Chapter 644: Summer Spirit Festival 2
After a few minutes of awkwardness, with no one, including Clint, knowing what to do with the blown Minister Ashton, it was about the same time that Minister Ashton stood up and Nancy, who had heard the commotion, came running.
“You, Andy-kun. ……What are you doing, father-in-law?”
“N, Nancy……don’t stop me, I have to cut him down”
“I don’t think Father-in-law can do it”
“Why don’t you hesitate for a second before you say it!”
“I don’t think an active soldier can cut down someone who can seriously lose to even a 10-year-old son”
“I mean, Tonio has talent, so it can’t be helped”
“At this point, he’s still about average for someone his age”
“N, No, he’s a talented guy who could become an ace knight”
“How can a man in charge of military affairs be so lenient with his own family members’ evaluations……good grief”
As she said this, Nancy-san took the sword from Minister Ashton.
“Ah, give it back!”
“Enough with the pranks. Are you seriously trying to make Dianne and Hilda angry, Father-in-law?”
“Ugh……but……”
The old man with the beard gets teary-eyed. Very uncool. But well, I don’t know if I can win against a ten year old who’s learning to use a sword……I don’t know.
“Laila, Anzeros……what were you going to do if I got cut down?”
“Ho. You’re not the kind of person to be cut down by such a dull sword. You’re a man who has rivaled even heroes and master knights”
“If it was really bad I would have tried to attack, but it didn’t look like Andy could reach me with his movements”
……Come to think of it, I’ve had some dangerous battles against a lot of different guys. It wasn’t that long ago, but even I had almost forgotten.
“What’s with you suddenly coming up with this now? His work is something that I should be grateful to, not just as an individual, but as a member of Celesta as well”
“But Nancy! Not content with Dianne and Hilda, Nord is there too! And even Cosmos was talking about him the other day! Do you know how disheartened……no, how angry I am!”
“……Again, leaving your wives behind to go to Cosmos”
“Ah, no, that’s a bit much. Anyway, if we leave him alone, the other girls will be in danger too! As a father, I can no longer abandon them!”
“Why don’t you realize that your credibility is crawling on the ground just from this conversation……?”
Nancy put her hand on her forehead and shook her head. Yeah. I think it’s a bit odd to declare that you’re also going to the prostitutes when you’re trying to denounce a guy who’s careless with women. I’m sure he has 10 wives.
“Anyway, father-in-law. This place already goes by the name of Carlos. Even if you’re a big shot, you’re not allowed to go running around like that”
“Carlos said he really wants to kill this guy!”
“Yes, yes”
Nancy didn’t take it any further and let the other maids she had brought with her take Minister Ashton away.
“I’m sorry. My father-in-law is usually a more reasonable man……”
“Haa”
“Like Dianne, Nord is a particularly prodigious talent……enough to make him proud, but he’s not a parental figure. And for that matter, he’s a good family man. I guess it’s a little disconcerting that even that girl has fallen head over heels for you, Andy”
“U, Umm……but I’d appreciate it if he’d refrain from suddenly attacking me”
I mean, was Nord-san that obsessed with me? Or rather, was it enough that she followed me to Basson?
“So what’s the purpose of your visit today? Do you have a purpose for coming here? Or did you just come to enjoy the festival?”
“Ah, that’s……”
At any rate, I introduce the women, all former drug addicts and explain the background. Nancy-san nodded hmmm and priced them out.
“It depends on whether you want to do serious business with one woman or work on the premise that you’re going to marry in a suitable place……depending on how hungry you are for that part of the world. We can take care of them. However, when it comes to providing ongoing treatment and reintegration support for the victim, we can’t say that we will take on the responsibility”
“Even Onyx?”
“Even though we have a certain amount of leeway, we are still a business. We can’t take unlimited responsibility for people who come here just because they were affected by drugs. It’s important that they have enthusiasm for the work”
“……Well, that’s true”
These women were taken with the intention of making them slaves. Many of the girls have no more place to return to or relatives at that point. They have to have a job to survive and it’s not good for us if we don’t take care of them to that extent. However, whether or not they actually have the aptitude and will to do so is a completely different matter. Not all of them are auspicious and diligent. Some girls may not be suited for it. They don’t check this and they transport people solely on the condition that they are 「Victims of Rabbines」, so the people being asked to take care of them can’t just say「Okay, okay, as many as you want」. The total number of people is also unknown. It is not likely to be thousands, but it is hard to guarantee the social life of people whose numbers are unknown, no matter how big a business association they are.
“When we defeated Rabbines, I thought it was humane to show those who were suffering how to revive them……but I think we need to think about the framework more fundamentally
“I don’t think Dianne is unplanned, so I think she’s thought about what we’ve been up to”
“I guess it was a rash move to go without Dianne after all……”
“Well, we can manage this time. We’ll take care of the ones who are here”
Nancy promises and everyone is relieved.
