Chapter 91: Elf Noona 3
Chapter 91: Elf Noona 3
Her face was obviously flustered, her cheeks blazing red, and she tripped over herself to change the subject.
It was like losing an argument, lying down in bed, and only then coming up with the perfect retort—
I'd dismissed my clone and returned to my own space before the Unfading Giant Tree's strange behavior finally clicked.
Not that I had any way of figuring out why she'd acted like that.
Can't taste magic power, so what can you do.
Maybe it really was so bitter it shocked her,
maybe the scent stung her nose when she licked it,
or maybe it didn't taste like perfume at all but like something foul, and she'd pivoted fast so she wouldn't hurt my feelings.
Too many possibilities. No point leaping to wild conclusions.
With that thought, I shaped the snow-white figure once more.
A white wolf beastman woven from threads of magic power.
Loyal Fang took one look at it and howled, his tail whipping behind him hard enough to buzz like a fan.
"Love it!"
"No, I meant give me some actual details."
"Hm? Wouldn't it be weirder if I customized every last hair on the person who's gonna be my mate? As long as it's roughly that, I'm satisfied."
"If you bitch about it later, I'll kill you. I mean it."
The bastard thumped his tail against the ground and raised his cup.
I lifted my own rough wooden cup in response.
That 150-centimeter scrap of a body feels serene and mentally harmonious,
but this huge frame is definitely more comfortable for enjoying a drink and sprawling out at ease.
"How could anyone complain about a sight this beautiful?"
He waved a thick hand toward the illusion shaped from my magic.
Walking on two legs like a wolf, I guess—I could see the meaty paw pads on that big hand of his.
Not the soft jelly of a pet's pads.
They looked like solid gray concrete; get clocked in the skull with one of those and your head would shatter.
"Ah, well, you... Must be the Dream Demon thing—you're awfully open about this."
"What the hell are you talking about."
I was adding detail to the white wolf clone when he cleared his throat out of nowhere and threw that at me.
I was busy putting pink paw pads onto the palms and a wet dog nose onto the white Furry One's face, and now this dogshit remark.
I turned it over in my head a moment, then it hit me.
He was seeing this as me painting pink nipples onto a love doll. Right now.
"Hey, you fuck. I give zero shits about your species's sexual fetishes."
"Still, you are a Dream Demon. Wouldn't it pay to know a little of everything?"
"I am not fucking a Furry One."
He'd knocked back a drink and was giggling, tossing around crude jokes.
Guess Constellations—male, female, doesn't matter—are all doomed to loneliness.
He spouted nothing but bullshit and was the type to flip his lid and throw down at the first excuse, but hating him was hard.
No need for manners or performance—a conversation partner you could call a bastard and get into it with comfortably.
A wolf-man dropped among humans must've been lonelier than me.
No one to drink with, talk filth with, brawl with.
A guy who believed males spoke with their fists, dropped into a gender-flipped world—his insides must've twisted inside out.
Online, I saw people writing off his masculinity as just a beast-type Constellation thing.
In the end, that tough two-legged beast had been treated like a delicate lady, same as I had.
The thought was kind of funny.
Women tiptoeing around a two-meter wolf-man like he was some frail girl, greeting him with bare-knuckle brawls until tails were severed, teeth shattered, skin torn open...
My imagination shoved a dress onto that massive frame and laughter leaked out of my mouth.
"...That's a pretty infuriating grin. What are you thinking about?"
"Anyway, that's the base it'll be built from. Your subconscious'll get mixed in, so the face'll shift a bit."
"Well, that's up to the person making it."
We chatted on like that, but I could feel him inching toward lunging at me, so I pulled out of his subconscious.
Fighting that bastard drains too much magic power—eats into my time with the Unfading Giant Tree.
Having a friend who gets me is great, but I'm not sacrificing time with the elf girl just for that friend.
In the end, him and me—both male—weren't we bonding over our sexual appetite for women anyway.
※
Going from a 190-centimeter heap of muscle that looked like it could deadlift 700 pounds to a tiny 150-centimeter runt was a goddamn surreal shift in bodily awareness.
Sometimes I'd be walking without thinking and misjudge a step so badly I'd stumble.
Acclimating to a change this drastic was going to take a while.
"You okay?"
"Yeah, thanks."
It happened today because instead of sitting at the low table, we'd gone walking to see the fruit-bearing trees in the garden.
Just ten minutes earlier, this body had been a 190-centimeter frame that would've put Hercules to shame,
and now I was a boy frailer than a girl, 150 centimeters tall, and had nearly face-planted in a garden.
The Unfading Giant Tree, walking right beside me, caught me.
