ch17

Was he about the same age as her from her past life?

It was the man who introduced himself as Kyle.

The one who had been sobbing for a long time, seemingly because he knew someone who was taken by the wolves.

Perhaps due to the aftermath, his eyes were swollen, and his clothes were torn and covered in dirt, making him look utterly disheveled.

Ara softened her gaze at his pitiful appearance, and he cautiously got up, dusting off his backside.

He swallowed hard, then approached and sat on the opposite side of the fire, picking up a twig and poking at the ashes for a while.

He probably thought she wouldn’t notice, but he kept glancing at her, making her sigh.

His behavior only made it more awkward to start a conversation.

He risked his life on a trading trip, relying only on his body, yet he was a peddler who couldn’t even speak up and only looked around cautiously.

What a trustworthy fellow.

Ara had no intention of letting this atmosphere continue, so she felt the need to speak first.

What a pathetic man for his age.

Ara looked at the merchants still arguing over the distribution near the wagon and opened her mouth.

“It seems like they’re still in the middle of it over there, but are you already finished?”

“Eep!? …Yes! …Yes…”

Kyle, who had been blankly staring at the fire, was startled by Ara’s sudden words and dropped the twig he had been poking at the ashes with. He cracked his voice while answering hastily, and then his face turned red as if he was embarrassed by the situation, and he lowered his head.

It was quite amusing to see him flustered by just one word, but he seemed to take a deep breath to calm himself and continue speaking, so he didn’t seem like a complete fool.

“I didn’t have that much luggage on the wagon to begin with. The product I was dealing with this time was salt.”

He pulled a pouch out of his shabby clothes.

Was it a little bigger than her fist?

Indeed.

Elves didn’t need much salt, so she had forgotten how important it was in the natural world.

When wandering through the forest, it wasn’t difficult to see animals licking salty rock salt.

In the Central Plains, salt had always been a necessity in human affairs, to the point where the country had a monopoly on it since ancient times.

Salt merchants who smuggled salt, called “salt bandits,” were a large force. It was said that the reason the concept of the “Martial World” first came about was due to the secret power struggles over salt among the secular sects, not to mention the Shaolin and Mount Hua sects, which were detached from the world.

It was one of the hypotheses that one would hear at least once when studying the history of the Martial World.

“And… honestly, I didn’t want to rummage through the belongings of the dead…”

He hugged his knees with a gloomy face.

A merchant would sell even river water if he could, but he still seemed to have some innocence left.

Considering his age, he probably wasn’t a very experienced merchant.

The guy, who had been depressed for a moment, seemed to think about something and then asked in a timid voice, looking around cautiously, as if he had made up his mind.

“Um…”

“Hm?”

“Are you… a witch?”

“A witch?”

A witch? It seemed like he was mistaking her for something.

Were there other races similar to Elves?

She wondered if there was another god who had created their own kin in the image of humans, like El-Araya had done with the Elves.

“I’ve never heard of it, what kind of race is that?”

“…Uh… maybe… human?”

“What do you mean by maybe?”

He answered in an unsure voice to her question.

Did he ask about something he didn’t even know about in the first place?

Ara looked at him with a slightly dumbfounded expression, and he hurriedly waved his hands and said.

“No, no… I’ve never seen one either…!”

“I… I sometimes heard about them when I was little. They’re beautiful, they seduce men, they use strange magic to spew fire from their hands or raise monsters, or they cast curses to turn people into frogs… or they eat children to become younger.”

“Oh…”

She had seen Saras create fire with magic, but had humans also discovered the same principles as magic?

The ability to control monsters was amazing, but even more amazing was the curse to turn people into frogs.

In the Central Plains, there were stories in folklore and legends about people being turned into pigs as punishment, but they were just legends.

How could one reduce the mass of a human to the size of a frog, and how would their nature change?

And what about the mass difference when they shrink?

Would it disappear from the universe altogether?

Regardless of the dangers it implied, it was an interesting phenomenon.

She was more curious about the curse that turned people into frogs, but she didn’t think the young and clumsy merchant in front of her would be able to satisfy her curiosity.

She gave up on that part, and she felt the need to correct the negative misunderstanding first.

“That’s quite an interesting being, but I don’t eat humans. If I need to, there are other prey available, and I don’t want to use humans similar to Elves as food.”

“Elf…?”

“Yes. I am an Elf. Not a human.”

Ara looked towards the west, where she had come from, and said.

“I am El-Araya, the seventh daughter of the Earth Mother, El-Prigion. I came from far away in the west because I sensed strange signs in the east. I left the forest where I belonged as a representative of my clan.”

“Uh… I’ve never heard of an Elf before.”

Ara smiled and said.

“That’s because I’m the first Elf to ever come outside the forest. You can be happy. You are the first humans in history to encounter an Elf.”

“The first…”

Kyle’s face turned slightly red, and he seemed strangely pleased.

That’s right, wasn’t that the age when he dreamed of becoming a special being?

It was the time when he wanted a medal to brag about to others.

