Chapter 146
Staying in an elven settlement.
It's a wonderful place, and in return for giving them Cheche, a cacao-like plant, I'm having the chief make me a ring.
A ring like the one Akira has, capable of translating the languages of other races.
Its effectiveness has already been proven, since I'm using it right now.
Considering the future, this is an item I definitely want.
With this, first contact with unknown races should go much more smoothly.
In fact, without this ring I'd borrowed from Akira, I might have ended up quarreling with the elves.
After spending one night and a full day in the elven settlement, evening arrived.
After dinner, the elven women came to fetch me.
Apparently, they wanted to thank me for giving them various things.
When a woman says she wants to thank a man, that usually means doing that, doesn't it...?
With Anemone and Lilith watching me with cold eyes, I was led away by the women.
Since it was dark underfoot, I took an LED lantern out of my Item Box.
The women's blond hair glittered in the blue light of the LED.
Their hair varied in length and style, but all of them had beautiful blond hair and long ears.
"Is that magical light?"
The women asked while sneaking glances behind them.
"Well, it's a kind of magic tool."
I'd explained that to the elves yesterday too, but they still seemed curious. It must have looked like a magical item to them.
They led me to a tree house built high in a large tree.
A narrow ladder stretched up from the ground.
The houses on the ground were made of grass and looked somewhat flimsy, but this one was built from logs and seemed fairly sturdy.
"Wow, this house looks sturdy. Why not make the other houses like this too?"
The elven women answered my question.
"Ordinary houses are rebuilt about once a year."
"That's right. This one is used as a refuge, so it's built sturdily enough to last a long time."
"Besides, a grass house can be made quickly, but building this takes years."
"Honestly, it's too much trouble."
"Exactly."
I had discovered that elves were basically a lazy race.
Perhaps after living hand-to-mouth for hundreds of years, they had no desire to do anything troublesome.
They didn't seem likely to develop much like this. In the first place, they probably hadn't even thought about it.
Living this primitive lifestyle forever must be part of the elves' doctrine.
To preserve that doctrine, they shut out other cultures and became isolationist.
The women invited me up into the tree house.
Inside, I found many women illuminated by blue light. There were about twenty of them in all.
The women sat on the plank floor, and there was also a large wooden bed.
With so many people gathered in such a small room, the smell of camphor made my eyes sting.
The same blue light that had been in the chief's house was probably magical.
It gave off no heat and looked much like LED light, but its glow was soft and gentle.
Under that blue light, the women's blue dresses appeared even bluer.
"Is this every woman in the village?"
All the women were tall, but they didn't seem quite so large when sitting down.
That was because their legs were long and their torsos short. As a Japanese man with a long torso and short legs, I wanted them to spare me a little of that leg length.
"Yes, all the women in the village are here."
"Won't the house break with this many people inside?"
"I told you it's used as a refuge, didn't I? It's built to withstand everyone coming inside, so it's fine."
I looked around at the women in the room. It was packed with beautiful, long-eared women.
I probably wouldn't get to see a sight like this very often.
"What are you planning to do with everyone gathered here?"
"Oh, come on, you already know, don't you? You seem to like children, but adults work too, right?"
"Wait a minute. You have that wrong about me liking children. I even have concubines back at my mansion."
Ignoring what I said, one of the elven women hugged me.
She was the short-haired, bob-cut woman who had been near us since morning.
"So? Which one will you choose?"
"Huh? You all gathered here so I could choose one of you?"
"Of course."
"Don't the men in the village say anything?"
"They don't say anything about that. Hahaha."
"Hahahaha!"
Apparently, elves were a race that did not choose fixed partners.
"I see."
"Besides, after you've been together for hundreds of years, you're practically like air to each other, so you don't see one another as romantic prospects anymore."
"I suppose that's true..."
Even human couples grew tired of romance after being together for ten years or so.
After hundreds of years with the same people, it was only natural that they would stop wanting to do it with each other.
"So when a man from outside occasionally comes along, you take the opportunity to have some fun—is that it?"
"That's right. Hahaha."
They were remarkably casual about it.
