Fully Prepared On This Side Too

“What?! The elves are coming?!”

When I went to Guinea to explain, Wheel-san looked genuinely shocked and dropped back down onto all fours.

So when you’re surprised, you go back to walking on four legs, Wheel-san…

“Yes… it seems like it happened because I planted too many World Trees, and I’m sorry…”

“Well, there’s no need to worry about it. Complaining just because something the elves hoarded started flowing elsewhere was wrong from the start. Besides, if we made a Sanctuary, the elves would’ve found out sooner or later anyway. In fact, we should be glad they came at a time when we’d been able to get plenty of preparations in order.”

“That… might actually be true.”

If the elves had come to Guinea before my Wood Golem defense setup was ready, they might have resorted to force.

Listening to Miria-san and the others, I’d realized that whether you were demi-human or not, the law of the jungle didn’t change.

It was a harsh reality, but unless we made them understand we had power too, we wouldn’t even be allowed to sit at the negotiating table.

“For now, let’s deploy a large number of Wood Golems.”

Ever since we decided to accept Miria-san and the other dark elves, I’d been using any leftover Smile Points on Wood Golems whenever possible.

My current Tree Planting status looked like this.

The reason I was keeping that many Smile Points in reserve was to use the Frazard Wood Golem in an emergency.

Just deploying one cost 7,000 points, but at present—excluding our top two, Nadja and Aira—it was the strongest fighting force in my domain.

If I could summon that just by spending points, there was no reason not to stockpile them.

Still, that stockpiling had slowed my leveling significantly, so once this elf issue was settled, I wanted to raise my level to 10 at least.

“For now, let’s put out a huge number of Wood Golems—partly as a warning.”

“Yeah. Elves love trees so much people even call them tree folk. Guinea probably wouldn’t get along with them from the start, so we needed to take precautions.”

Guinea, under Wheel-san’s earth affinity, had a thriving mining industry.

Right now we were smelting iron ore using the coal and coke Wheel-san produced through the Sanctuary, but once production scaled up, we’d eventually need to use lumber too.

It was a well-known story that elves who tried to protect trees didn’t get along with dwarves who cut trees down to do smithing.

Wheel-san probably knew he wouldn’t be met with friendly faces.

I hesitated, but simply lining golems up outside would be nothing more than intimidation, so I decided to place as many Wood Golems as possible inside Guinea Village instead.

Since everyone was already used to Wood Golems, the villagers accepted them without any particular panic, which was a relief.

And while I prepared, producing as many Wood Golems as I could, my Tree Planting level rose before the elves arrived.

“Tree Planting has reached a required threshold. Level up! The functionality of Tree-to-Tree Teleportation has been unlocked! Tree-to-Tree Teleportation has evolved into Group Tree-to-Tree Teleportation!”

The new power I gained was Group Tree-to-Tree Teleportation.

It seemed the previous limit—only up to three people including me—had been greatly relaxed.

Amazingly, when combined with the power of Tree Guardian Beasts, I learned it was possible to teleport all one hundred villagers of Guinea instantly.

So I hurriedly created an enormous House Tree that everyone could run into during an emergency, and then had Maton prepare various things so we could accept them afterward.

And just as those preparations were finally complete, the elf investigation team arrived in Guinea—.