29.5 (Side story)

Demis, who was working, raised his head at the familiar presence approaching.

“So? Is it any good?”

Saraswati approached with a light step and sat on the desk.

Demis inwardly frowned at her frivolous attitude, but from the start, Atira was about the only one of his sisters who listened.

Demis was respected and difficult to approach by all Elves, but his High Elf siblings all had some eccentricities, so he couldn’t quite maintain his dignity around them.

Rather than wasting energy on someone who couldn’t be improved, Demis decided to give the answer the other person wanted.

Demis looked away from Saraswati and stared at the paper he had been recording on just a moment ago.

He stroked the still blank parts to avoid smudging the ink and opened his mouth.

“It’s such excellent quality that I can’t even remember what the paper from a few years ago was like.”

“Hmph.”

Saraswati puffed out her chest with a smug expression.

“Even with this quality, the production volume itself remains unchanged?”

“The process itself has been improved, so you can consider it the same. If you want to increase it further, you’ll have to cut down more trees.”

Demis looked at the paper that Saraswati had improved.

Almost all of the useful tools currently used by the Elves came from Saraswati, but this paper was the only one not created by Saraswati’s hand.

Ten years since the Elves were born from their mother, El-Prigion.

The ecology of the Elves had changed in many ways.

1,007 Elves, naked and bare, dropped into a vast forest that had flourished by the power of their mother.

The Elves, who had few natural enemies in this vast forest as single entities, except for some dangerous beasts and wild gods, developed rapidly with the addition of collective action.

Starting with primitive dwellings, after a year, all the Elves began to make clothes from leather or fibers obtained from nature to cover their private parts.

Residential environments began to become more sophisticated in various ways, and Saraswati accelerated their development by creating standards for weights and measures and useful tools.

In the 3rd-4th year, Elves who had begun to spread out to investigate the forest environment clashed with top predators or wild gods, but were quickly dealt with under the force of the forest keepers following Pallas and Araya, and the mediation of Elmoni.

In the 5th-6th year, the number of Leaf Elves who had begun to accumulate experience also increased, and although the number of Elves had increased slightly to about 1,100 with the birth of some children, they were not a significant force. In fact, only about 1,000 Elves stood at the top of a vast natural ecosystem estimated to be over 3 million square Elte (3 million km²).

The Elves’ actions were so outrageous that other races from the outside would be astonished, but since they had no contact with the outside, they could not objectively view themselves.

And after things began to stabilize, the Elves began to feel the need for a recording medium.

The ecosystem was changing slowly but surely over time, and the amount of information the forest keepers recorded and reported about the changes was not small.

And Atira began to record the history of the Elves.

Demis needed orders for various administrative processes.

Originally, they used thinly processed fabrics or leather for clothing as a recording medium, but the quantity was too insufficient.

Elves’ clothes didn’t get dirty easily, but that didn’t mean they were plentiful, and using leather to handle the volume would inevitably lead to excessive hunting.

It was Araya who solved the situation unexpectedly.

This recording medium called paper, which Araya had created from plant fibers, solved everything.

Demis remembered Saraswati holding the paper that Araya had made and brought, and freezing in place.

For the Elf siblings, Araya had the image of a troublemaker who broke things more often than making them, like Pallas.

Perhaps her pride was hurt by this, Saraswati and the workshop created by the Elves who followed her had been constantly working to improve the paper, even while making other useful things.

And today, when Demis used the resulting paper and gave it a good evaluation, Saraswati’s face brightened.

Demis smiled slightly at his sister, who had a slightly cute side, and began to move his stopped hand again.

As Demis ignored her and began to work again, Saraswati, feeling inexplicably sulky, began to talk to Demis.

“How’s the situation in the forest?”

“The forest keepers, led by Pallas, are doing well. The area that one person has to manage is not small, but it is being consistently managed.”

“What about Elmoni?”

“One of the forest keepers discovered wild gods who had clashed over territory issues, and Elmoni went to mediate. She won’t be back for a few days.”

“Ah-“

“Atira is smoking trout and meat with the Elves in the village in preparation for winter. Anat is probably playing with spirits somewhere.”

Saraswati pouted her lips as Demis answered her other questions in advance without even taking his eyes off his work.

For a long time, only the sound of rustling and the sound of Saraswati periodically stirring her feet in boredom, causing her clothes to rub, filled the office.

“I wonder what Araya is doing now?”

Demis’s hand stopped again at Saraswati’s mutter.

But he started moving again, answering Saraswati’s words.

“She’s probably doing well. She’s the best forest keeper, so she won’t die a meaningless death somewhere.”

