Chapter 89: Foreign elf ・ first part
When I left the hot spring tiredly, Dianne and Irina walked from the other side before I could walk a lot.
“……How can you get tired like that, when you came out of the hot spring?”
Dianne looks surprised. ……Well, was it so easy to understand?
“No, that……”
I tried to make an excuse, but I was interrupted by the sound of Irina’s folding fan.
“Well, I had endured the hardship of a soldier for a week. There’s no point in being able to cross the business”
“I’m getting tired soon, but I don’t remember being in the profession of being an animal trainer”
“Hate?”
Don’t look serious like an ambassador. In such a place where friends appeared from behind me, Irina squeezed her hand with the folding fan and raised attention.
“Ah, I will prepare for a feast at the cherry blossom clan tonight. If you can come, by all means, I would like you to come to the feast as well, okay?”
The girls who listen to the word feast.
“Ho, a feast?”
“Cherry blossoms…… there’s rice and amounts of horse meat”
“Pe, Perhaps that’s the one-horned horse or something like that?”
“Yup”
“Hii……”
“Selenium is very familiar with it. The land of the cherry blossom clan is certainly about five times as large as the other regions, because of the one-horned horses”
“Is there any alcohol～. If not……Laila-chan, I request you to bring a barrel of great ice field”
“Hoho, leave it to me”
“Is there a limitation?”
I don’t feel like I want to go.
“Smithson-dono will you come, too?”
“Well, what kind of banquet is it?”
Irina looked at Dianne, and after having some wiggles, she smiled laughingly and said.
“It’s a farewell party for the exchange students of the cherry blossom clan”
————————-
The total number of exchange students from the cherry blossom clan was four. It seems that two people go to the royal capital and two to Folklore. From the life of the elves, it will not be a great deal of time for a few years of study abroad, but it is still a journey with no security guarantee in a sense. There is no doubt that they will be sent out grandly.
“But is it a good thing to eat the one-horned horse……?”
It was said that there used to be a lot in the northern part of the continent, but now the one-horned horse is even called a mythical beast. How much meat resources do they have at hand, but is it a good thing to eat them? I mean, Breakcore is also a one-horned horse, right? Wouldn’t it get angry if it knew we were eating its family?
“Even if the one-horned horse is valuable, it is livestock for us”
Christie, the deputy clan chief, offered sashimi of the one-horned horse with a friendly grin. For the time being delicious is delicious.
“Ho, if it is delicious, you should eat a mythical beast or monster. As we all need to die anyway, no matter where you go along the way there will be a big difference”
“I suppose it would be like a dragon”
Even if it is said that it is diligently released as much as Laila, I have a little trouble. For dragons, even humans are small animals that they just don’t eat because they don’t like them. However, the going-on party is quite exciting without waiting for nightfall. Songs and dances dedicated to the spirit of light, folk music such as harp and ocarina, etc. are followed by exotic and rewarding offerings to people from outside like me.
And as the day fell, the singing voices of the elves prayers to the light spirits was a sign that the feast was likely to continue.
“Hmm, my belly is full……”
I sat down with my back against a nearby tree and took a rest. There was the flight and the hot spring event today, so I felt a little tired now. It’s a little bad for Christie and Irina, but I would like to go to sleep now……and when I think about that.
“Smithson-dono”
“……Gorkus”
Orange Clan’s Gorkus was standing a few steps away.
“Are you tired”
“No, well……I feel like I want to take a break”
Gorkus’s fine line of thinness or elegance may be a place that is full of willingness, not knowing the word fatigue or hesitation, that he has to learn a little as a fellow man. Though I thought about it, he didn’t give up on me who is starting to feel a bit depressed, as Gorkus sat down next to me.
“Well, after your little rest, can you come to Christie’s mansion?”
“……Christie?”
Gorkus nodded firmly when hearing it back while being vaguely for a moment.
“……Yup”
Nodding without thinking well, I go into dozing for a while. At the end of the line, Laila, Jeanne, Selenium, and Apple were seen chatting happily between the bonfires. Everyone seems to be having fun above all…….
———————
Suddenly, the party’s program was over and the rest was in an atmosphere of chattering and laughing. Half of the bonfire burned off and disappeared and firewood is being added only near the dining table.
“Hmm……”
I shake my head and stand up. I remember that after a deep drink, my memory will be somewhat numb, but I still remember what I was told by Gorkus because I haven’t had a drink today.
“Emm……Christie’s house, eh?”
I ate too much horse meat and got a little heavy belly, so I look around and aim for the largest house properly.
“Good evening”
This elf’s mansion has two floors, but no matter how deep the room is, the door has no knocker. It’s unthinkable for Trot or Celesta to have a house of this size without a door knocker and a courtesy servant. But there is an elf. It has only huge ears, and it seems that it can hear me just by calling it in front of the entrance.
“Welcome, Smithson-san……ah”
Christie welcomes me, looks behind me and looks a little surprised. I turned around and saw Dianne and Selenium. Distance is less than 2 meters. I didn’t notice them at all.
“……E, Emm?”
