot of money.
Though four days’ wages amounted to only 200,000 won, so it wasn’t exactly well-paid.
“And Ms. Aetrinen, Mr. Nord. In honor of the success of this quest, you’ve both fulfilled the eligibility requirements to take the Bronze promotion exam.”
“Promotion!”
Frang reacted to the female receptionist’s words. Honestly, I’d been secretly expecting this, so I wasn’t surprised. I was happy, though.
“We both met the requirements at the same time?”
Frang asked, her eyes shining. My girlfriend was the type to take a subtle interest in, or perhaps feel a sense of romance about, little things like this.
“Ms. Aetrinen’s total record is a little higher. However, Mr. Nord’s capture of the Bonodier leader in this quest was highly regarded. Thanks to that, both of you reached the required performance score.”
“Wow! Nord, did you hear?! They’re counting the Bonodier you caught toward your record!”
Frang jumped up and down in delight at the receptionist’s words. I nodded while holding back a laugh.
“I heard. We got lucky. Looks like we can take the Bronze Class promotion exam together too.”
“Oh, that’s right!”
Frang clasped her hands in joy, not knowing what to do with herself. She was so cute. I wanted to hug her tightly, but held back because people were watching.
Anyway, although I pretended to be calm, I was fucking delighted inside too.
Do you know when people feel happiest and most joyful? It’s when, in a situation where anyone would obviously be happy, someone beside them is just as happy as they are.
It was exactly like when I received the university acceptance email and told my parents. As I shared my happiness with Frang, the receptionist said,
“Before that, would you like to undergo a pressure-stone test?”
“Yes. Let’s do it.”
A pressure stone. A pebble that changed color according to the force applied to it. It had been less than a month since I first held one after arriving in Sargadis, and I was already strong enough to advance to the next stage. I accepted the black pebble with mixed feelings.
Squeeze─.
Focusing on the mana inside my body, I gripped it hard. After a while, I opened my palm, and the pressure stone had turned blue.
“Oh.”
So having mana really made a big difference. Last time, it had been indigo.
“This is…?”
The receptionist rifled through the documents and paused to choose her words as she looked at the pressure stone’s color. She didn’t look terribly surprised, but she seemed perplexed.
“…Mr. Nord. Your result was indigo during the last test, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. I was.”
“It’s been just over a fortnight, and you’ve already changed to the next color? Did you happen to awaken mana recently?”
“That’s right. I obtained it by chance.”
I got it thanks to Beast Regression. There are many mysteries, but they say it has no side effects, so this was one area where it benefited me.
“I-I see. That’s an astonishing rate of growth.”
“Thank you. But is there some problem?”
At my question, the receptionist looked around and spoke quietly.
“Starting with blue, you’re at the upper Bronze level. Your last test showed indigo, which is the requirement for Bronze promotion, so that’s why this came up now. I was only briefly surprised by how quickly you’ve grown.”
“Ah, I see.”
So they judged people by the pressure stone’s color too. That made sense. They even went so far as to rub a dye-coated stone on adventurer plates.
But my unenhanced body was at the upper Bronze level. Looking back, I’d even chopped off the head of the King Walking-Water Deer without Beast Regression, so I guess my normal physical abilities were pretty high too.
“Can I try too?”
“Huh? Oh, of course.”
Frang, intrigued, gripped the pressure stone.
Squeeze─.
The result was blue, of all things. It was even brighter than mine.
“Oh! It’s brighter than last time!”
Frang looked delighted by the surprising result too.
Wait, though—‘than last time’?
“Frang, you were blue last time too?”
“That’s right! It was still almost indigo, but now it’s completely blue. Hehe. Maybe I’ve gotten a little stronger traveling with you, Nord?”
Her smile was as cute and lovely as always, but my pride was quietly wounded. No matter how different our base racial stats were, if I was weaker than my girlfriend, the name of Nord, the otherworldly macho man, would weep.
“Ah, Ms. Receptionist. By the way, what exactly is the promotion exam?”
So I changed the subject while taking the pressure stone from Frang. I asked something that wouldn’t sound strange, while moving my hand below the counter where the receptionist couldn’t see it.
‘Beast Regression ON.’
Shwaaak─.
The secret of Beast Regression that I’d gained from fighting the King Walking-Water Deer.
A short-duration, no-incantation spell activated, concentrating solely in my right hand. Frang noticed what I was doing and giggled.
Squeeze─.
I gripped it hard, then dispelled the magic and opened my hand. Just how much strength did I have while Beast Regression was active?
Drumroll! Ta-da!
Yellow!
It was the color of the Yellow Monkey race—the yellow race.