Chapter 32
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 32
Chapter Title: The Foul-Mouthed Spirit of Lightning
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“Let's go. Our destination is to the west, so you lead the way.”
With that single sentence, I cut short my squabble with Sergeant Trian. He probably had a mountain of things he wanted to say, but I refused to engage him.
Perhaps thinking I was no pushover, he clicked his tongue and sighed.
…I didn't understand why that bastard was treating me like the strange one, but there was nothing to be gained from picking another fight or dragging this out.
Without another word, I started into the forest. When I took the first step, Sergeant Trian silently moved ahead of me.
It seemed he wasn't so ill-natured as to let his pride get in the way of his duties.
That was a relief, at least.
“Stop. There's a trap ahead. Rireu, can you disarm it?”
“Ah… Yes! For this one, I just need to mess with the circuit…”
“Hold on. There are trees with highly poisonous leaves up ahead. Be careful not to brush against them, and if you get pricked and cut, tell me immediately. I have the antidote.”
“Even for a mage, aren't you getting tired too quickly? Hah… Wait here. I'll find a place for you to sit and rest.”
The elf, having swallowed his pride to focus on the task at hand, was far more competent than I had expected.
The knowledge and insight he had accumulated over more than a thousand years of life were truly impressive.
With an elf's characteristically sharp eye, he warned us of dangerous traps, plants, and terrain in advance, and even found a safe resting spot with a stump for me when I grew weary from the long walk.
Thanks to his skillful guidance and outstanding perception, we were able to traverse the rugged forest terrain much faster than I'd anticipated.
…So what if he's a bit of an ass? He's this competent.
I could see why so many commanders insisted on cramming elves, who often disrupted military discipline, into their archery corps.
“If you sit carelessly on the bare ground in a forest like this, you could be pricked by a poisonous twig or blade of grass. You should avoid lying on the ground if possible.”
“…Are you a kind person? Or are you just an ass?”
“I am merely fulfilling my duty. And I am not an ass. It is only natural that I, who have lived for over 1200 years, would speak informally to youngsters like you.”
Do elves not have the concept of 'it's natural to speak politely to someone you've just met, regardless of their age'?
And what happened to the idea that 'a soldier in the army must respect their superior officer'?
“By the way, is a cardinal direction the only way you can describe the destination's location? If you could pinpoint the exact spot where you feel this 'mysterious magic,' it would be much easier to plot a course.”
Sergeant Trian had been leading the way for about five kilometers from the outpost currently under construction by the dwarves, trusting only my words that 'we must head west for now.'
He clearly wasn't happy about blazing a trail through an unexplored part of the forest, filled with cliffs and poisonous plants, based on nothing more than 'let's just go west.'
“Now that we're a little closer, I can feel it more clearly. The largest tree… I have a sense that the oldest and largest tree in this forest is at the western edge…”
To ease Sergeant Trian's worries, I closed my eyes, placed a hand on my temple, and furrowed my brow as if I were sensing something.
…I felt pathetic putting on a show worthy of a snake-oil salesman, but what could I do?
“That's a much more specific landmark than I expected. Do you feel anything?”
“No, I'm still lacking in many ways… I'm embarrassed to say I can't feel anything at all.”
Rireu answered Sergeant Trian's question with an embarrassed look, lowering her head.
I didn't feel great about it, as if I'd literally become a con artist preying on a naive old man and a child.
“In that case, wait here for a bit. I'll go up to high ground and confirm where the largest tree at the western edge is. Having a clear landmark should make the path easier.”
Sergeant Trian left us resting on the stump and disappeared among the trees, only to return a few minutes later.
“Did you find it already?”
“No, there's a landmine nearby. Rireu, come with me. It seems I'll need you to check it.”
It seemed the path to the high ground was also littered with landmines. Disarming magic landmines required special tools or a mage, so I nodded and looked at Rireu.
Rireu looked slightly disappointed, but she soon stood up to follow Sergeant Trian without complaint.
Even if she hates being alone with a stranger, how can she show her disappointment so openly?
“Come back soon.”
“Okay…”
My words of encouragement were met with Rireu's listless reply. Trian didn't even pretend to hear my farewell. And so they disappeared into the bushes and trees, leaving me in quiet silence for the first time in a while.
***
“You seem quite close with that human.”
“Yes… well, he did save my life…”
Rireu replied to Trian in a small voice as she destroyed the circuit of a magic landmine hidden under the leaves with a spark of lightning.
When she was with Bin, her voice was at least audible. But left alone with a stranger, it became something akin to a breeze whistling from a mouse hole.
“…Could you speak up a bit?”
“I'm sorryyy…”
This situation, being alone with someone she'd just met, was nothing but uncomfortable for her.
“Never mind. As long as you do your job.”
Unlike when he dealt with Bin, Trian's voice was gentle. To him, Rireu, a fellow elf, was someone he might see for the next 500 or 1000 years.
“It's done…”
Rireu said, pointing to the tattered, blackened fragments of the completely destroyed circuit.
“Let's move. There's a cliff of a decent height up ahead. Once we get there, we should be able to get a rough lay of the land.”
