Chapter 165: Ah, You're Saying You Couldn't Eat It Because It Wasn't There (1) Paaaat.
As an intense light burst forth from the middle of the dense underbrush, the bird-shaped spirits perched in the trees flapped their wings urgently and scattered in all directions.
"This is…"
With his vision covered in white from the light caused by spatial transfer magic, Painfolt blinked and waited for his sight to return to normal.
"Painfolt, how is it? Looks like we succeeded, right?"
"Seems so."
Standing not on the rooftop at the very top of the mage tower but in the middle of underbrush they had never seen in their lives, Painfolt and Geshtain looked down at the enormous magic circle drawn on the ground.
"Thanks to Charlotte, we've actually managed to come to the continent where elves live. It's really something. But still… it doesn't look that different from other places, does it?"
The underground world where dwarves lived, the Ashred Continent.
The vast plain that stretched endlessly, homeland of the centaurs, the Krudian Continent.
Compared to those two continents they had visited before, the elves' continent—where the two mages now stood on their own two feet—did not seem to have any particularly distinctive features at first glance.
"Wait, this feeling…"
Painfolt raised his left arm and slowly spread his fingers.
Then, when he bent only the tips of his fingers, mana particles hidden in the air sparkled like fireflies.
"What? Are you drawing mana out of the air right now? Without using any special tool?"
"Seems like it."
"Let me try too… This works?"
Following Painfolt, Geshtain easily gathered the surrounding mana, then placed his hand on the nearest tree and kept blinking.
He sensed a considerable amount of mana from the nearby terrain and objects, and after even touching a single leaf of a weed sprouting from the ground and confirming with his own hand that mana dwelled in it, he could not stop marveling.
"Hoh… this truly is an incredible place! I've never in my life seen a space so saturated with mana. It's truly astonishing."
Having realized that the entire forest—filled with trees that had grown for at least several hundred years—was saturated with mana, Geshtain could not close his mouth.
"…"
Meanwhile, Painfolt silently looked around with an impassive expression.
To him, the fact that this was the third unknown continent he had encountered mattered less than the fact that this was one of the places he had arrived at while pursuing his younger sibling's whereabouts.
"We used quite a bit of mana implementing spatial transfer magic, didn't we?"
"We did."
"So it wouldn't be strange at all if we collapsed from mana depletion symptoms in a little while. Like I did before."
"That would be normal."
"But just being inside this unknown forest makes it feel like all the mana we spent has almost recovered. It feels like holding ice cream in your mouth. No—more than that. It makes you unable to endure without using magic!"
Unable to contain the mana overflowing through his entire body, Geshtain began drawing hand signs and chanting.
Painfolt quickly stopped him, placing a hand on his shoulder.
"Look here. This is a forest. No fire magic."
"Oops! Right! Then I can just try another kind of magic."
Geshtain hurriedly halted the spell he had been casting, then knelt on one knee and placed his right hand on the ground.
Sharp stone pillars pierced up from the earth and shot continuously upward toward the sky.
As he kept creating stone pillars rising dozens of meters high one after another, Geshtain's face filled with pure happiness, like a child who had found a new toy.
"If you lived somewhere with this much mana, there'd be no reason at all to write complicated spell formulas."
Magic cast through hand signs, incantations, and other methods contained not only the spell formula to activate the magic itself, but also a significant portion of formulas meant to use mana efficiently.
But if, like this place, mana could be replenished easily from anywhere, then one could focus solely on realizing the magic itself, making it possible to unleash far faster and more powerful spells.
Just like Geshtain right now, continuously summoning stone pillars dozens of meters tall and building an entire structure with nothing but magic.
"If the Francia Continent had been overflowing with mana like this, we might have been able to arrive here much sooner."
Painfolt sighed, recalling the arduous process of coming to this third continent whose name he still did not know.
Based on the records Angelica had left while traveling all across the Doren Kingdom, they succeeded without much difficulty in finding the coordinates that would allow spatial transfer to the continent where elves lived.
The problem was that with the spatial transfer spell formula they had used before, it required far too much mana to move to the elves' continent.
To solve this, Geshtain and even Julien joined in, and despite being shut up in the lab for months researching a new spatial transfer spell formula, no solution appeared.
Just when they were close to giving up, they found a clue to a new spell formula in an unexpected place—one of the prizes Charlotte had handed out during last year's autumn festival.
On the day the autumn festival ended, the prize Julien received from Charlotte was a ring densely engraved with rune letters along the rim and inner surface. At the time, they thought it was a prize without much value, but after a long time had passed and they examined it closely, the rune letters turned out to be one of the spell formulas used in ancient times.
Using that as a basis to create a new spell formula, Painfolt was able to come to the elves' continent together with Geshtain.
"Hey, Painfolt. Don't just stand there blankly—join me and let's get moving."
While Painfolt stood still, lost in thought, Geshtain—who had already built a fine building—patted Painfolt on the waist.
"We're both mages, so I understand being stunned by all this overflowing mana. But get a grip. There's no guarantee the race called elves we're about to meet will be kind like us dwarves."
Unlike when they went to meet the centaurs, Geshtain's tone was sharp, and a strange mixture of aversion toward the elves—whom he had never seen even once—was woven into it.
I don't know the details either, but I've heard elves and dwarves don't get along very well. It's not like they're sworn enemies who have to fight to the death, though—more like rough squabbling.
