Why are you drinking with a man like that? the woman seemed to say as she slumped her shoulders. Then she walked over to the table and sat down in an empty chair. While Inugami was still confused, she took off her cloth. When she did…
“Wha?!” Inugami shouted.
From beneath the cloth appeared a beautiful twenty-something woman with white skin so pale as to be translucent, golden hair, and pointed ears.
Those pointed ears were the mark of an elf. In addition to them, there was another thing that stood out about her: Her eyes were ruby red.
“A high elf… No, it can’t be! Is she really one?” Inugami gasped.
Deep crimson eyes were characteristic of the high elves. Elves and dark elves had a dislike for contact with other races, but in multi-racial states like the Kingdom of Friedonia, there were individuals who lived mixed in with the other races. Some of those individuals even married members of other races and had children. Souma’s chamberlain Marx was a half-elf who’d been born to parents who were a light elf and a human.
However, high elves were even more extreme in their hatred for having contact with other races. Because of that, the high elves were only found in their own country, the Spirit Kingdom of Garlan, which was situated on two islands, one large and one small, to the northwest of the continent, and which other races were barred from entering.
The high elves also engaged in their own unique form of spirit worship, which made them the ones who had the least to do with a theocracy like the Orthodox Papal State of Lunaria.
That was exactly what made Inugami so shocked. He couldn’t believe that here, in a country that was the center of a different faith, he was seeing a high elf dressed in the guise of a prostitute.
When he saw Inugami at a loss for words, Souji smiled wryly and plopped his hand down on top of the high elf’s head. “Allow me to introduce her. This is Merula Merlin. As you’ve already noticed, she’s a high elf. I know she doesn’t look it, but she’s an old woman who’s lived twice as long as me, so be careful.”
“How rude,” said Merula indignantly. “For a high elf, being one hundred years old is the same as being just under twenty for a human, you know? In the Spirit Kingdom, if I told people I was a hundred years old, they wouldn’t treat me as anything more than a kid.”
She then began to converse naturally with Souji.
“Um… what sort of relationship do the two of you have?” the still-bewildered Inugami managed to squeeze in.
Merula and Souji looked at one another.
“What are we…? Housemates, maybe?” Merula asked.
“No, no, I’m the owner of the house,” said Souji. “I’m acting as your guardian here, okay?”
“Hold on! Who looks after whom here?! If I don’t clean up after you, you leave things everywhere!” Merula shouted.
“You’re just too sensitive about that stuff!”
The two of them launched into something like a fight between a middle-aged couple.
Inugami squeezed his temples, then sought an explanation. “Um, could I ask you start from the beginning… and explain what a high elf like Madam Merula is doing here?”
“Hm? Oh, sorry, sorry.” When Souji calmed down, he crossed his arms and looked to Merula. “Do you mind if I explain?”
“Hm… Please do.”
And so, with Merula’s permission, Souji began to tell her story.
Merula the high elf had been born around one hundred years ago in the country of the high elves, the Spirit Kingdom of Garlan. The Demon Lord’s Domain hadn’t appeared yet at the time, so the high elves had defended the two islands that made up their Spirit Kingdom of Garlan, one big and one small, and lived without contact with the other races.
Despite being one of those high elves who were exclusionary and had no interest in the outside world, Merula had been a bundle of curiosity. From a young age, she had taken an interest in anything that caught her eye, and gone around asking adults what things were. When she grew old enough to think for herself, and started to see that the adults would lie to cover it up when they didn’t know something, she started wanting to go and find the truth on her own. And so, she spent twenty years studying various things.
Around the time she became a fully-fledged researcher, she ran into a great mystery.
What were the spirits that the high elves worshiped?
The high elves thought of themselves as a race loved by the spirits. The proof of that, they said, was in the powerful magic that the high elves were able to use.
The high elves were all able to use powerful magics that only those called mages among the other races could, and they did it as if it were no big deal. This was proof that the spirits were always at the high elves’ sides, lending them their power… or so their reasoning went.
Merula had her doubts about their spirit worship.
It’s true, high elves can use powerful magic, she thought. But is that really because of spirits? How can we believe in things like spirits that we can’t see?
There were those who claimed they had seen spirits. However, their stories were all utter nonsense, on the level of, “I saw my dead grandparents standing at my bedside.”
Besides which, living in a country that forbade the entry of all but high elves, even if the high elves could use powerful magic, how could they say for certain that the spirits only bestowed their blessings on the high elves?
It might be possible that the spirits would give their blessing to members of other races. On the other hand, what if a high elf left the islands? If the spirits would always be at their side, even if they left the island, they ought to be able to use powerful magic.
Without ever testing that, the high elves just blindly believed that they were a people beloved by the spirits, and Merula couldn’t tolerate it. Her knowledge couldn’t be made complete on the islands alone. Only by going into the outside world and absorbing knowledge from a variety of sources could she begin to approach the truth.
Merula began to think that way, and on her fiftieth birthday, she left the islands. Changing the color of her eyes with magic, she took on the guise of a light elf adventurer, traveling from country to country and absorbing more knowledge. There were things she figured out as part of that process, too.
Once she left the Spirit Kingdom, the power of Merula’s magic dropped.
Whether it was because “high elves can only manifest their power in the Spirit Kingdom,” or it was because “having left the Spirit Kingdom, Merula lost the protection of the spirits,” she didn’t know. If her power came back when she returned to the Spirit Kingdom, she’d be able to demonstrate with a high probability that it was the former, but those who left the Spirit Kingdom were deemed to be traitors. If she returned, she would be killed without question, so she hadn’t been able to verify this.
Let’s get back on topic.
Merula continued her travels, and the Orthodox Papal State of Lunaria, which had a unique faith, like her own people, caught her attention.
The Spirit Kingdom worshiped spirits they couldn’t prove existed. So what about the Orthodox Papal State which worshiped the moon goddess Lunaria? Did this Lady Lunaria, and the Lunalith into which her prophecies were said to be carved, actually exist?
If she could figure out the relationship between the Orthodox Papal State, Lady Lunaria, and the Lunalith, maybe she could gain some understanding of the relationship between the Spirit Kingdom and spirit worship. With that thought in mind, Merula snuck into the main church of Lunarian Orthodoxy in order to see the Lunalith, which was said to definitely be there.