Dark Elves Aren't Actually Dark
Last night had genuinely scared me—every last hair on my body stood on end, and I don't even have that many to begin with.
After finishing the barrier setup to keep monsters out and returning to the cabin, there wasn't so much as a nose-hair of the kids to be seen.
Fortunately, it seemed a mana link connected slave and master, so I could at least tell which direction they were in. Without a clear sense of distance, I braced myself for the worst, but thankfully, on those little ones' short legs, they'd only made it into the nearby woods.
The monsters that ambushed them were just wild boar piglets, too—if it had been a full-grown adult, Blackie would have been black and blue in a single strike, and she'd have awakened on the spot. I probably wouldn't be among the living right now.
We got lucky.
Well, no—being possessed by a slave merchant in the first place, I can't exactly call any of this luck.
But blaming luck wouldn't improve anything, so I decided to just do what needed doing.
The kids, it turned out, had been so shaken by the events of the night that they'd gone quiet and slept like rocks.
I got up early and made a bulk run to Elend for daily necessities. Food, bedding, dishes, and so on—enough that I could have used a cart. It made me really want an Item Box skill.
When I got back, the kids were still off in dreamland.
Looking at them like this, they're such ordinary little kids.
It somehow feels unreal that these children are destined to become the greatest threats on the continent once they awaken.
And knowing that, there's nothing I can actually do about it.
I'm just an ordinary, powerless D-rank adventurer.
Changing the original story's future, destiny, or history—that's a tale far too big for the likes of me.
I can't even change the four characters floating above my own head as it is.
So for now, all I want is to treat these kids as normally as I can.
…Though there's no helping it if they scare me.
Don't get on their bad side. Don't let them fall into mortal danger. Dissolve the slave contracts as quickly as possible.
That's my very difficult list of immediate objectives.
Careful not to wake the children, I spent the rest of the morning finishing the cleanup of the mill that would serve as our home, and by the time I was done, it actually started to look like a space where people lived.
"Master."
"Whoa! You startled me!"
I turned at the voice to find Yellow standing there, rubbing her eyes.
Stealth must be a passive trait for this one—I hadn't sensed her approach at all.
That was footwork worthy of the Black Knight.
"Oh, you're up."
"Yeah."
"How's your wrist?"
"Fine."
"You hungry, aren't you? Let's eat breakfast once the other two are up. Never mind that the sun's already past its peak."
They must have all been exhausted, so it was better to let them sleep. There was nothing to do anyway, so there was no reason to wake them early—and I'd heard growing kids are better off sleeping long hours.
"By the way, what's with that title?"
"Master?"
"Yeah. I don't like it."
Yellow pointed a finger at herself.
"Slave."
Then she shifted it to point at me.
"Master."
I waved her off.
"I told you, I hate that. When other people hear it, they'll see me as a slave merchant, plain and simple."
"Then what should I call you?"
"Anything but Master."
Yellow stared at me for a long while. Her expression was so blank it was impossible to tell what she was thinking.
"Old man."
Hmm.
That one stings in its own way.
Before the possession, maybe, but I'm certainly not old enough for that yet.
I've done some hard living as an adventurer, sure. My skin's tanned dark from the sun.
And this world's age of adulthood is pretty low, so it's not entirely wrong, technically.
Tch.
Fine, do what you like. What does it matter if you call me big brother or old man? We're going to part ways soon anyway.
"Old man."
"You don't have to double-tap."
"Teach me the sword."
"Out of nowhere?"
Yellow nodded vigorously, radiating intense enthusiasm.
The plan for the afternoon was to stop by the guild and pick up requests. It's how adventurers eat and live.
Though at this hour, all the good jobs would already be taken, and it did feel like the Black Knight-to-be should be getting her grind in, so to speak.
Not that I'm sure the best swordswoman in the world, aside from the Hero, would have anything to learn from a D-rank adventurer in the first place.
"Let's start after breakfast."
"Excited."
For all her muttering about being excited, Yellow's expression didn't look excited in the slightest.
Maybe she just didn't know how to use her facial muscles.
"This is the basic stance. Feet shoulder-width apart, vertical. And until your arms move, don't take a single step—think of your legs as planted. See the line I drew on the bandage wrapped around your hand? Grip the sword so that axis never drifts from the blade's center."
"Understood."
The four of us shared a lunch that couldn't exactly be called heartwarming, then came out to the front yard, where I began teaching Yellow the fundamentals.
"Yap!"
Yellow swung her practice wooden sword. The weight was still too much for her small frame—she lost her balance and wobbled.
"Don't get greedy. Imagine your hips as a fixed coordinate marker floating in midair. From now on, imagine your spine is frozen in place."
"Zip? Flatfish?"
Yeah, that was too many hard words.
I braced Yellow's waist with my left hand and traced the arc of the swing with my right. Perhaps something had finally clicked, because she tried swinging again with her arm relaxed.
"Keep going just like that. This is the most fundamental of fundamentals—the 'cut.' Basics are always what matter most."
"Basics. Important."
As I watched Yellow's silently diligent training from a little distance away, a presence stirred behind me.
Blackie was glaring at me with all her might.
"How's the wound?"
"Don't come near me."
She bared her teeth immediately, wary as ever.
"What kind of slave merchant puts a slave to bed in a room, feeds her good food, and tends her wounds? What's your scheme?"
"The evil slave merchant that I am, I'm plotting a conspiracy you couldn't even imagine. Now show me that wound—it's time to change your bandages."
I could understand Blackie's reaction. I remembered that the wiki had said Lich Testia loathes humanity.
I didn't know about her past, but she may have spent a long time in slavery.
If anything, Yellow was the more approachable one, even without expressions on her face.
