Sleeping Pointy-Eared Princess of the Forest (2)
"If you get it, then get the hell out of here. If some crazy bastard hangs around the campsite, it'll scare away all our other guests."
Further conversation seemed impossible. The elf staff member waved his hand dismissively and turned on his heel. Left behind, Yohan and Billy exchanged awkward glances.
"To think they all burned to death ages ago..." Billy muttered, his face a mask of disbelief.
"Actually, it makes sense," Yohan replied. Unlike Billy, he wasn't particularly flustered. In fact, he looked quite calm. "Think back to what we talked about before. You heard it too."
"Ah." Yohan had previously explained to Billy how he became the Apostle of the Unnamed Goddess. At the same time, he had also shared how Falco ended up traveling with him.
"Right. Falco was originally..."
"Yeah. Her entire body was covered in burns, so she always went around wrapped in bandages. On top of that, her voice was completely warped. I could've lived a hundred lifetimes and never guessed she actually looked like this." Yohan glanced at Falco, who was slumped over the horse's back.
"Anyway, that's not the point right now. Hey! Excuse me! Hey!" Yohan bolted after the elf staff member, who had already walked quite a distance away.
"What now? If you keep pestering me, I can have you kicked out for disturbing our business." Not a single trace of the elf's prior customer-service friendliness remained. He clearly viewed Yohan's group as nuisances rather than paying guests.
"Forget that. Just take a look at the girl snoring on the horse over there. Just look at her face."
"What kind of nonsense are you trying to pull now..."
"Just look at her once. Seriously. If you just go over and check her face, I swear I won't bother you again." Pulling out a silver coin, Yohan pleaded with utmost sincerity.
"Sigh... Fine. This is absolutely the last time." Yohan's 'sincerity' seemed to have hit the mark. The elf staff member let out a deep sigh but turned around and walked over to where Falco was.
"So, who is this girl that you want me to identify anyway?"
"She's a friend of mine. She claims she's from the Great Forest." Answering the elf's question, Yohan untied the rope secured around Falco's waist. He then carefully lifted her up and took her down from the horse.
"Here."
"Mmh..." Though she was comatose and her eyes were closed, surely someone who knew her would recognize her. Yohan held onto that sliver of hope.
"Wait a minute. How is she alive...?" As the elf staff member examined the sleeping Falco, his voice suddenly cracked with panic.
"Oh! You recognize her?" Yohan asked, brightening up. But for some reason, the elf looked as if he had just seen a ghost.
"Hey, you... Didn't you mention Peony of the Dawn Dew Tribe earlier?"
"Yeah. She told me to go find a person named Peony of the Dawn Dew Tribe." Yohan nodded in response. The elf tilted his head in confusion.
"No, that's not it."
"What do you mean?" The elf's pointed ears twitched as he clutched his head with both hands, messing up his hair.
"Dammit, this is insane! I'm saying this girl is Peony of the Dawn Dew Tribe!" he barked at Yohan.
"This girl is Peony?"
"Yes."
"Are you senile or something? Did living too long put a hole in your brain?"
"T-That's my line, you half-witted short-liver!" The elf staff member seemed to have completely forgotten he was an employee of the campsite. He spat out racial slurs that were hard to even listen to in a rapid-fire torrent. However, since Yohan had been the one to insult him first, he didn't press the issue.
"In the first place, our race has a far better memory than yours! Even if we've only met once, we remember the faces and names of every single one of our kin we've ever crossed paths with!" The elf's expression made it clear he wasn't lying.
"We thought the entire Dawn Dew Tribe burned to death during that incident..." The elf trailed off, staring at Falco's face once more.
"Ah, so she did not mean for you to search for someone named Peony. She meant for you to go to the Great Forest and give them her true name," the Unnamed Goddess's voice echoed in his mind. Yohan nodded in agreement. He finally understood what Falco had meant. The problem lay in what came next. They had used the Goddess's power to reach the Great Forest and had given her name, Peony of the Dawn Dew Tribe. But the response they got was that the Dawn Dew Tribe had been wiped out ages ago.
