Chapter 106: Chapter 100 – Migratory Fairies

"Mmmm. Not only do you give good treats to the spirits, but to us too. Yum."

At some point, a little fairy girl appeared beside me. She had a plate of flan levitating in front of her as she ate spoonful after spoonful of it in quick succession. The spoon she used resembled one of those disposable coffee stir spoons that some places used, but the handle was only half the length.

(Wait, she's one of the elders, isn't she?)

The dissonance from her appearance with her title confused me once again.

I, on the other hand, was relaxing while watching the excited fairies enjoying their treats now that they all managed to get a share.

"I didn't think it was fair that only the spirits got treats from me."

"What's not fair, is that you didn't get anything to enjoy during our feast."

Aurae waved her spoon at me. The tip wobbled a bit due to the length of the stem.

"I'm enjoying enough. All your dancing is pretty fun to watch. If I was a bit smaller, I would've joined in."

To be frank, I really would've. But the difference in size between our races was a bit too much of an obstacle to fly together within the confines of this forest's canopy.

"To take back as much as is taken. To create as much as is destroyed. To give as much as is received. Such is our way."

"...A decent philosophy."

I wasn't much of a believer in maintaining a zero sum game, but the determination to prevent things from falling below the established status quo was commendable to a certain degree.

"Personally though, when I receive ten, I prefer to return eleven when possible."

A positive sum game was my sort of philosophy, and it was the natural state of things as long as people worked together rather than against each other.

"Even more then that we must give you something in return."

"I'm already receiving this great show. You don't need to give me anything."

"When you receive ten, you give back eleven. That means we should give you twelve, doesn't it? Or at least one in gratitude?"

"Err, that's..."

She got me there. It was probably my own fault for half-heatedly spouting a philosophy I had heard from a show long ago.

"Plus we owe you for the rude treatment we gave you in the beginning."

While they certainly were rude when we first met, and they even attacked me at first, twice, but to be honest I couldn't blame them. A strange vampire had suddenly showed up out of nowhere at their new home. Considering how it looked like vampires had a bad reputation in general, it wasn't too strange of a response.

It was nothing more than annoying as well, and the results had been more than satisfying.

Aside from the question of why they were here in the first place.

"In that case how about you answer some questions in exchange?"

"Huh?"

The small creature tilted her head as she turned to face me. With some pudding on her cheek that continued to wobble for a few seconds after her sudden movement.

"Why are you guys here? I'm sure there wasn't a fairy settlement in this area a few months ago. Don't you have a country far to the south?"

"..."

The elder looked down at her lap as I waited for her answer.

"Those stupid, stuck-up elves."

"?"

I wasn't quite sure how elves connected with anything, but I waited for Aurae to continue.

"The elves only see the spirits as tools to use for their spirit magic."

"Okay?"

I hadn't even heard of spirit magic in the first place. There were plenty of skills I wasn't aware of, but it seemed there was an entire category of magic included within that list.

"But the spirits are friends! They're not things to be used and thrown away!"

There was a tinge of desperation in the little winged folk's voice as the clearness of her eyes grew distorted.

"But the elves won't listen. They never listened. They loved their spirit magic too much, but they don't love the spirits nearly enough."

"What is spirit magic anyways?"

For once, it felt like the subject was something that would be normal an average person to not know, so I didn't hesitate to ask.

"Spirit magic is magic that is channelled through a spirit. You form a familiar contract with a spirit, then you can channel spells through them. The familiar spirit carries half the burden of the mana cost and control for the spell, so spirit magic users can use more powerful spells than normal mages."

"Sounds pretty convenient, but I'm surprised that the spirits would form contracts so easily."

The fluffballs were pretty free-spirited in nature. While Claret initiated the familiar contract herself, that was only due to how I seemed to be connected to her former master. I hadn't formed a contract with any other spirit, and none of them seemed concerned about such a thing either.

"The younger ones will do it for a treat."

"...I see."

I could believe that. It felt like the sort of thing they would do if you offered a deal like that. As short-sighted as it was, it was completely within their nature to take up such a deal without considering the consequences.

"And there's that many of the younger ones? I thought spirits could live for hundreds of years?"

"They can live for thousands if given the chance. But most die early so most spirits you see are the young ones."

"I see."

(So they were all kids then?)

I couldn't help but think of the entire deal as child slavery. Then again, the elves probably saw it more like taming wild animals, so it severely depended on the perspective.

For me though, I didn't like it.

But it wasn't like it sounded entirely bad.

"But if you took care of your familiar then it would be a mutually beneficial relationship right?"

