World Alliance (65)

After spending the night in the forest, we returned to the Dark Elf settlement—or rather, the site where the settlement had stood—around noon the following day.

We realized something was wrong because a great deal of smoke was rising from around the settlement. Thinking the early-summer birds might have come again, we hurried back, only to find—

"Oh! High Elf-sama has returned!"

A low buzz of voices rose around us.

Indeed, there were several thousand Subterranean Humans.

The smoke came from cooking fires. They were roasting Forest Eater meat and eating it. Human appetites were incredible. There had been such an absurd mountain of Forest Eater meat that I had thought it would be impossible to eat it all and that we would have no choice but to return it to nature, yet the bones were already beginning to show.

"Um... what is this?"

When I asked the chieftain, who had come over,

"Nock explained High Elf-sama's greatness to them, and they, too, wished to receive High Elf-sama's guidance."

He sounded rather proud, but I couldn't make heads or tails of it...