"Judging by the way you talk, it sounds like this happened a really long time ago."
"Exactly. That's why I'm so shocked." The elf staff member let out a series of heavy sighs. Even so, his attitude had softened considerably in a short span of time. At first, he had thought Yohan was a lunatic looking for people who had died ages ago, but now, a survivor of that supposedly extinct clan was lying right in front of him.
'Wait a minute.' Come to think of it... if he played his cards right, wasn't this the perfect chance to find out exactly how old their resident pointy-ears was? As that realization dawned on him, a sly, mischievous smirk crept onto his face.
"I heard the gist of the story from her too. She barely managed to escape with her life while her village was burning to the ground."
"Hmm."
"You said earlier that forest pointy-ears have incredible memories. So, do you happen to know exactly how many years ago that fire happened?"
"Of course."
'Yes!' Things had taken an unexpected turn, but on the bright side, a golden opportunity to satisfy his personal curiosity had presented itself. Yohan clenched his fists in excitement.
"Let's see..." The elf staff member began to search through his memories.
"...That's enough."
"W-What the?" Falco, who had been completely comatose until now, suddenly cut him off.
"If you say another word, you will regret it." She glared at the elf with a chilling gaze, her voice low and growling. Her complexion was still so pale she looked like a corpse, and her voice lacked strength, but there was an ominous intensity to her words that suggested she might actually do something crazy if pushed.
"A-Alright. I get it. I won't say anything." Flustered by Falco's threat, the elf staff member immediately shut his mouth.
"Look at this girl. She wouldn't budge an inch this whole time, but the moment her age comes up, she magically wakes up." Yohan clicked his tongue in exasperation.
"You should just be glad she is awake, yet you choose to bicker," the Unnamed Goddess nagged in his head, but Yohan casually ignored her.
"...Forest elves naturally recover their strength quickly when they return to their homeland."
"Bullshit. I've never heard of a setting like that in my life." Yohan flipped her off in response to her excuse. A faint smile tugged at the corners of her lips.
"Well, whatever. Anyway, we made it to the Great Forest just like you wanted. What do we do now?"
"Right. Well..." Falco shifted her gaze to the elf staff member standing behind Yohan. Realizing her eyes were on him, the elf's eyes widened in surprise.
"Guide us to the shrine of my tribe's Guardian Deity."
"..." The elf staff member looked troubled at her request.
"What is it now? Is this shrine place off-limits to outsiders?" Yohan demanded. They hadn't come all this way just to turn back empty-handed. Besides, if Falco's words were true, she would be forced to stay inside the Great Forest forever unless they removed the conflicting blessings inside her body. Obviously, that wasn't an option. As the Apostle of the Unnamed Goddess, Yohan had a duty to spread her faith far and wide.
"N-No, it's not because of that."
"Then what is it?" Fortunately, it didn't seem like the deep parts of the Great Forest were a forbidden zone that barred outsiders. If not that, then perhaps they had to pass some kind of 'trial of the forest' to enter, just like in games or novels. 'If that's the case, I'll smash through whatever trial they throw at us,' Yohan resolved internally.
*Slide.* As they waited in silence for an answer, the elf staff member suddenly extended his hand. Naturally, Yohan's eyes followed the movement of his fingers.
"It's not free. If you want to enter areas outside the campsite grounds, you have to pay the Great Forest Conservation Fund." The elf rubbed his thumb and index finger together in the universal gesture for money.
"Oh, for fuck's sake."
"This is utterly ridiculous," the Goddess lamented. Yohan and the Goddess facepalmed at the exact same time.
Only after paying the conservation fund to the 'Forest Elf Association'—the governing body of the campsite—was Yohan finally allowed to enter the Great Forest. Still, it was a relief in a way. At least it meant they allowed outsiders in as long as they paid up. Technically, the campsite was also part of the Great Forest, but since the elves, the masters of the woods, drew a line between the campsite and the forest proper, Yohan had no choice but to play by their rules.
