The World's Strongest Elf Leaves the Hero's Party
Training
For elves, accuracy with the bow, rapid aiming, and the ability to constantly sense the surroundings even in the heat of battle were the most important things.
In other words, the ability to detect a hidden enemy sneaking up while you were shooting arrows from a tree or an enemy archer aiming at you, then quickly move to a safe position to set up an attack position again...
If you had just that, you would be classified as either a combatant or a non-combatant in the elf kingdom.
“Kariel, aim at me from far away.”
“Yes.”
I pointed at the tree in the forest in front of the villa to teach Kariel that detecting ability, and Kariel ran there, took up an attack stance with her bow aimed at me from the tree.
What I was testing here...
Whoa!
To the eyes of a normal person, it looked like Kariel had moved as if she had instantly teleported and approached the tree where she was, aiming at her neck.
Swish.
Kariel felt me disappear and quickly looked around, chasing my trail, but the practice wooden sword I had been holding was already aimed at her neck.
“Eh... How...?”
“I couldn’t find you because you were looking for me with your eyes.”
“Th-then how should I...?”
“You have to read everything together: sound, smell, the vibration of the ground, and the flow of mana to achieve true detection. I’ll do it one more time, so focus.”
I descended from the tree where Kariel had been and headed back to my original position, and in that time Kariel had been practicing alone to improve her detecting ability as I had taught her.
Normally, when taking elves as disciples, one would teach swordsmanship, archery, or elemental magic, but that was only possible when there was plenty of free time, and I gave them the detecting ability first.
Those who could sense everything about the surroundings, terrain, enemies and allies, offense and defense were true elf combatants, and in actual combat they could raise their survival rate.
“Okay, let’s go again.”
At my words Kariel started aiming at me again, and I held the wooden sword and moved toward Kariel’s neck as if I had instantly teleported like before.
Whoa.
Swish.
This time too, Kariel had come at me at an incredible speed and stood behind her back, aiming at her neck.
However, if there was one difference from before, it was that Kariel’s body had turned around even though she was a bit late, and her hand had been heading toward the dagger at her waist.
This movement was evidence that she had successfully detected me and prepared to counterattack, and it was almost as if she had succeeded.
“As expected... You’re amazing.”
“No, this time Kariel succeeded in detecting me, so the one who should be praised is Kariel.”
My praise, which had been circling around, made Kariel’s face blush and she smiled, and I continued by gesturing for the next elf to do the same training.
When I thought about teaching this to all eighty-eight elves the same way, my head throbbed even though it was easy, but my teaching them, with no sign of difficulty, and rather seeing them practicing alone in the back with passion, my body was tired but I continued moving anyway and taught them, and luckily they were also absorbing it at a rapid pace.
“This detecting ability, keep meditating at any time, and practice while feeling passersby walking by or birds flying around, and someday your detecting ability will grow much more than mine.”
I told the eighty-eight elves how to improve their detecting ability, and while there was still time I was about to take out a bow from my magic pouch to teach them archery too, when...
“Lord Lowell, will you teach us swordsmanship as well?”
Kariel, who had once ended Baron Bardoff with my rapier, was holding that same rapier in one hand, and a few other elves had come forward with determined faces to learn swordsmanship with me.
“I can’t use both bow and sword. I have to give up one of them. Are you sure you can?”
“Tw-two of them...?”
It seemed these elves were dreaming of using the sword in close combat after firing arrows from afar...
That was impossible for them without a magic pouch like me.
When extracting the most important ability from archery, accuracy, rapid rate of fire, and mobility were needed, and if you were discovered you had to move faster than anyone, and mobility to attack enemies chasing while moving in danger was linked to survival, so archers could never give up.
But when using a sword, you had to always carry it at your waist, and for an archer who had to repeatedly jump from obstacle to obstacle, crouch and stand, it would just get in the way.
So the real elf kingdom’s army was divided into swordsmen and archers, and the archers carried a small dagger at their waist.
“I want to learn swordsmanship! Lord Lowell!”
“Me too!”
“Me too...”
The five elves who had come forward with Kariel said they wanted to learn swordsmanship from me, and I set a condition.