"It's really exactly what Jinseo said."
"Huh? What is?"
"Nothing. Then let's go."
Painfolt started walking forward, recalling what Jinseo had said when Geshtain was away.
"I sense strong mana to the north, so if we go there, it seems likely we'll have a good chance of meeting elves."
"Still, I didn't realize it at first, but… it's truly a beautiful place. Compared to this, the place we dwarves live feels so shabby. I was impressed when I first came to the Francia Continent too, but it wasn't to this extent."
"It's not flashy, but it's a landscape with a quiet beauty. So you're jealous?"
"So jealous I could almost envy them."
Geshtain pushed out his lips and took in the beauty of the elves' continent with his eyes.
Massive trees stood rooted everywhere, and the beautiful undergrowth growing between them pleased Geshtain's eyes just to look at.
"Stop!"
"This is the territory of the Alas Tribe, guardians of the World Tree! If you don't say which tribe you're from, you cannot pass through here!"
At the shout from above their heads, Painfolt and Geshtain both lifted their heads at once.
"So those are elves. Jinseo said they'd hide in trees or in the brush and warn us, and it really is like that."
"Yeah. And the weapons they're holding and even what they look like are exactly what Jinseo described."
The two mages nodded as they looked up at the elves perched on tree trunks, bows trained directly on them.
There was no need to worry about language, since they had the magic pendant Painfolt's younger sibling had made.
However, since humans and elves had lived on different continents for hundreds of years, it was difficult to learn in detail what kind of race elves were through existing records.
If they're elves, they'll probably look like this. First, their ears will be pointed. They'll have lean builds, and most will be handsome men and beautiful women. And…
A few days before Painfolt and Geshtain cast spatial transfer magic, Jinseo visited the mage tower and explained in detail how elves were depicted in novels, movies, and games.
"Are you the forest race, elves?"
"And you who say that—are you not elves?"
To show he was not an elf, Painfolt took off the hat he was wearing, lifted his hair, and showed his ears.
"I'm human."
"And I'm a dwarf."
The Alas Tribe's scouts guided Painfolt and Geshtain—humans and a dwarf they were seeing for the first time in their lives—to the village where they lived.
"Please wait here for a moment."
One of the scouts hurried off to the hall at the center of the village, and the two mages sat down on chairs made by smoothing stumps left behind after trees had been cut.
Like the chairs the two mages were sitting on, the table made from an entire huge tree created an antique, old-fashioned atmosphere.
Painfolt smiled as he stroked the clearly visible growth rings on the tabletop with his fingertips, but Geshtain, sitting across from him, had his arms folded and a frown on his face.
"Come now, Geshtain. Relax your expression."
"It's because I didn't realize their concept of time would differ this much. They said 'wait just a moment' earlier too, so we'll probably have to wait a full hour. Huu…"
Painfolt and Geshtain believed the scouts when they said that if they walked "just a bit," they would arrive at the village, so they kept walking, but even after more than ten minutes, the village still was not in sight.
They later learned that when elves said "just a bit," it meant you had to walk an entire hour to arrive, and when Geshtain belatedly realized how long it would take, he cast magic on everyone and forcibly moved them faster.
Even so, it still took thirty minutes to reach the village.
For Geshtain, with his impatient personality, it was difficult to adapt to the unhurried atmosphere of the new continent.
Still… it's a shame there are more people than expected who can't use magic, even though they live in a place so saturated with mana…
Remembering the reaction the scouts had shown when Geshtain cast magic on them, Painfolt looked over the surrounding elves.
The scouts said they were still young and could not use magic yet, and they envied the two mages.
Neither mage had expected that the standard for being "young" was around one hundred years old.
Unless they truly have no talent for magic, one hundred years should be enough time to become a mage…
Grrrkk.
Lost in thought, Painfolt heard his stomach growl and rubbed his belly.
After walking nonstop for the first time in a long while, it was only natural he would be hungry.
"Elves, may we eat a meal here?"
"Ah—this… I apologize. This is our first time seeing other races, so I forgot we should serve you a meal first."
"It's fine. We have food we brought. Would you elves like to eat with us as well?"
Painfolt opened subspace storage and took out bunsik he had kept stored in packaging, placing it on the huge tree table.
Then Geshtain opened a black plastic bag and spread out the newspaper included inside, starting to set the bunsik on the table.
"Now, please try it. This is bunsik—a cuisine that came over from another continent, not the Doren Kingdom of the Francia Continent where I live. There's enough, so please eat as much as you like."
Painfolt skillfully lifted gimbap with chopsticks and dipped it in tteokbokki sauce before putting it into his mouth.
At first, he had only been able to eat Jinseo's bunsik with a fork, but after two years, he had become fairly used to handling chopsticks too.
Also, elves have a very strong tendency to prefer vegetarianism, so if you show them the bunsik or dishes I make, they might be disgusted—so be careful.
"Ah—this isn't suitable for you to eat…"
Painfolt belatedly recalled Jinseo's warning and tried to stop the elves from eating the bunsik. But it was already too late—the bunsik had already gone into their mouths.
"Ohh! Th-this taste?"
"It's a flavor and texture completely different from what we eat! Could it be that this is…"
"A dish with the mystical ingredient we've only heard elders speak of—meat?"
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