[The War Against Trees]
Elves were not sociable.
What did living five hundred years matter? Their daily routine was sitting in sunlight like sunflowers and smiling lazily.
And after sunset? In this fantasy world, some plants even grew by absorbing the faint divine power of moonlight. Perhaps because they resembled plants, elves watched the moon instead of the sun at night.
What social skills could people have when they spent all twenty-four hours communing with nature?
“You do not think so?”
“...No, I do. It is amazing that an elf is the one saying it. Or perhaps only an elf could say it.”
Elaine’s bitter complaint floated somewhere between self-awareness and hatred for her own people. After listening to her fume for a full hour, I was finally able to get to the point.
“I understand that you want the elves disciplined more actively.”
“Right?!”
“But why do I have to do it?”
“What? If Lewis does not, who will?”
What sort of conversation was this?
Teruna alone was enough to torment me!
“Student Elaine. I am only a teaching assistant. A teaching assistant has no authority to manage the academy.”
I could warn a student doing something wrong. But I had no authority to discipline or regulate elf students.
“Why not?”
“That is a very fundamental question.”
Why indeed?
Students and teaching assistants were both members of academy society. What was a citizen? A true citizen was someone with the courage to stop a fellow community member from doing wrong. The courage not to turn away from injustice!
Therefore, a teaching assistant unable to actively regulate a student was not an academy citizen—
‘What am I talking about?’
Maybe my cold still had not gone away. It felt as though a tiny Lewis was rampaging in my head and disrupting my thoughts.
“It is strange. Do humans not treat heroes well?”
“Most people treat me nicely.”
“Then why does Lewis have no authority? You purified the World Tree with my master.”
......?
The tiny Lewis rampaging through my mind stopped dead.
Very few people knew that I had purified the World Tree. Among elves, it was a secret known only to Aleph the Azure Sage and Queen Ceres. Even Elder Yureph, who escorted the students here, did not know.
How did Elaine know it?
I hurriedly took out a communication orb and contacted Hans.
— What is it—
“Hey! Special Affairs Bureau! What the hell are you people doing?”
— Has your madness flared up again? Why are you suddenly yelling at me—
“A fifty-year-old kid knows all my secrets! At this rate, even bugs wintering underground will know who I am!”
— What are you talking about? Ha. Are you really insane? I am busy. If you want to play, play by yourself.
Hans sighed and cut the connection unilaterally.
Whew. I felt calmer now that I had dumped my confusion on him.
“Did you misunderstand because I turned the World Tree Branch into a staff?”
“Oh, was it a secret? But...”
Elaine looked at my waist.
“I saw it myself.”
“You saw it?”
That made no sense. The World Tree was everything to elves, so it was not easily approached. That was why Aleph and I had slipped close to it without the elf guards noticing. At the time, only Aleph and I had been there—
Then a scene flashed through my head.
“Were you the one who led us through the maze garden?”
“Yes. I asked the World Tree.”
The World Tree really must adore this child. It even granted a request to open the maze garden, its final defense.
“Did Master not tell you?”
“I was busy.”
The excuse of a shut-in freeloader escaped me by reflex. In truth, I had cut off all outside contact and could not have received the news.
I had been tense for nothing.
“Anyway, a teaching assistant has no authority. I cannot discipline elf students.”
“But you are a hero, even if you are a teaching assistant.”
“I am not a hero. My name is not among the Five-Colored Heroes.”
“Huh?”
Elaine counted on her fingers.
“The Golden Empress, the Gray Storm, the Azure Sage, the Pure White Saint, and Black Footprints.”
Her head tilted.
“It is true.”
Then she suddenly drew her axes.
“Were your deeds not acknowledged? How dare they treat the World Tree’s benefactor—!”
At that moment, the door opened and Hans entered with his sword drawn.
“Lewis. Are you all right?”
Thus Elaine and Hans confronted one another with sharp weapons in hand.
But their weapons did not clash.
“Student Elaine. Why are you holding an axe in front of a teaching assistant?”
Hans sighed and returned his sword to its sheath.
“Sometimes I want to crack open someone’s skull and look inside their head too, but people die when you do that.”
