Chapter 340: Recognizing and the Elf

Enter the cabin.

A ritual array on the floor, empty bottles of magical potions stacked up, and a filtering-bubble spell in the corner purifying the air.

The scent of herbs, soft lighting, simple furniture arranged neatly.

A few little rabbits, each holding a rag or a broom, doing the cleaning.

It was a cabin kept in pretty good order.

Then, on a rattan chair likewise made by magic, lay the mushroom-person Scarlett, motionless as a person in a vegetative state.

A "vegetable person" in every sense of the word.

Rod smiled, waved at her, and said hello.

Scarlett heard the movement; a pair of yellow-and-black streaked eyes suddenly flew open and fixed on him in a hard stare.

In them could be seen a trace of grievance and resentment.

"Die you. You."

Uh.

Is it because of what happened last time?

But I did it to save you.

"Scarlett, this is Rod, the Warden of Windwall Forest. He and his companion saved your life. You must repay him properly."

The rabbit-person Auna introduced.

When she saw Scarlett's expression clearly, she too felt a little awkward.

So she dragged Rod aside to whisper.

"That day, this child wasn't unconscious. It was just that her soul being pulled made her look like she'd fainted, but in fact she was conscious the whole time."

"Uh"

"So after this child recovered part of her ability to speak, the first thing she did was ask me to help her kill herself."

"?"

A question mark popped up on Rod's forehead.

"Why?"

"Shh! Keep your voice down!"

Auna tugged his sleeve downward; the two of them were almost head-to-head.

A faint, leisurely scent of vegetables drifted over.

"Scarlett absolutely despises hallucination spores. The mushroom-people of her faction believe hallucination spores are what hold their race back."

The presence of consciousness is what makes the difference.

Wherever there are people organized together, factional strife is unavoidable.

Even among the mushroom-people, who are naturally gentle and kind, there are factions that pray for progress, utterly unlike those mushroom-people who spend half their day inhaling hallucination spores.

But.

What does that have to do with me using her like a baby bottle to pour into?

As if seeing through Rod's question.

Auna's face showed embarrassment and shamed anger.

"Yours, that one! That one! There was too much of it! I don't know why you have the spiritual art called 【Charm Fluid】, and I don't know why mushroom-people would react to it either. In short, because you poured too much of your thing into her, Scarlett got a kind of illusion like inhaling hallucination spores and ascending! For her faction, that's an unbearable disgrace!"

"Huh—so it even works on plant-type intelligent beings… wait, how do you know? Did you really eavesdrop?"

The rabbit-girl's cute round eyes went wide.

"Now is not the time to talk about that!"

"Since she was conscious at the time, how could she think she was inhaling hallucination spores? It was clearly something else."

"Mm, mushroom-people actually aren't very good at telling the difference between mushroom-people and humans. She might have mistaken you for a mushroom-person and thought your, uh, down there was a spore sac, for all we know."

"So now it's?"

Auna cleared her throat and said, "Let her recognize clearly the difference between you and a mushroom-person, let her know that what she absorbed that day wasn't hallucination spores, and then she won't try to kill herself."

"Meaning?"

"You sleep with her one more night."

Rod didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

"Hey Auna, this is your old friend's child. Are you really just going to push her into a pit of fire like that?"

The rabbit-girl's cheeks flushed red.

"Let me state it clearly first: one, mushroom-people don't have our morals and ethics, and they don't have that organ either. What you and she did is purely just organic matter interacting. Two, this child is stubborn. Once she clearly recognizes that your fluid is different from hallucination spores, she won't try to kill herself. I'm doing this to save her, and besides, Rod, you're not a pit of fire."

". …Thanks."

"You agree?"

"I'm not the one losing out, so why wouldn't I."

Rod shrugged.

Only then did Auna breathe a sigh of relief.

In truth, she had concealed part of the truth—Scarlett not only intended to kill herself, but before that, she meant to kill the two women and one man who had made her break her precept.

But well, since Rod had already agreed, there was no need to be afraid.

That way, once Scarlett recognizes things clearly…

"What are you doing?"

Rod beside her suddenly said helplessly.

Auna hurriedly turned her head, and saw that the succubus had emerged from the shadows at some unknown point, and was now leaning over beside Scarlett, one hand pinching the cloth covering her crotch, the other reaching in to feel around.

"Master, her wound hasn't healed yet! You can still keep using her!"

"You shut up first, can't you see she's glaring at you?"

"Glare all she wants, she gonna hit me or what?"

Tally planted her hands on her hips, wiggled her butt, made faces like a bratty little imp, and drove Scarlett—who could only glare from the rattan chair—furious.

She muttered under her breath, spitting out words like "die die die" nonstop.

Ona quickly pushed the succubus aside and changed the subject:

"I'll come find you later. Also, Scarlett told me something else—about the golden crown that opens the rifts to other dimensions."

Rod's expression turned serious.

He simply sat down on the bed beside them, striking a pose of attentive listening.

Scarlett couldn't move easily—normally she rested on the reclining chair—and Ona's bed was easy to get to, so naturally that bed belonged to Ona.

But the moment he sat down, Rod immediately felt something beneath his butt.

Judging by the feel, it seemed to be something long and stick-shaped.

A long stick-shaped thing on the bed?

Ignore it.

Rod shifted his butt and changed position.

But Tally, who kept a constant eye on her master, wasn't about to let that detail slip.

He saw her eyes light up; in a flash she was at the bedside and pulled something straight out.

—A short wooden stick.

Traces of magic clung to its surface.

Rod recognized it at once: this was an unfinished Xing De Fa.

Some mages don't like using ready-made magic circles; they specially cultivate an exclusive item, nurtured from start to finish by their own magic.

Not only is the affinity high and the handling smooth, even casting efficiency gets a good boost.

"Tch."

Tally clearly recognized it too, and tossed it back with a bored look.

But seeing the dangerous look in her master's eyes, she meekly apologized and ducked back into the shadows.

Ona laughed, seemingly not bothered.

"There's one piece of bad news and one piece of good news, Rod—which do you want to hear first?"

"The bad news."

"The crown that opens the rift isn't just two—it's three. The third was lost when the Mycelium Clan was attacked by beastified patients."

So that group of beastified patients really was after the golden crown.

Rod felt a headache coming on.

Finding the Mycelium Clan on the Kor Plain was already such a hassle for them, let alone a tiny crown.

"And the good news?"

"Before the attack, two elves from Emerald Court came to see the Mycelium Clan. They offered to buy the golden crown, but were refused. Scarlett told me they seemed very familiar with those crowns."

(End of chapter)