On our second night in Badomode, someone broke into the ship. One could argue the port security had let down their guard, but even so, being able to sneak onto a ship, slip past the large number of crew members, and break into my room entirely undetected was an act of considerable skill. Depending on the circumstances, there was a good chance I wouldn’t have noticed them either. Their infiltration had been just that stealthy, like they had melted into the darkness of the night.
However, even at port, even within the confines of the ship, this was the territory of the powerful water spirits of the ocean. The moment the intruder stepped foot on our ship, the spirits began to stir, striking the ship with waves to alert me. So the moment that intruder silently cracked open my door and peeked inside, the instant they stepped foot into the room...
“Stop. If you move an inch, we’re enemies. Your body might not mean much to you, but that means war against every one of you on this island.”
Having got out of bed, I held my magic sword ready, though still in its sheath. I was skilled enough with it that I could handle most opponents with the sword still sheathed, but more importantly, I had decided this was the most effective way to handle this particular intruder.
And as I had expected, the intruder immediately shrank back from the sheath, trying to keep as much distance from it as possible. As dark as it was, I was more than capable of tracking the intruder’s movements, and I was sure they could see mine as well. Technically speaking, shrinking back like that counted as “moving an inch,” but I had intentionally held my sword out knowing it would scare them back, so I’d let that one slide.
It seemed the story that fairies hated Fairy’s Silver was true. Because yes, there was no doubt in my mind that the intruder was a fairy. But the figure confronting me was not a tiny winged person who might fit in the palm of my hand, but a young human girl garbed in a black cloak and a white ceramic mask. She looked to be twelve or thirteen years old. She must have been one of the children of the island, assimilated by the fairies. While I couldn’t say the thought made me happy, I had already decided not to interfere with the island’s customs.
“U-Urgh... Ancient one, we have no wish for hostility. We beg, please don’t point it at us,” she squeezed out. The intruder’s attitude was undoubtedly one of submission, so for now I nodded, lowering the point of the sword. Of course, just because she wasn’t openly hostile didn’t mean I could trust her. But while I held the threat of the Fairy’s Silver over her, the conversation wouldn’t be going anywhere.
“Ancient one, gratitude for your mercy. We are Ci. Cut off from our comrades on the mainland, we built this colony here. We have a request of the ancient one, and so arrived.”
The child had a halting, awkward way of speaking. Being something like a terminal for the fairies, whose minds were all connected, there was no reason for them to speak aloud to each other. That must have been why speaking like this was a challenge for her; she just wasn’t used to it.
Unmoved by her faltering voice nor the emotion it carried, I urged her to continue. The first and most important thing was to think calmly and rationally. My pity for the girl who had been taken over by the fairies, my resentment toward fairies in general, and the feelings engendered by her halting speech would all interfere with my ability to make a sound decision.
“We beg. Please give us the fruit of life, you possess. Now, we have no connection with other swarms. Our numbers slowly fall.” The girl bowed.
I still remained unmoving, waiting for her to go on. What did it mean for a single terminal among the fairies to bow its head to me? Without being a fairy myself, I had no way of knowing.
However, I had sort of guessed what kind of problem the local fairies might be facing. Their objective was the Mystic Peaches in my pack that I had brought from the sacred forest of the elves in the Ancient Gold Empire. They were after the fruit of a Spirit Tree, no different from an apua. I figured the fruit of the Fusou Tree likely fell in the same category, but those would be a bit too big for me to carry around.
“With the fruit of life, we can restore our ability to grow. We can produce again. Your visit here must be fate, ancient one. Please. We beg. Save us.” Over and over the girl bowed her head. Seeing the fairy in human form acting like that started to move me a bit. When it came down to it, I really liked humans.
So now I understood what was happening. The problem faced by the fairies here on Badomode was their lack of genetic diversity. While fairies as a species had some false form of immortality, I didn’t know how long the individual bodies lived for. I suspected the span of a fairy generation was quite short though, likely much shorter than that of a human. With that being the case, they aimed for immortality as a race rather than as individuals.
Without new blood coming in from outside the swarm, their short life spans accelerated the process at which their bloodlines mixed. I didn’t know much about the difficulties such stagnation would cause, but judging by the fairy’s explanation, it was starting to have an impact on their reproductive functions.
And then just in time, I had come to their island with a bag of Mystic Peaches, one of the fruits of life. It wasn’t an exaggeration to call these fruits a concentration of life force. The fruit of a Spirit Tree would easily restore the declining bodily functions of these fairies. This was a miraculous opportunity for them.
That said, with no way to leave the island, the Mystic Peaches would only delay the inevitable if things continued as they were. But it would buy them a tremendous amount of time, perhaps enough for them to find another, more permanent solution.
“I see. I understand your situation. But why should I help you?”
With all that being said, I didn’t care much about their situation. Though I wasn’t interested in actively wiping them out, that didn’t mean I was keen to help them survive. “Besides, you snuck in here hoping to steal them while I slept, didn’t you?” There was no other reason for her to have silently sneaked onto the ship in the dead of night.
Though there was also the possibility she had intended to kill me and take all of my possessions. Either way, I wasn’t particularly angry. It would have been my own fault for letting my guard down. But of course, that wasn’t helping the fairies’ case either.
Considering all that, though, I didn’t refuse their request to speak. In the end, I could ignore them if this was a problem for the fairies alone. But in their death throes, there was no telling what would happen to the humans who lived around them. For example, if those humans perished along with the fairies, information about the sea around the island would all be lost, making a large portion of the sea no longer safe to travel. That would no doubt result in more than a few ships straying off the sea lanes and into monster territory, inevitably leading to their demise.
I had grown to like the sailors who brought me from Fusou back to the Ancient Gold Empire, and the ones aboard Suin’s ship. If a threat might come to their colleagues, or potentially to themselves, I wanted to nip it in the bud.
But of course, there was no need for me to tell the fairies that. Even if I was willing to part with the peaches, I would need to draw a fittingly heavy price out of them to leave them with a measure of humility. When it came to dealing with fairies, if you didn’t have an overwhelming amount of leverage over them, you couldn’t accomplish much of anything.
“W-We are prepared to trade our secret honey for them.” Despite the darkness, it seemed the fairy noticed my glare, as she immediately began to grow flustered. But those words had me lift my sword once again.