I wasn't surprised that she wanted to do so. This had been a long time coming in a sense.
Despite being a high elf, Willow had been forced to sit back and do nothing while dangerous situations such as the raid on the mansion, or the kidnapping of Lenore played out.
How could she not feel helpless?
I had never agreed with the way the elves treated her,yet had acquiesced as it was clearly an important cultural thing to them. And that I would be capable of defending her.
But this was different. Gods were involved now. False or real, the situation had clearly changed.
Political situations were always reasonable to a certain extent. As silly as that sounded, politics were inner conflicts. While inner conflicts could get serious, ultimately, things would never get too serious, lest it escalate and cause too great a deterioration of the situation.
No nation ever wanted that, lest it result in the collapse of the kingdom. Not even the nobles of the Romana empire dared, est it repeat some of the empire's greatest tragedies, which had often resulted in new nations and new enemies like he nation of Frandce.
But this was different. When faith got involved, things tend to hit the fan.
No longer were the interests purely political, but of belief, and belief was dangerous, and it could lead to death. Lot of it.
The very travesty which had caused a lot of people to flee the empire and form the Australian Federation had been sparked by the conflict of religious ideals.
Religion, which can be used as the glue of the kingdom, can just as easily be the thing that tears it apart.
Poor Willow has been dragged into a dispute of ideals and beliefs, something that rarely simmers down, but rather builds up and explodes.
I had no doubt it would get worse from here.
So I had no qualm with the idea of teaching her, or encouraging her to learn.
But how to learn? I was hardly certified to teach her. Sure I managed to create a skill or two like stake strike but most of my skills came out of my shop, if they weren't innate skills connected to my current body.
It wasn't like Leon, where I could teach him with my previous experiences as a human. As a human, I had no experience teaching the type of things that would best suit a high elf.
I don't even know where to start!
There is the qually great problem of how to hide it from them.
THere was no way I would tell the two of them that I was planning to clearly go against their request, and their orders from above.
That would cause a divide between our two groups, more than was already coming just by mere agreement to help educate her, which may even lead to a permanant disbandment of the team.
Then again, we're likely to part ways once they got on the boat to the elven kingdom, so that's already inevitable. So what if they found out? Nothing would happen.
I do have a way to hide it from them, thanks to my handy dandy space within the four seasons where I could conceal her training. That's the easy part thankfully.
As for teachings...
Hmmm....
Stolidus, do you have anything for that?
[Actually, yeah. It costs about 10000 points in the system shop as well as 5 skill points, but it's a comprehensive guide to the education of high elf children.]
.. Why does the shop have that?
[Personal experience from player 0.]
Ok, but what the 5 skill points?
[well, it offers some basic skills for high elves, though if you want the advanced skills, you would need to purchase the skills indicated in the shop.]
This is expensive, but I barely use my skill points, so it hardly affects me. And I probably won't need the follow up skills, since I'm just giving her a start up.
Alright, purchase it stolidus.
[And done. Man it's a good thing you are a point hoarder. Don't even use them for the most part.]
[Anyway. Brace for impact, in 5, 4, 3, 1 go!]
Before I could react, a wave of information flew through my head, so quick and intense I could barely react.
The pain was immense, but so quick I couldn't even react, merely leaving me in a dazed state in front of a very confused child as she watched me process her request.
After processing it, I reacted to Willow's patient but determined look.
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I still asked her to confirm.
"Are you sure? It won't be easy?" I cautioned her and she nodded with determination.
And she spoke to my surprise.
"I don't like being weak.
I want to be strong." She spoke softly, yet there was strong will behind it.
" I don't want to be useless anymore."
"Very well then. But if we do this, it has to be our little secret. No one else can know. Do you understand?" I ask and she nods.
"I understand.
They don't want me to learn.
But I don't want to be weak anymore."
It's clear that despite her quiet nature, WIllow has long been aware of the situation around her.
Children are perceptive. How could she not notice that the elves around her had been resistant to teaching her these things?
Even if they never said it, the hints were there. While Leon learned to fight, Willow played. She watched.
Having another child to compare against likely emphasized the gap in treatment between the two kids.
I nodded. "Alright, I'll try my best. You understand as well as I do the consequences of doing this, so if they ask what we're doing, you say..."
"We were learning the alphabet." she said calmly, without a hint of hesitation.
"And we tell Leon..."
To this, Willow showed more hesitation, before ultimately repeating. "We were learning the alphabet."
"Extra lessons." I confirm, deciding to use the idea that Willow was having a little problem understanding the written language to take some more time to teach her.
And of course, this required their permission.
----------------------------------------
It was easier to get their permission than expected.
Initially expecting them to make a fuss over the need for extra lessons, as well as having them in the subspace, neither of them seemed to make much of a stir in response to my suggest.