“If we leave you alone, you will flirt with anyone”
“That’s right”
I was suspected by those two. ……N, No, well, I can’t deny it from the current behavior. I can’t say that I wasn’t thinking that I would call Christie by name only on this night while I was walking, but Christie didn’t do anything.
“At, At least trust me a little bit”
I protest in a low voice.
“I can’t trust you if you are at least not condemn”
“Men usually say that what they do are debt and women.”
Uwa, they both have thorns. ………Christie who heard such exchanges laughed.
“You two are welcomed. ……It will be a long story, so follow me”
That said, she opened the door a bit wider.
We passed to the room behind the house. It was a large dining room, probably a gathering place for a village, a hall that might fit about 100 people. It seems that even a little exercise can be done. Under such circumstances, four old men and four young elves stood inside silently.
“Did he come?”
Someone said so with a hoarse voice and stroking his beard. Green clan’s Shaquille.
“We’ve been waiting. ……Andy Smithson. We would like to talk with you, a friend of the elves”
Irina’s voice. That means……this is a part of the clans meeting. That same group of people, except for the change of the silver and red clan chiefs, stared at me and Dianne.
“Do you know about the other side of the snake mountain, the demon territory?”
“……More or less”
I return a little unreliable answer to Gold clan’s Oliver’s question. I know that there is an area called the demon territory. Beyond the Snake Mountains, at a mid-latitude between Celesta and Trot, north of the “Renfangas Kingdom” country is a lawless area where hordes of demons live. An area of evil monsters who continue to be born from no matter how many you kill. The reason is that hundreds of years ago, the local “labyrinth” was destroyed at once by the local people who broke the evil equipment that generated the demons. As a result, the earth has become a land where bad “Qi” is concentrated firmly and other labyrinths collapsed and annihilated the nations of the humans, elves, and beastmen. Now it is a barren land that no one can step on.
“That earth is a world of wicked and atrocities that rejects living things”
“The horde of demons will not decline even if the best of Renfangas kingdom continues to kill tens of thousands each year”
“There is only a paradise of endless blooded demons beyond that”
Old man Oliver, Purple clan’s Old woman Alma and Blue clan’s old man Vois follow the words like a narrator.
“But I suppose……”
An unfamiliar man follows up. He is similar to Diel, so he should be the new clan chief of the red clan.
“……The story is going to change”
Irina took over the subject.
“One of the six extinct northern countries. In the center, the kingdom of Kalwin still exists”
“Ha?”
……In the middle of the demon territory? Or rather.
“That……emm, it was hundreds of years ago that the demon territory became the demon territory……isn’t that right, Dianne-san”
“It’s about three hundred years ago. My sister should know it, but I wasn’t born then”
Dianne nods.
“For so long……wasn’t it thought that it was destroyed? How did they survive……?”
“I don’t know. No one has confirmed it yet”
Irina shakes her head. ……Then why?
“There appeared a person in Renfangas who came from Kalwin”
Gorkus said.
“Renfangas……?”
Temporarily, Celesta and Trot are not in a state of war with Renfangas among the nations. But, certainly, there is always a certain tension. Renfangas’s army is extremely high in individual combat ability and it is the evaluation of the surrounding countries that a strong general could form the strongest corps that far surpasses the Swords Brigade. When you think that they might attack in the future, you must be prepared.
“Then, it doesn’t matter much to us……”
Whether it is Celesta or Trot, you have to say that Renfangas is far from being friendly. As for the elves who continued the seclusion by the barrier, there might not be diplomatic relations. Under such circumstances, it is meaningless to receive such information. That’s a huge problem, as they can’t do anything with a single soldier.
“No. We concluded that you were suitable”
Irina said.
“What’s the story……?”
The moment I said that Selenium suddenly thrust away my back. The next moment, Dianne suddenly moved like a whirlwind. While I don’t know what happened, I roll and raise my sight.
Dianne was twisting a white elf swordsman’s sword, who seems to have jumped here from the side.
“What……!?”
“Who are you”
Dianne kicks the swordsman with a front kick and takes some distance. Selenium softly lands beside me and pulls out a knife. When Dianne asked this question, the elf swordsman slowly lifts his arm……a showy golden armor……no, only the handle is golden? The fist is a wolf’s design. ……That is.
“Gold Arm……Renfangas master swordsman!”
Dianne muttered as if to throw it out.
“What does that mean, Irina!”
“…..You may as well go as far as to call him a visitor.”
The gold arm holds his sword when Irina says so. However, tension is emitted.
“……I can’t but tell the story that the man is eligible”
From behind the silent gold arm, two elf swordsmen emerge from the shadows. Were they hiding in an illusion? The gold arm and one other man. The last one is a woman. Each of them has a pair of armor, while the other two wear a black armchair with the same design.
“Do you disagree with the blessing of the nine clans?”
“Human, monster-like impurity. I can only hear the words of the nine clans”
The black arm woman insists to speak.
“But let’s thank you more or less. ……We meet for the first time. We are Renfangas’s gauntlet knights”
The three elves put their gauntlet arms into the form of an X in front of their chest.