"Most of the spirit users down south use up their familiar spirits within a few years."

"...Use up?"

(She couldn't mean...)

"If you force your familiar spirit to use more mana than they're fed, they eventually won't be able to sustain their bodies and turn to mist."

"Mist? Are you serious?"

The elder fairy looked me in the eye and gave me a grave nod.

Even if they looked at the fluffballs as animals the same way a tamer would, that treatment was just plain cruel.

I looked up to where Claret was floating around amongst a group of fluffballs. It seemed like she was happily chatting with them, though I couldn't for the life of me figure out what the little guys were saying.

For Claret to be able to understand those random looking fluttering and light pulses, it must have been a spirit thing.

"So when we heard that there was a new place the spirits loved, that was the home of someone important to them, we decided to take as many of the spirits as we could away from the elves and make a new home there."

"I see..."

That made sense. If the fairies loved the spirits and abhorred how they were treated, then it was natural that if they found a good place for them to live, that they'd take as many of them as they could to that new place.

(...Wait a sec.)

"That new place, you mean here?"

"Yup! This place is pretty rich in mana. Though not quite as good as our old home, it's good enough. And even better, the spirits say that it's the home of the person they love!"

"It's the home of..."

As far as I was aware, only Alicia and me lived here. Even Claret and Magni were surprised that I lived around here when I told them.

"You don't mean that the one they love is..."

"That's right! I've never seen the spirits care about a person as much as you!"

"No wait. You're giving me too much credit. There's no way that I could be..."

It wasn't possible. Sure, they seemed to like me a bunch of them followed me around as I travelled, but saying that I was loved by the spirits was probably taking it too far.

"The spirits are fickle creatures. Usually only two or three of them will follow a person they like. Maybe five or six they're especially liked. But you have dozens following you around."

"Yea, but that's because I feed them. They probably just like the fact that I give them free food."

It wasn't much different from feeding stray cats. Of course they'd follow you if you did that.

But shattering my claim, the pink winged one nodded her head.

"That's enough for them. You gave them food and treated them well, and they decided that they liked following you."

"Yea but..."

"Even for us fairies, not many of us have more than a handful of spirits following around. You have us all beat."

*Sigh*

"Alright, fine. So I'm half the reason why you guys decided to settle down here?"

It didn't seem like I was going to be able to convince these guys of anything. Well, having neighbours wasn't really a bad thing though, and they got along really well with the fluffballs as a bonus.

"Yup! So that's why we need you to tell us how to make these delicious things! We need to make more for when everyone else gets here!"

"Well, these flans are just made from milk, eggs, sugar, and usually vanilla for flavour but it looks like it turned out quite decently even without it. Wait, you said there's more coming? How many more?"

"Milk, eggs, and sugar?!"

But ignoring my question, Aurae grabbed her head and dropped her upper body like she had just saw the end of the world.

"There's nowhere to get any of that here! Oh no!"

The other fairies started to gather to the sound of the exclamation, and news of what was said quickly spread, along with a giant wave of devastation as the others similarly fell into a severe depression.

"Umm, there's a dungeon nearby and all of the ingredients can be gotten there."

"REALLY?!"

The elder immediately perked up when I said that, and the others reacted the same in an expanding ripple centred around us.

"Yea. I live inside of a dungeon near here, and all those ingredients can be gotten there."

"Then we can make more of these?! These flans?!"

"Yea."

I leaned back in response to the fairy rushing towards my face and grabbing my nose in both hands. The way her face sparkled joyfully at the news was pretty overwhelming.

"Alright! Then we can make more flans! Enough for everybody when they get here!"

"""Yay!!! More flans! More flans!"""

"Wait, how many more are coming?!"

"Everybody!"

"How many's everybody?!"

I gulped at the thought.

But all I got was a shoulder shrug while the elder's cheeks were puffed up like a hamster's with custard.

(Just how many are going to end up living here?!)

To the south, there was supposedly an entire country of fairies and elves living side by side. Even at a conservative estimate would already put the number in the tens of thousands. It was possible that they could number in the millions, though the population density of the places I had already visited suggested that such numbers wasn't the norm in this world.

Even still, a single dungeon supporting the eating habits of an entire country, even a small one, would be pretty difficult to deal with.

Then again, it didn't have to support them for everything. If the dungeon was used to only gather things that they couldn't get normally around here, then it was possible that the strain wouldn't be too bad.

Though the fairies would have to go gather the materials themselves. There was no way I was going to do all of it for them. Even if I wanted to, I didn't have the time for it.