“What about the spirit festival? Nord is going to dance again. According to the schedule, she should arrive in Talc tomorrow, but I’m sure Nord will be very disappointed when she finds out that you and the others have passed through”
“I, I won’t just pass by. Of course”
“I’m glad to hear that”
Nancy-san smiles and instructs the maids who had gathered before her to prepare a room.
“You can relax a little and enjoy Talc until the spirit festival. If you want, you can stay with us for a year or so, okay?”
“That’s a bit……”
“I’m quite serious, though”
Nancy shrugged. But honestly, I think I’d get a stomach ache if I lived in a mansion with Minister Ashton and Carlos-san for a year.
——————————————
The guest room we were ushered into was spacious and what a cozy room it was, deep in the garden and located in a wing well away from the hustle and bustle of the town and the preparations for the festival.
“Rennesto and Helicon mansions were luxurious, but this one felt the most hospitable”
“I’m at home, so of course I feel at home. I feel much more comfortable here than in a place where I’m treated like a tumor and not given much help☆”
Gloria and Hilda are all relaxed in their underwear after getting ready for bed. Incidentally, I was first shown to another room by the maid, but Hilda immediately said, 「He’s going to sleep in our room!」 and abducted me. The other girls were also assigned rooms and since it was already late at night and we had done a lot of erotic things at Helicon during the day, we decided to go to bed.
“I didn’t expect a white elf like me to be entertained in a dark elf’s mansion”
“I don’t think the dark elves are that fond of white elves to begin with. They don’t even like them”
“Nn……well, I guess so”
“White elves are too exclusive. They basically hate dwarves, humans, beastmen, ogres and all the rest”
“Right……emm, well, I guess they weren’t hostile to humans……I think”
“You can’t say that if you look at the situation in the Forest Territory and the Northern Forest a while back. The dark elves have been coming to get along with each other for thousands of years, so it’s a different story”
“Hmm……I wonder if it’s okay for a long-lived species that lives ten times longer to adjust to the time sense of a short-lived species”
Even now that Gloria has dropped out of elven society, she still seems to be dragging along elven sensibilities.
“The difference in the sense of time is so hard to deal with”
I don’t know about that.
“You may not feel it yet, but try to imagine for a moment what it would be like to live with the same feelings as someone who was born and died one-tenth of your age. Humans decline after about 40 years and die after about 70 years, right? Divide that by ten more and you get……a species like that to socialize with, work with and have sex with. Don’t you think that’s too much to care about?”
“……Emm”
In other words, a child born at the beginning of last year will be an adult at the end of this year. ……Is the same time for elves to reach adulthood? Let’s leave it at that. The guy who finally learns to drink this year will say he’s not young anymore the year after next and two years after that he’ll have a bent back. The year after that, or the year after that, he’ll be dead of old age.
“Seems pathetic to me……”
“You live in a hurry to get along with that kind of thing. What you think you can do in a month, you have to do in three days. You might want to take it easy for a day, but you have an hour or two off and the short-lived species has already left for the next job. It’s like living in a society like that”
“……So much?”
“I know that’s taking it to the extreme, because elves are not a lazy race either. But the elves have their own sense of time and they are oriented to take their time and study things carefully…….such a way of life is in line with the speed of growth of the trees in the forest. It may seem too leisurely, but living in step with the forest that is born and spreads and living alongside it, is also an aspect of what elves want”
“……That’s a far-reaching story”
I can’t put it well, but once again I have the strange feeling that the long-lived species have something different from us short-lived species……like the transcendent sensitivity of the dragon, who presides over destruction and continues to hold the fate of many others just by being there. I guess elves are different creatures after all. But.
“Do you think it is wrong, Gloria-san, to mingle with the short-lived species in that way?”
“…………”
“Maybe I’m too busy. Maybe we could live more slowly. Do you think it’s wrong to live in the same world as……us?”
“I……”
Gloria-san is lost. She’s no longer in a position to advocate for the 「Right」 way of life of elves. And Hilda is.
“I don’t think so. ……I never think that just because I have a long life expectancy, I don’t think that the many people who don’t have it don’t deserve to understand each other. I would rather enjoy the fact that we were born in the same time and that we were born. I never want to neglect the fact that there are so many people who laugh, cry, and love each other”
“……Yeah, maybe”
“So”
Hilda turned her face to me and smiled faintly.
“Feel free to make love to each other☆”
“So that’s what you’re going to do after all!?”
“Andy-kun, you’ve got it all wrong”
Hilda lifted her legs, slipped out of her underwear and said with a proud, smug look on her face.
“When I’m with you, Andy-kun, all I can think about is how to get into some sex☆”
“I kind of knew that, but I didn’t want you to declare it!”
“Eh? Isn’t that what you’d be happy about?”
……Well, it’s not that I don’t like it.