And that was because of my newfound backing.
"I mean, the favored of Anubis. Everyone knows that the Gods of the underworld are some of the most impartial and fair gods. Anubis himself is considered a prime example of this.
If he's vouching for you, and you're insisting that she needs more education, then that's fine.
Besides, I know you're doing it for her own good." Lenore said, with a look of trust and understanding. Even Servante raised no issue, clearly agreeing.
It made me feel a little embarrassed as I ended up inadvertently relying on my lord's reputation to deceive them and explain my choice to privately teach her some extra things.
Having said that, I easily justified it to myself with the understanding that this was a form of justice and fairness, for what I did in secret was to protect others.
Of course, before doing that, I have to make sure to restrain the growing ant queen.
Looking into the four seasons space, I slowly create a connection to the mind of the ant queen.
The ant queen shows no resistance, easily connecting to its mind.
The mind was more primitive than ore by a long shot. While ore was capable of thinking a few words here and there, even forming whole sentences, the ant queen was more primitive, feeling more like waves of emotion in its mind.
Or perhaps it simply thought differently than we did as an insect?
I wasn't quite sure, but regardless, what mattered was if it understood, and obeyed my intent.
My first attempt was conveying words directly into its mind, and to my surprise, it seemed to understand as I mentally commanded it to go pcik up a stick and it complied.
I also requested it to not bite a plant I had planted in the space, and it obeyed, swerving away from the thing.
It's solid so far, though the real test will be how it reacts to her.
And in the end it turned out I had overthought it somewhat.
The ant queen was terrified.
For some reason unknown to me, the second she stepped into the field, the ant quickly scampered away returning to its tunnel, not even daring to rear its head.
It left the poor elven child looking at the retreating creature in confusion.
Why did it run so quickly?
[Because unlike you, the ant queen has an acute awareness of the terrifying bloodline inside of the elf child who just entered your space.
As an ant, though its sight is poor, its ability to perceive things though pheromones, sounds and its terrifying instinct that drawback decreases dramatically.
ANd because of that it can clearly perceive how dangerous she is, unlike you who is dumbly ignorant of how dangerous she will be once properly trained. Well, more accurately, it can detect the terrifying bloodline which hasn't been fully awakened yet.
And thus it has a terrifying restraining effect on her, causing her to flee its presence. ]
Ah. This wasn't that surprising under that context then.
The high elf was clearly a dangerous being, which the elven kingdom had clearly gone to great lengths to control, so much so that it was the stuff of legends.
The fact that the royal family kept such strict control of the distribution of high elves said enough.
It was more surprising that I couldn't sense this terrifying aura described by the system.
Were my senses dull? Was my past life as a human interfering with my senses as a monster? Or was the intuition of the ant queen that good?
[Yes]
Shush.
Anyway, according to the instructions here, one of the first spells I should start working on with her is [grow]
It's a basic spell that druids and plant mages can use to grow plants and accelerate growths.
It's an extremely basic spell that a lot of people know, being public knowledge.
But that makes sense. After all, you have to start from the basics when it comes to teachings.
According to the guide there's a specific reason for this.
High elves are more often than not in tune with nature with few high elves being connected to other elements, though if the high elf is born in one of the branch off elf families, like the drows or the sea elves, then they are more likely to take on other attributes, in which case other spells have to be used.
Because of their attunement to nature, it's common for high elves who have begun to practice to cause crazy growths to plants.
In fact, when he had first been carrying her away from the elves trying to kill her way back in the forest where they had first met, he had seen the crazy growths and mutations amongst plants sprouting when she had seemed anxious.
It's a common thing for them, who have such a bond to nature, but no way to properly control it.
Unlike monsters, the races don't get an inheritance after all, having to rely on the teachings of others and the physical storage of knowledge.
Grow was a basic spell that happened to complement the high elves bond to nature.
It allowed her to use her natural attribute to its fullest, and let her focus on honing the outburst of the plant element.
This was also a good thing for me to be honest. I want to grow plants here after all. If Willow could properly develop the grow spell, then I could have her stimulate certain crops and grow even faster. As a high elf, there's no doubt that her capability was high, and according to the package, high elves are great at inducing mutations, for better or for worse. Like right now, were he to borrow her hand and to induce mutations in crops it would be unpredictable and uncontrollable, with the mutation likely to end up going horribly wrong, and benign at best.
The danger of a young high elf could be seen here.
If she became erratic and used her magic naturally, it would run wild and mutate everything near her and cause it to go nuts.
Thankfully, this domain is my space so I should have reasonable control over this space, as from what I could tell, I already controlled all the plants here.
Well, let's see how bad educating a high elf could go.