“Instead, there’s a condition. I’ll teach you for exactly one week... after one week, go back to the elf kingdom by having a duel with the Imperial Knight Corps over there. How about it? Do you still want to learn?”
I pointed at Alex’s knight corps training separately in front of the villa, and the elves, who had been confident moments ago, now showed a bit of hesitation.
“Y-yes!”
“Me too!”
Elves who said they would return to the elf kingdom...
Even if they weren’t like me, if they could handle a sword at all, they would be worth an army of ten thousand and ten thousand to the remaining eighty-three elves who carried bows.
In narrow areas or sieges, a few seconds of lead time would allow the elves with bows behind to eliminate more enemies through rapid fire.
However, there was one drawback...
After all, elves holding swords had a much lower survival rate than those holding bows.
So I planted that resolve in them and started serious training.
The elf holding the sword...
For female elves the sword was extremely weak, and since elves were already weaker in strength than humans, and women were like water in comparison, it would require blood and sweat to learn swordsmanship.
The first thing to overcome the weakness was to need speed...
“One hundred and twenty cuts of the sword per minute!”
I handed out wooden swords to the five elves who wanted to learn and started training with rapid sword swings.
One second, two times...
If you succeeded, the next was three times per second...
That is, you had to swing the sword one hundred and eighty times per minute.
And for the remaining eighty-three elves, I taught them archery.
Not just shooting arrows with simple physical force to hit the enemy, but I taught various methods using mana and spirits.
As elves who had talent for magic beyond any race, you could change the nature of the arrow just with the mana in your body, and even with that you could shoot exploding arrows or arrows with explosive magic, or like me, arrows with electricity to deal a powerful strike.
Moreover, you could use wind spirits to add amplification magic to the arrow to make the effect stronger, and with a little direction change and guidance ability you could increase accuracy.
“Today we’re going to practice passing mana to the arrow. First, load the arrow into the bow and pass the mana through the bowstring, so follow me.”
The eighty-three elves following me in unison...
Nearly half of them were following perfectly as I instructed, but the others failed to move the mana...
BOOM!!!!
Elves who had exploded because they put in too much mana.
Luckily it wasn’t a strong enough explosion to threaten life, but in an instant the training ground became a mess.
****
The Luteria Empire’s Imperial Palace...
The Imperial Palace had been busy without a day of peace lately, drawing up plans to rescue the hero trapped in the Kubera Dungeon, and the one with the most passion among them was...
Prince Felix, who had sent his daughter to the hero’s party.
Someone who had once touched the emperor’s sensibilities before, he should have been calm, but in the current situation where his daughter had gone missing, the emperor and everything else were invisible to his eyes.
“Isn’t rescuing the hero’s party originally supposed to be handled by the Grusen Kingdom?”
“The Grusen Kingdom has already sent reinforcements, and most of them were wiped out on the second floor, with only a few barely escaping the report has come up.”
“Then shouldn’t we immediately call S-rank adventurers to make a new reinforcement army?”
“There’s no time! Time!! As it is, there won’t be much food left! When are we going to call S-rank adventurers!”
The nobles were divided between those who favored sending reinforcements and those who opposed, and Prince Felix had been actively arguing for sending reinforcements along with the nobles who followed him, and in his haste to save his daughter.
“Your Majesty! It is only right to send capable knights stationed at the front line as reinforcements right now!”
Prince Felix, having given up persuading the opposing nobles, had come in front of the emperor in the middle and was pleading like a supplicant.
“Hmph... Prince Felix... Since your daughter is in danger now... I can’t help but feel it’s truly a very regrettable thing. But...”
“Yes?”
“If we remove the capable knights from the front line, what will become of the front line? Can you not abandon humanity for the sake of your daughter?”
“Your Majesty!!”
Prince Felix, unable to hide his dissatisfaction with the emperor’s words, called the emperor once again like a suppliant, but the answer he wanted did not come.
“There is one way, though...”
“Yes? A... a way?”
At that moment...
When the word “way” came out of the emperor’s mouth, Prince Felix’s furrowed brows relaxed, and he stepped forward to the emperor again, kneeling all the way to his knees and listening intently.
“According to what I received in yesterday’s report, Lord Lowell of the hero’s party entered this empire...”