"The world has truly gone mad. It seems the pointy-ears I once knew have long gone extinct."
"I'm the idiot for expecting anything else." Yohan and the Goddess continuously grumbled about the pointy-ears who had turned into money-grubbing monsters, while Billy silently followed behind them.
"Still... the atmosphere definitely changes once you get deeper inside. Honestly, it's really fascinating," Billy said in awe, looking up at the canopy.
"I suppose so." It was just as Billy said. The interior of the Great Forest exuded an entirely different vibe from the campsite area. The forest, densely packed with giant trees soaring toward the heavens, felt like a completely different world within another world, entirely cut off from the outside. Although he was disappointed by how thoroughly commercialized the elves had become, Yohan had a feeling this journey would still make for a pretty interesting memory.
"Hey, we didn't come here for sightseeing. We're here to save this dying girl."
"R-Right, of course." Yohan poked the slumped Falco as he spoke. Billy nodded in agreement.
"Anyway, that pointy-ears said if we keep heading this way, we'll eventually hit the Dawn Dew Tribe Ruins..." The reason Falco was currently bedridden was due to the conflicting 'blessings' of two different deities residing in her body. To resolve this issue, both deities who bestowed the blessings had to exert their power simultaneously.
"...The direction is correct. Just keep going this way."
"Okay." It was hard to believe given her usual behavior, but Falco was indeed an elf native to the Great Forest. Since she was the one saying it, it was highly reliable.
"Um... exactly how much further do we have to go?" Billy asked Falco. Yohan was also curious, so he nodded along.
"Three days... maybe four?"
"W-Wait a minute. Not a few hours, but four more days?" Billy asked, startled. But Falco merely nodded with a blank expression.
"Even so, my tribe was considered to be on the outskirts of the Great Forest. To get to the center from here, even a forest elf would have to travel for at least a week without resting." Their carriage had been wrecked long ago. They had managed to bring two horses, but in a dense forest like this, riding a horse or walking on foot wouldn't make much of a difference.
"Sigh..." The moment that realization hit them, Yohan and Billy let out a collective sigh.
True to its name, the Great Forest was incredibly vast, comparable to the territory of a decent-sized kingdom. The only saving grace was that food was much easier to come by compared to the mountains ruled by the man-eating troll tribes. After four days of repeating the cycle of resting and traveling, Yohan finally noticed a distinct shift in the surrounding air.
"There's something here..."
"Falco was right. I can indeed sense a presence in the distance." It was incredibly faint, to the point where one wouldn't even notice it without concentrating, but Yohan could still sense the energy of another divine entity distinct from the Goddess. Soon, a wooden building came into view in the middle of the dense forest.
"Looks like this is the place." Yohan stopped in front of the wooden building. Billy and the two horses following behind him came to a halt as well.
"Yes. We've arrived. This is my home village," Falco murmured from atop her horse. Yohan tilted his head in confusion.
"A village? There's nothing but forest around here except for that run-down cabin."
"Because it was all burned down long ago. The forest simply reclaimed the land where the fire died out."
"Huh." 'Yeah, she's definitely way older than she looks.' Yohan thought to himself as he stared at Falco.
"Then how did that cabin survive the fire and remain standing here?" Billy asked, voicing the question that Yohan had also been wondering about.
"Because it is the shrine dedicated to me." At that moment, a voice suddenly echoed in Yohan's mind.
"D-Did you just hear that?"
"What? You heard it too?" But this wasn't the voice of the Unnamed Goddess. In fact, it seemed to have been heard not just by Yohan, but by Billy and Falco as well.
*Flash!* A soft glow began to emanate from the front of the old wooden building. From within the light, a petite young girl materialized.
"Welcome to the land of the Dawn Dew Tribe, my friends from afar." She waved her hand toward Yohan's party.