In my original body, the size gap would've tucked her petite frame snug under my armpit,
but with my height reduced to match hers, I ended up leaning against her shoulder instead.
A fresh, grassy scent and the thump of a racing heartbeat against me.
She'd grabbed me on reflex when I lurched—probably never guessed we'd end up this close, cheek nearly touching cheek.
At her obvious fluster, I let the strength drain from my body and leaned into her a little more.
Something strange about that soft, small body bracing me so steadily.
She looked like a small, delicate girl on the outside, but she was the last caretaker who'd tended the World Tree for over a hundred years.
Factor in magic power and the spirits, and it wasn't odd at all.
"Um..."
"Yeah, thanks."
I savored the accelerating drum of her heart and the sweet-syrupy panic I could feel through her skin, then set both feet back on solid earth.
Whether absorbing the mood of people around me like a chameleon was a Dream Demon ability or not,
being in this plant-filled garden had me noticeably buoyant.
'Come to think of it, it was the same with other Constellations.'
In front of the Incinerating Tyrant, I'd been paralyzed and disoriented by the sheer gap in status.
Beside the Dream Demon bastard I'd eaten, fury had boiled in my chest like a sickness, so I'd stabbed him without even trying to talk.
And in front of Loyal Fang, I'd swung savage haymakers like some ancient Greek boxer, never bothering to dodge.
'If I can't get that under control, it's gonna be a pain.'
I worried for a moment about future meetings with other Constellations, but the real concern right now was the elf girl in front of me, cheeks staining red.
She was trying to brush off my advances by casually treating me like a kid, but did she really think that would work?
Not against a face that wasn't bad, and especially not against someone already transformed into the ideal type sleeping in her own subconscious?
'If that worked, my past life wouldn't have had singers crooning breakup songs about their first love.'
I trailed after her in silence as she walked through the garden.
Since this was the Unfading Giant Tree's garden, I followed without much thought,
and when she glanced back at me, her face got a shade redder.
Maybe the quiet, meek following hit a button for her.
Like solving a puzzle, I pieced together her tastes and thoughts one by one.
The reward for this puzzle ought to be sweeter than anything.
She faced forward again and strode ahead.
"So, this one is the honey tree. The one with the golden drink."
"Huh. For a tree, it's got a pretty unique look."
"Right? I was surprised too the first time I saw a real one."
She beamed in front of the bright-yellow tree at the garden's far edge.
Called a honey tree, but it looked like you could just call it a honeycomb tree.
Like someone had stacked hexagonal blocks into a Y-shape to build a tree.
"If you pierce right here in the middle, the sap comes out."
"This awl is the sap-tapping tool?"
She'd been letting her guard down a lot today; I slipped in close beside her at once.
One sap tool. Obviously, that meant there was a move to make.
I tried to reach from behind, wrap my arms around hers, and layer my hand over the one holding the tool—but my frame was way too small now.
Pressing in right against her would have to do.
"Ah, yeah. Iron blessed by the World Tree heals a tree's wounds right away, see."
Her voice trembled as she kept up her explanation.
At this shoulder-to-shoulder distance, I could feel her stealing glances at me.
I ignored the prickling heat of her gaze on my cheek, layered my hand over hers, and drove the awl dead center into one bright-yellow wood block.
Golden liquid beaded along the crude awl; her other hand—trapped under mine—caught it in a leaf-shaped bowl.
Until the sap stopped flowing from that segmented section of the tree, I didn't let go of her hand on the awl.
"...That's how you do it. If too much sap builds up, it bursts through the bark and draws pests. They can gnaw away these clear segments, so you have to drain the sap before it gets too full."
I only let her hand go after hearing the whole explanation, and she pulled the awl free.
Guess that "World Tree-blessed awl" wasn't elvish humor—the round puncture in the tree vanished in an instant.
"It really does heal that fast. So if you cut down a tree with an axe blessed by the World Tree, would it just grow back?"
"Huh?"
Since the important part had been her hand, not the tree or the awl, I'd tossed out whatever thought drifted by,
and she stared at me like a pigeon that just got shot with a slingshot. Had I said something that weird?
"Well, the trees do have spirits in them, and they can talk with elves, so..."
"Ah. Right."
A little awl-hole for draining sap—sure, you could call that a blood draw, a donation.
But chopping down a tree and regenerating it—wasn't that equivalent to yanking out a person's limbs or organs for surgery and then regenerating them?
Even in a world with recovery magic, that's a bit of a psychopath idea.
Chewing over the still-unfamiliar otherworld fantasy sensibility, we carried the sap-filled bowl back into the manor.