Beneath the World Tree
The wide space between the thick roots stretching out in every direction beneath the massive trunk of the tree that covered the sky was dotted with pretty single-story houses clustered together. They blended seamlessly with their surroundings, painting a breathtaking landscape.
“Wow, it’s truly beautiful.”
“Ahaha, our elf residential area is famous for its lovely homes, you know.”
“It seems like a lot of people would want to live here. Do only elves reside in this area?”
“The land directly beneath the World Tree is designated as the elves’ residential zone. The promise we made with the Korean royal family when we first immigrated and settled here has been honored all this time.”
“I see.”
The country called Korea wasn’t actually the first place the elves had arrived. The elven survivors who came through the dimensional gate into the northeastern region of the neighboring country known as China had been pursued by the extremely xenophobic Chinese government of that era. They fled and eventually reached the land then called Joseon—now Korea. The elven leader who met directly with Joseon’s king forged the first interspecies treaty between humans and elves on Earth. In accordance with that agreement, they planted the World Tree’s seed near the capital area below what is now Seoul and settled there.
Hundreds of years later, Joseon’s final king declared the kingdom’s dissolution, and the nation became modern Korea, where the people directly elect their representatives through voting.
“Well, the current president does come from the royal bloodline, but the fact that the citizens chose him themselves makes it very different.”
“It’s similar to the Kensas in my home dimension.”
“Kensas? A country from the dimension you lived in?”
“Yes. It was a large nation located in the northwest of Eden. That country also abolished its monarchy when numerous kings united their realms, transforming into a republic where the people elect their own representatives.”
“Heh~ Humans really are the same no matter where you go.”
Chatting lightly, we flew across the sky and finally arrived at her home. The vehicle descended vertically with a gentle touch and landed. The moment I stepped out, the scene before me made me feel as if I had wandered into a fairy tale.
In the clear, pristine sky, spirits darted about, laughing with pure delight. Beautiful elves who rivaled Ruya in elegance strolled along the paths. Around the graceful wooden houses, plants overflowing with the World Tree’s abundant life force grew lush and vibrant, brimming with vitality.
“It somehow makes me feel healthier just standing here.”
“Like I said before, simply being near the World Tree has a real health-enhancing effect. You’re a material-world spirit just like us elves—even if a different type—so you’ll feel the influence quite strongly.”
Just as she described, even though I was only standing still, I could sense my vital energy being absorbed slowly but steadily. Inside my womb, where the magic core resided, Las received that energy and responded with pleasant, rhythmic pulses.
The wind spirit in the form of a small girl, who had been perched on Ruya’s shoulder since the dungeon, fluttered up at a gesture from her and blended into the flock of spirits dancing through the air.
“Is it all right to send her off like that?”
“She only came along to do me a small favor. Spirits are fundamentally free beings, but they’ll grant requests for those they’ve grown close to.”
“I see. So to even perceive spirits, you need spirit power to begin with, and you also supply the energy they use as fuel.”
“Exactly. The nature spirits that gather near the World Tree encounter us elves so often that friendliness is inevitable.”
As we walked behind Ruya, who led the way while we continued our conversation, countless elves greeted us. They were all stunningly attractive men and women, their rich spirit power adding an irresistible charm.
‘They’re the perfect prey for a succubus.’
‘I wonder how incredible an elf would be if she turned into a succubus?’
‘Sigh, she’d be extraordinary.’
I still couldn’t sense the unique feeling that came when I encountered someone destined to become a succubus, but if I were to find a fertile female, I realized I would want to choose one from among the elves.
Suddenly my eyes fell on Ruya, who was chatting with some acquaintances. Imagining her—with a body far more voluptuous than the other elves around her—transformed into a succubus, the idea felt strangely perfect.
‘If Ruya became lewd enough, could she become a succubus?’
‘I wouldn’t know. I may use vital energy, but the only true, complete succubus among living beings is you, miss. Since you’ll be using her as prey anyway, tame her thoroughly into a properly lewd female.’
‘Ehh, I’m better at being tamed than taming, so I’m not confident. Can’t Elisa help?’
‘Sigh, fine. I’ll help you.’
‘Thank you, Elisa.’
Elisa, who had even received training from Sister Kyubey in order to tame me, was someone I could trust completely. Although she acted reluctant, I was certain she was secretly pleased. There was no way Elisa wouldn’t be interested in the beautiful Ruya.
‘I do like women, but I’m not the type who falls for just anyone—even if they match my tastes the way you do, miss.’
‘So Ruya doesn’t appeal to you?’
‘That’s not what I said.’
‘See? Hehe.’
‘Ugh, just hurry up and follow her already.’
‘Eep! Okay, okay—stop it.’
