Editing Dark Elf:Volume1 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 13===

Smoke signals were hard to miss. They were a signal, so that was by design.

The boy hesitantly approached, but not because he was afraid of whoever was making the signals. He had heard a quiet sound along the way. They could silence their footsteps through how they walked, but there was no fully silencing the rubbing of their white leather clothing. They were there. And if an outsider like him had noticed the smoke signals, those rulers of the forest would have seen it as well.

The entire forest was on edge. The dark elves had used torches before, but they may have been particular about fire management. With good cause given how close to disaster Klaus had come earlier.

And he had never seen the dark elves sending messages using smoke signals.

This had to be a human. Whether it was his rotten teacher or a surviving knight, he wasn’t the only one out here.

…''But giving away your position like that is suicide.

Were they that confident? Based on what? The knights guarding Professor Dissection had gotten their asses kicked and his teacher had run off, leaving her student behind, so the power of the dark elves’ Archdragon Magic was inarguable. Something didn’t fit. And in his experience, these small hunches rarely led to the pleasant sort of surprise. Especially ever since he had entered the Forest of No Return!

He hurried toward the smoke signals…and he was surprised to find he could do so while making sure the dark elves didn’t notice him. He had gotten used to this. All he had done was wash off his artificial scents, overwritten those with animal fur and such, and learned to be careful about making noises and leaving footprints, but those little things added up.

And eventually…

“?”

He quietly crouched down. He could see some footprints, but they different from any of the team-specific dark elf footprints he had seen. These were more complex and ornamental. The design gave no thought to silence or grip, nor did it hold any hidden meaning.

…''Was this person wearing armor?

The fancy footprints were deep and heavy compared to the nimble dark elves. He initially thought it must have been a large man, but the foot size was about the same as his own. Thus, he concluded they were wearing heavy armor.

Something flashed in the corner of his vision.

The glint seen through the trees was sunlight reflecting off of metal. That seemed downright careless. A dark elf hunter or archer would probably scoff because even Klaus could tell someone was there. He heard metal rubbing together past the trees. The dark elf hunters considered the best defense to be hiding silently behind bushes so you were never discovered, so they preferred not to wear heavy armor that could easily get leaves or branches caught in the joints.

In that case…

“Loinbelt?”

“What!? You?”

“Loinbelt, were those smoke signals you?”

He had somehow managed to make contact before the dark elves. Klaus’s words contained a shade of accusation and the page moved his face into view. He looked awful. There was no sign of the Loinbelt who had kept an honest expression on his adorable baby face. He had bags under his eyes, his hair was an unkempt mess, and his lightweight armor had dried mud caked onto it.

He must have faced his own trials in the forest, just like Klaus had survived by eating a bug. And Loinbelt was still here because he had chosen to survive.

But why had Loinbelt sent those smoke signals if he had struggled to the point of obtaining his own fire?

Idealism was meaningless in the forest of the dark elves. The rapier and knife at his hip would accomplish nothing. Surely he had learned and accepted that lesson if he was still standing now. Loinbelt looked adrift in a purposeless life when Klaus grabbed his shoulders, stared straight into the page’s eyes, and spoke slowly to him.

“What do you think you’re doing? You need to get away from here! A large group of armed dark elves are on their way! You’ll be surrounded!”

“…He’s gone,” said Loinbelt, staring into the distance. His eyes were not focused on Klaus’s face. “The honorable Sir Rainbook fought proudly to the end and lost his life in the line of duty. I was too terrified to move, so he shoved me aside and was crushed into a red paste!!”

“…”

“So I will kill them. I must have my revenge. No matter what it takes. Yes, I know I’m only dreaming. Their Archdragon Magic is too powerful and my armor might as well be made of paper. They have me beat in both quantity and quality, so I need to fix that. I need to gather more and better forces so we can overwhelm them.”

Klaus had never actually met Sir Rainbook, but he felt certain the knight had not protected Loinbelt so the boy’s soul would be bound by revenge like this. But the words of an outsider would never reach Loinbelt.

“So you sent out smoke signals to call in reinforcements?”

So he started with what he did know for sure.

Something about this was clearly wrong.

“They’ll never arrive in time! Do you have any idea how far we are from the capital? They can’t even see your smoke signals from there.”

“Oh, I called for reinforcements immediately after the devastating attack. By carrier pigeon.”

Now things were making more sense. In a bad way. And this one was even worse than when Professor Dissection got involved.

Loinbelt explained quite clearly.

“This is to call the reinforcements to me. They should have already arrived in the forest. I called for the elite knights who are second to none at cleaning up once disaster strikes: Last Resort Unit.”

An explosive boom rumbled across the deep forest. But not from just one direction. The projectiles and fearsome explosions of the dark elves’ Archdragon Magic were met by a different form of deadly attack from the other side.