"Would you really settle for an ordinary human man? Compared to an elf, it's like the difference between the moon and a mud turtle—but you probably don't know that expression."
"We don't really care about things like that."
"Do elves ever go outside?"
"Sometimes. But even if we live outside and make acquaintances, they die so quickly that we have no choice but to return to the settlement."
"Like in this book?"
I slipped out of the arms of the elf who had been hugging me and took a book I'd made earlier out of my Item Box.
It was 'Elves of the Forest,' which I'd made together with Anemone.
"Oh, you made a book?"
"Yeah. I drew these pictures too."
"Amazing!"
"But while this might be a good story for ordinary humans, for elves..."
"Exactly. In the end, your partner dies almost immediately, and you have to return to the forest."
"As far as I heard, it only said that they lived happily ever after."
"That's the ordinary human perspective."
Well, even if an elf lived in some village and made acquaintances, those people would keep dying.
And once one's partner died, the survivor would inevitably feel out of place.
According to what the women said, the story I'd written was based on real life.
The women passed around my book and read it in turn.
"The book doesn't matter, though. So, who will you choose?"
"If I choose someone, what will the other women do?"
"Watch here."
"What?! Seriously?"
I looked around again. If everyone watched me here, there was no way I could get it up.
This was like a strip show's cutting-board act—but young people probably don't know what that is anymore.
The men who had taken elven women as partners must have been remarkably courageous.
"So? Who will you choose?"
"Then, you first."
"Hmm. Then... what will you do?"
The bob-cut elf hugged me again, so I grabbed her small bottom.
"Eek!"
She let out a small scream and promptly dropped onto the floor.
"All right, next!"
The other women gathered around the woman sitting on the floor.
"Hey, what happened?"
"Ah! Don't touch me right now! This is bad!"
Next, I took the hand of the long-haired woman sitting in front of me and pulled her to her feet.
"All right, raise your arm a little."
I slipped my arm under her exposed armpit and pulled her close, then grabbed her bottom again.
"Eek!"
She collapsed onto the floor and began twitching.
"Huh? What is this? Magic?"
"It's something like magic. Using it makes me hungry, though."
After dealing with two women, I was already getting hungry, so I bought energy bars from Shangri-La.
The women were still waiting, so I ate two at once.
"What are you eating?"
"It's a snack made from the 'Cheche' you mentioned. It's sweet and delicious. Want to try some?"
I bought about thirty energy bars from Shangri-La and piled them up on the floor.
The women leaped at the sudden mountain of snacks in front of me, but...
They got carried away and knocked the first two women aside.
"Eek!" "Idiot! Don't touch me! Wait! This is bad! I'm coming!"
The first woman I'd touched toppled backward onto the floor.
"Now that I've finished eating, all right, next!"
I took the hand of the next woman. Her hair was short and she looked somewhat boyish, but she wasn't a man.
"Um, I need a moment to prepare myself..."
"You came to a place like this, so you were eager enough to begin with, weren't you?"
"No, I never imagined it would turn into this..."
I pulled her close while she continued protesting and grabbed her bottom.
"Nyaa!"
She nearly collapsed, so I gently sat her down on the floor.
"What? What's happening? Is it magic?"
"Ahh! Don't touch me! If you touch me, I'll come!"
The other women gathered around the short-haired elf, who sat rigidly on the floor.
"What's going on?"
The women looked puzzled, but they left the woman sprawled on the floor alone and began eating the energy bars I'd given them.
"It's sweet!" "Oh, this is Cheche!" "It's so delicious!"
"Hey, leave some for me!"
The elf lying on the floor was saying something, but she couldn't move.
"All right, let's try the next one."
"Then me!"
The one who sprang to her feet was an elf with slightly curly hair.
Her fluffy blond hair looked like cotton candy, almost good enough to eat.
She gazed at me with a mischievous look, her face full of curiosity.
"All right, come over here."
"Hey, hey... I want you to touch my ears."
"Your ears?"
When the other elves heard that, they tried to stop her.
"Hey! Don't let him touch your ears! You don't know what will happen!"
"But I'm curious to see what happens, aren't you?"
