Chapter 16: Checking up on Mare

The sun was already touching the horizon as the sky became dyed red and the day was about to end. Unlike the demon hunter troupe that had to take into account the amount of time it would take them to get back to the tribe, the druids of the ritual site did not have this problem as the site was a good fifteen minutes' walk away from the cave and was through relatively safe territory.

By now, they normally would have returned to the tribe like the hunter troupe, but because honing their skills was so important to the survival of the tribe, they sometimes stayed in the ritualist site until the very last moment. Today appeared to be one of those days as none of the druids had returned yet, and it seemed like they might even spend the night there.

Such things had happened before when one of the druids was close to a breakthrough in his magic training. At such an event, the druids would stay at the ritualist site to welcome a new powerful member of their group into the fold.

However, time was of the essence today as the grand elder of the tribe was waiting for Ainz and the twins to come back and further discuss the terms of a possible alliance with him, thus Ainz decided to set off with Hamsuke, Aura, and Camus who was still looking shell-shocked at Aura all the way as if he had trouble believing that she was real.

Before they left his vice-captain had told him just a fraction of what had happened throughout their day but that alone made his hair stand on end.

On Hamsuke's back, the group made it to the ritualist site in a matter of minutes as they quickly came to see a patch of forest that seemed even darker than the rest of Lodos.

Lodos by itself was a rather dark forest; with its dense growth and vegetation it allowed for very little light to shine through the treetops and as such gave all who waked on the ground a feeling of mystery.

But even so, this darkness was nothing compared to the part of the forest where Ainz and the rest now stood. The trees here were almost umber, as were their leaves. If the other parts of the forest allowed for very little light to pass through, then this part of the forest allowed no light at all to reach the ground. In here, the thick black leaves of the forest blotted out all sunlight, with the only source of light being swarms of strange bugs that resembled fireflies and gave off an eerie green glow as they swarmed around the trees.

The druids had chosen this location precisely because of the darkness, as to dark elves light was merely a disturbance in refining their magic arts. For them, darkness and a close connection to nature were the most essential parts of advancing their magic. For this reason, they had developed a simple training method.

The dark elves hollowed dead trees in this part of the forest and trained inside of them as they tried to communicate with nature. They repeated this process for years until they finally gained a connection, and through it practiced and mastered their spells. This was how they had trained their druids for centuries.

If a druid from the human world saw this, they would gasp at the sheer stupidity of this method. This training method would require decades for a person to be able to cast so much as a first tier spell. Human druids, like elven druids, of course knew about how making a connection to nature was an essential part of becoming a true druid, however they instead did not wait until they had formed this connection and immediately began practicing spells.

Establishing a connection to nature merely meant that they would be able to use spells more freely and deplete less mana whilst casting them. Compared to the decades that one had to spend to gain this connection, it was much simpler to skip this step and start practicing spells in the first place. They would never be able to understand the elves, who had such long lifespans and could afford to do it this way.

Having said all that, recently there was talk in the highest circles of the dark elf tribe that their druids likewise should learn spells straight away due to the pressing threat of the demonic beasts and their kin. But this was quickly rejected by the clans, which valued tradition above all else and could not allow the prestige of this connection to be reduced simply because times were tough.

In truth it was quite a worrying matter when the grand elder who was supposed to be their leader proposed one thing but was denied by the major clans who officially are meant to obey the elder without question. This was just one of the many problems that the tribe faced.

Ainz had heard about all this before as he had questioned Camus about it while he was touring the tribe after his victory. It was always useful to know as much as possible about your future business partners before making a deal with them. This applied both to his world and this one.

As the group walked into the dark part of the forest, they swiftly moved to the innermost part of the ritualist site where the druids would be. But before they could reach the central altar around which the druids trained, they saw a little elf girl sitting solemn-faced on the ground and leaning against one of the umber trees. Her eyes were devoid of life as she both had and did not have a face to speak of simply because she looked so gloomy.

Upon seeing her, Camus froze up as he had no troubling recognizing her and couldn't believe what he saw. The single most pugnacious girl in the dark elf tribe, Mica…

Was reduced to a state of utter depression and lifelessness.

Camus cast off all other thoughts as he jumped off Hamsuke and ran towards her and promptly grabbed her by the shoulders.

"Oi, Mica! What happened? What's wrong with you? Did something happen with that dark elf kid? Oi, answer me!"

He might have his disputes with her, but this girl was still a future pillar of the tribe and the granddaughter of the tribe's elder. No matter what, it was better if she was cheerful and healthy than depressed and sad like right now. If something happened to her, the amount of problems that the tribe would face would be no laughing matter.

Especially him since he was technically her guardian. With the elder busy he had been assigned to watch over her as much as he could. Even though she didn't really need his protection, if something happened it would still be his fault. Therefor he needed to get her out of this slump no matter what!

Finally, she looked up at Camus and just as lifelessly as his vice-captain, she responded.

"Ah, it's you Camus. I'm such a lowly existence, I didn't think you'd notice me."

Seeing her like this, Camus almost experienced Deja vu as she was mirroring his vice-captain. But thinking about what he had heard was the cause of that, he froze up as he still had trouble believing his words.

"Tell me… what happened?"

Hearing those words, Mica teared up and almost began crying as she pointed with her finger to the place where the core area of the ritualist site was and shouted.

"That happened!"

In the core of the ritualist site stood a massive altar made of stone that was supposedly built by the oldest ancestors of the tribe when they migrated here over six hundred years ago. This altar strengthened the learning process of and the connection to nature that druids had. And had some other secret uses that few knew about.

Here the druids would sit around the altar and at first try to gain a connection from it and then later build on that connection inside the dead umber threes. Though this process may seem tedious to elves it was a holy ritual capable of being called their tribal legacy.

Upon looking over there, the group saw the grand altar which represented the core area of the ritualist site and as expected, all of the druids were there gathered around the altar but…

Something about their pose was quite strange.

It would have been normal if they were just sitting around the altar, but they were all actually kowtowing with their heads lowered in the direction of the altar. Not a single one dared to move a single inch as all were motionless… except one.

One dark elf was not only not kowtowing in the direction of the altar, but was actually sitting on top of it and was looking around with a pained expression.

"Haah, to think that something like this would happen."

Ainz couldn't help whispering those words as he saw just who was sitting on top of the altar.

Ainz didn't even need to guess who that dark elf was as he had figured something like this could happen.

To him, it was almost no surprise that the one the druids seemed to be kowtowing to…

Was Mare.

AA: who's got two thumbs and had to buy a new PC? *points to himself* THIS GUY! Anyways latest chapter is ready and now that I have a new pc I can start writing again.