episode_0056

After cleaning up all the orcs and goblins, the elves who had fainted due to Luv’s fear came to their senses belatedly. After running wild, they came towards us who were resting for a while.

“Arzen… ! Thank you so much.”

An elf woman with silver hair appeared as a representative and expressed her gratitude. They recognized Rube, who had red hair, as Arjen. In fact, he had an appearance no different from Argen, with only differences in hair, eye color, and body shape, so there would be no reason not to recognize him. They are all things that can be controlled with polymorph magic.

“I promised to take care of it, so there is no need to thank me.”

Rube’s tone of voice was quite calm and firm. I had never seen such an attitude before, so it felt awkward.

“Are there any casualties?”

The first thing she asked the elves was the casualties. It seemed like they checked it first because it was part of a ‘contract’.

“Two members of the reconnaissance team were injured while avoiding pursuit. Recovery is possible with potions.”

As soon as he heard those words, Rube searched his chest and handed me two vials filled with white liquid. I realized later that the reason I waited instead of going straight back to the rare even after defeating all the monsters was to ensure this post-processing.

“If there are no more problems, let’s go.”

No one opened their mouths in response to Rube’s words. After confirming the silence, Rube immediately wrapped his arms around my waist and used magic to fly into the sky.

“Wow.”

When my feet suddenly left the ground, I let out a slightly embarrassed exclamation. Rube was smiling brightly as he watched my reaction.

“Hehe, it’s cute.”

“Chiit… Anyway, is this the end? What do we do with that mountain of corpses?”

There were more than one corpse of orcs and goblins. There were literally countless piles of them, so it was unreasonable to hope that they would be cleaned by nature’s self-purifying action.

“Humans will come and solve that later.”

“… That amount?”

Even if humans were far more numerous than elves, it would be a lot of hard work to clean them all up.

“Humans are very enterprising, right? Since we do all sorts of things, we also use all the monster corpses. Rather, it is beneficial to humans.”

In other words, it meant money. Then, of course, the story changes. If all the things lying around there are valuable, they will be cleaned up quickly.

“Arrived.”

Unlike the rush on the way there, the way back took a lot of effort, so in the end, I was only able to arrive at Lare after the sun had completely set.

“Phew… I’m tired. Thank you for your hard work, Eugene.”

“I did something… Sirocco had a hard time.”

As I said, it was true that it was difficult. According to the stories I heard before and after the contract, there was absolutely no factor for the spirit priest to lose his strength, but in reality, the process of conveying his will to Sirocco during the battle became more and more difficult.

When thoughts stop at just thoughts, they end up as just random thoughts, but when they are realized by the power of the spirit, my mental power slows down greatly. My head was pounding and my eyes were spinning, and I felt tired, as if I had worked hard all day.

Unlike feeling tired after exercising, this fatigue felt very similar to feeling tired after using your head for a long time. Of course, this fatigue was extremely unpleasant.

“… I’m hungry.”

My brain was openly asking for sugar. Rube, too, seemed to be starving as he walked with weak steps toward the food warehouse. He had just rescued the elves from danger, but the sight of him going to eat the elves to fill his stomach created a very sense of disconnect.

‘I shouldn’t be like this, I need to eat something too.’

This time I decided to cook it myself. The food that the automaton usually brought was ultimately prepared by Arjen using remote control, but it was impossible to complain to Rube, who already looked very tired, asking for food.

“Let’s see… .”

When I opened the warehouse, or refrigerator, with the magic of sterilization and refrigeration, all kinds of meat greeted me. I immediately picked up the steak meat that caught my eye. It was seasoned with salt and pepper, probably because Arjen had prepared it in advance.

Steak is a favorite food because it has simple ingredients and cooking methods, making it easy to create a taste similar to the world in which it originally lived. After gathering all the other ingredients and coming out to the kitchen, a smile never left my face.

“Hehe… .”

I’m sure the reason why I laughed so foolishly was because I liked steak, but the main reason was that the pressure was completely gone. If you suddenly ask why I feel such a burden, the truth is that I have been feeling it every time I eat.

Strictly speaking, it was no different from me eating without a fight here. When it came to clothes, I felt less pressure because Arjen liked to hold fashion shows using me as a doll, and when it came to sleep, it didn’t really hit me since we always made love before going to bed, but when it came to food, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was just getting it.

Before I came here, I had to buy most of my meals, so I felt particularly envious. Moreover, although Kaela ate together, it was not a proper meal for Arjen, so it seemed like he was just wasting food without doing anything.

But today I did something that could definitely be called ‘labor.’ It was clearly helpful to Rube, and I felt proud that I had done the right thing. The saying that those who don’t work shouldn’t eat means that if you work, you can eat as much as you want. That’s why I can’t help but feel very comfortable while grilling meat.

“Wow, you arrived quickly?”

When I entered the restaurant after finishing my steak, Rube, who seemed to have already finished eating, came and sat down first. No, it can no longer be called Luv. This is because there was Kaela, a person with a strong claim that the restaurant was her territory.

“Hello.”

Perhaps thanks to the fact that we were together all lunch today, Kaela was unusually less aggressive towards me than usual. Considering that his clothes were usually taken off when he entered the restaurant, he seemed very calm.

“Would you like something for Kaela?”

Kaela was the only person who wasn’t a picky eater, so she was able to eat my grilled steak without a problem. However, contrary to my expectations, Kaela shook her head from side to side.

“No. Maybe it’s because Rube just ate, but I’m not hungry at all. Don’t worry, Eugene eat a lot.”

“Really?”

“…Actually, I really want to fuck Eugene, but strangely I don’t have the strength…”

I think I was misunderstanding the reason why he wasn’t aggressive towards me. I thought that if I hadn’t been cleaning up orcs and goblins all day today, I wouldn’t have ended up looking like a mummy like I did at lunch.

“Now that I think about it, Kaela said she can’t see Luv in action, right? What happened today…”

While eating the steak I cooked myself, I told Kaela about what I did today. I couldn’t hide the lightness in my voice, but as I said before, I felt very comfortable because I had done something that gave me a sense of accomplishment, even though my body was tired.

“Hmm… I’m a little worried.”

Kaela, who listened to my story in silence, expressed concern when I finished speaking.

“Huh? Why suddenly?”

“I know that humans clean up monster corpses.”

I agreed with what she said. As Rube said, humans will handle the corpse disposal.

“But that doesn’t mean the elves don’t do anything. First of all, the forest is around the elves’ residence, and in order to dispose of so many corpses, that many humans need to come, which is a sensitive issue for the elves.”

It was something I hadn’t thought about. I listened to Kaela.

“Then, humans and elves inevitably come into contact, and if Eugene had personally handled the spirit in front of the elves, it would have attracted quite a bit of attention.”

“But almost all of the elves fainted from Rube’s fear.”

“Not everyone fainted, right?”

There was no denying those words. Because it was so chaotic, there was no time to check one by one to see if all the elves had lost their minds.

” Since we won’t just meet and have a snowball fight and then go back, the story about Eugene will be relayed to the ears of humans. In the form of ‘an elementalist with considerable power.’”

Kaela spoke meaningfully, but I wasn’t that worried. Even if I had no abilities or if I was dealing with an extremely strong spirit, it would be nothing compared to Arjen’s power anyway. It was based on the idea that as long as Arjen was right next to me and supporting me, it wouldn’t matter at all how much power I had.

And I soon realized that my thoughts were very complacent.