Apocalypse Dark Elf Style -Magical Tribes Reincarnated in the Modern World

TL: Xean

ED: Cubic

TN: “Calm before the storm.”

†

I’m sure it was due to the two thoughts on my mind before I headed to sleep.

The first was about the tensions I have never experienced before today, and the second was about my hobby.

I had a nightmare.

However, it seemed that my self-preservation reaction barely kicked in. Far from lucid dreaming, it consisted of only a series of images that felt suffocating like coal tar. It was only a natural disaster, a fragment of the past. (TN: Coal tar – https://cargohandbook.com/images/thumb/b/b6/Coal_tar-1.jpg/240px-Coal_tar-1.jpg)

The low view of my child self, the corridor of the house. A shadow looking down at me. A stern ice statue—my father, the ruler. Then I heard, “You don’t need any of this stuff”. It was from a friend, my very first friend. “You don’t need this in your life”, even though it was a gift. He gazed at me from high above. Precious memories torn and scattered. There was no pain. Not even the warmth of pain can be given. The world was anything but warm. It has always been that way. All I got from other family members were stares. It could be a cynical laugh, a sneer, a look of disgust, or a look of dismay. As a child, I couldn’t understand it.

The warmth was nowhere to be found

A blackout. Father. Family. Difficulty in breathing. Silent mass followers. Home. Hell filled with happiness. Nothing was allowed. Look. There was no room for error, only righteousness. Not even coldness. Endlessly waking and sleeping.

That was how the existence of Asakura Rensuke was born ─ no.

Managed / Created / Engraved / Fostered─

“Gasp…!”

Before I knew it, I was lying motionless on the bed. Sweat was dripping down my forehead, and my heart was beating wildly. It was the usual. But now, something was different.

“What’s wrong?”

Quietly, as if it was nothing, simply her voice.

When it reached my ears, the palpitations suddenly stopped. Her t-shirt was rolled up above her navel, revealing an area of her brown skin just above her gently sloping thighs. Recalling the state of her lower body right now, my mind was jolted awake, but fortunately, it was still miraculously hidden underneath the blanket. Her arms were both lifted in a ‘banzai’ pose, her posture had a languid air reminiscent of a lazy cat.

However, she wasn’t looking at me. Rather, her eyes were looking into the distance.

“Sorry, did I wake you up?”

“Don’t mind me. I have a habit of waking up at the slightest movement. I had to be on the lookout for knife-wielding assassins trying to rob my wallet while I sleep.”

“…Just so you know, I don’t rob people or steal their wallets.”

“Hmm… that’s true. The only thing you can aim for is my body~”

“That’s… well, I don’t have a say about that.”

“He-he-he. Lying smoothly really isn’t Rensuke’s strong suit… *yawn*.”

Sheena chuckled suggestively and mumbled this as she let out a yawn.

As we talked, I completely forgot about the bad dream. I was thankful that I forgot what the dream was about.

Sheena lifted her arms that were in a banzai pose by ninety degrees so that they were sticking straight in the air. She then swung her arms in the air.

“I slept so much. My body feels heavy…Rensuke, help me up.”

She still had on a mischievous smile. I grabbed her soft hands. Trying to pull her out of the blanket was not a good idea due to the state of her lower body. For the time being, I could only pull up her upper body.

She let out another cute yawn. I then noticed something amiss in the background.

“It’s dark outside… Hm, what time is it?”

“I don’t careーAh, there was a noisy ringing noise in the middle of the night, so I hit it randomly and it stopped.”

I looked at the alarm clock on my bedside table that she was pointing at. The hands were pointing to seven o’clock. I went to bed at around four o’clock, so there was no way I could have gotten three hours of sleep. The display showed PM, which meant that we had completely slept through the dozen hours between morning and sunset.

“Seriously? Setting aside whether I was going to go or not, I had planned on get up before school began.”

“Did I do something bad?”

“… No. Well, it doesn’t really matter. If ever they contact me, I’ll just say I wasn’t feeling well.”

Explaining things. Perhaps the very concept of school no longer had any meaning.

Sheena stretched out on the bed (even her pointy ears lifted up, which made me smile).

“It’s not a lie saying you’re not feeling well though? You slept so much because your body needed it. In other words, you’re still in the recovery phase. Let’s make recuperating our top priority.”

“I have no problems with that. Then we should call a day off for today… and sleep. My shoulder is barely healed after all.”

“Hmm. It’s important to sleep, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to sleep all the time. Though, I’m not all that familiar with the treeman of this world either. Rensuke, what do you feel like your body needs right now?”

“I want to drink water. I’m also hungry.”

Hearing this, Sheena chuckled.

“That’s it. I’m hungry too, so let’s have dinner again. It’s amazing how we can eat good food, go to sleep, and wake up only to eat good food again. I don’t care if we have to go out or make it, but I want something that tastes good! Especially something that I haven’t tried yet!”