I gently took hold of the curly-haired elf's ear as she stood in front of me.
It was very warm, soft, and springy. When I stroked it, she writhed.
Judging by her reaction, an elf's ears seemed to be a sensitive place.
"Mmm..."
"Then..."
I tightened my fingers around the long ear.
"Eek!"
She let out a strange cry, rolled her eyes back, and collapsed on the spot.
The elf in the blue dress convulsed, and various fluids spilled from her body.
"Hey! Seriously?!"
The elven women shrank back while sitting down, but this was a cramped room.
There was nowhere left to escape.
"All right, next!"
I approached the elves, wiggling the fingers of both hands.
"Um, ordinary is fine! Just ordinary, please!"
They must have realized that their ears were off-limits.
Besides, if I understood that and forced them anyway, it would amount to rape. Of course I wasn't going to force them.
"Eek!" "Nyaa!" "Eek!" "Ah!"
The elven women began collapsing onto the floor one after another.
The ways they fell were all different and amusing in their own ways, but apparently no other elf was willing to challenge me by offering her ears.
I ate energy bars and bananas and repeated the process.
Yes, by this point it was simply a task.
"Hey, what's that long yellow thing? Is it some kind of fruit?"
One of the elves lying on the floor asked about the banana.
"It is. Want to try one?"
"Yes."
I fed a banana to the bob-cut elf lying on the floor.
"Oh, it's surprisingly good... and very soft."
"It's pretty nutritious too."
The elves swarmed around the bananas, stuffing the long white fruit into their mouths.
"It's pretty good." "Yeah."
"The green fruit before it ripens can also be cooked like a potato."
"Really?"
Come to think of it, why not have the elves grow bananas?
Bananas and cacao might give them too much nutrition, though.
Before that, did Shangri-La even sell banana seedlings? I searched right away—and it did.
As expected of Shangri-La, which sold everything. It even sold cacao pods.
Banana seedlings cost ¥2,000 per pot, so I bought two plants.
I placed the slightly large seedlings on the floor. Each had two smooth leaves sticking out.
"Here. If you liked the yellow fruit, try growing these seedlings."
"Are these tree seedlings?"
"They grow very large, but they're actually related to grass."
"Oh, that's unusual."
An elf lying on the floor stroked the banana's smooth leaves.
"It's a foreign plant. The drawback is that its fruit has no seeds, so you can only propagate it by dividing the plant."
"It doesn't have seeds?"
"You just ate one, didn't you?"
The original species of banana does have seeds, but it is difficult to eat because it is mostly seeds.
If growing bananas and cacao worked out, the elves would have something they could sell.
I reached toward the ear protruding from the bob-cut elf's head as she ate a banana.
"Ah!"
"Are elves' ears sensitive?"
"N-no, don't! Ah! I-I'm coming!"
The elf arched her back, her head still against the floor, and her body began to convulse.
"...Haa, haa... What was that strength?"
"It was a blessing."
"A blessing? Really?"
"Yes."
"Do you know someone in the royal family?"
"My principal wife is a former member of the royal family."
The elf was shocked by my answer.
"What? A royal as your principal wife? Who are you?"
"The royals call me a holy knight."
"Are you really a holy knight?"
"Yes."
Apparently, the elves knew about holy knights.
"Well, elves have lived in these forests since before ordinary humans came here and founded a kingdom."
"I know a mage who's received a blessing from the emperor of the Empire too."
"What? There are Imperials too? And he received a blessing from the emperor? Then he must be a royal guard, right?"
"Apparently."
The other elves who had been listening to my conversation with the bob-cut elf gathered around us.
"What? What's going on?!"
I explained various things to them for the time being.
They knew this land better than anyone, after all.
"Yes... I know the story that a family possessing the power of blessings became a royal and imperial family."
The elves lay sprawled across the floor.
"Where did that family with the power come from in the first place?"
"I don't know where they came from, but I thought the story said they received that power from the gods."
The gods, huh? The same could be said of my Shangri-La and Item Box abilities.
There were other people who could use Item Boxes besides me, and there were girls like Anemone who could wield incredible magic.
