Chapter 228

“Ugh...”

With a bit of a groan, I dropped my belongings in a room made from leaves and ivy that had been prepared for me. My pack had grown quite heavy. The relics I had taken from the group of four that had attacked me on my way out of the alliance were rather bulky.

Now that I had a chance to relax, I could take some time to look over those relics a bit. Really, I should have been spending my time going over what I had learned from the elves here, but I hadn’t quite digested the information yet. It was like when I got stuck in blacksmithing, I’d feel the sudden need to start cleaning the forge for no reason. I figured this was the same in principle.

Anyway, the group of four men that attacked me had graciously surrendered four cloaks, one bow, three short swords, and two small shields. Aside from the bow, I decided to dismantle the rest of the relics piece by piece to find the rituals engraved where they would otherwise be invisible. I learned that my conjecture during that fight had been more or less correct when it came to the cloaks, bow, and swords.

The cloak improved one’s stealth, allowing them to operate covertly at night. The bow had a strength and elasticity that made it fire arrows with unbelievable power. The swords crackling with lightning would inflict damage and possibly stun opponents even if they blocked the blade with armor or a weapon of their own. The swords also had rituals engraved to preserve and repair the weapon, as well as protections to prevent the lightning from harming the user.

The shields, on the other hand, thoroughly betrayed my expectations. As much as they were shaped like shields, their function was entirely unrelated. As I’ve said many times before, any damage or distortion to the ritual engraved on a relic would render it entirely powerless. That meant they were ill-suited for use as a tool to block attacks and absorb impacts. As such, I had been quite excited to find out how exactly they had made these little shields work...but they weren’t designed to deflect attacks at all. The rituals engraved on them did nothing more than shine brightly.

They had been designed so the face of the shield would shine a blinding light, so while the user pretended they would use the shield to block incoming attacks, they would then pass magic through it to blind their attacker. Rather than for use on a crowded battlefield, it had been designed for covert operations like our scuffle a few nights back. It definitely gave me the impression of an assassin’s tool.

It seemed that at present, Odine’s military didn’t have the relics or personnel to have a large impact on the battlefield. The impression these tools gave were that they were focusing their efforts on covert operations and assassinations instead. Kawshman had always wanted his relics to be useful for adventurers...but I suppose anything suited for them would also benefit an assassin too. I had no strong opinion myself on how the relics were used. I was only interested in how the tools and rituals on them had been developed.

Considering the relics I had here, the research Kawshman had begun had come a long way. That being said, I couldn’t help but feel like the actual construction of these relics was...somewhat lacking.

They weren’t especially horrible or anything, but they clearly only made the grade for a mass-produced model. Yes, as a mass-produced item, I would give it a pass.

Back then, Kawshman and I had used every ounce of skill the two of us possessed to create his flaming sword and the sword at my hip now. Kawshman’s knowledge of rituals and magic were clearly first class, and I could brag that the swords I had made, which such rituals were engraved on, were masterworks in their own right. To see the relics descended from that research only amount to “just good enough” left me feeling despondent.

The development and application of rituals had clearly advanced considerably since our time, but it seemed the craftsmanship had been neglected, producing an end result far different from what we’d aimed for. That was my evaluation of the craftsmanship of the tools themselves, but also of the quality of the inscription work on them. Being only barely a pass, even the tiniest bit of damage to the ritual would render it useless. Even the rituals meant to preserve and repair the weapon could easily be damaged and lose their function.

So while these weren’t exactly single-use relics, they were clearly expendable to some extent. All weapons and armor could be classified in a similar way, as anything used in combat would break down after enough use, but this was far from the ideal Kawshman and I had been pursuing.

Kawshman had been saddled with a very limited life span, so compromise was an unfortunate necessity for him. Humans couldn’t chase romantic ideals forever. That said, as the student of a dwarf, he should have had an unerring respect for the art of craftsmanship. And yet, from these relics in front of me, there was no sign of that respect at all.

Once again, I was struck by this sentimental feeling. Someday, I needed to take back that flaming sword from Odine’s military. And, after recording the rituals used on these relics, I would find a forge where I could destroy them.

Taking back the sword would have to wait until the situation calmed down first, though. I probably wouldn’t be able to work on it for a few decades. Now, as for the main matter at hand, I had learned three interesting facts from the elves here.

The first was that a forest south of here, in what was once the Duchy of Kirkoim, had been attacked by revenants.

Revenants were monsters born from the corpses of people. You could think of them as particularly fresh zombies. They were a particularly rare breed of monster, though, as the conditions needed to produce them were rather strict. For example, if the corpse had been significantly damaged, the mana gathering in it would leak out. In particular, if the stomach was ruptured, it was virtually impossible for a revenant to be created from it. For that reason, many cultures included the cutting open of the stomach and removal of the internal organs as part of their burial rites.

Even if someone were to die out in the wild, their body would likely be eaten by wild animals, making it impossible for them to turn into a revenant. On top of that, depending on the time of year, bodies could decay very quickly, making it more likely for them to rot away before enough mana could gather within them to create a monster.

These factors together made revenants rather rare as far as monsters went. The exceptions would be entire villages wiped out by sickness, where there was no one left to bury the bodies, or wartime when there were too many dead for burials to happen in time. In situations like those, where large numbers of bodies were left unattended, it was possible for revenants to appear.

It seemed like the revenants who had attacked the forest in Kirkoim had been born from the large number of victims in Zieden’s attack. I supposed it was understandable enough after a war of that scale, but that didn’t make it any more pleasant.

The second piece of information was that Airena and the elven caravan hadn’t visited the area in a number of years.

That was about as much as I had expected. Either Airena was wary of entering Zieden herself, or the country had forbidden them entry, but I couldn’t say which was the case. Either way, it seemed the smarter choice was for me to avoid visiting any human settlements while I was here.

The last thing I learned was that Zieden was making calls for the elves, as residents of their kingdom, to supply troops for the war effort. The soldiers that had delivered the letter had been ordered to search the forest where the elves lived themselves. As the request had come directly to them, and not through the proper political channel of the elven caravan, the elves had given no response. However, some of the elves worried that continuing to ignore Zieden’s demands would eventually lead to war between them and the human kingdom.

After what had happened in Ludoria, the elves had started to focus on developing ways to defend themselves, but they were still hopelessly outnumbered. If Zieden’s military put real effort into it, the forest and their village within it would be reduced to ash.

It was still unclear why Zieden wanted to draw the elves into their war. It was starting to sound more and more likely that Zieden had forbidden the elven caravan’s entry into the country. They were likely trying to cut the isolated, solitary elves off from those who were more familiar with the workings of the human world. It all felt too wrong.

If Zieden was planning on moving against the elves living here, I would have to make a move myself. A war breaking out between the humans and the elves with significant losses on both sides could create a gulf between them that would persist for centuries, if not longer. Using my powers as a high elf to threaten Zieden into submission or move the other nations to action would resolve the situation with far less damage. That said, even that would still result in casualties.

With a heavy sigh, I flopped onto the floor. This was too big of a problem for me to come to an easy conclusion. However, wasting time in indecision threatened leaving things until it was too late for me to do anything. As much as it troubled me, failing to act would result in losing something important.