Chapter 96

The elven village could not be found by humans.

Though no one knew how it worked, but they could only locate the village if they followed the path that was only visible to elves.

As they followed Sia into the forest, just as they took another step, a village spread out before their very eyes. If you took a step back, then all you could see was dense forest, but move forwards again, and the village appeared like it had always been there.

There were several buildings around a large clearing and some stone houses too.

After guiding them to the village, Sia disappeared for a moment, saying he would explain the situation to the elder and another elf approached them.

“Who is the King of the human clan?”

When he said that, Calian glanced at Yan because he couldn’t understand the elf, and noticed that Yan’s gaze was on him. Looking around, everyone in their party was looking at him.

When the elf saw this, he too looked at Calian for an answer so he hastily replied,

“There is no such great person like the King of humans here,”

“Is that so? The elder wants to meet the King of humans,”

“You’ll probably never be able to meet someone like that,”

He was certain that during Rumein’s birthday celebrations, the elves had sent an envoy to congratulate him, but unlike those elves, these elves didn’t seem to know the humans system well.

Either way, Calian thought there was no need to go into detailed explanations here, and so instead said,

“I’m not the King of humans, but I am the representative of this group,”

The elf nodded and said to Calian,

“Okay. Follow me,”

Calian followed the elf and soon came face-to-face with the elder, in the largest house of the village. A considerably handsome elder with silver hair, similar to Hina greeted him,

“I am called Ger, the elder of Hiriska Village. Sia is my son,”

Calian was quite surprised to hear that. Rather than being surprised that Sia was the son fo the elder, he was more surprised that the elder’s son was going around selling sculptures. If you’re an elder of a village, isn’t that about the status of a territory Lord in human terms?

Anyway, since he was being greeted and the other party was not human, Calian nodded briefly and made a statement.

“Calian. Calian Rain Kyris.”

At that, Ger’s pointed ears twitched once. He looked deeply at Calian and said,

“It’s nice to meet you.”

“I heard you wanted to see me?”

He had asked that wondering if he would receive a thank you for somewhat looking after Sia, but Ger’s next words were very different from Calian’s expectations.

“That’s right. I asked you to see me because there was something I wanted to ask of you?”

Calian’s eyes opened wide. It was their first meeting, and Calian was the saviour who had brought back their Elder’s son – so without even a word of thank you, why were they already asking him for a favour?

“I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s hard for me to understand why I have to accept the elves’s request.”

The elder elf, Ger replied to Calian, who was speaking from a place of fatigue and irritation in halves.

“Because you are the King of the human clan,”

“It’s not a clan. It’s Kyris and I’m not the King, I’m a prince,”

“Yes. That. Same thing.”

Calian smiled fiercely at the man who was saying things that could potentially have Calian’s head flying if someone misheard it.

“It’s actually very very different.”

Yan, who had been watching this exchange without being able to say a single word, felt like he was about to rip his own hair out.

“Anyway, I want you to help us with our work,”

Ger, who was bringing up words that had less common sense than he could have imagined, continued speaking without waiting for Calian’s answer.

“Luca, who returned to the village recently, took the another 2 elves out of the village this time,”

“- No wait a minute -”

“ – they did not return for more than 10 days after leaving, so since then, two more went out to search for them three days ago, but they have not returned either,”

Calian was going to ask why that had anything to do with him, but Ger kept talking. There was no room to intervene.

“Though I did warn them that humans were not easy to deal with, they just went out and disappeared. So I hope you can help me find them. The elves here don’t know much about the human world. I cannot allow more elves to go.”

“Are you asking me to find the 5 missing elves right now? Why me?”

“Because you are the King of the human clan,”

He seemed to have come to the end of the preset dialogue.

So he was basically saying that the elven village needed Calian’s help, who had arrived just in time. The elves here didn’t know much about the outside world and so they wanted him to find the ones who had gone missing.

No matter how he looked at it, Calian couldn’t find a reason as to why he had to be the one to resolve this issue. Plus their att.i.tude when asking for help wasn’t exactly good.

“What kind of nonsense is this?”

Eventually, Calian stood from his seat.

It was already dark out side, but Calian would rather get out of this elven village. Rather than staying in an uncomfortable place like this, he would just camp out.

The Ger opened his mouth to try and hold Calian down,

“I’m not just asking for your help. I’ll pay you. Of course, I’ll pay you for saving Sia too.”

Calian had heard that elves were the type of creatures who couldn’t bare to live in debt. So if they do get help from someone, they would pay them abc at a price that met their own standards.

Calian’s gaze briefly flickered to Kyrie. It had been the same for him and he was only half of elven blood.

The elder, looking at Calian, who was stood up, said,

“You are on the road heading the Siegfried’s land, is that right?”

“That’s right,”

The elder nodded and said,

“Human roads may be slow, but using the forest roads will reduce the time you have to travel from 4 days to 1 day.”

That meant, a journey that would take them more than 2 months would be reduced to one quarter of that?

“You can travel 2 months distance in 15 days.”

Calian’s shoulders flinched.

He quickly turned on his heals and sat back down.

To think 5 elves were gone!

Of course he had to help.

A Territory Lord is a n.o.ble cla.s.s higher than commoner but not quite a Baron, it’s also known as a Baronet – they’re usually only in charge of one small town or a large village – usually this position is given to knights, bureaucrats or commoners who have performed meritorious services for the country. The t.i.tle could also be bought by wealthy merchants and the sale of this t.i.tle was one of the ways for the Crown to generate income.