Trian extended a hand to Rireu, who was crouching down to disarm the mana mine.
Rireu remained crouched for a moment, staring at Trian's hand in thought, before getting up on her own without taking it.
She herself didn't quite know why she had deliberately refused Trian's hand.
Seeing this, Trian fell silent for a moment, then looked at her with concern in his eyes.
“…It's best not to grow too attached to other races. We live for thousands of years, but they die so quickly, not even reaching a hundred.”
“Pardon?”
“It is healthiest for elves to interact only with other elves. The other races leave our side all too soon.”
“…What is this all of a sudden?”
Rireu asked, looking up at Trian with her large eyes as if she genuinely had no idea what he was talking about.
Had she perhaps offended him by not taking his hand?
It wasn't that his dirt-covered hand was filthy or that she was upset. Rireu watched Trian's back as he walked ahead, wondering how to clear up this misunderstanding.
“…Well, you'll understand when you experience it for yourself. I didn't listen when my father told me the same thing.”
Trian muttered as if to himself, his gaze fixed forward.
Rireu, accustomed to speaking in a small voice, didn't miss his quiet mumbling and committed it to memory.
…Still, she couldn't quite grasp why he was saying such things.
How could a twenty-one-year-old elf possibly fathom the inner thoughts of an elf who had lived for over 1200 years?
They walked toward the cliff in silence after that. Along the way, Rireu wanted to apologize for not taking his hand earlier and tried to speak up, but she couldn't muster the courage.
“Wait here.”
While Rireu hesitated, they arrived at the base of a sheer cliff. Sergeant Trian scanned the cliff face with a practiced eye, quickly identifying footholds and handholds to forge a path, and began to climb.
Even though it was his first time, he climbed as skillfully as someone who had trained on this cliff dozens of times a day, reaching the top of the high precipice in less than ten minutes.
“…Hmph.”
From his vantage point on the cliff, a tree with a trunk far larger and more massive than any other came into Trian's view.
Its location was also near the western edge of the forest… That had to be the place the genius mage said he felt a peculiar magic.
“Let's head back. I've got a rough idea of the route.”
Immediately after, Trian displayed an excellent sense of direction, retracing their steps perfectly through the dense forest of bushes and trees without getting lost.
“Ah, uh… umm…”
During the suffocating forty-minute walk, Rireu never managed to get her apology out.
***
After returning from the cliff, Sergeant Trian was practically a living navigation system.
I don't know how he memorized the entire terrain of this vast forest, but he skillfully guided us around sheer cliffs and areas thick with poisonous plants, leading us safely to the western edge.
The forest was dreadfully quiet.
Normally, a forest would be filled with the sounds of monsters and animals, but the Mazoku had already used most of the creatures as materials for their mutants, leaving not even a single common ant on this land.
The sight of lush trees and bushes with not a single insect in sight was bizarre in its own right.
We walked on, with only the sound of my ragged breathing as a backdrop, and finally reached the western edge of the forest just before sunset.
“Hah… huff, hah…”
I leaned against a tree, gasping for breath.
Rireu, as if used to seeing me like this, silently took out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat from my brow, while Sergeant Trian shot me a pathetic look, as if I were a weakling for collapsing in exhaustion after walking just a few kilometers.
“Is this the tree?”
He asked, placing a hand on the tree I was leaning against.
“Hoo… Yes? Ah, yes. Yes, it is.”
With a trembling hand, I pointed to the tree's roots.
“There should be a runestone hidden under here.”
“…A runestone?”
“Ah, well… the feeling of the magic is exactly like that of a runestone…”
Ah, did I only say I felt a mysterious magic, and not that it was a runestone?
I was so exhausted my mind went blank, and I seem to have made a slip of the tongue.
“…That's amazing. Even now that I'm here, I still can't feel anything. To think you can identify an object by its magic alone.”
Fortunately, thanks to Rireu's incredible (and unintentional) assist, I managed to gloss over it.
The truth was, I couldn't feel a runestone or anything else either, but that wasn't what was important right now.
What mattered was that there was a runestone hidden under this tree, and that runestone had the ability to communicate with the Spirit of Lightning.
How I came to know that fact was irrelevant, wasn't it?
“Please dig.”
After catching my breath a little, I made the request to Sergeant Trian.
“…”
Sergeant Trian looked at me with the characteristically haughty expression of an elf, as if he were genuinely offended. Sharp eyes filled with disgust… It was the same look the Elven Queen gave to criminals.
“It's an order.”
But so what if you're offended?
From my experience so far, this elf wasn't the kind of scoundrel who would screw over his superior and abandon his duty just because he didn't like something.
If he were that rotten, he wouldn't have become a soldier who must be prepared to die for a greater cause in the first place.
Which meant he wasn't rotten to the core. It was just that his pride in his race and his millennia of experience had made him arrogant.
“…Unbelievable. These youngsters…”
Just as I expected, Sergeant Trian only muttered something under his breath and did not disobey me. It was probably because I had established the chain of command early on, using my authority to keep him from getting out of line.
