Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:MvM Chapter3 (section)

===Part 18===

The mayor was an old man. That old man had once been a middle-aged man. That middle-aged man had once been a young man. That young man had once been a boy.

He had used elves without ever questioning it.

And without appreciating the benefits that gave him.

When he was still young, there had been an epidemic that only affected elves, forcing the small society that was his village to survive with only the humans working.

It had been a disaster.

They hadn’t known how to work the fields or weave. In fact, they hadn’t even known how to draw water, so the entire village had nearly dried up and died.

At that time, the powerless nobody had realized that the elves were their lifeline. Without the elves, the humans would surely die. He had to accept that the elves were stronger, more beautiful, and a superior lifeform to the humans. So they could handle being worked as slaves. There was nothing wrong with the humans relying on and sponging off of the elves to survive. Wasn’t that right?

''Not at all,'' thought the old mayor in a self-deprecating realization in that final moment.

It was true the humans had nearly died when they hadn’t had the elves to work for them. But what if they had changed their way of thinking and decided the true danger was their reliance on the elves? What if the humans had bowed down to the elves and made a legitimate effort to learn how to till their fields and grow the food they needed to establish a cycle of self-sufficiency?

What would things be like now if they had thanked the elves for supporting their lives for so long and then tried to return the favor?

There had been countless opportunities to make that choice.

But the old man had never tried to change.

“This may be divine punishment,” he muttered

A moment later, the adventurers were on him like a swarm of monsters.