Drones (1)
“Hehe, success~.”
Deep inside a treehouse in El-Ladh, an elder elf named Emily grinned from beneath her plush duvet as she stared intently at her screen. Against all odds, by putting on a flawless performance and pretending to be a human, she had successfully wrangled a remedy out of the Head Moderator himself!
“The Head Mod wouldn't dream in his wildest nightmares that I'm an elf, would he~?”
The Head Mod had previously distributed toothpaste to the forum, but for the unfortunate souls whose teeth were already cracked or knocked out, modern paste was utterly useless.
Trolls seeking to deflect their misery and direct their fury toward the Head Moderator were a fixture of every board.
Emily had sneakily slipped right into that unruly pack of agitators. And why had she done it?
‘Dental Treatment Remedy’ has been delivered!
All for the sake of obtaining this very cure.
“So this is the medicine that can heal teeth...”
Emily slid out from under her covers, crept over to a mirror, and parted her lips. Between two neat rows of otherwise pristine pearly whites, her two upper incisors were broken off in a jagged, unsightly mess. They had shattered during the recent invasion of El-Ladh, while she was participating in combat.
“Fighting valiantly against the ravenous beasts, only to end up... sob.”
The humiliating truth was that she had been commanding the backline, tripped over an overgrown tree root, and planted her face directly into the dirt. But if she posted that pathetic tale and begged for assistance, she knew full well she wouldn't receive a speck of sympathy. What was the current climate on the Gallery, after all? Mentioning you were an elf immediately summoned a barrage of vitriol—derided as 'disgusting point-ears,' 'elf infiltrators,' and 'shameless parasites.' The Head Mod, who steered the culture of the forum, certainly bore part of the blame for that hostile atmosphere.
“Hmph, I suppose I will generously forgive you. Seeing as you acknowledged your fault and brought me this medicine...”
[Dental Treatment Remedy]
Please take the broken tooth fragments into your hand and swallow them together with the remedy.
Ever since her front teeth broke, young elves whose baptismal water had barely dried had teased her relentlessly. How deeply she had blushed with shame! But that humiliation ended today. Emily perked her long, tapered ears, gathered her nerve, and swallowed the remedy along with the broken tooth shards just as instructed.
“Mmm, it actually tastes like grape juice~?”
It tasted surprisingly sweet on her tongue. But immediately following that burst of fruit came a brand-new sensation. It felt as though...
“Gah. Wait? Hrk, ack, k-heeeek!”
It felt as if her entire body had been twisted into a pretzel and used as a jump rope. Emily collapsed flat against the floorboards. Tears burst from the corners of her eyes as an unbearable, searing agony concentrated squarely into her upper jaw.
“Heeek! S-Save me! It hurts! El-kkiyaaaak!”
It was an indescribable, transcendent plane of pain. And in that very moment, as Emily flapped across the floorboards like a landed carp gasping for air, a new comment flashed across her screen.
“Ju-ttaaak...!”
It was an evil conspiracy by that demonic Head Mod all along! The ceiling was the floor, the floor was the ceiling; driven half out of her skull by the torment, Emily even flipped into a panicked handstand, her hands flailing about in pure hysteria.
Clatter!
Her flailing hand struck the discarded bottle of dental remedy, sending it tumbling across the floor. The outer label tore away on impact, revealing the real name printed beneath.
Boasts twice the efficacy of a Low-grade Recovery Potion.
Including the pain.
Endure the pain of getting stabbed by a blade and get your teeth back vs. Never feel it and just live toothless.
It didn't just restore them; it rebuilt them better than my original teeth.
It's pants-shittingly awesome.
I mean I literally soiled my pants. Yeah.
Written as 'Dental Treatment Remedy,' read as 'Intermediate Recovery Potion.' While the Low-grade Recovery Potion excelled at sealing amputations and regenerating muscle tissue, its effectiveness when it came to rebuilding bone had been abysmal. Elevating the brew to intermediate grade, however, granted it the power to restore bone structure as well.
A massive share of the credit belonged to the developer, Morone, who had thrown herself into non-stop research without taking a single break ever since I rescued her. Thanks to that manic drive, she seemed to have lost half her sanity in the process, but... well, she'd be fine, right?
