Elin's Vacation
Elin was currently on her way to the Great Forest for the academy break.
The nation of the great elves.
Its official name was Alistrier-Helmund, but elves and humans alike tended to call it simply the Great Forest.
In any case, Elin Nidia had enrolled at the Empire’s Helon Academy from the Great Forest on a certain mission.
Helon Academy was the finest academy not only in the Empire but across the entire continent. Talented individuals from every corner of the land flocked there, and even the beastman kingdoms and the dwarven realms often sent their own to enroll.
Of course, the elves were an arrogant race that always considered themselves supreme, so elves who entered Helon Academy the way other races did were rare. Rare, however, was not the same as nonexistent, so when Elin enrolled, the Empire side did not find it especially strange.
Elin Nidia was a figure of extremely high standing even within the Great Forest. She was the daughter of an elf elder who sat on the Elf Council of Elders. Aside from the elf queen and the royal family, almost no one outranked a girl who would one day ascend to an elder’s seat and claim a place on the council herself.
That such a noble personage had personally enrolled at the academy was itself proof of how vital the mission she carried truly was.
And right now, the greatest problem was that the mission was not going well.
She pictured the faces of two human men.
Louis Wallenstein and Leo Epsilt.
Their names were similar, and both were handsome. Their personalities, however, could not have been more different.
To put it bluntly, Elin liked Louis.
First of all, his face was as fine as those of the elves, who were famed for their beauty. Of course a highborn elf would never fall for someone over looks alone, but Louis was also kind.
The thing that had disgusted Elin most after she entered the academy was the ugliness of humans. Humans were, as a rule, selfish, cowardly, and base. There was a reason she had made a habit of calling them “lowly humans.”
It was not as though elves were purely good and noble either, yet humans were far worse. Being around them felt like watching animals. So among such people, Louis naturally stood out.
At the same time, he was an interesting human. He never bowed even to those stronger than himself. He put in blood-sweating effort, and his growth was astonishingly fast. Unlike others who treated elves with excessive deference, he even talked back to her. He was nothing like the boring elf men of the Great Forest.
To Elin he was far more entertaining, someone she actually wanted to grow close to. A man kinder than other humans and more interesting than elves.
Unfortunately, the human she was required to grow close to was someone else.
Leo Epsilt.
His looks were handsome enough to rival Louis’s, yet everything else about him was appalling. If all humans were lowly, Leo was lower still. Where Louis was a human Elin wanted to befriend even more than her own kind, Leo was a human who made her skin crawl just by standing near her. His personality was nauseating, and his insides were rotten through and through.
Still, she could not let it show.
At first Elin had tried to carry out her mission while also growing closer to Louis. In the end she realized it was impossible. Leo hated Louis. A disgusting inferiority complex, Elin thought.
Anyway, Louis was only human. Elin tried to stop caring about him, yet to her surprise it was not easy. Thoughts of him kept returning. Whenever she saw him her heart raced and her face grew hot. It was something she had never experienced back in the Great Forest, not even when looking at the most beautiful elf men. For Elin it was simply bewildering. She was an elf, and yet she was reacting this way to a mere human man. Every time Louis threw a remark her way, her chest fluttered.
Even so, there was nothing she could do. The mission was far too important for her to put her own feelings first.
Elin began treating Louis the way she treated every other human. In other words, she started calling him a lowly human to his face. It hurt every time she spoke to him that way, but she had no choice. Especially since Leo always looked pleased whenever she insulted him.
Sticking close to Leo and becoming his friend was truly nauseating work.
Then one day Leo came to her with the matter of expelling Louis from the party. Elin, of course, agreed in order to curry favor with him. Events, however, took a strange turn, and in the end the two of them arranged a duel with Louis’s expulsion hanging in the balance.
Leo could not be allowed to lose and have his spirit broken. His growth was necessary for the sake of every elf. And so Leo entrusted her with a task.