Elisa kept releasing and resealing the sexual desire I had blocked off, causing my arousal to flare up suddenly only to be doused just as quickly. The repeated cycle was terribly distracting.
After enduring Elisa’s teasing and walking through the elf village for some time, we arrived at a four-story mansion that stood out prominently among the mostly two-story homes.
Ruya spread both arms wide in front of the splendid residence, where plants had grown naturally to waist height and formed living walls.
“This is my house. What do you think?”
“It’s wonderful. I’ve been curious for a while—what exactly do you do, Ruya?”
“Hmm~ An elf who hunts as a hobby? Just kidding. I’m simply an elf with good parents.”
“Your parents?”
“They’re rather well-off. Anyway, shall we go inside?”
As Ruya approached the house, the head of what looked like a grandfatherly brown spirit suddenly popped out of the ground. The elderly spirit stared at her for a moment, then sank back into the earth. At the same time, the plants forming the closed wall shifted on their own, creating an entrance.
‘My goodness, even spirits serve as gatekeepers.’
‘She really is the elf version of a trust-fund kid.’
We crossed a garden that looked meticulously maintained despite showing no signs of artificial care and reached the door of the elegant old mansion. I had secretly expected a maid or butler to appear, but Ruya simply entered a passcode and opened the door normally.
The interior was far less remarkable than I had imagined. It was simply an ordinary modern home. More than anything, the scattered clothes and underwear lying everywhere gave it the lived-in feeling of an actual residence.
Ruya hurriedly picked up the underwear, laughing awkwardly.
“Ahaha, it’s a bit messy because I live alone, right? I’ve been especially busy with requests lately, so it’s worse than usual. Please don’t think it’s always like this.”
“I understand. I’ve lived alone too.”
The last time I had spent several months alone inside the mental space, it had been an absolute disaster with trash mixed in everywhere. Compared to that, this was perfectly acceptable.
I helped her tidy up, gathering the scattered clothes and putting them away before we sat down on the sofa.
“Whew, I made you start cleaning the moment you arrived. Sorry about that.”
“It’s clean aside from the clothes lying around.”
“Well, I mostly just come here to sleep anyway.”
“By the way, why haven’t I seen any elf children at all?”
I had grown curious because, despite walking through an elf village, I hadn’t spotted a single baby or child the entire way.
She looked slightly puzzled by the sudden question, then rubbed the back of her neck.
“Hmm~ It’s because of our racial traits. Elf women have strangely low sexual desire and fertility rates compared to females of other species. In the early days after we immigrated, we made great efforts to conceive out of a sense of duty to preserve our race. But now that things have stabilized… well. We only have one or two children when we truly want them.”
“How low is the birth rate exactly?”
“Around a hundred births per year?”
“My god, and your population is still maintained with numbers like that?”
“It’s because we elves have very long lifespans. By human standards, we live roughly a thousand years.”
“Wow.”
A thousand years? When the average human lifespan was less than a hundred years, that meant they lived at least ten times longer. It was an incredibly long time.
‘They really are a long-lived race. Though it feels a bit strange for a succubus with nearly infinite lifespan to say so.’
‘Is their low sexual desire a result of living so long? That orc only lives about thirty years at most, which is probably why his sex drive is so ferocious. And he can get almost any female pregnant.’
‘Looking at it that way, the unique breeding method of succubi might also be connected to having no fixed lifespan.’
I was pondering the possibility when Ruya continued.
“The dragon race, which lives even longer than we do, can reach ten thousand years. That’s why dragons only experience an ovulation period once every hundred years or so. What about succubi?”
“We don’t really have a lifespan. As long as we have vital energy, we can continue living indefinitely.”
“What? You’re immortal?”
Her voice rose in surprise at the revelation that succubi had no lifespan. She sat up straight and leaned in close. The rich, fragrant scent of vital energy that suddenly washed over me from her body stirred my appetite, and I swallowed.
“Not immortal. We have no lifespan, but we can still die. In the dimension I live in, we were nearly wiped out by humans because of a certain religion.”
“Ah, I’m sorry. When I heard there were only three of you, I should have guessed.”
“It happened long before I became a succubus, so it’s only something I’ve heard about. I’m still a young succubus who has only been one for a year.”
“Didn’t you say you were twenty?”
Now that I thought about it, Ruya didn’t know how succubi reproduced, so her assumption made sense. Since she was the only person here I could truly trust, I decided to tell her everything.
“Succubi reproduce by finding a female who meets certain conditions and transforming her into a succubus so she can be reborn. That’s how I became one as well.”
“Really? So that’s how succubi breed. Fascinating. What are the conditions?”
“I don’t know the exact details. The one thing I do know is that the more lewd the female, the higher the chances.”
“As expected of succubi—a lewd race indeed.”