Lightning. In other words, electricity. A niche lab in the royal capital was experimenting in making electricity visible inside a device known as a neon tube and Klaus himself had made use of static electricity to ignite pine resin, but this was on another level entirely. This lightning was manually bent and twisted like a sugar sculpture. A different culture entirely was tearing away pieces of the dark forest.

“Vanguard, not so far forward! Feel free to leave the brunt of the burden on me!!”

“''Ito bae mugguqj po!? Yo’to douqj revkog difm!?''”

“Silence, monster. You seem to have entertained yourself with our dog hunters, but now I will ensure you can never speak again.”

The people speaking the human language were not begging for their lives this time. There was an exchange of words from both sides. A female voice dripping with hostility overpowered even the dark elves, leaving them unsure about their next move.

This was Last Resort Unit.

But the difference in power between human and dark elf was supposed to be insurmountable. The humans shouldn’t have been able to outdo the dark elves in the field of magic no matter how elite a force they sent in. And yet…

“What is-?”

Klaus was cut off by several dark shapes rushing out from the bushes nearby. He didn’t even have time to cry out as his mouth was covered and he was knocked to the ground along with Loinbelt.

“Lady Elzane! We have secured Loinbelt!!”

“Plus one unknown – unarmed and human. Shall we rescue this boy as well!?”

They had not been brought down to be restrained. It was for their own safety. And Klaus grimaced when he heard “Lady Elzane”. That was unfortunately a name he recognized. And not in a good way.

A warhorse was ridden by a female knight using just one arm to easily lift a giant lance known as a chauve-souris. It was a flashy weapon named after a bat, but its practical design caught the enemy weapon on its side blades while slaying that enemy with the center blade. Her armor was much more ornate than Loinbelt’s. She only wore a highly aggressive style of chainmail on her upper body to prioritize the mobility of her arms and torso. Conversely, her legs were covered with enormous pieces of metal armor to attach her solidly to her saddle. The spur and spike on the armor’s heel and sole may have been used to give accurate instructions to the horse.

Overall, it gave her the same silhouette as a hakama-wearing martial artist from the isolationist nation far, far to the east when they removed their upper clothing and tied it around their waist. The armor itself did not appear to have any mobility-enhancing symbols or magic circles included in its design. That sort of thing had instead been placed in the metal armor surrounding the horse’s neck and torso. The horse had been boosted so thoroughly it would have damaged a human’s muscles and tendons.

She had beautiful sky blue eyes and hair worn in massive ringlets that fell nearly to her ankles. Also, that hair was an impossibly bright lemon yellow. It was clearly different from an ordinary blonde. It was more fluorescent or metallic. It reminded Klaus of the neon tube experiments he had seen at the royal capital school.

Non-medical hair dyes were obviously a luxury afforded only to the upper classes. And even then, most of the nobility had to resort to mineral dyes that damaged the scalp. Only a select few could use purely plant-based dyes.

She was a horseback warrior through and through.

Giving her long hair so much body and splitting it to either side was likely a fashion meant to accommodate her riding.

Fashion.

That word felt like it came from another world entirely. She was not actually using perfume, but the sweet scent from her nape and chest still tickled his nose. After nearly starving due to the faint scents on his hair and clothing, that sounded like suicide to him, but she could get away with it as long as she could bring plentiful resources along with her and had the strength to fight off the dark elves who detected her presence. That extraordinary knight held a position that allowed her to do all that just to remain fashionable.

She was combing her hair atop her warhorse. Did that involve the legend claiming that a witch’s power came from her hair? That may have been a personal rule of hers, much like his need for the magic derivative.

She broke the comb in two, tossed it aside, and brushed a giant croissant of hair off her shoulder.

“Hm? Why if it isn’t the Knockburn boy. I would recognize that adorable face anywhere.”

“I am not your childhood friend. And need I remind you for the zillionth time that I’m older than you?”

She would occasionally arrive at the school as an outsider to ask his rotten teacher for advice. That teacher had given her some lessons on leading a combat group based on how bees, wolves, and lions formed their respective groups. Her name was Elzane Livzy. She was a year his junior, yet this was how she treated him. She was simply too accustomed to looking down at everyone around her. The fact that she did not look down ''on'' them meant she was still a little cute, though.

…''But the difference in status is so great I have to be all formal with her even though she’s younger.

