Chapter 204: The Kukkoro Male Knight and the Secret of the Elves

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Elves had no lifespan. At those words, I almost grimaced without thinking. How were we supposed to fight people like that?

“I’m not really sure I get it, but… Are you saying Elves don’t age? Is that it?”

Karina whispered to me. I nodded. Whether their lifespan truly had no upper limit was unknown, but that loli-looking Dalaiya was over a thousand years old, after all. To us short-lived races who could only live for maybe a hundred years at best, it was practically infinite.

“W-What should we do? I really don’t think we can win if we make enemies of people like that…”

“They’re not literally immortal warriors, I assume, but it’s troublesome. If a large number of thousand-year-old elders exist, their accumulated experience would be beyond anything imaginable.”

On the other hand, I couldn’t understand how the previous magistrate had managed to repel people like them. Her forces should have been far smaller than mine, and their equipment was inferior as well. There was no way clever tricks could solve that. Either she had been secretly making deals behind the scenes… Or the Elves were bluffing. Or both.

“Don’t make faces like that, it’s fine. The Elves aren’t an invincible army.”

Seeing us whispering, Uru grinned and lowered her voice.

“It’s something I shouldn’t really be telling you, but since you gave me food and shelter, I’ll make an exception. Elves are “keshimitagari.” That’s your opening.”

…She was clearly sharing some huge secret, but thanks to her accent I didn’t understand a damn thing!! What the hell was “keshimitagari” supposed to mean!? I looked at Karina in a cold sweat, but she shook her head violently with a face that said, “Don’t look at me!”

“Um, in your language, I guess it’d be… ‘Death-seeking,’ maybe.”

Seeing our confusion, Uru corrected herself with a terribly awkward expression.

“For those Elven tribes, having no lifespan meant they saw clinging to life as shameful.”

“I see…”

Thinking for a moment, I nodded and speared a piece of fried onion on my fork, offering it to Uru. She briefly made a shy expression before taking a bite.

…For some reason, Karina, sitting beside me, held out her own fork toward me with her mouth open. This little sister of mine was oddly calculating sometimes. I had no choice but to feed her too. Uru looked slightly displeased at that.

“Here, have some more beer.”

I needed her to keep talking happily about Elven secrets. I topped off her cup of oat beer, now nearly empty, and offered it to her. With a look that seemed to say “That’s right, that’s how it should be,” Uru downed it in big gulps. …Yeah, this was kind of fun. There really was nothing as entertaining as watching someone eat and drink happily.

“Puhah… Right, we were talking about the Elves’ view on life and death. Just living a long time is something even plants can do, they say. That’s their common saying. So instead of living better, they valued dying better.”

Having said that, Uru opened her mouth wide, clearly wanting more onions. As requested, I shoved a huge piece into her mouth.

“Agug… Specifically, they considered an honorable death in battle, or dying from childbirth, to be good.”

“I see.”

An honorable death in battle, huh. Maybe that was why their population plummeted during the civil war? If people who sought a beautiful death ended up fighting their own kin… It probably turned into something that resembled a flashy mass suicide. It must have been an awfully tragic conflict.

“Dying from childbirth… What does that mean?”

Karina asked with a troubled expression. Yes, that part concerned me too. The Elf reproduction situation. Well, using the word “reproduction” for humans felt wrong. But even if I said “baby-making,” that carried its own dangerous nuance…

Anyway, the point was. The Elves were ridiculously desperate for men, far too desperate for a long-lived species. Sure, they handed the men they kidnapped to their Birdfolk subordinates and Humes too, but even then there had to be a limit. Of course, a major part of their kidnappings was probably not for reproduction but simply for satisfying their sexual desires…

“Ah, you don’t have any long-lived races around, so I guess it’s hard to understand. Elves stop growing and stop aging once they reach a certain point. But once they get pregnant, that stopped time starts moving again, and they begin aging just like us short-lived races.”

…So when they had a child, they started aging? It surprised me, but thinking about it, if these long-lived Elves could have unlimited children, the world would be nothing but Elves. But in reality, they were only a small tribe. I’d suspected their reproductive capacity was extremely low, but I hadn’t expected that to be the reason.

“There’s a saying in Galea: ‘Marriage is the grave of life.’ But for Elves, it becomes literally true.”

“Exactly. For Elves, taking a man meant the same as choosing death. And it was a death equal to, or even more honorable than, a glorious death in battle. That’s why they sought men so strongly.”

Hmm, I see, I see. I felt like I was beginning to understand Elven culture. They were ageless, but not immortal, so they were deeply conscious of death. Well, living long wasn’t the only way to live a life. I could understand that to an extent.

“Nn!”

While I was thinking that, Uru pushed out her mouth demanding more, like a baby bird begging for food. Except she wasn’t a baby bird. She was a huge Birdfolk woman about my height. Smiling wryly, I tossed another piece of onion into her mouth. Still, this was valuable information even if I needed to verify it later. Our hospitality strategy toward her was clearly working. I wanted to keep this up and draw her more and more to our side.

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