“By the way, how old are you, Ruya?”
“Me? I’m eighty-four now. By elf standards, I’m still young.”
Eighty-four? The difference between races hit me all at once.
She tilted her head, thinking for a moment, then crossed her legs.
“How many days and months are in a year in your dimension? Age calculations get complicated because it differs between worlds. On Earth, one year is 365 days across twelve months.”
“Ah, is that so? In our world, one year has sixteen months and 640 days.”
“That’s quite a big difference. Let me calculate… At twenty years old on a 640-day cycle…”
She frowned, doing the mental math, when Elisa suddenly interjected.
‘Miss, by Earth standards you are thirty-five years old.’
“Thirty-five? The gap is that large?”
“Huh?”
Ruya suddenly looked at me with a questioning expression after I blurted out my surprise.
“Why are you talking to yourself all of a sudden?”
“Ah, well… there’s actually another person living inside me.”
“Huh?”
Her expression turned strange.
‘Why would you phrase it like that? It makes you sound mentally ill.’
‘I couldn’t help it…’
‘Sigh. Since it’s come to this, I’ll introduce myself.’
‘All right.’
As Elisa came forward to introduce herself, my consciousness was once again shut inside the mental space.
Agh, at times like this she could at least let me stay out with her. I grumbled inwardly and looked around. Because I had been traveling outside so often lately, the mental space had been completely remade according to Elisa’s tastes.
Machines of unknown purpose filled the area, and the desk beneath the lit stand lamp was covered in papers filled with messy sketches.
“Is this an airplane?”
In the center of the room stood a model of what appeared to be an aircraft. The machine had long wings spread to either side and round, tower-like engines attached at various points.
“Instead of this, I should just create another room.”
The space I normally used was a kind of main room. It had once belonged to Sister Kyubey; after she left, it became mine. I could add or delete rooms freely, but this main room could never be erased because it served as the default. I suspected it was the most important core area of the entire mental space.
I created a door on a wall the machines weren’t blocking and made myself a new room. Remembering how empty the previous one had felt because it was too large, I made this one slightly smaller. I recreated the furniture Elisa had deleted, along with game consoles and everything else I needed, and decorated the space.
“Good. While Elisa is talking, I’ll take a bath.”
Since I was in the mental space after so long, I decided to enjoy a proper bath—the kind I hadn’t been able to have recently—before going back out.
After relaxing for a while, I returned at Elisa’s call to find Ruya watching me with eyes sparkling with fascination.
She stared intently at my face and said, “Wow! Your expression really does disappear. It’s Elisha, right?”
“Yes. Have you met Elisa?”
“I have. She’s much livelier than you, isn’t she? She talks a lot.”
“She can be a bit willful, but she’s a good child.”
‘I simply have strong self-assertion.’
More importantly, for some reason both Ruya and I were sitting there completely naked. Because of that, I could see everything—her full, beautifully shaped breasts, the pale nipples, the smooth line of her abdomen, and even the modest patch of light-green pubic hair.
Seeing her bare body like this, I had to admit she had an excellent figure.
“But why are we naked?”
“I threw the clothes we were wearing into the wash along with the rest of the laundry. Didn’t Elisa tell you while she was out?”
“When Elisa comes forward, I’m completely cut off from the outside world.”
“Ah, privacy protection. But you’re fine with Elisa watching you?”
“I don’t really have any secrets from Elisa.”
“You really are a peculiar child. Mmm.”
Still seated, she stretched her arms high. Her body tensed, revealing faint, elastic muscles, then relaxed back into soft, feminine curves.
Looking at her pretty navel, a question suddenly occurred to me.
“You said elves are spirits too, yet your reproduction method seems to be the same as normal mammals?”
“Well, in some dimensions they claim we elves are born from nature or that the World Tree gives birth to us, but we’re simply one evolutionary branch of humanity. The genetic similarity between elves and humans exceeds 99.9 percent. The only real difference is the presence or absence of a spirit core. That’s why, although rare, mixed-blood children do exist.”
“Are the people with animal ears also an evolutionary form of humans?”
“That’s right. Opinions about their origin vary, but beastmen are genetically more than 99 percent identical to humans as well. Mixed blood exists there too.”
It seemed that races physically close to humans could all be considered branches of human evolution.
She had been staring blankly at my seated body. Now she lay on her side, propped her chin on her hand, and asked, “But is sex really that pleasurable? Elisa kept recommending it so strongly.”
“You’ve never tried it?”
“Mmm, I never felt any particular need for it, and I never had a suitable partner, so no.”
“I knew you said your sexual desire was weak, but I didn’t realize it was to this extent.”
I truly hadn’t expected that someone who had lived eighty-four years would never have had sex even once.