“Damn!” I said. “Is there no other way to move around…?”
I noticed something. Hal and the others looked to see what I was looking at, then gulped.
I was looking at the beasts pulling the container cars. If you take a rhino, add a Komodo dragon, divide by two, then multiply the size by ten, you would have these giant lizards, the rhinosauruses. They were big, but they could run continuously at high speeds comparable to a steam locomotive.
“…Hey, Hal, Kaede,” I said.
“What?” Hal asked cautiously.
“What is it?” Kaede asked.
“It’ll probably make us all nauseous, so will you be okay?” I asked.
“I’m quite resistant to motion sickness, you know,” Kaede said.
“…I’ll deal with it,” Hal muttered.
“You will? I’ll tough it out, too, then.”
I immediately gave the order to fifty members of the Forbidden Army.
“Unload all the freight from the container cars! Fortunately, the road runs near the God-Protected Forest, but once we get into the woods, we’ll be traveling on foot! The lighter our load, the better! Leave the materials where you unload them! Even if they’re lost, you won’t be blamed for it! I’ll give a written apology to Hakuya and get off with a little scolding! Also, bring all the food with us! We can’t do something lame like show up to offer aid, then have to sponge off the locals for food!”
“““Yes, sir!”””
Following my orders, the Forbidden Army soldiers speedily unloaded the container cars.
As you might expect from people who’d been doing nothing but construction work, they moved fast. The way they efficiently worked together to carry off the materials made them look like skilled movers. They really did feel reliable.
“No, we’re soldiers, remember?” Hal complained.
“Stop prattling and get to work, Hal,” Kaede said.
Kaede was using her magic to easily move materials that would normally have taken a few big strong men working together to lift.
Earth magic was, in the end, the magic of gravity manipulation. It didn’t create earth or stone from nothing: it manipulated what already existed. That was probably why she could do tricks like this. It was a huge contribution.
…Right now, I was probably the least useful person here. Since I had below-average strength, even if I joined in with the soldiers, I would probably just be in the way.
As I stood there watching them work for lack of anything better to do, Aisha came up to me. “Your Majesty…”
She looked weak, as if she might break down at any moment.
Ever since I’d recruited her, Aisha had been at my side as a bodyguard, so I felt like I had seen a lot of her expressions. Her determined face when she made a direct appeal to me, her imposing warrior face, her childlike face when she was eating something, the face like an abandoned dog that she made when she had to wait for that food… I had seen many expressions from her, but this one was new.
To see a girl who was so much more powerful than me looking so weak pained my heart. Aisha was always protecting me as my bodyguard, but now it was time for me to protect her. I placed my hand atop her head, which was roughly the same height as mine.
“S-Sire?” she asked.
“Leave this to me.” I pulled her in, resting her forehead on my shoulder. “I have no power, and I’m far weaker that you, Aisha, but I’m in a position to make a lot of people move. So leave this to me. If there are lives that can be saved, I’ll save all that I can.”
“Sire… Siiiiiiiiire!” Burying her face in my shoulder, Aisha began to cry.
I gently patted her head.
Until we were ready to go, I comforted the crying Aisha.
The God-Protected Forest was a forested area to the south of the country.
The name apparently came from the legend that a giant god-beast that took the form of a goat-antelope protected this forest.
That said, there had been no claimed sightings of it in recent years, and now the only proof of its existence was that its divine protection kept locusts from attacking the forest, kept droughts from drying it up, kept cold waves from freezing it, and kept the trees green at all times. This god-beast that only showed it existed through its divine protection… did it really exist?
The dark elves were the ones to claim their forest was under the god-beast’s protection.
The forest had to be approximately as big as the Sea of Trees around Mt. Fuji. They called it a forest, but it was actually the autonomous domain of the dark elves, and that xenophobic race had never let the other races enter their forest. Even Aisha had come to appeal to me for a crackdown on trespassers.
This time, there were close to fifty (hundreds once you considered the units to follow) humans coming to provide relief, and we would be entering the forest, but this was by request of the chief’s daughter, Aisha, so it would be treated as a special case, apparently. The dark elves lived in the forest, defended their independence, and hated outsiders.
As a matter of fact, despite the catastrophic landslide they had suffered, they apparently hadn’t sent a request for aid to the capital. If Aisha hadn’t been contacted, we might never have known the disaster had happened at all. It was admirable of them to try to solve their problems on their own, but it was stupid for them to let the number of deaths shoot up because of it.
“They’ve become hardheaded because they don’t even try to look at the outside world,” Aisha spoke sadly as we walked through the God-Protected Forest. “Because I made contact with you, sire, and you listened to my opinions, there were signs of that beginning to change, but…”
Her voice became indignant.
“This isn’t an era where we can live in the forest alone. With the threat of the Demon Lord’s Domain, we never know when they’ll begin to move south! If we shut ourselves away in our forest, do they believe the god-beast will really save us when the time comes?! The god-beast is the protector of the forest, it’s not the protector of the dark elf race!”
“Y-Yeah…” I said, taken aback.
“That’s why we dark elves should study and learn about the wider world!” Aisha was impassioned. It felt like the first time she’d looked so respectable in a while.
“Besides, if I stay in the forest, how would I eat Your Majesty’s delicious foods?!” she added.
…I take that back. Aisha was still Aisha.
Well, it’s better that she’s like this than to have her be tense and anxious, I thought.
Soon after we arrived in the dark elf village, we were met by a handsome man who looked to be in his twenties.
“Oh, Your Majesty!” he cried. “How good of you to come.”
His handsome face bore a certain resemblance to Aisha’s. Could he be her big brother?
He was tall, probably at least 190 cm. I could tell from the accessories he wore on his head and arms that he was of a high rank, but the fine-looking robe he wore was covered in dirt. He looked a little tired, as well.
As she stood before that young elf, Aisha thumped her hand on her chest once. “Father, I have brought His Majesty here with me.”
“Well done,” he said. “Your friendship with His Majesty must have come about through the guidance of our god-beast.”
“Father?!” I exclaimed.
My surprise brought a smile to the young elf’s exhausted face.
“My king, it is a pleasure to meet you. I am the chief of the dark elves and Aisha’s father, Wodan Udgard. Thank you for taking such good care of my daughter.”
“Oh, sure. Um… You’re awfully young.”