She stood up, the blanket falling off of her. I hurriedly averted my gaze. However, in that split second, my eyes caught a glimpse of the brown lines between her thighs which continued unobstructed to the base of her cr*tch.

I figured that’s how it was going to be.

It would have been nice to cook another homemade meal, but after yesterday’s binge eating, there were little ingredients left in the house. So, I decided to eat out for the time being. When I asked her what kind of food she wanted, she replied strongly, “If I had to pick one, it would be meat”, so I selected a beef bowl from a chain restaurant, the pride of Japan’s restaurant culture. I thought it might be too common, but Sheena seemed to enjoy it a lot, so I guess there was no problem.

Thus, I got a rare, close up look of a Dark Elf eating beef bowl at the counter of a beef bowl restaurant.

The rice bowls I ordered were served. I was surprised by the quick service. I took a bite and chewed.

As I took a bite, I saw Sheena staring at me with wide eyes.

“Hey, this is crazy. How come it tastes so good when it’s just meat on top of rice? Is this some sort of magic?”

“This is what the human food culture is like. It’s not a form of magic.”

“I can’t believe it…What’s that red stuff you’re putting in there?”

“It’s a spice called red ginger. This is intended for experienced people.”

“You’re just trying to hide the taste from me, aren’t you? Let’s see how it tastes…”

The moment she bit down, her face turned into a scowl.

“Bitter. This is what herbs taste like.”

“That’s why I said so.”

I smiled inwardly, thinking she had a palate of a child after all. I’m not sure if she noticed my gaze, but Sheena, who seemed to have forgotten about the red ginger and was devouring her bowl, looked up and stared at me.

“Ah. I’m pretty sure you thought of something rude just now. You’re thinking something rude, like, ‘This guy is a dark elf, but she eats like a slime’.”

“That wasn’t what I was thinking, but…”

Her words remind me of something. In a hushed voice, I asked.

“Can we just eat outside with a carefree attitude? Don’t we need to watch out for the slime?”

“It should be fine. The other side wasn’t unharmed either. If they had any brains at all, they would prioritize restoring their condition. Well, it’s that stupid slime, so there’s always the possibility that it’ll do something stupid and unexpected.”

Sheena seemed to be relaxed.

“If anything happens, then so be it. In addition to the slime, there is no certainty that another magical species won’t attack us. There’s no point in worrying about it. The right thing to do is to recover our strength as quickly as possible so that we can run or fight with all our might when the time comes. Anything else can come afterward.”

“… Understood.”

When I sprinkled more of the red ginger into the beef bowl, Sheena’s ears twitched again.

By the way, I’ve already come to understand her emotions surprisingly well just by the subtle movements of her ears. They move frequently if she was motivated, and when she felt relaxed or down, the tips of her ears would droop downward slightly. Vice versa, when she was angry or alert, they would turn upward. Though, these were only my guesses, there may be exceptions.

It was a habit that amused me. When I told her that she could try using black pepper, she became suspicious and looked around nervously.

“Hey, Rensuke. This much pepper? Unprotected? For free? That’s definitely a bad idea… If you steal this much and sell it off, wouldn’t you be able to live off the profit for a month…?”

Apparently, she still hadn’t gotten over her view on the preciousness of pepper from her original world.

The meal left the Dark Elf with some culture shock. After eating, we left the restaurant.

“So, what do we do now? If the priority is to recover, we should go back home…”

“That’s right. For now, let’s do that─.”

My breath hitched. *Plunk*, I felt a light weight in front of me.

Sheena put her arms around my neck and suddenly hugged me from the front. We had just left the store and were on the side of the road. The people around us stared at me with envy.

“S-Sheena!?”

Then I realized. It wasn’t just a hug. She was using her entire arm to examine my left shoulder—which had been gouged yesterday—from the top of my clothes. It didn’t hurt that much, but it was itchy and irritating.

‘It’s regenerated to a certain extent, but not enough.”

“I’ve been drinking water… like you said.”

“That’s not enough. Then that means…”

Sheena’s comfortable weight quickly left me. It was a bit of a bittersweet moment, to be honest.

“There are two ways to do this. You decide which one you prefer. The first is to go home and go back to sleep. If you get hungry, get up again and eat something. It will stabilize you, but it may not speed up your regeneration significantly.”

“And the other thing?”

“Let’s go to a private location and use the secret plan I came up with. It may not have any effect, but if it works, you should be able to heal yourself in one swoop. The disadvantages are… Hmm, it might be costly?”

I don’t even have to think about it.

“I’ll go with the second option then. We still have the money, and if we fail, we can just go home and sleep like we have been doing.”

I could see Sheena’s lips turning up in a wonderfully wicked and amused grin when she heard my answer.

I wondered if I had made the wrong choice.