But Aurae managed to put a not insignificant wound on me with a quick spell, and it wasn't even a light element magic, so it was possible that they had the strength to farm things on their own.

If that was the case, then all I had to do was show them where to farm the needed ingredients and teach them how to make the flan themselves. Making enough flan for an entire country's worth of fairies just wasn't feasible in the first place. Maybe once was fine, but there was no way I was going to make them on a regular basis.

No, even once was pushing things a bit. At the very least, they needed to help pouring the mixture into moulds and baking them. There might have been the joke of making bucket pudding for making a large quantity of flan at once, but that wasn't something practical to eat in the slightest.

"But I'm glad the spirits were right."

I turned to the little winged figure. Her arms hanging limply at her sides as she stared sombrely at her empty plate. I could only presume from her tone that the sombre atmosphere she was exuding not because she had ran out of flan. Or at least it wasn't the only reason.

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"We might have been able to fly over all the most dangerous monsters along the way, but while the spirits said it was safe, there was no way to really know without coming ourselves."

"I was born here, so I don't really know. Though I can understand how it's hard to take the spirits' words at face value."

Those fluffballs probably weren't able to differentiate what would be safe for them who were invisible to anyone without a decent level of [Spirit Perception], and for anyone else.

"You were born here? That explains how you knew it was a safe place to live."

"What do you mean?"

Normally people would just explore everywhere they can, wouldn't they?

Now that I thought about it, it was certainly strange that there wasn't any evidence of civilization in this area. While it could have been just put to chance, it wasn't really a convincing argument. This place was pretty safe, and there was a great dungeon as well. It was actually stranger that there wasn't some sort of large city here already.

"According to legends, the sacred mountain of Hourai was the domain of the gods. The forest protected their home and the powerful monsters within were a warning to any trespassers."

"Huh..."

(So that mountain has a name huh?)

To have thought that it was believed to be a sacred mountain, and I lived inside of it like it wasn't anything special.

"They also said that the fools who didn't turn back would be judged by the gods themselves."

"Wait, what would you have done if that really happened?!"

"Those that survived would go back to warn the rest."

"That's it?"

"Was there anything else we can do? We've been looking for a way for the spirits to get away from those stubborn and foolish elves for so long. We had to take this opportunity."

"I see."

To have thought that they were driven into a corner so badly.

(They really care about the spirits huh?)

Despite how sombre the atmosphere had grown, I couldn't help but let my cheeks rise as I looked up at the fluttering fluffballs. Those guys were probably the most innocent creatures in this world, and they deserved to be treated well.

"Wait, you said gods, but I thought that people believed there was only one god?"

"That's what the church teaches. We fairies don't care what other people say about things. My granny told me, from what her granny told her, and her granny before her, that long, long ago, there were many gods who lived on Hourai Mountain. They watched over the people of light, played with us, and fought beside us against the people of dark."

"So those gods back then walked amongst the people?"

"That's right. But one day, they all just disappeared. Some think that they chose to watch from far away while we solved our own problems while others think that they abandoned us, disappointed that even with their help we couldn't end the great war."

"The great war?"

"The terrible, never ending war between light and dark people."

"The same war from the age when gods walked the land?"

"That's right."

(Seriously?)

"How long has this war been going on for?"

"They say for about as long as the world has existed."

"Continuously?"

"Yes."

"That's..."

(It sounded absurd. There was no way such a long was could exist.)

The war would have ended one way or another at some point. Either one side would have won, or a peace treaty would have been signed. Even if that didn't last, I couldn't see how a single war could have continued throughout all of this world's history.

(Did this world's gods have a hand in prolonging the war?)

For that matter...

"You said the church teaches that there's only one god, right?"

"That's right."

"Then do they just ignore all the other gods or something?"

"The church teaches that there's only one god, but under him were countless heroes. That's why the church raises new heroes all the time to fight in the war."

"The heroes are always part of the church?"

"They are."

That explained why all the stories of heroes I've read sounded like all the heroes were just the church's private hounds. Because it was true.

"You mentioned that the war was between the people of light and people of dark, but do you mean the people from each side of the Abyssal Chasm?"

If I remembered right, Claret had told me that the chasm divided the continent between the land of light and the land of dark. If the war was merely due to that divide, then there was hope if something could be done about that.

"To be exact, the races from each side of the chasm."

"The races?"

"That's right. Like the spirits and us fairies are both light races, while vampires and dragonkin are dark races."

"So this is a racial war then?"

"That's right."

Racial lines were much harder to resolve. And it was much easier to simply point at someone who looked different and declare them as the enemy.

