“A flower that can bloom without light?”

“Yes! Wouldn’t it be wonderful? They can bloom even in the darkest winter!”

“Don’t you think you have to make them be able to survive the cold first?“

“D-don’t worry! I thought about that as well!”

“...”

“A-alright, I didn’t think about it until you brought it up…”

“For a flower maniac like you, I’m surprised you didn’t think that far... “

“Uuu….”

“...Fine. I’ll give you some pointers on how to do it. If we’re talking about cold resistance, then the first thing you need to know is…”

--------

Hugo

I spent an hour or so investigating the village as thoroughly as I could, going door-to-door and entering every wooden hut that I could find. Now, I was no expert at archeology and such, but I could tell that this place hadn’t been inhabited for a long, long time, judging by how thick the layer of dust was inside those houses. The beds used by the people here seemed to be made of leaves as a replacement for the normal cotton, and those leaves had rotted and decayed to the point that you could barely find any. There were some scrolls and parchments I found with some words written on them, but I couldn’t read any of it. It’s probably written in elf tongue, if I had to guess.

Eventually, Ilymhyrra arrived. Without any fanfare, she asked me what I had found.

“Well, I got some writings you might want to look at.” I told her. “And I’m pretty sure this place has been abandoned for a long time.”

“I see. Take me to those writings.”

With no change in reaction on her face, she walked to the largest hut in the village. It’s where I had piled up all the interesting things I gathered. If I had to guess, it’s probably the chief’s house. Sorry Chief, going to borrow your house for a bit.

I decided to wait outside as she read them. The air was too dusty inside to be comfortable (though she herself didn’t seem to mind). I could clear the air with my magic but I didn’t want to disturb anything if I could help it.

After another hour of waiting, she finally came out from her hole.

“So, what did you find out?” I asked her.

"The flower is located further in."

"And about this village?"

"It's an elven village."

"But elves don't live underground, do they?"

"No, I suppose they don't."

And just like that, she walked away, ending our conversation one-sidedly once more.

I could only sigh as I followed her.

--------

We followed the lake-turned-river into the tunnel at the base of the large clearing, with her leading the way. I kept my eyes alert for any signs of the flower, but all I could find was mushrooms and moss growing on the riverbed.

The river continued on and on, until it decided to split into two. We took the right path. Or rather, she took the right path. She didn’t even stop for a second, which meant she probably already knew that it was the right choice to take.

She probably already knows which way to take from all those writings I’ve gathered.

No monsters bothered us as we marched on, strangely enough, even though we had encountered many bats and moles on our way here. Perhaps because we were close to that underground village? It’s only natural to assume that they would regularly exterminate any monsters that came near, so eventually, the hostile wildlife would just decide to avoid this section of the cave entirely.

“Hey, I’ve been thinking… You say the ones who lived here were elves, right? Were they the ones who made that treant?”

“Yes, they were.”

To my surprise, she actually answered.

"Let me guess. The treant went rouge so they had to live underground like this."

Without hesitation, she gave me a "that's stupid" look for her reply, before going back to her usual silence.

"You know, I wish you would open up a little. Is it really so hard to tell me just a bit on what’s going on here? I know that you know more than you’re letting on.” I gave her a frustrated look.

Once again, the silent treatment. She didn't even bother turning her head this time around.

I could only sigh in response.

-------

Eventually, the river branch led us to another large clearing. I drew my wand, ready to cast a flare spell to lift up the place like I did with the village, only to find out that it was unnecessary.

For it was filled with glowing white flowers, illuminating the darkness like the stars in the night sky.

I gave a look towards Ilymhyrra.

"This is it, right? This is the flower you wanted?"

She didn't answer. She instead walked forward, crouched down, and picked one of the flowers. She gave it a stare before bringing it close to her nose, giving it a sniff.

And then, she smiled.

It was one of the sweetest smiles I had ever witnessed.

"Congratulations." She turned to face me, still smiling. "You've earned your Dream Orb."

My heart jumped with joy as a smile broke out in my face.

To think that it would actually be here underground. And that there would actually be so much of them in one place like this… unbelievable...

Her staff lit up and a crystal ball-looking object manifested in mid-air. Carefully, I grabbed it with both hands. It was a flawless translucent purple orb, slightly smaller than a basketball.

"Do you know how to use it?" The elf asked.

"Uh, no?" I replied, just realizing the fact.

"It's simple, really. You hug it while you're going to sleep. Continue thinking about the person you want to send a message to and what message would be. Imagine yourself talking to her loud and clear. That way, the message you sent would be the same way."

"Right… thanks!" I flashed her my smile.

A surge of excitement bubbled in my stomach. Finally! I can send my message to Sherry!