The first human to meet an Elf in human history.

Didn’t that sound impressive?

However, the way he was squirming made her feel a little uncomfortable.

“By the way, beautiful, huh.”

Clatter!

Ara continued, looking at Kyle, who was startled as if his stomach had dropped and looked at her in confusion.

“Do… do you, Kyle… do I look beautiful from the perspective of humans?”

His face turned bright red at those words, and he stammered in embarrassment.

“…Y-You are beautiful.”

He couldn’t even look her in the face and answered in a mosquito-like voice, lowering his head.

Ara asked with a slightly serious expression.

“…Could it be that the human aesthetic standards… prefer something a little small?”

She couldn’t directly ask if he was a pedophile.

The time and space were different, not to mention the world, so she couldn’t say anything, but from the perspective of someone who still had the standards of her past life, she would be honestly troubled if the beauty standards of this world were in that direction.

Kyle pondered those words, and then shook his head like a windmill as if to say absolutely not.

“Absolutely not! Humans also consider women with properly womanly, full breasts and big… buttocks… to be beauti…”

The guy, who was explaining with fervor, moved his gaze to her chest as he spoke, and then his voice gradually became smaller as he felt her gaze freezing over.

“…You only need to say what’s necessary. Don’t forget the rudeness of your gaze.”

“…Yes…”

As they were spending time with such trivial stories, the merchants who had finished organizing were approaching the fire.

“Ah…”

“Well, was the work well organized?”

As the merchants began to take their places in the empty space around the fire to warm their chilled bodies, there were four more people between Kyle and Ara.

The merchant who introduced himself as Deador looked once at his companion, who was lying down and breathing evenly on one side of the fire, his ship’s contents once the pride of the world, then scratched his head and expressed his gratitude.

“Thank you… I owe you my life. When those wolves’ teeth were stuck in me, I thought we were all going to die. Especially in that guy’s case, it seemed like it was over even after the wolves retreated.”

Deador, who frowned every time his arm moved as he said that, also had wounds that weren’t shallow.

A wolf’s teeth could pierce tough cowhide and tear flesh, let alone human skin.

Deador also needed her treatment, and there was a slight amount of blood seeping out of the cotton cloth that had been cut and tied from what was originally on the wagon for sale.

“Baron has a wife and three young children. If he had died here, the fate of a family with children who had lost their head of household would have been obvious. One woman can’t feed three children… You saved not only us, but everyone we’re responsible for. I express my gratitude.”

As Deador bowed his head, the other merchants also bowed their heads.

“Well, I helped you because I also had something I wanted to obtain, so there’s no need to be so grateful.”

“We’re just merchants, but a merchant’s duty is to pay the appropriate price for goods. If there’s anything you want, we’ll help you as much as possible.”

“Hmm… then…”

Ara told them again only the necessary parts of what she had explained to Kyle.

She was an Elf from the west, she had set out because she felt a strange energy in the east, and she was traveling to find out how the outside world was doing.

“So, since I met you humans, I would like to meet the representatives of the humans. And I also want to find clues about the strange energy.”

The young man on the right, who was older than Kyle but younger than Deador, politely suggested.

“If you’re talking about the representatives of humans… how about meeting King Prigos of Poheln, the city we departed from?”

“…King?”

“Yes, Poheln was originally a large village in the vicinity, but it grew larger and larger from the time when a man named Prigos’ father, Pteras, was the village chief. At some point, he began to attack and merge other villages by mobilizing the young men, and in the era of his son, Prigos, it became very large. Since it grew as much as combining dozens of other villages, they began to call it a city instead of a village, and he didn’t want to be called a village chief like the village chiefs of other villages, so he started to rule using the title of king. For now, Prigos’ power is one of the best in the human world, so I think you can say that he represents humans.”

“Hmm…”

Had the formation of nations already begun on the human side?

From what she heard, Prigos seemed to prefer mergers through force rather than wise rule, so she didn’t know if they would communicate well.

“And if there’s a group that’s most sensitive to rumors, it’s us merchants. We keep our ears open every day to see if there’s anything that can make money whenever a new village is created somewhere or something happens somewhere. If there’s a suspicious rumor, it’s bound to come to our ears. You seem to be looking for traces of something suspicious, so if we see anything strange, we’ll tell you right away.”

“Hmm! Thank you. I was feeling a little lost, but I feel like I’ve found a direction.”

“The problem is those goods…”

Deador scratched his head as he looked at the relatively intact goods that were arranged and piled up next to the broken wagon.

“The wagon is broken and unusable. It’s hard to fix it with the things here, and even if it’s possible, it’ll take too long. We’ll have to make simple backpacks in the morning and carry them on our backs.”

“Don’t worry about me. It doesn’t matter much if it’s delayed a little.”

“Um…”

One of the merchants, who had been quiet, timidly raised his hand.

Was his name Remil?

His slightly torn weasel eyes gave him the look of a cunning merchant.

He opened his mouth in a slightly nervous voice.