I had no intention of getting close to her either, but I did hope to avoid earning her outright hostility.
Approaching slowly, the way you'd handle a stray cat soaked through by the rain, I carefully unwound Blackie's bandages. When I took disinfectant out of my waist pouch and cleaned the wound, she flinched hard.
"Doesn't look like a secondary infection, so if you keep applying the medicine, it'll heal up in a week. Don't overexert yourself."
Fresh bandages on, treatment complete.
"Why do you carry all that stuff around?"
"Because I'm an adventurer."
"Then why does it say 'slave merchant' over your head?"
"That's exactly why I'm dying of frustration here. I get why you're suspicious—your whole race has been burned before. With the other elves going on about pure bloodlines and whatnot, they've probably been persecuting dark elves since way back."
At those words, Blackie's wariness sharpened into open hostility.
"Ha, figures! You're just like the rest of them—you took one look at my skin and decided I was a dark elf, didn't you?! You're all the same. I'm sick to death of it!"
Smack!
Blackie struck my arm. Judging by the way she was biting her lip, she'd happened to hit the injured arm, and it must have hurt badly.
She was completely misunderstanding what I'd said.
"No—it's your eyes that are black."
"…Huh?"
Blackie froze, then slowly lifted her gaze to my face.
"The whole 'dark elves have dark skin' thing is a myth that got out of hand. The high elves poison dark elves with black mana from childhood, that's all—it makes them easier to tell apart."
Blackie's huge black eyes blinked.
"The only real way to distinguish the two races has always been eye color. High elves are blue; dark elves are black. Every now and then you get special cases like albinos, but."
Elves come in two classifications—high elves and dark elves—and in truth, the two share the same lineage. They're less separate races than political factions.
I know this world's elves extremely well. Not just elves, either—I've got the entire wiki memorized for every race.
The reason is simple: I found it interesting and read them over and over before the possession.
Those pages aren't viewable anymore, but the knowledge is all still in my head.
I wasn't a wiki addict for nothing.
"Come to think of it, they weren't even called dark elves in the first place. They were Night Elves, weren't they?"
"…How do you know that? Are you even human? Humans were—all of them were idiots."
"Yellow's human too, you know."
At my question, Blackie shut her mouth. She hung her head low and avoided my eyes.
Now that I thought about it, so was Yellow.
―Shuuung! Shoong!
Hmm.
Why can I already see spatial distortion in the arc of Yellow's wooden sword?
Yellow turned to look back at me.
"This is... the basics, right?"
―SHUUUNG! SHWAAAAAK!!
What is that? I don't know, and it's scary.
The dark elf slave—Blackie—was worried about Yellow, who had trailed after the slave merchant.
Yellow, it seemed, had already let her guard down around him.
Blackie thought she must not do that. Every kindness she'd ever received from the creatures called slave merchants had come due tenfold, a hundredfold.
And so she resolved to dig out the real reason behind his good treatment.
No—she had to find it.
That he had saved her life yesterday, saved all of their lives—she was grateful for it.
Grateful, but utterly unable to put it into words.
Because once he believed she had submitted to him, there was no telling how he would behave from that moment on.
So she needed a reason.
A reason why she didn't have to be grateful.
But today, too, his manner never wavered.
When he treated her wounds it had stung, but once she endured it, the pain subsided and the area felt almost refreshed. Even the rough texture of the hands that had held her arm felt, somehow, not entirely unpleasant.
And yet he had called her by that racial name.
Dark elf.
A name she had hated for as long as she could remember.
From childhood, on the sole basis of being a dark elf, she had been exposed to black mana she never wanted, and forced to learn not magic, but black magic.
For her steadily darkening skin and hair, all the world returned was ridicule and contempt.
Having lost the power struggle within the great elf tribe beneath the World Tree, the dark elves who lived on in scattered enclaves had their fates sealed from the moment of birth.
Blackie hated her black skin.
The brand of "dark elf" followed her everywhere—no matter where she went, no matter whom she met.
But this slave merchant...
"No—it's your eyes that are black."
"Come to think of it, they weren't even called dark elves in the first place. They were Night Elves, weren't they?"
Not a single slur crossed his lips—nothing about filthy skin or impure mana. He simply held accurate facts as knowledge, nothing more.
When he treated her wounds, when he took hold of her arm, there wasn't a trace of revulsion in him.
An unbidden question blossomed in her heart: was it possible he actually saw her as a person?
'…There's no way that's true.'
Blackie didn't want to admit it.
If she admitted it, she would be forced to the conclusion that the slave merchant before her had truly helped them out of pure, uncalculating goodwill.
'…But I've said such awful things to him until now?'
Blackie looked up at the slave merchant. He was staring blankly at Yellow.
Seeing that face made Blackie's chest ache all the more.
His was nothing like the faces other slave merchants had worn—the face of someone appraising an object, a piece of cargo.
He was watching Yellow's swordsmanship with such reverence and astonishment that one might mistake him for the one overwhelmed.
She could see it now. The slave merchant was treating them as equals—as people.
'…Could this person, really…'
Blackie bit her lip.
"Um."
"Oh—huh?"
The slave merchant, who had been gazing blankly at Yellow, turned his head.
Blackie couldn't bring herself to meet his eyes. Instead, she murmured in a voice barely above a whisper.
"…bĕnígne."
At those words, the slave merchant's eyes went wide for a moment—then he snorted a quiet laugh.
His reaction startled her so badly that Blackie's face flushed crimson.
"You know ancient elvish too?!"
The slave merchant just shrugged and answered lightly.
"Latet."
"Like hell you don't know!"
Blackie bolted away from him like an arrow released from a bow.
Still, her gratitude had gotten through properly this time—and deep down, she felt relieved.