Prologue
THE BRIGHT SUN shone down on me. That sunlight, coupled with the occasional breeze and the cool, crisp air, was comfy enough that it made me wanna stretch, but it probably wouldn’t have been the best idea, given my current situation, so I had to give up on it. Why? Well, I was climbing a cliff. Pretty solid incline, about 190 degrees. The face of the cliff was really easy to lose your grip on, and if I did, I was in for a looooong slide down. A pretty precarious precipice, in my opinion!
Not that it was a particularly problematic precipice for me, considering my grip strength. Nah, powerfully pulling my person up the precipice with the potent puissance of my pfive pfingers? No problem!
“Hey, there’s another one!” I called out to Filia.
“Oh, you’re right!” Filia replied from behind me. She was close enough that I felt her breath lightly tickle my ears—which was to be expected, considering that I was carrying her on my back. Her beautiful silver hair tickled too.
Everything about Filia was gorgeous enough to captivate just about anyone; she had a slim, firm waist and long, slender, lily-white arms and legs. I bet a ton of people would have felt weird about being so physically close to such a cute elf, but I had no problems keeping my wits about me. The fact that her breasts—which were pushing against me at that very moment—were quite modest had nothing to do with it. We were just coworkers in the middle of carrying out a request.
I am a gentleman—specifically, a gentle muscle man! And a gentle muscle man devotes all of his energy to fulfilling requests.
“Okay, I’ll get it,” said Filia. Still perched on my back, she carefully reached out and plucked the flower from the cliffside. It was a small flower with white petals, speckled with red spots. Today’s request was to gather this flower.
“And that makes ten,” announced Filia, carefully placing the flower in the bag of holding at her waist.
“Let’s pick two or three more then before we get back down, just in case.”
About five minutes later, we’d picked three extras, and we started making our way back down the cliff.
“You know, I simply must wonder why flowers would bloom in such an unpleasant, hard-to-reach place,” said Filia.
“I suppose you’ve got a point. They do look really beautiful, though…”
“Oh? When did you start talking about me?”
“I’m not talkin’ about you at all, I’m talkin’ about the flowers!”
Going back and forth like that, we made our way down the cliff face. Filia hopped off of my back, patted herself down, and sent a light cloud of dust fluttering around her in the process.
“Filia, could you check again and make sure that the petals are okay? Just in case?”
“One of the flowers is withered, but the rest are fine.” She held the withered flower up to me. It had been blooming so vivaciously before, but now it was black and shriveled.
“Wow, I can’t believe it would wither just like that after such a tiny shock. What a weak plant!”
At first, Filia had approached the flowers while floating with her wind magic, but the flowers had withered when touched by the swirling winds. That’s why Filia and I hadn’t had any other option except for me to carry her on my back, which had kept the plants from being disturbed.
“You were going at it too hard, Yuri. Why, you practically picked them to death!” said Filia, putting her hand over her mouth and giggling.
C’mon, that wasn’t fair! What was wrong with a little effort? It wasn’t my fault that the flowers had been so freaked out by my mighty presence! Ah, well… Climbing a cliff with just one hand had been a good workout, so it was fine.
“At any rate, we’re done with this request. Let’s head back to Jeepupp.”
After we’d left the elf village, all sorts of stuff had happened. We’d ended up moving our home base from Mussen Morgeth to a city called Jeepupp. Yep, our adventures were far from over.