"Be careful," she continued. "You only have one use of it. After that, the orb would crack and it would be just a useless glass ornament."

Quickly, I stored it in my bag for safety.

She then moved towards the middle of the clearing, where there stood what looked to be a single wooden gravestone. I followed behind her, just out of curiosity, even though I could very well turn around and leave.

Still, I have to admit. These flowers… they really are beautiful.

"You know, you should've mentioned they glow in the dark. Would make my search much easier."

"I didn't know that. I didn't stay long enough to see her finish her work."

We stopped on the front of the gravestone. The writing was illegible, as it was written in the same elvish character as the ones in the books I'd found.

Behind it were other, similar gravestones. Multiples of it, in fact. They were laid in a row, just like a human cemetery.

"Here lay Primeria. May she rest with the flowers she loved." Ilymhyrra spoke.

"A friend?" I looked at her.

"An acquaintance."

She knelt down and put the flower she had been carrying on the soil. I knelt down as well and did the same thing, before clasping my hands and giving a short prayer. I had no idea about the religion the elves followed, but I felt I had to do it to give respect to the grave.

I noticed the melancholic look Ilymhyrra had. She must feel lonely, seeing her old friend dead and buried like this.

She must be really old after all, despite her youthful appearance.

She stood up, and to my surprise, began to regale me a tale.

"Once, some time ago, though perhaps a long time ago for your kind, this whole region was populated by elvenfolk, separate from your human kingdoms. I visited them then, and I met with a certain elf who loved flowers more than anything else."

"And she's the one who created this flower of yours?"

"Yes. She's a skilled flowercrafter—one who grows new species of flowers."

Flowercrafter? That's a new word.

"I left her before she could create this flower. And I only had the opportunity to return here now, many years later."

"And when you came back, she was already gone, along with her people…" 

Damn, that's depressing. 

"...Wait, doesn't that mean you're gone for hundreds of years?" I looked at her with alarm. "You don't have any time to visit her again all these years?"

"...I was on a journey. A long one, if by your standard."

"And I guess you're not going to elaborate on that."

"No. I'm only telling you the story of this place."

I sighed. Still as difficult as ever. "And the underground village? What's up with that?"

"The Halfbloods lived there. Elves with non-elf blood in them. In your language, they would be your ordinary elves, while we, what you call high elves, are the Purebloods. Purebloods didn't want to share their forest with Halfbloods, so they put them in underground caves like these."

Discrimination, huh? I know high elves view normal elves as beneath them, but this is something else.

"She never left this place. Said that she couldn't feel calm if she had to live with the humans. So she and a handful of other Halfbloods simply endured it, until the day they died. Their lifespan was much less than us Purebloods after all."

That explains the grave. “And the Purebloods?”

“I’m not sure. Perhaps they decided they didn’t want to live so close to humans, so they left for the far north where the Timeless City is.”

“Timeless City?”

"The capital of the high elves. Inside what you call the Forbidden Land."

Ah, that mysterious place no one ever returns from.

I turned back to look at the graves one last time. I just hoped that these people could rest in peace, in whatever afterlife existed in this world, if it truly existed at all.

"Do elves have their own god?" I decided to ask. "Us humans have the Saint and the Heavenly Dragon and all."

"We worship no one. We instead revere the Timeless Queen, our Elder of Elders. There's no need for a deity when you're immortal. At least, that's what they believed at the Timeless City."

Hmm, she has a point. Fear of death has always been one of the driving forces for religion to exist. Or so I heard.

"Is that all?" She gave me an annoyed glance. "If it is, then you should leave this place. I'll stay here for a bit."

"Well, I still got a lot of questions to ask to be honest. But since you clearly don't want to answer them, then I'll just shut my trap and leave." 

I gave her a smile before I summoned Earth Sprite, ordering her to carry me upwards and dig through the ceiling.

"Hey, uh, thanks again. You sure you don't want the gold?"

"Keep it. If you're still going to the Demon Continent, then you'll probably need it. I have no need for gold."

Yeah, I can imagine that.

"Good luck with the flowers!" I waved my hand as my summon carried me upwards with a pillar of mud.

And so ended my first meeting with a high elf. And I had to say, she somehow both met and not met my expectations at the same time.

For guys who like flat-chested elf kuudere, she’d be up there pretty sure.

---------

It didn’t take long until Earth Sprite brought me back to the surface. The cave wasn’t really that deep. It was mostly big horizontal-wise.

It was nighttime outside. Thankfully however, no blizzard this time.

Before I dismissed the sprite however, she decided to ask me something first.

“Master, what was that place? The soil there… it’s overflowing with mana.” She looked at me with a slight hint of worry in her eyes.

