Editing Dark Elf:Volume1 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 1===

That deep, deep forest was known as the Forest of No Return.	

Once you wandered into that cursed forest, you were doomed to never leave again. Thanks to that, there were no hunters living in the small inn town at the forest’s entrance and all the meat served at the restaurant had to be transported from afar by wagons. It was all venison or beef preserved with salt. The way it was soaked in water to remove the preserving salt before it was cooked provided a unique flavor, but it would get old fast if it was all you had.

The redheaded boy named Klaus Knockburn’s plate also contained a round object no more than 5cm thick. It was the stem of a giant Witch Pumpkin, a type of magic derivative. Normal people did not eat those. In the fields outside the village, they were viewed as big, heavy weeds and wagon drivers hated them. However, certain conditions had to be met to use magic. In Klaus’s case, he only had to soften up the hard, nasty stem by cooking and seasoning it, but some people had to eat or drink things with extreme bitterness or even toxins that had to be removed first. Figuring out the trick to preparing it and asking a cook to make it more appetizing was one job of a magic user.

…''If I use up all the stem inside me, I get really bad headaches and dizziness. That might sound like a big problem, but it’s really not much different than what happens if you don’t eat anything for an entire day. Once you’re used to eating them, you stop thinking about how much trouble it is to do so.

“It doesn’t make any sense, does it? All this delicious meat is delivered along a road built through the Forest of No Return.”

A beautiful (on the outside) court scientist with long, glossy black hair and bright skin was moving her knife and fork across the table from Klaus. Observing the items she had on the table was enough to know what kind of magic she used. She did not have any Witch Pumpkin stem.

Her name was Reika Kickpleats.

She wore a thick black cloak, a witch hat with floral decorations, intellectual glasses, and a tight black dress that showed off her plentiful curves like a smooth silk camisole. That rotten teacher was downing a glass of red wine in the middle of the day.

“Pwahh☆ If you’re gonna be an absolute disaster anyway, you might as well start day drinking!!”

“Y’know, you could at least ''try'' not being a disaster.”

Klaus’s comment was not appreciated. Reika snatched up the broom leaning against the wall nearby and smacked him over the head with it.

“Ow!?”

“Pipe down, my #1 student.”

Klaus heard a heavy metallic clanking from directly behind him. She must have wanted him to lower his head, but that grip was made of hard and heavy Naval Cedar, the same wood used to build the giant sailing ships used for intercontinental travel. She had hit him in the head, but he felt a little nauseous and couldn’t get his voice out.

A knight in heavy armor was walking by behind him, so Reika unnaturally leaned her upper body down onto the table to hide herself in the crowd.

“Oh, dear. I can’t let the knights see me here, so I might have to have you go buy me sandwiches from now on.”

“What did you do ''this time''?” groaned the redheaded boy.

His rotten teacher winked behind her glasses while resting her upper body on the table (and thus softly squishing her large breasts against it).

“It’s all a big misunderstanding☆ As always, I’m working myself to the bone to make the world a better place.”

Then she quietly explained her reason for this trip to the Forest of No Return.

This was his last warning. And Klaus was not stupid enough to enter that deep forest without even knowing why first. He sighed when he saw how good a mood she was in despite her messy hair.

Once she was done explaining, he had just one thing to say.

“What a mess.”

“Don’t act like you couldn’t guess this was going to get messy☆ Were you worried about your kind, gentle, and beautiful teacher traveling all on her lonesome?”

“Of course not. I’m here because of the extremely rare reports of dark elves being spotted in the Forest of No Return.”

Dark elves were occasionally seen in virgin forests.

But he had to be cautious.

“A human only has one chance in their entire life to find a dark elf village. ''There are no second chances.'' So if I give up and leave the forest, I can never ever find their village.”

“Isn’t that just a legend? Do you have any statistics to back it up, my #1 student?”

“Shut up and listen. I’ve been visiting likely forests and wasted my chance in all of them. I never even caught a glimpse of a dark elf, much less their village! So if I screw up here, I’ll have to travel across the ocean and try to find an uncharted island or something!!”

“Sigh. You’re almost as thorough as me.”

“I have to be. My past brethren have pursued the dark elves for generations, but not one of them managed to reach those legendary villages. They all lost hope, graduated, returned home, and took over the family business…but I refuse!! Why do you think I chose this elective in magical biology that lets me study all the fantasy lifeforms that don’t fit into the general classifications? I’ll do whatever it takes to find a real dark elf and marry her!!!!!!”

“But that’s the Forest of No Return. They say you can never find your way out again if you take a single step off the stone-paved road. Besides, aren’t dark elves depicted as villains in children’s books?”

Witches were also stereotypical children’s book villains, but that long history of prejudice had finally come to an end and it was now an elite position that granted you free access to the royal court. So couldn’t the same happen for dark elves? Klaus pouted his lips. He would make sure it happened.

“Sigh. Since you chose my lessons for your elective, I really wish you would direct this passion toward the rest of your fieldwork. I’ve never seen someone so bad at investigating strata and water veins.”

“Um, how exactly do you expect me to focus on something that doesn’t have brown boobs and a healthy ass?”

Reika Kickpleats received a refill from a waitress in a miniskirt uniform that excessively accentuated her chest (given her age, it may have been her way of finding someone to marry). Reika swished the red liquid around in her gloved hand and narrowed her eyes.

“What is it about dark elves that motivates you like this, my silly student? Especially when you have a lonely witch getting a little tipsy right in front of you?”

“Heh heh heh. An unusually good question for you, my silly teacher. You see, dark elves have shiny silver hair and brown bodies that are as athletic as they are sexy. I also love how they wear unnecessarily revealing clothing and consider it perfectly normal. These aren’t the normal elves you can find just about anywhere. Those ones act all friendly like they’re coming on to you, but then they brag about how many hundreds of years old they are and insist they have no interest in romance with a human, but dark elves have none of those impenetrable defenses!! Yes, the keyword here is purity. I need a pure dark elf who’s super strong, still lives in tune with nature, and has the wisdom of age, but is also kind of clueless and defenseless!!!!!!”

“That is legitimately creepy.”