“Hey, elves die from that too.”
“You suddenly used a code phrase, so I thought it was a dangerous situation.”
The ‘bugs wintering underground’ I mentioned through the orb was code for the demonfolk of the Underworld. Since I did not know how Elaine learned of the World Tree’s purification, I had called Hans first. He had understood the code and rushed here ready to fight.
“Do not worry. It turns out to be nothing.”
After hearing my explanation, Hans was relieved that my trip had been pointless.
“That is fortunate.”
It would be nice if he showed me that knightly side more often.
Elaine’s eyes sparkled as she watched us.
“So you are working at the academy to stop another invasion from the Underworld?”
She seemed to have misunderstood something.
Or perhaps she had not?
The original game was certainly full of incidents involving the Underworld. But it had been ten days since we arrived at the academy, and absolutely nothing had happened. It felt as though the genre had changed.
“Student Elaine, that is our work. Do not interfere—”
“I can help! I fought in the Yggdrasil War too!”
“Were we not discussing disciplinary measures for elf students? What does that have to do with the Underworld?”
“The academy has to be quiet before we can deal with the Underworld properly. They are my people, but if they are left alone, the academy will become a real mess.”
She was not wrong, but she was exaggerating.
“The elves have only been at the academy for a short time.”
“That is why we must establish order at the start.”
“Once classes begin and the three races truly mingle, the elves will restrain themselves naturally.”
At times, I wondered if the World Tree had created elves as fanatics to cover the land with trees. But an academy would not be plunged into chaos merely because they planted a few trees. The gardening budget might rise two or three times, that was all. And trees did not grow in a day or two.
“So do not worry too—”
**[S. Forest of Will]**
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**[Current SP: 100]**
A Sub Quest suddenly appeared before my eyes.
And then—
CRRRRACK—
With a deafening roar, the teaching-assistant office darkened.
When I turned, a huge trunk had blocked the sunlight.
A giant tree had sprung up without warning.
Crash!
Well, would you look at that.
The pointed end of the trunk shattered the window and stopped right in front of my nose.
I knew this tree. It was a Thorn Oak, the tree elves used as a weapon.
The Research Building was not the only place in turmoil. Beyond the window, massive trees grew in real time and coiled around the buildings.
In the dead of winter, enormous trees had appeared out of nowhere.
Together, the trees instantly transformed the academy into a forest.
Seeing that, I had one thought.
Those elf bastards might not be intelligent creatures after all.
***
Elves and spirits had not interacted at all since the Great War.
That did not mean they had forgotten one another. The Age of Loss after the Great War lasted hundreds of years, but elves and spirits lived even longer. The elders who survived the war restored the knowledge destroyed by its flames and passed down the existence of the other races in their own ways.
But that also made each race’s knowledge extremely biased.
“Spirits? They are beings in which a self has taken root in nature’s life force.”
“When spirits helped us long ago, a great forest rose in little more than a decade. Hoho. I miss it.”
To young elves who heard such stories and entered the world, spirits were the ultimate growth booster.
Naturally, when they heard spirits had arrived at the academy, elves went looking for them.
“Elf! Elf!”
The spirits happily played with them. Young spirits had no reason to keep their distance from elves, who were born from the World Tree with clear, deep life force.
The two races quickly became friends and roamed the academy together.
It ought to have been a joyous occasion: two races reconnecting after a long severance.
But too much was worse than too little.
An elf planted a seed. The location was not important.
An earth spirit enriched the soil. The elves applauded at its abundant life force.
A water spirit, unwilling to lose, soaked the ground with nutrient-rich water. The elves cheered louder.
Wind and fire spirits shielded the saplings from the bitter winter wind and created a greenhouse-like environment.
Moved by that perfect environment, the elves produced World Tree carvings in bulk.
The spirits danced around them, laughing and spinning.
On the surface, it was a boundlessly beautiful sight. Before the Great War, people might have wept to see it.
But charged life force took root in the frozen earth and burrowed deep below.
One day. Two days. Three. Four.
Having learned how effective their collaboration was at growing plants, the tireless children wandered all over the academy.