Hmm, that might be why those flowers only grew in abundance there. But why would the soil have so much Mana in the first place?

...Wait. Don't tell me… those elven corpses…

"Master?"

"A-ah, right. Don't worry about it." I patted her head. "It's just an elven graveyard."

As usual, I gave her a hug before dismissing her.

I then promptly made my way back to town. I wasn't going to do the whole orb thing out here. Too risky. Can't focus when you're wary of monsters.

Not to mention that I still had yet to formulate a good message to send.

--------

"Hey, kid! Where have you been?"

Right when I entered the inn (it was Oaken Hospitality, the same one from before), I heard the all-too-familiar loud voice of Miss Innkeeper.

"Your two girlfriends are looking for you, you know." She folded her arms under her chest. "Hmph, really, just a brat yet you're already fooling around with girls like that."

"Haven't I already told you to tell them that I found the elf?"

"Sure, but they kept asking for you almost every day, thanks to you not telling them when you're going to get back." She huffed.

Heh, they must be worried about me. 

"Stop smirking and sign here. You’re going to rebook the same room, right?”

“I guess I am.” I gave her a smile, taking the quill from the inkstand.

--------

That night, I decided not to use the orb. Instead, I burned the midnight oil, as I tried putting the words I wanted to say to her in paper first.

"Dear Sherry, I want to inform you of—"No, that's too formal.

"Hey Sherry. Got some bad news to tell you." No, that's too casual.

Like a little boy who's writing a love letter to his crush, I kept writing and rewriting the parchment, crossing out huge swathes of letters as I remained unsatisfied with the words. The more I wrote the more I realized that just sending out a one-sided message like this wouldn’t be sufficient to tell her about everything that had happened since she was away.

In the end, I fell asleep on my desk, with not a single coherent message to send.

---------

The next morning, as I had my breakfast at the inn in its small dining hall, I saw two familiar figures barged into the room, heading straight towards my table.

"You got quite the nerve, just disappearing like that without telling us." Anne spoke first. Judging by her hands-on-waist pose, she clearly wasn't in one of her good moods.

"Yeah, what's up with that? At least stop by and share the good news with us." Amelie spoke next. She looked just as unhappy as her friend, putting her hands under chest, inadvertently pushing her sizable chest upwards. Quite the welcome sight, after spending a week with the washboard elf.

“Look, I can’t wait for you guys to come back and keep the elf waiting. What if she decided to leave? Then it’d be how many months more of me looking for her.”

“So.” Anne took a seat in front of me, uninvited. “Did you get it? That Orb thing?”

“I did. Haven’t really sent the message yet though.”

“Oh? I thought you'd immediately do it since it's your girlfriend and all."

The bitter tone in her voice didn't escape my notice.

"Uu, I forgot that you already had one…"

A melancholic expression appeared on Amelie's face as she touched her index fingers together. She too had taken a seat on the table.

"S-so." She looked up with upturned eyes. "You're really going to leave soon, huh, now that you got the orb?"

"Yeah, I would. Like I've said before, I'm heading northeast to the port town of Vermouth to cross over to the Demon Continent.”

“Y-you know, we can travel together there if you want," Amelie replied.

Only to be immediately interrupted by her friend.

"You realize we're going to go to the west after this, right?" Anne sent her a glare.

"W-we can just ask Anton to—"

"No. If you want to be with him so badly, then just leave and go with him. Not that he'd want to though, seeing how he already has a girlfriend and all."

There it is. That bitter tone again.

"Charles." She looked at me straight in the eye. "Don't waste that orb. Tell her everything you want to tell her, got it? No holding back. No girl likes it when their boyfriend hides things from her."

"...Got it. I promise I'll do just that."

A smile formed in her lips. It was a happy smile, and yet, I could sense some sadness behind it.

I realized then what she felt.

She had accepted her defeat.

--------

I spent the day stocking up on supplies for my journey. I was planning to depart as soon as I sent my message to Sherry, which I was confident enough that I could do this night. Amelie decided to accompany me. Or rather, she selfishly decided to take me to accompany her shopping. Normally, I would have rejected her, but I thought since I would probably never see her again after I left, I decided to go along and humor her. The poor girl clearly was sad about my departure. Anne on the other hand said that she was going to help Anton with a little in-town quest, so she wasn’t able to come with us.

I was quite surprised by that decision. She basically just gave her rival a date with her crush.

She really must have given up on me then.

And so, here I was, strolling with her on tow to the shopping district. Her left arm was linked with my right, making my upper arm brush with her soft breasts many times as we walked.

Aah, boobs really are the best…

It was enough to make any thoughts of my message to Sherry disappear into the wind.