There had to be some original source for those powers...
"Now that I've had a little rest, shall we continue?"
I went over to an elf I hadn't dealt with yet.
She had braided her blond hair and tied it back.
"Wait, hold on..."
I pulled her close and grabbed her bottom, though it didn't really matter whether I grabbed her bottom or anywhere else.
"Ah! Eek!"
The woman dropped onto the floor and trembled.
"And that's another one done."
"What was that...?"
"All right, next!"
I'd done it with everyone, but the room had become unbearable, filled with the smell of camphor and various other odors.
Still, I'd fulfilled my obligation, so I took a break and ate.
I was tired of energy bars, so perhaps I should buy some daifuku.
At Shangri-La, I bought a gift set containing various kinds of daifuku.
Things like this were usually intended as gifts.
Some had cream in addition to red-bean paste, while others contained caramel, offering plenty of variety.
"Does anyone want to eat these?"
"What are they?"
"The outside is made by cooking, pounding, and kneading grain. The black filling inside is beans boiled with sugar and kneaded together."
Since the elves didn't seem to eat animal products, I bought ordinary daifuku.
"Then I'll eat one."
I gave daifuku to the elves who wanted some while lying on the floor.
"It's sweet and delicious." "Why does this white skin stretch so much? Is it really grain?"
"It is."
"Is this black stuff really beans?"
"Yes."
I bought about a kilogram of azuki beans from Shangri-La and showed them to the elves.
"Here. These are the beans."
"They're red beans? How unusual." "They're so small and cute." "Could we grow them here too?"
"Beans grow anywhere, so I don't think there will be a problem."
I asked them about elven agriculture.
Apparently, they chose some random place in the forest, scattered the seeds there, and left them alone. They didn't make fields or plow the soil.
They patrolled the forest every day and harvested crops along the way.
For a settlement of about thirty people, that was apparently enough... That was probably why they had never conceived of cultivating cacao either.
That was fine, but could azuki beans be eaten in ways other than as bean paste? I only knew of them being used in sekihan.
I decided to give them soybeans as well.
"Here. The bean drink we had during the day is made by squeezing these. Though that one had been heavily adjusted with magic."
"Oh, they're white, round, and beautiful."
Soybeans had all sorts of uses, so they would probably find them valuable.
I was curious to see how the elves would use soybeans and azuki beans.
Maybe they would come up with some bizarre otherworldly use for them.
"Well, we've done everything we needed to do, so shall we sleep?"
Since there was a bed available, I decided to sleep here.
"Don't you need to do anything else?"
"I have plenty of women at home."
"I thought ordinary human nobles were pathetic, but I've ended up with an unbelievable one."
"Exactly."
"Everyone got to enjoy themselves equally, so that's good enough, right?"
The elves were spread across the floor, lying side by side.
"Before that, how long is this going to last? I can't move."
"It'll wear off by morning."
"What?!"
"Then shall I touch your ears? You'll go straight to heaven in one shot."
I pointed at the curly-haired woman, who had fainted after I touched her ears.
"J-just kidding!"
I tried to sleep in the bed, but its surface was hard and lumpy.
This would be painful. I took a mattress out of my Item Box and spread it over the bed.
Yes, this was much better, though it was a little too large for one person.
"Sleeping alone is lonely, so maybe I'll have someone sleep beside me."
When I looked around, the bob-cut elf I'd dealt with first averted her eyes.
"All right! I've chosen you!"
I picked up the bob-cut elf and tossed her onto the bed.
"Ah! Aah!"
The shock of landing sent the elf flailing around on the bed.
"All right, let's go to sleep!"
"Wait, you're going to kill me!"
"Don't worry, don't worry. No one's died yet."
When I pulled the bob-cut elf close, she screamed, but her resistance was feeble; she was quite weakened.
"Haa, haa! D-don't touch me!"
"As the representative of the elves, you have to accept me."
"I'm not the representative!"
She said that, but she seemed to have taken the lead in quite a few things.
After all, she had been the first one to hug me.
"Eeeek!"
The elven women's screams echoed through the forest until midnight.
