CHAPTER 82: Floréal
Early the next morning in the breakfast marquee next to the kitchen, Sustelia walked in looking far more refreshed than I expected after her long trip and the previous night’s revelry. I guessed she was more used to that lifestyle than I was. Her muscled form certainly made for an imposing image as she walked into the marquee. As a regular adventurer to the Adios Dungeon, Sustelia wouldn’t be making a lot of money to be able to afford better gear. Her leather armour was relatively standard in that part of the world.
Hana and I had already finished an early breakfast and we were preparing to start our day. That previous night, Hana explained to me that most adventurers couldn’t afford to buy expensive armour. We were lucky because I had ways to dispatch larger groups of monsters and larger ones at that. To have better than normal equipment, adventurers required sponsor who could purchase expensive items for them in the form of a term loan. The adventurer would then pay back the sponsor over a period of time depending on the cost of the items. It wasn’t unusual for payment periods to extend into years, sometimes even decades. The additional stress of finding a decent sponsor was one of the limiting factors for budding adventurers, one of the key reasons so few adventurers made it through to higher ranks. I guess I could be considered something of an anomaly. Just as higher rank adventurers were few in Obon, decent sponsors were even rarer. For whatever reason Sustelia didn’t have a sponsor and her abrasive personality probably didn’t help either.
We were finished with our meal and headed for the entrance. She seemed surprised to see me for some reason and broke out into a smile. She started to say something, but before she could I threw a large and heavy hessian bag at her. She caught the bag, obviously caught off guard by my unexpected action. When she opened it, she discovered special armour I created for her with Ara’s help. I threw in a far better sword for good measure, something similar to Orcrist with its own scabbard.
“What’s this?”
“Consider me your new sponsor. Peeping at someone beautiful like you while bathing should have a price. Not that I am proposing to marry you or anything like that.”
I said smiling and walking past her out the marquee. Sustelia rummaged through the bag and stopped breathing for a while.
“I can’t accept this.”
“Do you want to give it back?”
Before she responded, Hana quickly grabbed Sustelia by the shoulders and whispered something into her ear, and after making quick eye contact with Sustelia she joined me as we walked away. Whatever meaning transpired from that look totally evaded me. When we left, Sustelia’s eyes started watering. When we were some distance away, Hana smiled from ear to ear. My curiosity got the best of me.
“What did you say to her?”
“I just told her something she needed to hear. Woman to woman.”
I met a flabbergasted Sebastien at the gate. Already some of the woodcutter teams on their way to work were entering the forest in the distance. He turned and looked back at the camp that inclined slightly uphill towards the small fort.
“What you’ve done here is simply amazing. The paved roads are so wide and versatile it’s fantastic, there’s so much space and the views are amazing. Heck you even have your own bloody fort on the hill.”
I nodded. I didn’t want to tell him the fort was pretty much a shell at the time, it still needed some work. But overall, the place seemed less of a camp and more like a town. In such a short time the number of people coming and going seemed to increase daily. It seemed word got around that we were open for business and villagers from the surrounding areas including merchants of all types were turning up to make business. I didn’t even arrange food anymore. Elle arranged a few supply deals with some merchants and the rest happened on its own. Once the villagers became aware of our situation goods trading happened naturally. Even with our supply agreement with the palace, we were still capable of supplying processed lumber to both local villagers and travelling merchants from Shimmerstal.
It was to be a special day for me, I was about to discover more about our little monster friend from somewhere in the depths of the Ironwood Forest. I wouldn’t discover why it left its home, only it knew that, but anything I discovered more about the creature increased my knowledge of it. Even Ara was burning to learn something since her knowledge about the creature’s habits was limited. While the dathrod remained in the creation core she could inferring some of the dathrod’s behaviour by studying its physiology, but its full nature remained an enigma to her. Elves spent their lives hiding from dathrod’s, making their literature on the subject somewhat limited.
To study it further, I needed a cage. The cage needed to be around eight by eight meters and three high.
Through a laborious process, Ara created numerous mustite and steel blended bars for me, each about eight meters long. The bars consisted mostly of steel, since mustite required higher heat to melt, taking far too long. I welded the bars together into a mesh using the blowtorch I found in my first pocket dimension space storage ring. The ring I originally discovered while fixing Shimmerstal’s portico gate for the gate guards. Finally, I found a worthy purpose for the the blowtorch tool other than using it as a convenient lighter for lighting campfires. While Hana at first helped remove the long bars slowly emerging out of the core, she quickly became bored and demanded that I take over the role as she tried her hand at blowtorch welding. Never having done anything like that before, she needed a bit of training at first, but I was surprised how quickly she learned to weld. Within a day, and with some assistance from my transmutation skill, we welded something worth calling a cage and set it about a meter into the ground using earth skill. If the thing escaped, I didn’t want it to hurt anyone while trying to get out the camp, so I strategically placed the cage outside the gates. According to Ara’s calculations, the thick steel bars would hold back the dathrod. By the time we were done, we had a small audience watching us making the cage. Multiple people asked us what we were doing, interested in the novelty of the blowtorch and no doubt intrigued with what we plan to do with such a large cage. I think the people were getting used to seeing interesting things around me, I got the impression some people stayed there for that reason alone. I couldn't blame them, this cage was a case in point. I guess I wanted them to see the Dathrod as well after a few people would see it in their lives and those that did probably regretted it. Before I released the dathrod there was something I needed to check with Ara first.
“Are you guys ready?”