It was a filthy job: slipping Louis a potion just before the duel. That this was supposed to be the Hero made her sick, yet the first thought that rose in her was worry for Louis. She felt terribly sorry, but Elin steeled her heart. It could not be helped. Everything was for the elves. If Louis were expelled, she would no longer have to see him, and her own heart would stop wavering.
In the end she made her decision and carried it out.
And for reasons she could not understand, it failed.
It was clearly a bad development, her plan thrown off course, yet she was startled to find herself feeling relieved.
Separately from that, a problem had arisen with the plan itself. Leo had begun keeping his distance from her. It did not seem to be simply because she had failed the task he gave her. There was clearly something more, yet she could not discover what it was. All Elin felt was frustration.
She swallowed her disgust and tried even harder to approach him, but Leo kept pushing her away.
Just what is going on...? A lowly human like him...
Thinking of the two men, Elin finally arrived at the very heart of the Great Forest, at the home of her mother, the elf elder Tiel Nidia, which stood right beside the World Tree.
"I'm home, Mother."
Tiel welcomed her.
"You've returned, Elin?"
They spoke for a while of recent events and exchanged news of each other’s well-being. Then Elin asked Tiel,
"How is the World Tree...?"
Even though they were alone, Elin lowered her voice as far as it would go. At the question, Tiel shook her head with a gloomy face.
"The same... no, it has grown worse."
Elin bit her lip hard.
The World Tree was the pillar of the elves. It was not merely a spiritual support. The magical power the great tree itself radiated protected the Great Forest from outside invasion. Thanks to it, even while the races beyond the forest were swept up in war, the elves had been able to live in solitary pride under the World Tree’s protection.
Yet for several years now, something had gone wrong with the World Tree. At first the change had been so slight that no one noticed. By now the elf queen and the elders were doing everything in their power to conceal it.
The World Tree had been contaminated by Magi.
It was unbelievable, and there was no precedent. More shaken than ever before, the elves had searched high and low for a solution. They ultimately failed to purify the Magi, yet their efforts had not been entirely in vain. Among the ancient documents left by their ancestors, one recorded the same phenomenon. And, most fortunately, the document also recorded a remedy.
That remedy was remarkably simple.
The World Tree’s erosion by Magi could be resolved only by the power of the Hero.
The Hero’s power. It was similar to holy power, and many people in fact mistook it for such, yet in the end it was something slightly different—a power that only the Hero could wield.
The problem was that the Hero candidate of this generation was the heir of one of the Empire’s three great ducal houses: House Epsilt. The purification process recorded in the document was not simple. The length of time it would take was never clearly stated. Expecting the Empire to simply send its Hero candidate to the Great Forest was already difficult. And having the Hero remain in the Great Forest for the entire unknown duration of the work? The Empire would never stand for it.
There was only one exception: if the Hero volunteered of his own free will.
That was why Elin’s mission was to make Leo help the elves of his own accord—by winning him over, or, in the worst case, by seducing him. It was a decision of the Elf Council of Elders.
"So, is it going well?"
Honestly, problems had arisen, but they were still manageable. Elin answered Tiel with a smile.
"Yes."
And in Elin’s mind there was yet another problem. She too had been able to examine that ancient document. According to it, the Magi erosion of the World Tree had been followed by an invasion by the Demon King.
Elin asked carefully,
"Mother... is it really all right not to warn the other races about the Demon King in advance...?"
Tiel shook her head.
"Elin, it has already been centuries since the Demon King last appeared. Magi occurs even without a Demon King, does it not?"
"But according to the document..."
Tiel’s face hardened, and her tone grew a little stern.
"Elin. To warn them about the Demon King, we would ultimately have to explain what has happened to the World Tree. Even if we try to gloss over it, the outside races might still discover the truth."
Elin nodded with an equally stiff expression.
"If the outside races learn that something is wrong with the World Tree, do you have any idea what will happen? Elin, they are all base creatures."
Then Tiel smiled faintly once more.
"Do not worry. The Demon King will not appear. And even if he does, we elves still have the World Tree, do we not?"