------◇◇◇------
The morning of our second day staying in the elven settlement.
When I woke up, the elven women were sprawled weakly across the floor.
"That was horrible..."
The curly-haired elf sat up and stretched deeply.
"Mmm! I feel refreshed! It's like I did a whole year's worth all at once!"
"See? In the end, it was better to have me touch your ears and faint straight into heaven."
"Aww..."
The women repeatedly gave incoherent replies.
"If you're elves, can't you use Healing magic on yourselves?"
I was hungry, so I decided to return to my family.
It was a beautiful day outside. I climbed down the narrow ladder from the tree house and headed toward the settlement.
Everyone was already awake and preparing breakfast in front of the container house.
All the tools had been left lying around, after all.
"Morning."
"Hmph. Looks like you had quite a good time..."
"Don't pout, Lilith. This is politics, you know—the kind that fosters friendship with other races."
"Who knows..."
"Mmph..."
Anemone was in a bad mood too, but she baked bread for us.
I'll make instant soup and bacon and eggs.
All the elven women were exhausted, so none of them came to steal our food.
While my family and I ate breakfast, the elven chief came over.
"Good morning."
"Good morning."
"Here is the ring."
The chief handed me the completed translation ring.
"Oh, thank you very much."
"Mirra told me. Apparently, you dealt with all the women."
Mirra was apparently the curly-haired elf.
"By 'dealt with,' I only mean that I used a special power. I didn't really do it with them."
"So, honey, you used that power?" "Nyaa?"
"Yes. There was no way I could handle them all normally. Hahaha."
"Mmph."
Even after hearing that, Anemone and Lilith remained displeased.
"So I didn't actually do anything. That's all right, isn't it, Lilith?"
"That doesn't make it all right!"
"As I thought. Hahaha."
I bought flour and salt from Shangri-La.
I bought bread flour for baking bread—ten 20-kilogram bags at ¥4,500 each.
For the salt, I bought five 10-kilogram commercial bags at ¥1,000 each.
"You entertained me, so these are gifts of flour and salt. You need both, right?"
"However..."
"Doing it with twenty elven women is the sort of event that will become legend, so naturally I should pay at least this much."
The chief considered it for a while, then seemed to decide to accept them.
"Then we shall gratefully accept them."
"Hahaha. I'm glad to hear you say that."
The women came over as well.
"Ahh, that was horrible."
"It was an experience you don't get very often, wasn't it?"
"It was, but..."
The women seemed dissatisfied for some reason, but after I'd gone to the trouble of entertaining them, what could they possibly be unhappy about?
Once we'd finished eating, it was time to leave.
We would retrace our path to the lake and continue surveying from there.
Thanks to the information from the elves, we now knew that this river led to the Anis River.
I said goodbye to the elves.
"If there's anything you want, come to my mansion."
"You said it's in the frontier count's territory, but where is your mansion?"
The bob-cut elf, who had been the friendliest toward me, asked the question.
"There's a large lake upstream from here, right? It's on the opposite shore."
"Do you mean the place with the waterfall?"
"Oh, you know it?"
"Yes, that place."
Apparently, the elves' range of activity was larger than I'd expected.
There were supposedly elves deep in the forest between Astrantia and Dalia, so they probably had contact with other tribes too.
Well, now that I had my own ring, first contact should go much more smoothly.
We floated a rubber boat on the small lake in the settlement and began heading upstream while surveying the river.
The current was slow, so traveling against it shouldn't be a problem.
Of course, it would be harder than going downstream, but we had the tools of civilization if things came to that.
The boat that Nyamena and Myare had been riding in was abandoned when the bees chased us, so I bought a new one.
"Well, goodbye."
"Here, take this!"
One of the elves gave me a dried, slender creature. It was reddish brown with stripes.
It looked like a worm.
"What's this?"
"Probably a tube worm, nya."
Myare seemed to know what it was, but I put it in my Item Box for the time being.
"Goodbye~"
About thirty elves saw us off as we began heading upstream from the lake.
I had been a little worried because we were going against the current, but it seemed to be fine.
This had been my first contact with another race, and it could be called a moderate success.