Also, after she had repeatedly fallen victim to and been brought to tears by his rotten teacher’s eccentricities, she had eventually started to view Klaus as something like a mascot. Whenever she asked for advice in a closed room and received relentless flirting in the darkness in exchange, the straightforward and sensible boy waiting outside had felt like a breath of fresh air to her. So when she felt especially victimized by the rotten teacher (in other words, every single time), she would hold him in her arms like a big teddy bear, rub his head, smell his hair, and otherwise soothe herself before leaving the lab. She was younger and a stranger, yet she had taken up the “older girl next door” position in his life. ''Damn and she thinks she can get away with anything because her fancy diet has made her tits so big.'' In a school life where age and school year were everything, he found this incredibly frustrating. (Especially because he found him powerless to fight back.)

She smiled a little while carrying a lance twice her height and with the tight chainmail accentuating the size of her boobs like fishnet stockings or a boneless ham’s netting.

“Out adventuring, were you? I admire the spirit, boy, but from the look of you, I imagine you were ''yet again'' having a rough time. Where is Reika?”

“…Missing.”

“I see. Then we must slaughter every last one of them.”

''Wait a second.

He had no idea when the terrible knight constantly visiting their lab had ended up leading the elite Last Resort Unit and it confused him that her lightning was so effective against the dark elves. As far as he could see, Elzane was the only one using magic while she waved her giant lance on horseback. A single human was overpowering and pushing back the dark elves. This clearly contradicted the rules he had gathered on his note-taking stick. How could this violation of the rules be permitted?

He lacked the information to reach an answer on his own, so he needed more observations. The answer revealed itself as another warhorse emerged from between the trees. A lithe blonde girl of about 12 rode the white horse.

No, that wasn’t just a girl.

She wore the transparently-thin green outfit of a priest and her ears were long and pointed.

“''The hope elf''? The visiting priestess!?”

“Address me as Rosehera, young one. And I would not complain if you added ‘St.’ to that.”

She looked like a child, but she spoke like an elderly woman. She even held a hand up to hide the elegant smile on her lips.

Unlike the dark elves, this hope elf could speak human language. There was an independent elf language, but Rosehera used the human tongue (while making it clear this was a favor she was mercifully granting them).

The dark elves all looked young no matter their actual age, that knight had an unbelievable chest despite being younger than him, and now this small hope elf spoke like an old lady. Were Klaus and Loinbelt the only ones in the forest who looked their age? Was there not a single ordinary girl here!?

“The dark elves are no more than a distant branch of the elf family, so their power cannot defeat one such as I who has a mastery of the elven arts. Archdragon Magic? No more than magic that takes the dragon name in order to conquer dragons. Ha ha. A mere parlor trick. They started by thinking of the unconquerable Brashgain and then lowered the mental hurdle by setting their sights on dragons one or even two levels below him. Then again, even that is superior to trying to make sense of those error-ridden texts you have so foolishly preserved in your royal capital’s library.”

“…”

“''I have lent that girl my power,'' so each of her attacks packs a punch those dark elves will never see coming.”

…''She’s on an entirely different level.

Rosehera was the only hope elf in the entire royal capital with its school full of eccentrics. In fact, there was no community of hope elves like the dark elves and their village.

Only the most powerful and intelligent of elves became known as a separate species known as hope elves. Categorizing someone as extraordinary as Rosehera in the same species as other elves would have caused too much confusion in academic society, so they had instead created a new category. She was just that powerful.

She was not just the only hope elf in the royal capital. She was the only one in the entire world.

If she were to fall to a deadly blade, the loss would be incalculable. Yet she had been taken from the safe capital to fight in this deep forest? Just how badly did the humans want to settle this problem?

Loinbelt kneeled next to Elzane’s horse. He bowed with his knee in the mud and his head down low where she could kick him to death if he upset her. That may have been some form of etiquette.

“The honorable Sir Rainbook fought nobly to the very end.”

“I see.”

“Please lend me your blade of vengeance, as a final kindness to one too inexperienced to fulfill this duty himself.”

“I humbly accept your request,” replied Elzane, pulling a new comb from her armor.

The dark elves had killed a noble. That may not have mattered much in the rules that governed the forest. Klaus himself believed those humans had only themselves to blame for assisting Professor Dissection. But humans had to follow their own rules. They could not allow a noble to be insulted. So to erase the shame of his defeat, they had pulled out all the stops and sent in an elite unit and the hope elf.

The knight glanced over at the hope elf.

“What would be our most effective option? I can always crush them one at a time with this borrowed magic, but we do not know how many dark elves are out there. We don’t want them to mask their numbers by hiding or playing dead in the vast forest.”

“I might be the supreme member of the elf family, but I am very familiar with this puny subspecies’ weaknesses. Leave this to me.”

The blue-eyed hope elf, who was practically a legend herself, raised her small index finger.

And she continued with a smile.

“You need only set the forest ablaze and burn the entire place to the ground. Dark elves live in the forest, so they know not how to survive outside of it. Then you can massacre every last one of them.”