He began to dig into the ground with his bare hands. Perhaps feeling sorry for the 1200-year-old elf crouching and digging, Rireu began to help him a little with her slender hands.
Of course, Rireu, who had never done manual labor in her life, was more of a hindrance than a help.
“You're in the way. Just go.”
Unlike how he spoke to me, his tone with Rireu was kind. If I had been there doing that, he would have snapped at me to get lost.
“If I'd known! I would've told you! To bring! A shovel! It would've been better! I swear, listening to these youngsters! This is why…!”
Sergeant Trian openly rebuked me, but I consistently met him with a 'so what' attitude.
Common sense dictates that a general can't be the one digging with his bare hands while a sergeant stands by, right?
…Though it was also strange for a kid not yet twenty to be sitting around doing nothing while a 1200-year-old was digging.
But what could I do? My body was on the verge of shutting down.
Every muscle in my body was screaming. I was confident I couldn't move a single step even if someone held a knife to my throat and told me to get lost.
I mean, my body would have to be able to move to get lost or run away in the first place.
“Hah, damn it…!”
Trian dug like that until the moon was high in the sky.
Moonlight filtered through the leaves, but it wasn't bright enough to illuminate our surroundings. I lit a lantern Trian had brought and shone it on them.
“Oh…”
After digging for a long time, Sergeant Trian's fingertips seemed to have caught on something.
Rireu stared into Trian's pit with wide eyes. I, too, eagerly craned my neck to look, thrilled that we had finally found the runestone.
“…Hoo, this must be it?”
“Good work. I'll see that you get a reward when we get back.”
“Forget that. Just explain what this thing is for.”
It seems even a 1200-year-old elf didn't know about the existence of runestones that could communicate with spirits.
Unlike artifacts, which are scattered all over the world, there is only one runestone for communicating with spirits for each magic attribute, meaning there are only five in the entire world.
“What… is this…?”
Rireu, who had studied magic diligently, had a similar reaction to the sergeant.
Sergeant Trian dug out a bit more dirt from around the runestone, fully exposing it. Ancient, indecipherable runes were carved into the massive stone, which was large enough for two or three people to lie on.
“…”
Rireu stared blankly at the runestone, like a girl who had just fallen in love. It was a natural reaction for someone born with the aptitude of a mage.
A thrilling sensation filled both Rireu's and my chests—the feeling of being able to approach the essence of lightning magic, the very definition of mana, the core of the mystical power called magic, all of which had been beyond our grasp until now.
It felt as if we could grasp the truths of the world just by touching it.
We just stared blankly at the dirt-covered runestone.
Rireu swallowed, licking her lips. She seemed to instinctively sense that something incredible would happen if a lightning mage like herself were to touch this stone.
“Y-You go first.”
She had unconsciously reached out a hand before yielding the turn to me.
“Even though it's emitting such immense power, I couldn't even notice it… My master never mentioned feeling any special magic either, so this runestone must have been specifically calling out to you, Bin, not me or my master.”
“Huh.”
What is she talking about?
“I don't know what this runestone communicates with… but its master specifically singled you out, Bin. Something terrible might happen if someone else tries to commune with it first…”
“That makes sense.”
Sergeant Trian, who was washing the dirt from his hands with water, chimed in with Rireu's concern.
The aura of mana and all that. I wonder how they'll react when they find out it was all bullshit I made up.
“…I understand.”
I put on my most solemn expression and slowly placed my hand on the runestone. It bothered me that I had to keep up the snake-oil salesman act until the very end… but what could I do? This is how things turned out.
The next moment, a brilliant blue bolt of lightning shot out from between my hand and the stone, then spread out in all directions through the tree's roots.
Strangely, despite the lightning spreading everywhere, the tree did not catch fire. The trees around us seemed to act as conductors, absorbing the lightning and glowing, and soon, electricity began to gather above the giant tree in front of us.
…The sheer power was incomparable to what I had seen on a screen. The air around us grew hot, but strangely, no thunderstorm formed.
The sound of crackling sparks filtered through the leaves covering the sky above.
The lightning slowly formed into white claws, a body, and then large, beautiful antlers, eventually taking the shape of a magnificent deer.
“…”
The Spirit of Lightning had descended.
I was overcome with the urge to bow my head. Rireu, a fellow lightning mage, seemed to feel the same, her face filled with awe. Even the sergeant, despite his 1200 years of life, let out a quiet gasp of admiration at the sight.
What should I say? How should I greet it? What was the dialogue in the game…?
“SON OF A BIIIIIIITCH!”
And with that, the deer-shaped Spirit of Lightning's eyes flew open as it let out a sudden, hearty curse.
…?
“…Huh? Wha—huh? What?”
I was so dumbfounded that stupid sounds reflexively escaped my lips.
I had met this Spirit of Lightning countless times on a screen, but this was the first time I'd seen it react so passionately.
“Uwaaaaah…”
Unlike me, with my [Composure] trait, Rireu was instantly frightened and slammed her head to the ground.
“I'm so fucking pissed. I should just burn all you little shits to death!”
Umm…
What the hell is its problem?