Damn Reincarnation

ene instructed her.
“Don’t piss yourself while pointlessly trying to hold it in.”

“Y-yes,” Narissa replied as she gulped down her shock.

As an elf, she also knew how to perform a bit of spirit summoning.

Howevers, elves as a race usually tended to allow their innate talents to lie fallow due to their peace-oriented natures.
Although she had already lived for a long span of a hundred and thirty years, Narissa’s spirit summoning magic was only slightly above the level of a beginner in the art.

Elves were just such a race.
They lived for a long time indeed, but they spent most of that time chirping with the wild birds of the forest and caring for the flowers and trees.

Even so, with how long they lived, an elven archwizard who had lived for hundreds of years was strong enough to make a human archwizard look ridiculous in comparison.

“Ummm… Sir Eugene… do you mind telling me… how old you are?” Narissa asked hesitantly.

“If you convert it into elf years, I’m around two hundred,” Eugene answered her.

Narissa was lost for a moment, “Huh…? Um… Ah! Yes, I see.
That’s truly amazing.
Even though you’re not that old, to be able to freely control the spirits like this… and you’re even strong enough to terrify those fearsome warriors… I-I truly admire you.”

Narissa’s trembling had settled a little as she stared at Eugene with admiring eyes.
Kristina, who noticed this look, snorted and shook her head.

“First she said that you have a face that’s so impressive and amazing that even an elf can’t compare to you… and now she’s saying that she admires you? It feels like you might be hearing more compliments today than you’ve heard in the rest of your life,” Kristina noted.

Eugene disagreed.
“Not really? I think I’ve heard a lot of compliments like that, ever since I was young.
I’ve also been told a few times that I have quite the handsome face.”

In his past life, with Hamel’s face, he’d never once been told anything like that, but after he was reincarnated with this face, he truly had heard those compliments a few times before.
Even for Eugene himself, when he was looking at his reflection in a mirror or in a body of water, there were times when he had that kind of thought. ‘What a handsome bastard.’

Kristina suddenly jolted.
“Hold on, Sir Eugene, you aren’t thinking of abandoning her midway just because she might be a burden, are you? I refuse to believe that your personality is that screwed-up.”

Eugene snorted.
“If I was going to throw her away, I wouldn’t have picked her up in the first place.
Besides, this makes for a good pretext, doesn’t it? We’re just protecting a traveling elf and guiding them to the elven village.
No matter how fierce the guardian who protects the village is reputed to be, he probably won’t reject his own people.”

At this reply, Narissa swallowed a sigh of relief.

Eugene suddenly turned to her.
“But anyways, Narissa.”

Narissa yelped, “Y-yes!”

“Did you come here looking for the elven sanctuary that is said to lie at the foot of the World Tree?” Eugene asked.

“That was one reason, but… I also thought that it would be easier to live in hiding in a rainforest rather than in a city.
I-I wouldn’t need to worry about the Demonic Disease either…,” Narissa faltered.

Eugene eyed her.
“But it doesn’t look like you’ve caught the Demonic Disease.
Have you?”

“Uh, no… I haven’t caught it yet, but who knows when it might happen,” Narissa mumbled as her chin fell to her chest.

The Demonic Disease was a disease that only afflicted the elves.
The reason why Sienna, who had been living peacefully within the elven sanctuary, had ended up going out into the world was because of the Demonic Disease.

It was now rare for any elf to catch the Demonic Disease, but three hundred years ago, back when all five Demon Kings were still alive, countless elves had contracted the Demonic Disease and perished.
The elves living in the sanctuary were no exception to this.

As such, Sienna had set out from the elven sanctuary.
Her mission was to slay all five Demon Kings, and prevent any more elves from being afflicted with the Demonic Disease.

“…The Demonic Disease is an incurable illness,” Kristina muttered.
“Even with the light of divine magic, it is impossible to treat the Demonic Disease.
Even the Demon King of Incarceration has been left with no choice but to evade responsibility for it, calling the Demonic Disease an ‘unavoidable illness.’”

“Well, that makes sense.
In order to get rid of the Demonic Disease, all the Demon Kings and demonfolk would have to commit suicide,” Eugene gave a repressed response before turning towards Narissa.
“Were your parents also born outside of the rainforest?”

“Yes…,” Narissa cautiously admitted.

This meant that she wouldn’t be of any help in finding the place.
He held back the urge to say this out loud, but Eugene still couldn’t help but think this to himself.

* * *

Ujicha was a senior warrior of the Garung tribe.
He was a towering giant that closely resembled a stone statue.
His cleanly shaved head and muscular body were absolutely covered in scars and tattoos.

Filled with cold rage, Ujicha turned to look at his surroundings and voiced his conclusion.
“It was a one-sided slaughter.”

