In the final tug-of-war with Milli, Ash casually tossed Frieren back onto the bed, temporarily deciding to ignore that girl who still refused to get up even after having the underside of her skirt completely seen.
After giving up on waking Frieren, Ash followed Milli out of Frieren's room and into Milli's wine cellar… no, her residence.
But just looking at the stone house packed wall to wall with barrels of alcohol made his scalp tingle.
"Why is there so much alcohol here?"
"Heh~ Heh~", Milli didn't answer his question. Instead, she took out a bottle and introduced it proudly, "Do you know? This is Emperor Wine?"
"Nope."
"Emperor Wine is the kind of wine offered to the emperor of a massive empire that once ruled over more than half the continent, you know?", Milli explained on her own, flashing a sly smile as she directly handed him the bottle, "This is supreme nectar, the finest of wines. Don't you want to try it?"
"Try it? Then I'll let you go first."
He suspiciously took it and opened the bottle, then suddenly grabbed the elf girl's mouth and poured the wine into her like refueling a machine. The next moment—
"Pff~", The elf girl choked and spat the wine straight out.
In an instant, the entire room was filled with the stench of low-quality alcohol.
Just smelling it made one doubt the quality of the wine.
Milli, her face drenched in wine, glared at him indignantly, "You actually made me drink something this awful again. You brat, have you drunk Emperor Wine before?"
"When my little sister has some bad idea brewing, her expression usually looks just like yours did."
Even now, he still didn't quite understand why other demons were all expressionless, yet Aura was so emotionally rich. Was it really his influence?
He still hadn't figured it out, while Milli wore an annoyed expression, "So someone got to it before me, huh?"
"And? It really tastes that bad?"
"Whether it tastes good or not aside, this is really valuable! And it really is Emperor Wine!", Milli emphasized angrily.
That made him hesitate for a moment. He looked at the bottle in his hand with some reluctance, "If you say it like that, I'm actually a little interested."
"Go on~ try it!"
"It won't kill me, will it?"
"Didn't you just force-feed it to me? Look, am I dead?"
"Good point."
He nodded slightly, not thinking too much of it, and tilted his head back to drink.
There was no smoothness at all. A bitter, hard-to-swallow, sour and pungent taste instantly surged up his throat. The acidity was far too strong, mixed with an irritating stench. Just swallowing it made one feel unhappy, and he couldn't help frowning, "So disgusting."
"Yeah, I think so too. That's why before I came to this village, I even carved a stone monument praising the taste of Emperor Wine."
"Your personality is awful. Worse than this wine."
"Thanks for the compliment. But you don't look much better," Milli nodded indifferently and even offered him an approving smile, "I think we might get along quite well."
"I just want to learn magic."
"It's fine. There's still plenty of time."
"Don't apply human time to me."
"Alright then. In a few years, we'll officially—"
"Forget years. Today! Now! Immediately!"
Completely unable to stand the elves' sense of time, he grabbed the elf in front of him and shook her until she couldn't take it anymore and was forced to surrender.
But… even after agreeing, Milli was still so slow that Ash was getting anxious and irritated.
Only after constant urging did she reluctantly make her preparations… which meant eating breakfast, then mentally preparing to teach. And the magic she planned to teach was—
How to make wheat grow better.
A spell that was completely useless to him, which made him so angry that he chased after the giggling Milli, who somehow started running away, wanting to tie her up and make her teach him properly.
But before he could catch her, around noon, he finally saw Frieren step out of her house, stretching lazily under the sunlight.
"That lazy vibe is just like an old granny.."
"?", His instinctive muttering made Frieren snap her head toward him.
That expression was clearly displeased, even a little angry, but he decisively ignored it and just said, "What's wrong? Aren't young people supposed to sleep early and get up early?"
This wasn't the twenty-first century with young people staying up all night on phones and computers. Why were these idle medieval villagers lazier than this? Ash honestly didn't get it.
Frieren, however, stiffened her face and replied unhappily, "There's plenty of time anyway. What's the big deal?"
"Alright then."
He had plenty he wanted to say, but thinking seriously about it, since he was the one asking for help, he kept quiet.
That left Frieren, who had been ready to start a fight and properly accuse him of the crime of lifting her up, with the feeling of punching cotton. She didn't even get the chance to say her follow-up lines.
And so, in this sort of atmosphere, Ash's life of studying in the elven village continued in an orderly fashion.
———
Life in the elven village could be summed up in one word: dull.
Dull and dull again. Every elf had a lazy, unmotivated air about them, making Ash feel that they were even less driven than Serie.
At least Serie, even if she sat around long enough to grow moldy, still had the urge to stir up trouble. Of course, she had magic to clean her clothes, so she didn't actually get moldy.
Compared to that—
"It's already night. Aren't you going to rest?"
Looking at Ash, who skillfully kicked the door open and stood brazenly in front of her bed, Frieren, already tucked under her blanket, wore a numb expression. She was starting to regret why she had agreed to teach him magic in the first place.
Compared to Frieren and the other elves, Ash was so proactive that Frieren began to wonder if humans mostly died before reaching a hundred simply because they overworked themselves.
But now that she'd realized the problem, Ash absolutely refused to let her go back on it.
It wasn't just her who had complaints. Ash also had a dark expression, "It just got dark, and you're telling me to rest now?"
"Go find Milli. She's probably still drinking tonight. She should have time."
"No, I refuse!", He rejected it without hesitation, making Frieren throw off the blanket and glare at him angrily, "Why? She's traveled outside before, right? She should know plenty of magic!"