Five days. Six. Seven. Eight.
Like squirrels burying acorns, the children forgot where they had planted their seeds. Yet, because it was fun, they kept planting them.
On the ninth day—
CRACK—
The shell of a ‘bomb’ buried beneath the academy responded to the overflowing life force and broke.
CRRRRUMBLE—!
Vast life force spread through the academy. Plants throughout the grounds stretched awake, using it as nourishment.
That was why the academy became a forest in winter.
***
The Underworld was a demonic realm reachable only through a handful of the dungeons scattered over the continent.
In the residence of one of its five rulers—
“That bastard! That damned bastard ruined our great plan! The blade of vengeance we have sharpened for hundreds of years!”
Baal, his body wrapped in layer after layer of bandages, cursed Lewis as he struggled for breath.
Crack—
“Aaargh!”
Cracks spread through Baal’s horn, and he screamed.
“You need rest.”
“Grrrgh!”
At his aide’s words, Baal ground his teeth and swallowed his rage.
Still, the Demon King of Wrath spat a curse.
“I will bring those bastards here alive. I will make them neither dead nor alive and let them suffer forever— Aaagh!”
The horn repeatedly healed and split again.
His white-eyed aide, Yuel, spoke while looking at it.
“We are locating that man. We will bring him alive to this hell.”
Yuel hated Lewis as well. But the poison they had nursed for too long and too deeply could not be spent on one man alone.
“The troops. How is the restoration of our troops?”
“Seventy percent was lost in the battle against the spirits.”
“I asked how much we restored!”
“We are barely maintaining the remaining thirty percent.”
Defeat did not end with losing soldiers. The resources spent on cleanup and recovery were immense. They also had to watch those trying to break away while the Demon King was weak. Maintaining the final thirty percent was only possible because of Yuel.
Baal’s teeth ground together.
Yuel sighed inwardly. If this continued, Baal would explode one day.
“That man is one matter, but should we not teach the three races their place as well?”
“...Do you have a method?”
Baal’s voice abruptly calmed. He knew Yuel did not speak without preparation.
“I planted a bomb beneath the academy.”
“A bomb?”
“Yes. It was originally energy gathered to make a Nest grow rapidly.”
Unfortunately, the war ended in only a year, before they could use the Nest.
“Gloria Academy, built in the Afernia Empire, will strengthen the unity of elves, humans, and spirits.”
“It cannot be allowed.”
“Exactly. If we are to target the surface again, we cannot permit it.”
So they would target the academy, destroy the symbol of harmony.
“When the academy fills with students and life force, the energy planted underground will react.”
“But even energy meant to grow a Nest will not collapse the entire academy.”
Nests grew by burning pure life force, not the demonic energy used by the demonfolk. That kept them from ordinary demonic-energy detection, but made them less explosively powerful.
“It will not collapse the ground in an explosion.”
“Then what? Did you not plant only life force, without even a Nest seed?”
“Correct. But the overflowing life force will naturally flow into living beings on the surface.”
Baal understood and laughed lowly.
“Young creatures flooded with excessive life force... Heh heh.”
“Vessels that cannot endure will burst, or undergo grotesque mutations.”
Such horrific deaths would produce far more turmoil and resentment than assassinations or accidents.
“Good. Very good. When?”
“Judging by the number of elves and spirits enrolled, the spring or summer after next.”
After a great disaster, intelligent beings instinctively fight over responsibility. The alliance of the three races would crack.
“Good. What else do you need?”
“It would help to have troops prepared to assassinate key figures or deepen division at the right moment.”
“Divert the resources for restoring the legions to an assassination unit.”
“Yes. I will prepare so that you are not disappointed.”
Yuel bowed and left the hall.
But even the greatest strategist among the demonfolk had failed to anticipate the tireless synergy of young elves and spirits, and the life force of the World Tree Staff Lewis awakened.
“Heh heh... We will not retreat so helplessly. Just wait. The time for our counterattack will come!”
Baal’s triumphant cry echoed through the ruined hall.
It was one minute before the energy source planted beneath the academy erupted.