The Shitty Elf and the Shitty Dwarf (4)

"The Six-Star Team, White Lake, guarantees Eisa-sama's identity and will also pay the entrance fee."

Airena, an elven woman, told the guard this and began handling some sort of paperwork.

As I gazed absently at her retreating figure, a human man and woman who seemed to be her companions came to stand beside me and explained what six stars meant.

Apparently, adventurers had ranks ranging from one star, for beginners, to seven stars, the highest rank, and these people were a team made up of six-star adventurers, the second-highest rank.

There were only a few seven-star adventurers in the entire country, and apparently these people were the highest-ranking adventurers in the town of Vistcoat.

In other words, yes, it was a boast.

Since they seemed pretty impressive, I clapped for them anyway.

However, I had no idea how many adventurers there were in this town, so I had no clue just how impressive they really were.

Airena's female companion gave a wry smile, but the man still looked somewhat pleased, so I decided to let it go.

I was more curious about where the name White Lake came from than about the six-star rank, but it no longer seemed like the right time to ask.

Eventually, the paperwork seemed to be finished, and the guard from earlier beckoned me over.

"Hey, you. Good for you. You can enter the town as you wished. But this person is acting as your guarantor, so be careful. If you cause trouble in town, your guarantor will be held responsible too."

He explained the rules I needed to follow while in town.

Most of them were perfectly obvious things, such as not stealing or drawing a weapon in the street except in self-defense.

The only thing I really needed to watch out for was that people without citizenship had to pay a tax for their stay at the town office if they remained in town for a week or longer.

Although drawing weapons in the streets was prohibited, it was allowed in special places such as weapon shops and the Adventurer's Guild, or in private places like one's room at an inn.

After all, if you couldn't draw a weapon in your own room, you wouldn't be able to maintain it, so that was only natural.

"Now, write your name in the ledger here. ... Eisa, huh? I'm Rodner, a town guard. If you run into trouble, come talk to me. All right, then, Eisa, welcome to the town of Vistcoat."

When I wrote my name in the ledger he handed me, the guard, Rodner, smiled and patted me on the shoulder.

Before I knew it, it was completely dark.

He must have waited with the gate open so I wouldn't be locked out.

When Airena, her companions, and I entered the town, the gate closed behind us.

...Well, I'd finally entered a human town, but unfortunately, the sun had already set, so there weren't many people out and about.

"Now then, Eisa-sama, do you have any plans for what you'll do next? If you don't have any particular plans, I recommend registering as an adventurer so you can obtain identification."

As I looked around curiously, Airena asked.

Ah, that's right.

Come to think of it, I needed to decide soon what to do next.

But there was something I wanted to do more than become an adventurer.

"No, I'll pass on becoming an adventurer for now. ... More importantly, I want to go to a smithy. Where can I find the best smith in town?"

Yes, my first step was to learn how to work materials and turn the Forest Wolf's fangs and claws into knives and other crafted items.

A smithy was obviously the place to do that, and if I was going to learn, I wanted to learn from the most skilled smith possible.

But when I said that,

"Um... the best smith in this town is a dwarf, so I doubt he'll sell anything to us, since we're elves."

Airena said that with a bitter expression.

I see.

It was true that dwarves and elves mutually hated each other, and a dwarf smith probably wouldn't sell anything to me or Airena, since we were elves.

But that wasn't a problem at all.

After all, I didn't have any money in the first place, so I couldn't buy anything from that dwarf anyway.

But a dwarf, huh?

"Sounds good. I want to see a dwarf too, so that's convenient. Ah, but if you hate dwarves, Airena, you can just tell me where the smithy is."

Actually, that was exactly what I wanted.

The chances of that dwarf teaching me how to work materials were probably slim, but either way, it would be a good opportunity to find out for myself exactly what kind of creatures dwarves were.

"Um... Eisa-sama, you don't dislike dwarves?"

Airena looked at me as though she were seeing something unbelievable.

Ever since I decided to stop acting like a High Elf, I had been prepared to receive that look whenever I met an elf.

So I simply smiled and nodded at her.

"Isn't it strange to hate someone you've never even met?"

At that, Airena looked away from me.

In elven mythology, dwarves stole a fragment of fire from nature itself and imprisoned it in a furnace.

But that couldn't possibly have happened.

Because that would mean the dwarves had completely mastered nature.

If dwarves really possessed the power to do something like that, the elves, who were on such bad terms with them, should have gone extinct by now.

At most, it was some sort of metaphor, and if the elves took it literally, they were fools.

That said, no amount of talking could easily erase hatred that had taken root.

Nor did I intend to force Airena to change her way of thinking.

I only needed to be able to live as I pleased.

"Ah, but it's already night, so it might be a bother to go now. I'd like to find an inn first, but I don't have any money. Oh, right. Airena, would you buy this from me?"

As I said that, I took an apua fruit from my pack and pressed it into Airena's hand.

I hadn't tried to sell it at the gate because I thought humans wouldn't be able to identify what it was.

But since she was an elf, she should know what it was.

Apua fruit held imperishable vitality, and even half a month after being harvested, it remained just as fresh as ever.

"Huh? Could this be...?"

Airena's expression changed when she examined the fruit in her hand.

Judging from her reaction, it seemed unlikely that the elves of the deep forest had simply assumed apua fruit was valuable, only for it to turn out to be worthless in the outside world.

I felt a little relieved.

But when I thought about it, I had only gotten into town because I met Airena, and I had only learned that the smith was a dwarf because she was here.

After receiving this much help from her, it would be terribly discourteous not to thank her at all.

"And this is to thank you. Thanks. You really helped me out."

So I took out another apua fruit and placed it in Airena's hand.

As an elf, apua fruit was probably one of Airena's favorite foods.

I'd grown quite tired of eating it by now, but it tasted so good that I was certain I'd want it again if I went without it for long.

Airena's companions watched our exchange curiously, but it took her a while to reboot after freezing in surprise.

Afterward, Airena made me promise not to show the fruit to other people without thinking, and to put off visiting the smithy so she could teach me more about money and how humans lived tomorrow.

She had apparently thrown her respect for High Elves aside somewhere when she warned me with a fairly serious expression. She was frightening enough to make me tremble, so for now I decided to learn all sorts of things from Airena tomorrow.