episode_0071

In the forest where darkness had fallen, a man with a worried face was sitting in a castle within the forest.

Pointed ears, fair skin. He was ‘Hiades,’ the king of a race commonly called elves.

Because of the growing worries day by day, Hiades, despite being an elf who lived a long life and aged slowly, was noticeably developing wrinkles on his face.

That was because the elven race was currently on the verge of extinction.

The extinction of a race was not something that happened easily.

Originally, the elven race did not venture out of the forest. Because of this, there weren’t many conflicts with other races.

But all events started with a conflict with the orcs.

About ten years ago, an orc warrior entered the elven forest.

The reason was unknown. Whether it was simply to scout the situation before a war, or whether he was simply shipwrecked.

The exact reason could not be known now.

But it was clear that things could never go back to the way they were before.

The orc who entered the forest soon encountered the elves in charge of security.

Naturally, the elves had no choice but to attack the orc, who was so tall and large that he seemed to have two or three heads on top of them.

They weren’t on friendly terms with the orcs in the first place, and it was an unavoidable choice because the orc was fully armed.

It would have been better if they had succeeded in killing him completely.

The orc who was attacked at the time managed to survive with his life barely intact.

And after that, the orc tribe started a war with the elves, leading all their troops.

The reason was, “The arrogant pointy-ears touched an orc warrior.”

Nothing more, nothing less.

Since then, the elves have not had good results in the war with the orcs.

The elves had been living hidden in the forest, training mainly for defense. Naturally, they were not used to large-scale warfare, and the situation became more unfavorable as time went on.

As the elves in the south and west were defeated, it was thought that there was no future for the elves anymore.

But that’s when it happened. The elven princess ‘Natasha’ came up with a plan.

“Chieftain, there are humans outside the forest. I will ask the humans for help with Oberon.”

Oberon was the princess’s husband. The two had been married for only a short time.

Even so, she was saying that she would go to the humans for the future of the elves.

No one told her to, but it could be seen as a true princess’s mindset who was thinking about the future of the race.

Hiades was full of worries.

Thinking about the future, it was right for the princess to go to the humans for help. If not, the extinction of the elves was as good as certain.

But a fundamental question arose as to whether humans could be trusted.

“……Natasha, humans are people who may be hiding something inside. Is that really the only way?”

In fact, Natasha wasn’t very drawn to the method either.

To those who hadn’t ventured out of the forest for decades, no, almost hundreds of years, humans were nothing more than primitive creatures.

It meant that they were only at the level of asking for all kinds of help to learn the magic they used.

She didn’t think they would be of much help, but she thought that even a little help was better than nothing.

This was the same as the opinion of most of the elven elders.

“……If that is the princess’s will, there is no choice. May the blessing of the Tree of Life be with you.”

Wishing for the blessing of the Tree of Life was the only thing the chieftain could say.

So Natasha and her husband Oberon made preparations for a journey to the human nations.

When they left, all the elves came to the entrance of the forest to see them off.

“Please come back healthy. Lady Natasha!”

“Princess, you are the hope of our elves!”

With enthusiastic cheers behind them, Natasha and Oberon got into the carriage.

The inside of the carriage was quite cramped as it was going on a rather long journey. But the two endured it with their love for each other.

“……Oberon, I’m sorry. I wish I could spend the first night with you, but I can’t help it because I’m the princess of the elves.”

“It’s okay, Natasha. Wherever we are, we will be happy forever. So now it’s right to think about the future of our people.”

“Oberon…….”

Natasha thought that she was really lucky that her husband was a kind person like Oberon at this moment.

They were able to endure this situation because they had each other. So it was the princess couple heading to the human kingdom ‘Aman’.

She just hoped that there would be humans in Aman who could help them.

***

The human kingdom, Aman.

Dozens of years ago, Aman fought a fairly large war. After swallowing and unifying all the kingdoms that existed around it, Aman became the only empire.

Aman, which had the largest territory in human history, began to develop rapidly.

The background was the abundant supplies and land, but the role of the emperor, who did a great job in politics, cannot be left out.

Aman’s emperor ‘Lawer’ was arguably the most outstanding emperor in history.

He grew Aman in all areas of economy, agriculture, and commerce. But even this great emperor had one concern.

That was that the maids around him were too weak.

It was the same right now.

Thud.

In a room full of numerous torture devices, there was Emperor Lawer, who was wearing nothing but underwear, and a woman who had fallen to the floor.

The woman’s body was full of all kinds of red line-like wounds.

It wasn’t just that she was injured. The woman was panting and frowning.

“You’re such a weakling.”

Lawer kicked the woman lying on the floor once and walked out of the room. As Lawer came out, the soldier in full armor guarding the front of the room immediately bowed his head.

“Greetings are unnecessary. Clean up what’s inside.”

It was clear that this cleaning target was the maid. Even at the words to clean up a person, the soldier silently followed the words.

He had seen this scene so often while guarding Lawer that he no longer felt anything special.

Originally, great rulers were bound to have a dark side.

The bodyguard had the confidence to secretly hide this dark side of the emperor who had made Aman so prosperous.

That was what he had to do, and what others would do even if he didn’t.

“……By the way, is this the 7th one this year?”

Lawer tormented and abused the maids to an extreme degree.

But there was no way that a maid who was not a knight or a warrior could withstand such abuse for long.

Most of them couldn’t last long and died. Even if they were alive, most of them took their own lives.

Of course, it was not difficult at all to procure maids in this vast empire.

The bodyguard had to wander around the capital to find a maid that suited Lawer’s taste.

Lawer, who had returned to the throne of the imperial palace, could not hide his boredom.

On the ceiling of the room where the throne was placed, there was a picture that he had seen and grown up with since he was a child.

He heard that his great-grandfather had destroyed and absorbed all the surrounding kingdoms with his excellent strategy.

The picture he was looking at now was about a woman who was captured as a prisoner in Aman afterwards.

He heard that she was the princess of a ruined country.

Was her name ‘Princess Stella of Laos’?

Anyway, that wasn’t so important. What was important was that the emperor ‘Roman’, the main character in the painting, succeeded in dropping and degrading the princess Stella to the position of a bitch.

He wanted to do that since he was young.

But before that process could even take place, the women died.

The maids were too weak. He couldn’t bring in the daughters of nobles and do that.

As the empire grew, the power of the nobles also became stronger.

“In the first place, I don’t think the daughters of nobles are physically strong either.”

It was clear that the only ones who could be said to be physically strong were the Knights.

But he couldn’t bring in the female knights of the Knights who were struggling to secure territory right now.

Even if he brought them in, it was impossible to drop them into slavery.

No matter how much power the emperor had to bring down even a flying bird.

Lawer didn’t like the current situation.

He imagined bringing in something new, maybe non-humans, as slaves.

But he soon realized that it was impossible and had to give up the idea.

“The elves, who are similar to humans, never come out of the forest.”

He couldn’t bring in orcs either. He didn’t even want to imagine an orc woman.

At that time, a vassal ran in urgently. He was so urgent that he seemed to have forgotten the etiquette of facing the emperor.

“Yo, Your Majesty, you must come out quickly.”

“Come out?”