18 – Dreyah
“Druid sir! You can wash yourself here! There is nothing dangerous around, so please relax!”
“Ah. Thank you.”
“hahahaha! You can speak casually to me! I’m still young, you know. That would make me more comfortable too.”
“Fine. Then you can talk comfortably too.”
“No way! Then go wash yourself thoroughly!”
“……”
The high elf who guided me disappeared like the wind after getting a one-sided informal speech from me.
His name was definitely ‘Ridin’, right?
I guess that level of sociability is necessary to work under Shiz.
I chuckled and started to take off the clothes and armor I was wearing.
I had to take them off anyway, whether I washed my body or did the laundry, since they were dirty with goblin blood.
[Hey! Why are you taking them off all of a sudden?!]
That’s when the Pii I had put down on the floor shouted at me, covering his eyes.
Why is he acting like that?
I stopped lowering my pants and asked him in a crouching posture.
“Why? Don’t I have to take them off to wash?”
[Don’t you feel ashamed? Why are you stripping in front of me?!]
Huh? What? This is an unexpected reaction.
I cautiously asked him a question that was hard to mention at this point.
“Pii, tell me if I misunderstood something. You’re not a girl, are you?”
[Yes! Can’t you tell by looking?!]
“What, tree spirits have genders too?”
[Why! Do you want me to show you my genitals?! Will you believe me then?!]
“…….”
I was stunned by the shocking fact.
The tree spirit also had a gender, and even more surprisingly, Pii was female.
But what does it mean to show the female organ?
That point started to bother me a lot, but I shook my head and cleared my mind of any distractions.
“Hmm….”
I don’t know how to accept this.
I was in a serious dilemma, holding onto my pants.
Should I take them off? Or not
The clothes made of leaves were still intact, but they were thin to begin with, so it didn’t seem to be much of a problem.
I sat in the shallow pond and held Pii at a suitable height.
If I didn’t hold him up, he would have drowned in the water.
[Tsk! I don’t know what you’re so proud of, throwing off your clothes like that!]
“You haven’t seen my pride and joy in detail yet.”
[Oh, fine, just don’t get up!]
I sprinkled water over Pii’s head and chuckled.
Then, I heard a soft and languid voice from somewhere.
“Yes~ don’t get up.”
I turned around in surprise.
In the middle of the wide pond, there was a huge rock. On top of it, an elf girl was sitting.
Her long green hair stretched over the moss and her cute pointed ears. And her half-closed light green eyes and small height of a elementary school student.
The girl looked somewhat mysterious, as if she was about to fall asleep any moment, while looking at me.
“It’s obvious that you’re small~ why bother showing off?”
But contrary to the mysterious atmosphere, her words were cheeky and rude.
What? What’s small?
I couldn’t believe what that tiny brat was saying.
My male pride was hurt, and I opened my mouth with a stern expression.
“Little girl. You’ll get in trouble if you talk like that.”
I didn’t know her exact age since she was an elf, but she looked young, so I thought this much scolding would be okay.
I continued to speak to the girl, hoping to clear up the intolerable misunderstanding.
“What kind of nonsense is that? You’re the one who’s small.”
“Hmm~?”
But the girl’s reaction was somehow lukewarm.
At this point, she should have been screaming at me, but instead she just gave me a look that said ‘Is this guy crazy?’
I felt like something was going wrong.
As I sensed the danger and prepared to get out of the pond, the girl who was looking at me with interest spoke to me softly.
“You think I’m small? That’s the first time I’ve heard that~.”
The girl pointed to the sky with a slow hand gesture.
I followed her white finger and looked up.
The vast sky was filled with the sight of the gigantic world tree that stood firmly.
“I’m the biggest in this world, you know~.”
The girl flicked her finger lightly as she finished speaking.
– Snap!
At that moment,
A pitch-black darkness descended over the entire forest.
“……What?”
I was too shocked to speak.
I stared blankly at the sky in the darkened woods.
The sun was hidden and out of sight. Only a dark ceiling was visible above the forest.
The world tree that had been letting the sunlight through withdrew its grace and exuded a sense of oppression.