Even despite the peaceful nature of Earth's first world countries, racism was still extremely difficult to stamp out, and even tiny sparks easily caused them to flare up again out of nowhere. History had repeatedly taught us that lesson yet the richest and most affluent people still were unable to learn it properly.

"Is that why you guys attacked us on sight?"

"Sorry."

"No, it's fine. I'm just glad to have figured it out. I was worried that people just universally hated vampires specifically."

When all the information was brought out, it was no wonder that vampires were looked so poorly on. Fundamentally my kind had been at war with the people on this side of the continent for as long as history had been passed down.

It was more like a minor miracle that the people who figured me out up until then hadn't just freaked out and outed me immediately. Even more so that these fairies had accepted me despite having only just met me.

"You're a good vampire! The fact that the spirits like you proves that! And so, we fairies like you too!"

All of a sudden the fairy elder peeked under my hood and stroked my cheek. Despite how tiny her hand was, it felt really warm.

"Thanks."

Before I knew it, my mood had plummeted, yet in an instant this fairy elder that somehow looked like a pre-teen managed to give my emotions a complete 180.

Maybe she really wasn't just an elder for show?

"Now then, about what we owe you."

"No, really, that's not..."

"Shh shh shh shh shh. Even if you don't want it...it doesn't matter. We'll do it anyways."

The tiny elder lightly tapped my cheek with her hand while talking down to me like a child.

Despite the context, the implications of her words sent a small shiver down my spine.

(Fairies really do think differently from anyone else like in the stories.)

Considering all that, all I could do was weakly nod in response.

"Alrighty then! As for what...how about some new clothes? There's a few tailors amongst us. I'm sure one of them can make something better than this ratty robe."

I felt a little insulted at her words as she lightly tugged the hem of my hood, but at the same time I couldn't bring myself to disagree with her assessment. These robes really were poorly made, and frankly it was a small miracle that they had held up for so long.

The weave is inconsistent the colour was a bit splotchy. The fabric was warped and the material had grown thin in some places. If one looked closely, you could even see some small tears here and there as well.

I was well beyond in need of a replacement, and the fact that this was my first line of defence against sunlight and light magic, it was stupid to continue neglecting it if something could be done about it.

"Alright."

With my mind set, I gave Aurae a firm nod.

"That's my girl!"

The fairy gave me a bright smile before looking off to the side.

"Orphne! Hey! Come over here!"

Aurae wildly swung her arm as she called over another fairy. The one to turn towards us was the leader of that patrol group I had first met.

(So her name's Orphne huh?)

"What is...it Elder Aurae?"

The little blue winged one flew diagonally towards us before realizing she shifted too far to one side and corrected. Or rather, over corrected and partially circled around us and a bit under before realizing her mistake and finally arrived in front of us. While slowly sliding upwards.

Her face was quite red as she took a big gulp of whatever was inside that flower head.

"Orphne. Can you take, umm...what was your name again?"

"Scarlet."

Frankly, it was feeling like going nameless had become a trait of mine. Almost everyone I met didn't learn my name until a while after we first met. Sometimes even days.

"Oh, you've got the same name as the legendary saint?"

"Yea, I was named after her."

"Well, you live up to your name."

"Thanks."

"Now, Orphne, can you take Scarlet to our best tailor and have some clothes made for her afterwards?"

"Aye aye!"

The little fairy did a sloppy salute while barely avoiding dropping the flower in her left hand.

"You...!"

"Huh?"

The fairy turned to me and scrunched up her tiny face.

"Vampires can't eat is it?"

"Umm, yea. We can't eat normal foods."

"But they say you drink instead, right?"

"Umm, right. We drink blood instead."

I had a bad feeling about where this was going.

"It's a feast! But if you can't eat drink, then drink!"

She pressed that flower to my face.

The sweet smell of some sort of flower filled my nose along with the scent of alcohol.

"Wait wait! I can't...!"

"No waiting! Drink!"

Taking advantage of the fact that my mouth was open as I protested, she dumped the entire contents of the flower into my unguarded maw.

The entire inside of my mouth started to burn and as I tried to take a breath in shock, the sensation filled my throat, then as I exhaled it consumed my nostrils as well.

Unable to stand it, I ducked my head and did my best to spit out whatever it was that had invaded my face.

"Wah! What a waste! Gimme it if you don't want it!"

It was only after a few more moments of trying to purge the burning sensation in my mouth did I realize that there was a fairy hugging my face inverted while sucking on my distended tongue.

(This...doesn't count as a kiss, right?)

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