CH 48.1

“Chaos, we’re almost there,” a deep voice brings my mind back to reality. As I take off the hood I was wearing and look outside the carriage, beyond the vast farmland, I see a village. And beyond the village, it looks like there’s a large forest. I wonder if they cleared out the forest to expand the village.

“I heard that it was close to a forest, but it’s a pretty wide-open space.”

“That’s just a stereotype. Even if a lot of elves live in the forest, it would be too difficult for us to live deep in the woods. Most of the residents live around here, since the fields are indispensable for obtaining food for our daily meals. There’s a limit to how much we can expand our fields in the middle of the woods unless we clear out more trees,” Cornelia says.

“Elves are a minority race. It’s pretty rare to see them in human towns. Even I never had a chance to meet one until I left my village,” Liam says. “It’s pretty peaceful here. Reminds me of my village.”

“So this is what your hometown was like?” I ask.

“It’s similar, but mine was a little smaller. There was monster territory nearby, so we couldn’t make the village too big. Because of that, there aren’t many jobs, so it’s pretty common for young people to leave for the city if they can’t inherit the family business.”

The young adventurer before me, Liam, looks towards the village with a sense of homesickness. I wonder if the reason he got a dangerous job as an adventurer fighting monsters is because he didn’t have a job in his hometown.

“My hometown doesn’t change much, so the kids get bored. Most of them leave for the city seeking excitement. I was surprised when I arrived in Maeldia. It was a cityscape bigger than I’d ever seen out in the country, so I kept shouting, ‘Woah, woah!’”

The elf, Cornelia, is shocked to hear this. Havoc and Emilia, who are acting as the coachmen, laugh.

“Alright, we’re here.”

As I get off the carriage, people turn to stare as if it’s strange to see travelers. The children are especially blatant about it.

“Wow, that person has black hair,” an elf boy says, pointing at my head.

“Yeah, isn’t that weird?” an elf girl replies.

C**p. I forgot I still have my hood down.

Apparently, people with black hair are rare in this world. When I think about it, I’ve never seen anyone in this world with black hair this whole time.

This world looks a lot like the medieval European-style worlds which are common in RPGs, so although the inhabitants of this world have a wide variety of hair colors other than blond, if anything, their physical traits are closer to Westerners than Japanese people. I probably look really out of place here.

Although, the reason why I’m hurriedly putting my hood back on isn’t just because my appearance is unusual.

“It looks like the rumors about Chaos haven’t spread this far,” Emilia says.

“Even if there’s some interaction with humans, there aren’t many who are eccentric enough to come all the way to this village,” Cornelia says. “At most, merchants are about the only ones who visit, so news from Clermont rarely makes it here. Well, even if it did, there aren’t many people in the village, so it probably won’t be that bad.”

The elves’ attention isn’t only directed at me, but at the others as well. I guess it’s just the fact that we’re travelers that’s drawing their attention.

‘If we were in Clermont, they probably would have made a big deal about it,’ I think as I breathe a sigh of relief.

By the time we took back Clermont from the vampires, I was already so famous for saving Roseline that a crowd would gather as soon as they found out that I was Chaos.

And this time, I became so famous that people even know what I look like. It got so bad that it’s not even funny, like when I tried to go into an items shop, but then people found me and it broke out into total chaos.

“Man, that was awful. I thought I was gonna get crushed,” Liam says with an empty smile. If he hadn’t saved me, I would have been swallowed by the wave of people. When she heard about it later, Roseline was so shocked that she summoned a merchant to the royal palace.

By the way, according to that merchant, black robes and toy staves are selling like crazy. …I guess the law of supply and demand applies even in another world. Seeing this shrewd salesman’s determination was an indescribable feeling.

So, that’s why I wear a hood when I’m out in public so that my identity won’t be revealed.

“Big sis! You’re back!”

“Celia!”

Out of the circle of elf onlookers jumps a cheerful girl with an aura of innocence. Celia greets her with an awkward smile, and the girl smiles back. When I compare their faces, it seems like the girl is younger than Cornelia. She might even be as young as Alexia, or maybe slightly older.

Hm? Hold on…

“Hey, Liam. Is she…?”

“Looks like it.”

‘Seriously?’ I instinctively ask in my mind.

I did hear about it from Cornelia, but now that I’m seeing her in person, I can’t contain my shock. There was a time in the past when it was like that, but with the common sense of someone living in modern day Japan, it’s incomprehensible to me.

I can’t believe this girl is the bride.

“Chaos, it might be out of the ordinary where you live, but for the countries in this region, it’s not strange for girls this young to get married. Especially since elves’ lifespans are longer than humans’, so they have a longer youth period. She could be older than she looks,” Havoc points out, belatedly stepping out of the carriage. Now that he mentions it, a lot of the elves in the crowd are elderly, but they look younger.

Also, they’re not all dainty and beautiful like elves are commonly depicted, and there are even elves who are fat or muscular. If anything, they’re more like humans with elf ears. Maybe the ear length varies by the individual, since there are a lot of young people with short ears. Cornelia fits the stereotypical image of a slender, beautiful elf, so I misunderstood, but it looks like elves have individual differences just like humans.

“Wait, then Cornelia is too?”

“It’s impolite to ask about a woman’s age. Nel is a year younger than Liam. Even if they’re elves, their growth is about the same as humans until they reach adulthood. They’re just slow to grow old. …As a woman, I envy them,” Emilia says, looking towards the elves with a lingering gaze.

Well, even though there are people who want to grow up, there aren’t many who want to grow old, so anyone would yearn for a longer youth.

…That’s what I think, anyway.

“Big sis, are you going to stay with us today?”

“…No, I think I’ll stay somewhere else today. I don’t know what I’ll end up saying to him when I see him.”

“Big sis…” Celia says sadly.

“It’s okay, I’ll be on my best behavior at the wedding. If you say you won’t hold the ceremony until I come, then I’ll just have to celebrate. Worst case scenario, if I go out of control, I’ll have everyone stop me,” Cornelia says with a bitter smile. Celia turns toward us.

“I sympathize with Nel when it comes to this,” Liam whispers so that Celia won’t hear.

After all, looking at this from Cornelia’s perspective as her acquaintance, it’s difficult to celebrate this wedding genuinely. Havoc and Emilia may be relatively neutral, but Liam especially is completely on Cornelia’s side.

It would be more accurate to say that I was invited to Cornelia’s hometown as a deterrent against the outburst that Cornelia is anticipating rather than to celebrate the wedding. From what I’ve heard, Celia is Cornelia’s childhood friend who she loves like a sister. So normally, her wedding should be a time for celebration.

However, the problem is the person she’s getting married to.

Celia is getting married to Cornelia’s dad.

In this world, it seems like it’s acceptable for people to get married at a relatively young age, but even if it’s another world, cases like this aren’t considered to be all that great on an emotional level, apparently. She probably has complicated feelings about having a mother who’s younger than her, but I guess to Cornelia, having someone who was a younger sister to her become her stepmother is crossing the line.

Apparently, Cornelia’s feelings toward her father aren’t particularly good, so when she learned that the two were getting married, she left her hometown in a rage. Cornelia finally came to terms with it and returned to her hometown, but it seems that those lingering feelings haven’t disappeared entirely.

I really am out of place here. It’ll probably take a lot more time before Cornelia and Celia’s strained relationship returns to how it was before.