The darkness that descended on the great forest was due to the anomaly that struck the world tree.
“Did you get a big surprise?”
As the girl spoke, the sunlight began to fall on the great forest again.
A girl who could freely control the world tree as if it were her own body, and who claimed to be the biggest in this world.
I lowered my creaking head and looked at Pii.
Pii, who met my eyes, smiled and nodded his head and shouted.
[Hello! Miss Dreiya!]
Dreiya.
The name of the world tree that looked over the great forest.
* * *
“So. Who’s the little one now?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Stand up and let me see how big you are.”
“I’m really sorry.”
“Not standing up?”
“I am, but….”
I apologized to Dreiya over and over again as I sat in the pond.
I tried to scold the world tree, which was kilometers high, for being a little one.
If the high elves had been watching, they would have surely executed me for blasphemy.
“Well, whatever~ It’s partly my fault for hiding my power, so I won’t make a big deal out of it.”
Fortunately, Dreyia forgave my rudeness generously.
I felt like I had come back from the dead after seeing her transcendent performance just before.
As I let out a small sigh of relief, Dreyia lay down on the rock and said with annoyance.
“By the way, your mana is really dirty~ How many trees did you cut down? You, the former lumberjack and druid candidate.”
I felt like I was going to die again after coming back to life.
The World Tree in front of me knew that I was a lumberjack.
And that I was a lumberjack with a lot of experience in cutting down a whole forest.
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I felt a dizzying sensation as if my blood was freezing, and I asked cautiously with a trembling voice.
“H-how did you know my identity?”
Dreyia let out a long yawn and opened her mouth.
“Where do you think you received the trust? It was inside my main body~ I heard everything.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t worry about telling the elves~ I’m too lazy for that.”
“T-thank you very much.”
“But can you change your attitude a bit? I don’t understand why you’re more afraid of me than of Trias.”
I was definitely more intimidated by Dreyia than by the goddess of nature right now.
It must have been because I was shocked by her first impression.
I coughed a few times and tried to muster up some courage to change my attitude.
“Ahem. Then from now on, let’s be more casual….”
“Do whatever you want~ As long as you don’t get buried in the ground, I won’t eat you. But can you please put on some clothes? The tree spirits are also wearing clothes, so how long are you going to stay naked?”
“Ah, okay.”
I picked up the pants that I had taken off and started to wash them roughly in the water.
Then, the beep that I had put down seemed to have remembered something and asked Dreiya.
[Oh! Dreiya! Do you know how to purify dirty mana?]
It was a question that Dreiya would likely know the answer to.
I put on the wet pants with difficulty and listened to Dreiya’s reply.
Dreiya thought for a moment and opened her mouth.
“Hmm~ Do you want to purify the woodcutter’s mana?”
[Yeah! I’m a druid candidate after all, I can’t leave him like that.]
“That’s true~ Well, there is a way. I don’t know if it will work or not, since no one has tried it before.”
[What is it?]
Dreiya, who was lying on the rock, scooped up some water from the pond and answered.
“The blood of a tree spirit must be cleansed with the blood of a tree spirit~ If you drink the sap of the spirit tree, you might see some effect.”
[Sap?]
“Yes~ The sap of the spirit tree is rich in clear mana. If you keep pouring clean water into muddy water, won’t it eventually become clear? It’s similar to that.”
[Oh!]
Pouring clean water into muddy water.
In other words, she was telling me to flush out the dirty mana filter with clean mana.
Then I needed the sap of the spirit tree.
I naturally looked at the tree spirit, Pii.
Pii didn’t seem to notice my gaze and asked Dreiya again.
[Then where do you get the sap?]
Dreiya smiled as if she found him cute and pointed at him.
“Are you also a spirit tree? Where are you going to extract the sap from?”
[Huh?]
Pii looked at me with a surprised reaction.
He met my eyes and thought hard before he said.
[You’re going to feed my sap to this guy?]
I nodded.
Dreiya nodded too.
Then Pii’s face fell.
[This feels bad somehow……]
It was the moment when Pii turned into a water dispenser.