Chapter 70 Elven Tail Support
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“First of all, our lifespan is roughly 250 years. Human’s lifespan was roughly 70 years while tailfolk was roughly 60 years.” Sarielle started to tell his story.
“When Northlandgard was attacked by humans, we managed to repel them. However, somehow undead started spawning from the western forest called Forest of the undead.”
“Huh? There were already undead even before that? This is news to me.” Lhorne spoke out.
“These undead were different. They were more like usual animals from dungeons. Just like those spiders in Edenthal Forest. They dropped feystones, and they didn’t venture that far from the forest.”
“The attack was a failure, but the humans didn’t give up and laid a siege to our settlement. They started to bait the monsters from the forest and use it for their war.”
“By the way, this news was also new to us. When we checked the records of Northlangard and compared them to research from Leylines center, we concluded that when humans baited the undead, they happened upon a leyline leakage. And thus, the undead evolved, and using human corpses as resources, they began to march against us.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” Lhorne and Lily spoke out. We had already returned back to the resting spot. After sanitizing the floor with fire magic, we sat down, and Lhorne began to cook. We ate our meal in silence as Sarielle continued his story.
“Yeah, we don’t know much about the undead. We don’t know how they could utilize the leylines leakage. This is just our researcher’s best guess.”
“And so, Northlangard was overrun.”
“Wait, The first undead were just zombies and skeletons, right? Do we really have a hard time against them?” Nora asked.
“They spawned right in the middle of the city. Somehow bypassing our walls. We didn’t know about corruption back in the day, and even if we did, we don’t know how to stop it.”
“So, we escaped. But over 90 percent of our population in Nothlangard were annihilated.”
“I see. That doesn’t explain your population crisis, though. Even if your most populated city were to be decimated, there were still Regoia, Hoeth, Reminiscence, and others, right?” Mattheus wondered.
“My father told me that Regoia was just a village with less than two thousand people at the time. ” Lhorne answered.
“Regarding this population crisis, it is a sensitive topic, so please make it a secret.” Sarielle warned us once again.”Many elves, including central nobles, were apprehensive that the tailfolk population was growing while our population dwindled.”
“I don’t understand. Many human nobles could have seven to ten children in our society since they had tailfolk slaves. I wonder why elves didn’t….” Mattheus asked. His question was straight to the point. “Is it just the longer breed time?”
“Don’t call it breeding! How uncouth!” Sarielle hissed.
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“Sorry. I am talking about marriage and having offspring.”
“We wondered about it too. And when we realized it ten years ago, we conducted a study. We figured out that the number of marriages decreased substantially. The tailfolk, however, had like five or seven children each family.”
“Lily, is your race such a horny individual?” Jona finally chimed in, trying to make a joke. “That was forbidden in the dwarven kingdom, you know. Having more than two kids is taboo, and you could get a forced abortion depending on the food situation.”
“No!!” Lily protested. Her face beet red at the accusation.
“When your kingdom was destroyed, many refugees flooded our country. We accepted them with open arms with the condition that they would never hold a governing position or lords. They accepted as long as they were not worked to the death like humans do.”
“The tailfolk was accepted warmly, and they also behaved well, right?” Lhorne muttered.
“Yeah, the fact that the problem lies on our part is the most concerning thing,” Sarielle answered.
“Tailfolk population was already larger than ours even when we were at the peak of our glory. Even when only thirty percent of your population made it our way, after the destruction of our Northlangard, we needed a workforce.”
“To maintain order and prevent rebellion, most tailfolk were employed as farmers, waitresses, maids, laborers, and other low-level jobs. The council forbids them to use weapons. Until 15 years ago.”
“Ahh, the war with humans and undead dwindled the elves even further while the tailfolk population continued to rise.” Mattheus nodded.
“Yes. Moreover, our study also revealed that the elves had difficulty finding partners due to the sparse elven population in their own region. Take a look at Lhorne. For example, He only had Anny, Hanna, or Lisey to meet. Suppose he didn’t want to marry them or vice versa. In that case, the elven population in the Edenthal region will be annihilated, leaving only some traveling merchants or shopkeepers. And even if he did marry, elven law frowned Polygamy, and thus there will be two elves who will not marry in your region.” Sarielle continued to tell the story.
The more I heard his story, the more I wondered how fucked up the elves were. They were on the brink of extinction at this rate. But none of them was tailfolk’s fault. We did our job as farmers well, but their population continued to dwindle, and their worry about their own race extinction was evident on their faces. They could not openly fault tailfolk since we were just obeying orders.
“So, what will you do now that you already know about this?” Nora asked. She wanted to know what the high council was planning, “Will you prune us?”
“No, that would be against our high magic,” Sarielle replied.
“What is this high magic you speak about. I heard it often during the council.”
“The high magic of the elves is simple. ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,’ It is the base of all laws in elven countries.” Sarielle noted. “it is the law born in our hearts.”
“Ahh, now all your doings made sense. I thought you would be more greedy like humans and tried to exploit us, but it was never that severe.” Nora nodded.
“It is just a law, right? Humans make laws too, but they break them as often if they see a benefit in doing so. What makes yours different?” Mattheus asked
“You will not understand Mattheus. We are different races, after all.” Lhorne smiled. Sarielle, however, found it insulting that Mattheus mocked elven high magic. “I will never understand apes like you. How could you sleep soundly every night when you had done those terrible deeds? What if others do the same to you? Did you even know what karma is?”
“Hmm, that doesn’t explain why you wanted to free Northlandgard.” Lily noted. “is it to reduce casualties with the undead? But you will still need to face humans after that.”
“ This is not set in stone. But the High council wanted to acknowledge you into a free nation. Then, your nation will be given a part of Edenthal, Reminiscence, and Northlangard as a buffer zone between humans and elves. But that has a lot of issues.” Sarielle noted.
“Yeah, we could not give any lands to foreigners under any circumstances. It would betray our ancestors.” Lhorne replied.
“Huh? But we were given Edenthal?”
“Edenthal was not founded by elves. It was a wilderness built by tailfolk with a lot of help from elves. We did have problems giving them to you but not that much.” Sarielle noted.
“But then, a suggestion came forth” Sarielle smiled. “From you, actually.”
“Guys, let’s rest. We still had tomorrow for storytelling.’ We wanted to continue, but Jona halted it and advised us to rest. It was already midnight.