He had no choice but to judge the battle that had taken place here as such.
The tribe’s warriors and the Vakahan Wolves, they had all been one-sidedly slaughtered.
Ujicha slowly walked through the battlefield, examining the corpses.

Soon, Ujicha’s eyes lit up.
Although the corpses had already been lying there for a few days and had been damaged by monsters feeding on them, the wounds they had suffered could still be made out clearly, mostly because of the variety of blows that had been delivered.

A few had been killed by a fist, some slashed by a sword, some others had been stabbed with a spear, others blown to pieces as if they had been within range of an explosion, and still others looked like they had been grabbed by some huge monster and crushed to death.

However, unlike the traces that had been left on the corpses, the set of footprints that remained imprinted in the ground indicated that there had only been one opponent.

“So this was all done by one person,” Ujicha mumbled.

Ujicha wasn’t the only one to have come to this conclusion.
A man wearing a large shirt that easily allowed the wind to blow across his skin came on over and stood at Ujicha’s side.

The man spoke, “So then, these brave warriors of the Garung Tribe… they truly couldn’t beat just one person and even had their prey stolen from them?”

“So it seems,” Ujicha conceded.

The veins on Ujicha’s bald head were throbbing in anger.
He glared at the man beside him and growled out in a ferocious voice, “I will hunt him down and return with the prey.”

“Of course you will.” The man nodded.
“Can’t you see how excited our young master had become after being told that you’ll be giving him that elf as a gift?”

“If he wants elves, there are others we can give him,” Ujicha grunted.
“The slave market should be opening again soon.
One or two elves should probably be put up for sale this time as well.”

It wasn’t just the Garung tribe who would be participating in this slave market, several other neighbouring tribes would also be attending.
This market, which was held twice a year, traded in tribal criminals who had been sentenced to slavery, tamed monsters, and foreigners who had also been enslaved.

It wasn’t just the natives of Samar who attended this market — foreign nobles and merchants who had developed close ties to a tribe could also find their way there.
That said, their main purpose for visiting wasn’t to purchase slaves, but rather to take in this rare spectacle of an event that only took place twice a year.

“No no, other elves won’t do.
Our young master… well… he has slightly unusual tastes.
He’s obsessed with elves who have had a body part amputated,” the man admitted with a shrug and a look of embarrassment.
“You get what I’m saying right? He’s got a bit of an… amputee fetish? Something along those lines.
He likes it when they’re missing a limb, or even just an eye….”

“If that’s what he wants, then I can just cut them up for him,” Ujicha offered.

“No no, I’m telling you that just won’t do.
If that could work, don’t you think that I would have thought of it already? The young master says that he can’t get excited by such artificial measures.
He needs to know that they were already missing a limb before he gets his hands on them,” the man explained.
“Of course, that one-legged elf probably wasn’t born with just one leg, but the young master insists that he wants an elf whose foot was cut off, not an elf whose foot was cut off because of him.”

“So he’s just crazy then.” Ujicha snorted in disgust.
He had no desire to understand the young noble’s twisted tastes.

The man continued, “Furthermore, if you want an elf from the market, you still need to pay for them, right? Why waste our money on that? When we can just catch that one-legged elf for free.”

“Bron.
Don’t rush me,” Ujicha growled.

“I’m not rushing you… did it sound like I was? Well then, I guess I’ll let you go about it your own way,” Bron mumbled as he kicked one of the corpses.
“That aside… his skills must be pretty impressive.
My first impression is that he doesn’t seem to come from a knightly background.
Could he be a mercenary? But what reason could a mercenary have to come all the way here just to wander in the forest on his own?”

“He must be a hunter[1],” Ujicha guessed.

“For him to have entered this deep into the forest all on his own, he must not be an ordinary hunter,” Bron muttered to himself.

“It’s been two days since they were killed.
We can still catch up to him,” Ujicha stated firmly as he ground his teeth in suppressed rage.

“That’s good, the trip has been getting a bit boring.
Let’s go after him together,” Bron proposed.
“Ah, it won’t be just the two of us, right? It may have been just one guy who killed all your warriors, but he might still have companions.”

“Are you scared?” taunted Ujicha.

“Haha! Me, one of Shimuin’s Twelve Finest, scared?” Bron chuckled as he pounded Ujicha on the shoulder.

Once he had calmed down, Bron nonetheless reminded Ujicha, “It’s still better to be on the cautious side.”

1.
The raw uses the same word for hunter to describe these slavers, so they may be assuming that Eugene has taken Narissa as his slave. ☜

Openbookworm's Thoughts

Penguin’s thoughts 1: bro… people are allowed to have their own fetishes, but… bro…

Penguin’s thoughts 2: lololol Uji-cha means tea from Uji, like the famous tea-producing place in Kyoto