Chapter 1: The Gift of Soup from the Forest
HOW did my life turn out like this?
A blood-drenched gang of bandits stood before me. Well…that’s what it felt like, staring at the group of four knights.
We were currently in the deepest depths of the forest, hard at work hunting monsters. That was our unit’s duty as the Second Expeditionary Squadron of the Enoch Royal Knights.
“Excellent work! Now what’s our kill count?”
Captain Ludtink, the head bandit—no, he’s the Captain!— and a giant man with a frightening bearded face, turned around to question Vice Captain Velrey.
“You’re at twenty,” Velrey replied. “I’m at seven, Garr’s at eleven, and Ulgus has five.”
“Ha! If we keep up this pace, we’ll be done by tomorrow. Hey, Wild Rabbit! Jot those numbers down!”
With a big sigh, I noted the numbers in my monster extermination journal.
“Don’t go slackin’ on us now, Wild Rabbit!”
“I’m not a wild rabbit, Captain. I’m Mell. Mell Risurisu.”
“Nah! You’re a wild rabbit.”
The captain poked my long ears with his finger.
“Gyah!” I cried. “Please don’t do that!”
“Gahahaha!” he laughed heartily at my annoyed reaction.
What the heck do you think you’re doing, you perverted bandit?! I wanted to shout at him, but I managed to hold it in. This man was (somehow) still my commanding officer, after all.
Still…he was truly insensitive! I was a Fore Elf and my unique, long ears were actually full of nerve endings that made them extremely sensitive.
We weren’t born with these ears just so people could tease us about them. We had evolved them to inhabit the forests, letting us sense predators and monsters and discern different animal cries.
“If ya got long ears, then you’re a rabbit.”
“No, I am not! I’m a Fore Elf!”
I glared at him, but he didn’t look scared at all. I felt so frustrated as Captain Ludtink patted me on the head before turning away.
I swore I’d have my revenge someday. Flames of fury quietly burned in my heart.
Now why, you ask, would a Fore Elf—a resident of the woods—join a royal knightly order? The answer was simple—my very large family was very, very poor.
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JUST the other day, the man I was supposed to marry had told me we were through.
His reasoning? My family was terribly poor, my looks were lacking, and I couldn’t use magic at all. And he was right!
Despite being a Fore Elf, one of the “beautiful spirits of the woods,” I was hopelessly plain. I couldn’t use a drop of magic. And I was absolutely no good at hunting.
Men were usually the ones in charge of hunting large beasts like boars, while women handled everything to do with smaller animals like rabbits and birds. But in my case, I’d spend a whole day hunting without killing a thing, instead filling my basket up with medicinal herbs before going back home.
With all these issues, I was the last person anyone would want as a bride.
Dirt poor, no life skills, and no magic to my name. Three huge detriments stacked atop each other. I was utterly hopeless.
Now, maybe I was just biased when it came to my family. But I had some very cute little sisters; they were wonderful hunters and powerful sorcerers.
My only wish was to save them from our crippling poverty. With that goal in mind, I ventured to the faraway human royal capital to get a job and send money back home.
I had really thought I’d be able to find work right away, since my best skills were cooking, laundry, and cleaning. But it became an unbelievable struggle! Apparently with humans, no aristocrats will offer you high-paying jobs working for them without a letter of recommendation first. Boy, was this news to me!
I had interviewed for jobs at various restaurants, but as soon as they saw my pointy ears, I was immediately shown the door.
Fortunately, a kindly old lady explained to me that most humans see elves as prideful creatures who aren’t suited for work. Not that there’s any truth to that!
Elves rarely ever show up where humans dwell, and the ones who do are eccentrics, so the prevailing human wisdom is that every elf is probably just a weirdo. I couldn’t help but hate all the elves who’d left such a bad impression on those humans.
But the kind old lady found a job that she said would suit me. She introduced me to the Royal Order of Enoch, the national order of knights who swore their loyalty to the country.
They accepted all races into their ranks and allowed them to work as equals. And the salary was very impressive.
My spirits high, I’d gone to Enoch for an interview and to take their exam. I was certain they would offer me an office job of some kind, since math was my specialty.
But for some reason…for some insane reason…they had assigned me to the Second Expeditionary Squadron, which only had four other members to its name. And they had made me a combat medic! I had desperately tried to convince them that, despite being a Fore Elf, I couldn’t use restoration magic at all. But once I’d mentioned I knew a bit about medicinal herbs, I ended up assigned to this absurd unit.
Expeditionary squadrons were deployed to different areas for things like monster extermination and disaster relief. The second I learned I’d have to ride a horse for hours a day, I felt lightheaded.
Horseback riding definitely wasn’t my strong suit, either. On top of that, the other members of my unit were all huge shocks to me.
Crow Ludtink, our Captain, was so tall that I had to crane my neck to look at him. His face was lined with an ash-gray beard, and his eyes were a dazzling purple with a crazy gleam to them. He really did resemble a bandit leader, with an enormous longsword strapped to his back. He didn’t look like any knight I’d ever seen.
If someone had introduced him to me as a bandit, I would have said, “Yeah, that seems about right.”
Anna Velrey, our unit’s Vice Captain, was a young woman. She had blue eyes, short dark-blue hair, a slender build, and she fought with two swords in combat. Even to a newcomer like me, she was very friendly.
June Ulgus was a young man around my age, probably around seventeen or eighteen. He reminded me of this brown dog I used to have when I was younger.
Finally, there was Garr Garr, a rather quiet wolfman who was even bigger than Captain Ludtink. He had beautiful red fur, and despite being a typical masculine knight, he was also compassionate and gentle.
This motley crew had dragged me out on one of their expeditions without thinking to explain what our mission was!
Our destination was a forest about three hours away from the royal capital by horse. Our mission was to eliminate a large monster outbreak. Captain Bandit (as I kept calling Ludtink in my head but never to his face) had ordered me up on my horse and then handed me a brand-new helmet, which looked a lot more like a giant metal pot.
“Here! Wear this during battle and cower somewhere in the back, Wild Rabbit,” he’d said.
“Huh?!”
Ludtink had pointed at my long ears and called me Wild Rabbit right from the get-go. I immediately decided I’d never forgive him for that injustice!
His criminal-like appearance wasn’t the only thing that surprised me about him. Captain Bandit was stronger than I ever imagined. He could cut through monsters with a single slash of his longsword. Vice Captain Velrey could slice through the monsters’ throats with her dual blades, whirling through the air like a dancer.
Ulgus, the young knight, waited for just the right moment to send his arrows flying, piercing the monsters’ skulls. And Garr, the wolfman, surprisingly nimble for such a large man, chose to deal with monsters by impaling them with a spear.
These four, I realized, were surely the best of the best. They were proven knights on the battlefield.
But once the fighting subsided and they’d turned to look at me, their bodies drenched in blood and gore, all I could see was a head bandit and his gang of ruffians. I kind of wished they would act more “knight-like,” like building a cross to mark the monsters’ remains or something.
I decided to pray to the gods for them all instead.
“Hey, Wild Rabbit. Get hopping already,” Captain Bandit called out to me. I acknowledged his order with a cry back and started moving.
This is the story of how I became not a member of a bandit clan, but the Second Expeditionary Squadron of Enoch.