Ch.370The Road to Ainsess Plains (2)

Tick… Tick…

Lucia stared blankly at the crackling campfire.

The stars in the night sky looked as if they might pour down at any moment, and the luminous moon shone like a queen of the night.

Bubble, bubble…

Clatter… Gurgle.”

As the kettle came to a boil, Casia poured tea into two cups, handed one to her sister, and the two fought off the chill of the cold night while sipping their warm tea.

“We should reach the city by tomorrow.”

“Yeah. It was a tough hunt. We still have a long way to go.”

As the Sun had predicted, the elves were still continuing their adventuring work.

Their current request was to eliminate a nest of Giant Slimes that had settled in the forest. Dealing with amorphous mucous monsters was challenging even for aura users like them, and as proof, their clothes were thoroughly soiled.

However, the equipment they wore was top-tier. Following Victor’s logic that one might blame people but never blame equipment, they were wrapped in incredibly expensive gear that wouldn’t be damaged by mere slime stickiness.

Such equipment would probably maintain its performance for 1,000 years with just casual wiping, even without proper maintenance—truly, human technology was remarkable.

“I wonder how everyone else is doing?”

“They’re probably fine. Sun and Moon are probably all over each other as usual. Simon’s probably buried in the library, and the dwarves are probably hammering away at iron in their workshop.”

Though her words came out grumbling, there was no real contempt behind them.

Rather, it was self-deprecating. While everyone else had something to do, the elf sisters had nothing.

They weren’t practicing archery; they were just idling away, drinking every day. Though no one criticized the elves out of camaraderie, sometimes indifference can be scarier than anger.

And that anxiety reached its peak when Casia collapsed with a critical injury.

While others showed one-person-army combat prowess against invaders, the sisters had to hold the lower flight deck with soldiers, with Casia suffering life-threatening damage from what others would consider mere third-degree burns. This experience was like a sore thumb for the elf sisters.

Simply put, their pride was hurt.

Who could they blame? If they had devoted time to self-improvement instead of drinking and fooling around, Casia wouldn’t have been critically injured, and Lucia might have become a headhunter taking down enemies one after another.

They received respect without putting in effort, which made them complacent, and they paid the price for it. Actually, it wasn’t much of a price—considering how many people in this world lose their lives or fall into ruin from a single mistake, it was merely a “stern warning.”

Knowing this, the elves could no longer remain with the Iron Walker party.

Having realized their weakness, it was time to temper iron into steel—they understood it was time to leave the comfort of drinking parties behind.

“When do you think we’ll finish our pilgrimage?”

“I don’t know. But we should be able to finish it before we die.”

“Right… before we die…”

To revive the slowly dying campfire, Lucia repeatedly added dry firewood.

For some reason, she hadn’t felt much like drinking since leaving the party.

She would drink if it was available, or drink something else if it wasn’t—that was about it. She didn’t know why.

Normally, people would seek alcohol to soothe feelings of emptiness and futility in such situations. Was this proof that elves who live eternally march to a different beat?

“When we reach the city tomorrow… let’s collect our payment, resupply, and head to the next destination.”

“What kind of alcohol are you going to buy?”

“I don’t know. Whatever, I guess.”

This mature conversation was unrecognizable from the elf sisters who had been disappointed by low-alcohol beer on the ship heading to the Miriam continent.

Victor deeply despised the common creative trope of “human nature revealed in extreme situations,” but he couldn’t deny that harsh environments ultimately produce mature individuals, just as adolescents in developing countries often skip the rebellious phase of puberty.

Just as one cannot become a true adult without leaving the protection of their parents, humans wrapped in comfortable lives inevitably grow through the process of facing harsh natural environments and powerful enemies, whether they want to or not.

Rustle… Rustle…

Sizzle…

After cleansing their palates with tea, Lucia and Casia took out bacon, cold hardened bread, and a few eggs wrapped in straw, placing them in a frying pan to cook their dinner.

The meal was much cruder and rougher than the food on the Sky Warden, but now that they were in this wild environment, such rough meals were exactly what they needed.

Bread, eggs, bacon. They were getting a balanced intake of carbohydrates, protein, and fat, and could even supplement with leafy vegetables for vitamins and fiber.

“Eating like this reminds me of the old days.”

“It does.”

For elves, the concept of “old days” wasn’t uniform.

It could mean 100 years ago or 10,000 years ago. Since they were fresh(?) elves not yet 100 years old, their “old days” probably referred to the time when they adventured with the Iron Walker party, sleeping in tents.

Some say that those who fly high fall harder, and while there’s truth to that, there are things visible on the ground that can’t be seen from the sky.

Like in fairy tales where a king ruling from a high throne falls in love with a woman of slave origin. Some realizations come only from walking this world directly.

“Now that we’ve eaten, let’s sleep.”

“Yes.”

With clattering sounds, the two elves finished cleaning up and huddled together in their small tent to sleep.

Tomorrow, the sun will rise again, and at night, the moon will appear.

*

Laisha smiled gently as she watched them.

The sight of them eating dinner together under the moonlight was enough to stir her maternal instincts.

While her husband, the Sun, was the type to make clean breaks, she wasn’t such a ruthless deity. Inevitably, whenever the moon rose, she used her power to secretly observe the elf sisters.

Whether this should be called compassionate or obsessive is unclear, but the sense of loss from suddenly losing companions with whom she had shared hardships for years wasn’t easily resolved.

Especially for her, who had lost her father suddenly as a child and endured difficult times afterward, separation was extremely painful.

Perhaps her obsession had intensified as she became a deity and gradually merged with Maria, or maybe her inability to bear her beloved’s child until the pilgrimage ended was being projected in strange ways.

Either way, it wasn’t exactly admirable. Voyeuristically watching grown women was classified as a crime in most cities and countries.

That’s why she didn’t tell Victor what she was doing. She knew well that he wouldn’t understand.

Her husband was a strong and excellent man, but she knew that his harsh childhood had left him lacking in empathy.

More precisely, her man’s actions weren’t governed by emotions. His hand wouldn’t tremble with fear while holding a sword, or he might shed tears at a sad story but still kill just the same. She could understand such a husband.

Parchifal was a magical wasteland on the west coast of Faerun. Having lived there since infancy without anyone to rely on or trust, she knew that if his emotions and reason hadn’t been completely separated, he would have died long ago. She, born in Faerus Vale, understood this well.

Faerus Vale was a heart city of 500 million people. Naturally, dirty and ugly affairs abounded. It was obvious how much “sewage” she had seen living as a lower-class citizen, and she too had developed a self that killed emotions and just did what needed to be done. She wasn’t innocent enough to gossip about her husband.

And because of this, Laisha remained silent even when the elf sisters crossed the line. Like children who don’t know fire is hot and reach for it without hesitation. She thought, “How sheltered must they have been to act so recklessly?”

“I hope we meet again someday…”

Laisha murmured as she snuggled into her husband’s arms.

As Victor naturally cupped her cheek, he began to wonder what timing would be appropriate to mention that he knew she was stalking the elf sisters.