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“The genius archer Fini wandered into a forest infested with monsters. It was then that my younger sister, the genius wizard Lulu, appeared. After having an emotional reunion, my sister and I finally came to this town to escape from the monsters chasing after us. How does that sound?”

We crossed the forest that acted as a border and came to the elven kingdom of Viridis. After first going through the Nigel Kingdom’s edge that is.

Although it was known as the Elf Kingdom, it was a unified kingdom of both the Elves and the Beastmen. Both races coexisted with nature, and they each lived their own lives.

There were Elf-only villages, and there were villages that were inhabited by both Elves and Beastmen.

The climate was stable even around the borders, most likely because of the kingdom’s harmony with nature. I even tried picking up and eating one of the wild fruits growing nearby, and to my surprise, it was nowhere near as bad as the vegetables I’d eaten in that village in Fraus.

Lullus also agreed that it was more stable than the Fraus Kingdom but mentioned that the spirit here is also likely weakened.

Unlike in Fraus, hunting and gathering were the primary means of sustenance here, with only small-scale farming carried out by the Elves. This likely meant the spirit didn’t need to expend as much energy to support the region.

Instead, its energy was carefully adjusted to cover the entire kingdom.

It was clear they were making an effort to conserve the spirit’s energy, but it didn’t change the fact that they were still draining it. Regardless, the world was probably doomed to collapse before the spirit’s energy ran out anyway.

Those things aside, we were currently about to try and enter a town that we found. Right now, we were in front of the gates about to be inspected. Although I called them gates, the town was situated in the middle of a forest, and its atmosphere was quite different from Fraus’ towns.

In addition, the Elf gatekeeper looked flustered after listening to my narrative.

I assumed he was suspecting us because we too were Elves.

“In short, you got lost in the forest near the border, correct?”
“We’re ashamed to admit it, but yes.”
“That is fine. Rather, I’m glad that people of the same race managed to make their way to town safely. However, I should warn you that things have been dangerous around here lately. It’s not a safe place for two kids.”
“It’s fine. Despite how I look, I’m quite strong. I’m even an adventurer.”
“But aren’t you only F Grade, big sis?”
“I’m as strong as D Grades!”

I said, quickly bouncing back from Lullus’ interruption.

I hope you’ve already caught on, but all of this was an act. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t having fun, but generally, Lullus wasn’t really making fun of me, and I wasn’t sulking.

The reason I was the older sister was also because Lullus stubbornly insisted on it. As long as we were in the sister roles, calling me Master Finis was strictly forbidden, and I couldn’t just let Lullus call me elder sister.

Taking Lullus’ opinion into consideration, the best scenario was to have me be the older sister.

Additionally, we’d also decided that if I transformed into Toriyama to move about, Lullus would also change into its spirit form. Lullus was only allowed to be Lullus while near Finis.

The guard looked at us with warm eyes and let us go inside.

“Can we really go in?”
“Yes, you can.”
“Is there a Collegium in this town?”
“Yes. It’s just a little further in; it’s impossible to get lost.”
“Thank you very much. Lullus, let’s go!”
“Okay!”

We were lucky to enter without any issues. Nonetheless, it might’ve been mostly thanks to me being an Elf. It was what I would define as a perfect elf move.

(Come to think of it, he didn’t check our statuses. And here I went through the trouble of setting up Lullus’ status with a focus on Mana.)

Its status was about a D Grade in terms of strength. And I too had increased my stats to match a D Grade, just as I’d told the gatekeeper.

◇◇◇

When inside, we noticed that half of the town was like a forest. The houses were mostly made of wood, and some were even built on top of trees.

(It doesn’t seem like there’s a tree big enough here to make a treehouse. Maybe we’ll see one if we visit the towns deeper in the forest.)

In any case, this town did have an Elf vibe to it. I wasn’t sure whether it was limited to this town or not, but as far as I could see, there were only Elves. I’d expected to see neither humans nor Dwarves, but I hadn’t expected to not encounter even a single Beastman.

For now, we headed to the Collegium in the hopes of asking for a place to stay.

“That’s the story. I’d love it if you could introduce us to a cheap inn.”
“An inn… We do not have any establishments that specialize in that area¹.”
“Then where do the people from the outside stay?”
“You could either stay at a friend’s house, the Assembly Hall, here, or rent an empty house. If you decide to go with either the Assembly Hall or here, you’ll have to sleep while huddling with other people, so I wouldn’t recommend it.”

We were currently inside the Collegium and talking with the receptionist about a place we could use to stay.

The woman at the reception desk looked young, but she was in fact over 50. I didn’t remember how long an Elf’s lifespan was, but she was probably on the younger end.

Keeping with our lodging issue, the receptionist believed that renting an empty house would be the best course of action for Lullus and me. The fact that they didn’t have an inn suggested that not many people visited here.

They were Elves after all. They had a certain secretiveness and exclusiveness to them.

This would lead one to question if they’d be safe if a powerful monster suddenly struck, but despite the small number of Elf adventurers, they all had high statuses due to their lengthy lifespans.

Even inside the Collegium, the Elves all had varying ages. If one were over the age of 100, they’d almost certainly be in at least C Grade. And more than half of the Elves here were over that threshold.

However, there weren’t any A Grade Elves. While I could find an Upper B Grade here or there. If we were to compare them in terms of the 100-meter dash on Earth, an A Grade would be in the 9-second range.

It was a huge wall to overcome. Don’t ask me why I decided to base it on the 100-meter dash because I too don’t know.

When it came to S Grades, the legendary heroes, they’d be able to do it in about 7-8 seconds.

I’d heard that the average of their status was about 250, but I didn’t know whether that had been measured right after their summoning or before they’d set out to fight against the Demon Lord. At the very least, the final stats would’ve been way higher.

“Big sis, what should we do?” Lullus asked, making me snap out of my thoughts.

We had enough money to rent a place.

“How much does it cost to rent an empty house?”
“The cheapest one is about five small silver coins for 10 days.”
“Can we rent it here?”
“Yes.”

I was surprised that it went so smoothly.

I was also astonished at how cheap the rent was. Back in Fraus, a room at the cheapest place would set me back 2 large coppers per night, while 10 days would be 2 small silvers². It was hard to imagine we could rent a whole house for just 2.5 times that.

I didn’t know if this was okay. I really didn’t. But I didn’t care. We finally had a place of our own. Though it was still a rental.

1. Robinxen: Sorry but unless your village is tiny and only produces locally, that’s impossible… at least in a fantasy setting with a high demand for adventurers and the like. Now, in reality, yeah this totally makes sense. In fact inns were for the most part only on major roads, as common as they were, so if you went anywhere not on a road you were more likely to just borrow a room at someone’s place or use an empty house.
2. Robinxen: This makes me think… wouldn’t her currency give away her identity as a foreigner? Do all nations in this world use the same mintage?

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