I asked everyone watching. As soon as the dathrod touched the ground it hit the steel mesh in front of me while roaring. In that split second, it presented a large maw full of teeth as its massive razor-sharp nails ripped at the cage bars. Never did I feel so happy there were a few inches of steel between that creature and me. For a half a minute it smashed against the top and sides trying to escape. Finally, it quietened down, crouching in the middle of the cage, it’s ribs heaving huge breaths as it recovered from the exertion. It focused its unwavering gaze on me with small dark eyes. It was a massive animal, its thick muscled legs culminated in claws with apposable thumbs or dew claws, one of them missing. Its tail moved independently like a velvet snake, and I got the impression it could use that in no less deadly ways than those fangs, designed to never let go of its prey.
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Members of the camp, attracted by the roaring, carefully came to see what was going on and noticed the caged dathrod outside the camp. Whenever the dathrod roared, horses in the camp became noticeably edgy, pulling on their halters while neighing loudly. The sound of the creature forced their instincts to run. The dathrod eventually calmed down, realising it couldn’t escape, it decided to conserve its energy. Perhaps it felt exhausted, or it realised the futility of doing anything. Even with steel bars between the dathrod and myself, I didn’t feel totally comfortable.
At a quiet spot outside the village, I released the scolems and watched them scurry away. With no benefit in personally watching the dathrod I instructed the gate guards to keep an eye on it and to immediately report anything abnormal.
A day later, an emotionally flustered Antonetta came to see me with a burning question.
“Is it true that you have the monster that killed my daddy?”
I nodded. Obviously, she knew that I subjugated the dathrod, I told her as much, but I don’t think she understood the emotional ramifications of me not killing it but just capturing it. I guess that in her childish black and white mind, there wasn’t any grey.
“That’s right. You’ve heard it roaring last night, did you?”
“I want to see it.”
It was my turn to be uncertain about the emotional ramifications. I could forbid her from seeing it, but to what purpose. If anything, I hoped it would help her face the creature and not end in constant nightmares.
“Okay, then let’s do that. But stay close to me, okay?”
She nodded quietly. But as we made to leave, the sudden arrival of the gate guard heralded some strange news.
“Er, boss we need you at the gate, there’s a situation.”
My heart skipped a beat. I would have thought the worst if not for the very casual look of the gate guard, then leaning on his spear as if the walk up the paved street took far too much effort.
“Did something happen with the dathrod?”
He shook his head.
“No…no, the dathrod is fine but we have some unusual visitors.”
“Huh?”
Imagine my utter surprise when the spectacle greeting us at the gate included a group of seven tall elves. One woman and six men. It was the first time I ever laid eyes on full blooded elves. Elle’s half-blood heritage didn’t count. They all carried the typical fantasy elvish body profiles, slightly taller than me, all with the silvery hair and short pointy ears. Yep, most definitely elves I thought. Each of them sported long silvery hair up to their shoulders, tied up in various silver bands, only the lady’s hair remained untied. The group of them look very Hamish, in a fantasy sort of way.
Like uniforms of some secretive sect, all of them wore unisex one-piece garments coloured white and tinged in green, their shoes reminding me of Elle’s green moccasins. They wore jewellery, but it looked minimalistic and functional rather than aesthetic. All wore necklaces but the woman standing in front of the group also carried thin silver coloured wrist chains and a thin silver chord tied around her waist. Four of the men carried bows and short swords while the other two carried normal sized swords. Their weapons were all carried on their backs, so they obviously weren’t there with hostile intentions. The lady elf seemed unarmed, at least that’s what it looked like.
“Where did they come from?”
I asked the guard, who still seemed unimpressed by the elvish procession as if they were an unfortunate hindrance to his day.
“They just popped out from the forest over there.”
He pointed eastwards. His broad description didn’t help me. Although thinking about it, that wasn’t too unexpected from secretive elves. For us, the elves’ presence was a momentous occasion, but I didn’t know what to do with them.
“Call the rest of the Goldcastle team to come here, get Karato, Grenfell and Sebastien too.”
Sensing my urgency, the guard finally realised it was a big deal and scurried away to find the others. I decided greeting them was the least I could do.
“Greetings. My name is Shane Karosaki. I’m the leader of this camp. How can I be of service to you?”
I said giving a slight bow. What a fine example of my customer care training from my student part-time workdays, I couldn’t have said it better. Even if they were rare elvish visitors they should be duly impressed by my introductory speech. The lady elf respectfully nodded her head, acknowledging my presence.
“Greetings. I am called Floréal, I represent the olden elves of the ancient forests.”
She spoke the common tongue, so everyone understood her. For some reason she didn’t introduce the other elves. She pronounced her name with a strange inflection which I tried to imitate by putting the emphasis on the right syllable.
“Floreal…Flo-ral…Flor-eal.”
That's when Ara stepped in.
Floréal's light complexion turned a subtle shade of salmon pink making her look cuter. I embarrassed her with my unconscious verbal performance. The male elves looked distinctly upset at my blatant social faux pas. From that point onwards they always scowled at me from behind Floréal as if looking down on me.
“Accept my apologies for my insensitive behaviour. Please continue.”
I bowed apologetically. I doubted anyone had said her name like that before, but she smartly recovered from my verbal ineptitude and continued with her exchange.
“Leader Shane, the elves of the ancient forests require the dathrod.”
She cut straight to the chase. I wasn’t sure if it was just me, but that sounded very much like a give me what we want and don’t waste our time arguing about it. I suspected saying no to them wasn’t on the agenda and they didn’t want to hang around more than was painfully necessary. Why did I get the distinct impression, elves didn’t relish interacting with humans? Not that I could blame them, we could be a complicated lot. I appreciated them being candid with me, but I could also cut to the chase.
“I’m sorry but I’m not releasing the dathrod.”
“Why will you not release the dathrod to us?”
“Aren’t you going to introduce me, Shane?”
Oh bugger, I forgot about Elle.