“That’s true… but she always makes me anxious.”

Araya, the youngest of the High Elf siblings, was always an unpredictable sister.

From the moment she was born, she made everyone dumbfounded by saying absurd things to their mother.

Atira tried to record the content in the history of the Elves, but because Araya lay down and made a fuss, it was excluded from the history of the Elves, but Atira said that she was secretly trying to record it separately in the form of the Secret History of the Elves.

She also had extraordinary aspects in a good way.

The method of accumulating natural energy called Internal energyMental cultivation method that Araya created.

Originally, Elves were a race created to play the role of Regulator, so they all had good sensitivity to nature and the outside world, and this Internal energyMental cultivation method gave wings to the racial characteristics of Elves.

It was true that Elves were superior to other creatures individually, but it was largely thanks to this that they were able to stand at the top of the ecosystem in this vast forest in less than 7 years.

Now, although they are divided into different ways as needed, all Elves’ ways of handling mana come from the roots created by Araya.

But Araya caused a major accident when she created this Internal energyMental cultivation method.

“I’ve never seen Mother’s thoughts tremble like that before.”

Although the words had no subject or context, Demis, who remembered what event Saraswati’s mutter was talking about, momentarily had a headache and covered his forehead.

Perhaps because she made it herself, Araya’s own Internal energyMental cultivation method was definitely outstanding.

It was only natural that the person who made it themselves had a better understanding than someone who used something made by someone else.

The problem was that it was too outstanding.

Fundamentally, High Elves and Elves are beings derived from the World Tree, a tremendous entity that plays a part in the natural ecosystem.

As a result, they are a race that is loved by spirits from birth.

Among them, Anat, who has a kind personality and high affinity with spirits, is always overflowing with primordial spirits who come to find her energy.

But the moment Anat approaches Araya, there is no trace of spirits.

Why?

Because the spirits are afraid of Araya.

It wasn’t like that from the beginning.

Araya was also a High Elf, and her sensitivity was as outstanding as a High Elf’s.

The problem erupted when Araya created and used the Internal energyMental cultivation method.

The Internal energyMental cultivation method basically involves taking external energy into the body, and it basically had an attraction to the surrounding energy.

In addition, primordial spirits are basically faint in emotion, like babies, innocent, and pure energy crystals.

One of the important basic elements in the ecosystem that makes up nature.

Araya mistook the primordial spirits for natural energy and absorbed all the primordial spirits who approached her with goodwill, turning them into her own energy.

At the time, the High Elf siblings, as well as the World Tree, who basically didn’t intervene but watched, couldn’t help but be dumbfounded as they watched the scene.

They couldn’t stop her because they thought it would be dangerous to touch something that was becoming complicated, but their feelings when they saw Araya, who had finished her energy circulation and said, “I feel like my energy has increased a lot,” were…

To the eyes of the High Elves and the World Tree, who could clearly see the traces left by the spirits as they died, the spirit traces, it was like seeing their youngest High Elf covered in blood and smiling innocently after finishing a massacre.

It happened so early on that there were no spirits approaching Araya, and Araya, despite having such high spirit sensitivity, became the only High Elf among the High Elves who had never properly seen a spirit.

“It was the same with Fenrir…”

It was terrible when the youngest, who had been smiling brightly and went out into the forest in the morning, was brought back to Pallas as a corpse with her spine exposed to the point where it was a miracle that she wasn’t cut in half.

Everyone was stunned and didn’t know what to do, and if it hadn’t been for their mother’s scolding and help, they would have lost their youngest at that time.

She fearlessly attacked a wild god who was at the top of the forest ecosystem at the time, resulting in mutual destruction, which was infuriating for the family.

“Her problem is that she causes all sorts of accidents, but she thinks she’s so smart.”

He expressed his silent agreement with Saraswati’s scathing assessment.

The youngest, perhaps as a reaction to being born small among the siblings, especially wanted to look mature.

As a result, there were many incidents and accidents that occurred over the past 10 years.

Araya had achieved many things, but she had also caused many accidents, so Demis, as the leader of the Elves, was responsible for most of the cleanup of Araya’s accidents.

Having been tormented like that, Demis may have been happy in one corner of his heart when Araya said she was leaving.

Demis, feeling disturbed by Saraswati’s chattering beside him, sighed and looked east, where his youngest had left, and said.

“I don’t expect much, I just hope she causes fewer accidents and comes back healthy.”

But now, thinking about his youngest, who might be causing accidents in a place where his eyes and hands couldn’t reach, the worries of the leader of the Elves and the eldest son of the High Elf family deepened even further.