“Granted, there are some minor side effects.”
Being an early prototype, the potion was still rough around the edges. Minor mishaps occurred, such as swallowing a broken incisor only for an unwanted wisdom tooth to sprout alongside it. Even so, the Gallums were downing the dental remedy in droves.
Entertainment was desperately sparse in this world; games and leisure simply didn't exist. Under such circumstances, the diverse modern delicacies I occasionally distributed were the community's sole source of joy. It wasn't an exaggeration to say marketplace food sold out in a matter of seconds. Furthermore, the excruciating agony of the potion had unexpectedly fostered a positive cultural shift across the Gallery.
The sheer terror of enduring the cure had miraculously driven home the gospel of oral hygiene. Yet regardless of how beneficial the outcome was, malcontents were inevitable.
Replies chiming in to agree with the agitator suddenly surged like an avalanche.
“Hmm.”
I narrowed my eyes at the thread, studying the suspicious cadence of the replies. Then, I casually posted a response.
Dead silence. Not a single reply could bring itself to say it. Smirking, I rummaged through my saved image folders and fired off a rapid salvo of attachments.
Infiltrator Detectors One, Two, and Three. Under the psychological weight of those three cursed images, the supposed human users cracked and spilled out into the open all at once.
“Elves? Apprehended.”
As expected, they were elves masquerading as humans. Moreover, this wasn't the work of one or two rogues; it was a premeditated, coordinated brigade of agitators. Before dropping the ban hammer, I decided to hear their excuse.
Having their identities stripped bare and enduring a torrent of insults proved too much for the elves, and their composure completely shattered.
“Huh?”
I clicked open the image posted by one of the elves. In the center of the frame, swirling out from the hollow core of the ancient World Tree trunk, thick tendrils of violet mist were billowing into the forest.
Historically, El-Ladh was a realm steeped in dense, natural mana. It was the sacred sanctuary where dimensional rifts had never managed to gain a foothold, the consecrated earth guarded by the World Tree itself—a living, breathing cosmic barrier. Or rather, it had been.
That protective sanctuary had lasted right up until the World Tree, thoroughly disgusted with the arrogant elves, packed up its roots and migrated over to the Dark Elves. Now, nothing remained in El-Ladh except the hollow, desiccated husk of the original divine tree. With the divine tree vacated, its mana barrier vanished alongside it, leaving the forest vulnerable to hostile incursions from roaming magical beasts.
Inevitably, an extradimensional rift had manifested inside the empty sacred wood. And the real issue was the perpetual stream of purple fog spilling outward from the tear.
“Can't you just walk up and investigate it?”
Rift emissions were nothing new; the Fron region had experienced bizarre phenomena leaking from fissures all the time. But unlike Fron, which had been riddled with dozens of cracks, El-Ladh was troubled by only a single rift nested in the World Tree. It seemed simple enough to send a scout to inspect it and report back, but the problem lay in the supernatural properties of the fog itself.
It appears to be sleeping fog, da-eyo.
Anyone who inhaled the vapors was instantly overcome by an irresistible drowsiness and plunged into deep slumber. It seemed possible to hold out temporarily by erecting a barrier of mana, but even that offered only a fleeting reprieve.
Their mana reserves evaporated in an instant, leaving the elves utterly helpless against the onset of sleep.
“Wait, why?”
Was the rift's slumber fog truly so overwhelming? As it turned out, that wasn't the issue at all.
Ordinary mages actively drew mana from the atmosphere, refining and cycling it within their own vessels to cast spells. The elves of El-Ladh, however, had never bothered with such rigorous cultivation.
Why break a sweat when you could freely tap into the boundless mana radiating from the World Tree? They had idled away centuries without disciplined training, and now that complacency was coming back to bite them. In short, scouting beyond the veil of mist required someone possessing an immense reservoir of mana, but...
“If the fog drains mana to induce sleep, can't we just send something with zero mana?”
If there was no mana to suck dry, the sleeping effect was utterly toothless.
Without hesitation, I purchased a drone straight from the system shop.