"Yeah, but for some reason she really likes planting wheat. Making wheat grow better, or making it grow quickly after planting. She insists I learn all those spells first before she'll teach me anything else. She wouldn't budge even after I drank her treasured wine."
"That's because wheat can be used to brew alcohol, so she focuses on it…. Wait, you're ruthless," Frieren wasn't just stunned, she was genuinely impressed, "I remember that wine was from six hundred years ago, right? I heard she treasured it dearly. You just drank it like that."
"And it still tasted terrible."
"She's already being merciful by not fighting you to the death. And you're worrying about the taste? Behave yourself. At least now I can teach you the secret of elven longevity."
As she spoke, she lay back down again, pulled the blanket over herself, turned on her side to face away from him, and casually said, "Basically, take it easy. If you're as restless as you are now, you won't live for hundreds of years."
"Normal humans can't live that long anyway, right?", Ash grabbed her blanket, trying to pull it off, but Frieren clutched it tightly and refused to let go.
"That's not necessarily true. Humans rush everything, that's why they mostly don't live past a hundred."
"What nonsense are you spouting? Living like you do would just waste your life."
"How would you know your limits if you don't try?", Frieren argued back seriously, as if she genuinely hoped he'd experiment for a hundred years. Cold sweat beaded on his forehead.
"Using your whole life as the price, don't you think that's a bit tragic?"
"But isn't it even more tragic to live your whole life without knowing anything?"
"I don't think so!"
"It's just wasting a hundred years. What's the big deal?"
"You're going off-topic. Get up already. Don't waste your life."
"You're the one who should let go by now, don't you think?"
That night, Ash and Frieren argued while fighting over the blanket. And the final result was—
.
.
.
The next day, Frieren didn't wake up until noon, and at some point she'd rolled off the bed wrapped in the blanket.
Ash, on the other hand, had seized her pillow and occupied her bed, sleeping soundly, albeit without a blanket.
Milli, who'd come over wondering why the village was so quiet today, froze with a strange expression when she saw the scene.
But following the principle that less trouble is better than more, and not wanting to get involved in their messy relationship, Milli casually closed the door again and pretended nothing had happened.
———
Though the days were dull, there were small ripples. At least for the elves of the village, Ash had stirred up quite a bit of turbulence in their originally peaceful lives.
Almost every elf, as long as they had time, would get dragged by him into discussions about magic.
At times, Ash would lie beneath a tree in the village by himself, reading, researching, and practicing quietly with the magic books he'd gotten from Serie.
After finishing their daily magic training, Milli and Frieren would sit leisurely nearby, observing this "human" who had unknowingly already spent two years in the village.
"Milli, look at him. He's busy every single day. It feels like he won't live past a hundred."
"What are you saying, Frieren? Humans usually die in the blink of an eye anyway, right?"
"Seeing such a busy human, do you ever feel anything, Milli, who's always spacing out and doing nothing?"
"Feel something?", Milli, still holding a wine glass, lowered her head to think for a moment, then turned to look at her friend, "By the way, Frieren's been calling me Milli lately. You used to always call me Milliarde."
"Is that so?", Caught off guard, Frieren showed a surprised expression.
Milli simply smiled and nodded, gazing at Ash's figure with interest, "A human this interesting… is pretty rare."
"Better not care too much. Humans die if you look away for a moment."
"That's true."
Milli nodded in understanding and didn't pay Ash much more attention, continuing to drink and chat with Frieren as usual.
But that very night, when everyone else was already asleep, Ash alone was still in the stone house, continuing his nonstop practice.
As clouds covered the moonlight, darkness silently spread, enveloping the once peaceful elven village. For reasons unknown, the village was unusually quiet tonight. Even the cries of birds and beasts had vanished, so silent it felt terrifying.
In the dead stillness, only the cold glow of candlelight remained, making the silence and depth feel even more abnormal, stirring an inexplicable chill in one's heart.
And within this deathly quiet, the dense forest at the edge of the village quietly became the stage for a different scene.
Moonlight filtered through the treetops, illuminating a group of mysterious figures clad in long robes.
Like ghosts in the night, their entire bodies were tightly wrapped in robes of various colors, their heads clearly different from humans, most of them bearing all kinds of horns, just like—
Demons from legends.
———
Pairs of eyes glowing faintly in the darkness peered into everything within the village. These uninvited guests seemed to be waiting for the moment when everyone had fallen asleep, so they could make their move.
However, Ash, who had been staying up late, also sensed the overly abnormal atmosphere of the night. He instinctively stepped out of his room and, BANG!, kicked Frieren's door.
The old door, long neglected, or rather wrecked by him, collapsed straight down with a single kick, sending dust flying everywhere.
"What is it now!", Frieren was startled awake, sitting bolt upright on the bed and glaring at him fiercely, "I worked hard tonight too, didn't I? Why did you tear down my door again?"
"Now's not the time for that."
"No! If you don't explain yourself, I won't let you off!"
"There's danger. Probably an enemy attack."
"Enemy attack? At this time? Here?"
A term she'd never heard in all her years in the village made Frieren doubt for a moment whether he'd been on the battlefield too long, his nerves stretched too tight, like old soldiers who were always paranoid.
Of course, this world didn't have the term "post-traumatic stress disorder." Just like ancient times "didn't have" such illnesses. It simply hadn't been diagnosed, not that it didn't exist.
Having read about similar situations, Frieren couldn't help giving him a sympathetic look, "Should I give you a sleep spell?"
"You…. forget it. Come with me."
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