Fem-san

After that, I used Tree-to-Tree Transfer and decided to guide Fem-san to Magros Volcano.

Nadja said she would accompany her and explain things about the inside of the dungeon, so I decided to leave it to her this time.

“This is also the duty of a future… b-bride, after all!”

When she said it like that, I had no choice but to trust her and send her off.

After parting with Nadja, Aira and I decided to head to Miria-san’s place.

“—gh—ah————i————!”

“It seems to have become quite a commotion…”

Just as Aira said, even though we were still quite far from the dormitory, we could already hear voices making a fuss.

Could something dangerous have happened…? My walking speed naturally grew faster, and pulled along by that, my heart began to hurry too.

“—Wh-what in the world should I do—”

Miria-san seemed to be in quite a panic, and as I approached, I could hear her desperate voice.

I knocked twice, then raised my voice so that she would not feel anxious.

“Aira-san, it’s Woody!”

“W-Woody-sama! Thank goodness you have come! P-please look at this!”

Beyond Miria-san, who had sweat running down her forehead… there was some mysterious creature I could not properly describe in words.

“…”

Its appearance was a ball of fur.

Its color was pale red, and it looked like a fluffy ball of fur with eyes attached to it just like that.

Its eyes were round and cute, its fur was fluffy, and it had a charm that made me want to touch it without thinking, but what in the world was this…?

“Woody-sama, this is—a spirit!”

“Huh, this is a spirit!?”

As I looked at the spirit, which was very different from the image I had, my mouth opened without thinking.

Even I knew what spirits were.

Simply put, they were a kind of natural phenomenon.

When mana took some kind of form and gained a material body, those things were generally called spirits.

In stories, spirits were often depicted as beings that took human form, animal form, or imitated living creatures.

At the very least, I had never heard that spirits were round balls of fur like this.

“…?”

The ball of fur floated softly into the air and spun around.

Then, just as I thought it had looked toward me—it came flying at me with incredible speed!?

Aira jumped out to protect me, who was taken aback, but the ball of fur dodged her with quick, fluffy movements… and landed on top of my head.

“Meow…”

A light impact went poof… but that was all.

Its body was shockingly light, and I could not feel any weight at all.

The spirit sat on top of my head, then sprawled limply across it.

“Myaa…”

“Its cry… is kind of like a cat’s…?”

The words that came out of me in response to the sudden situation were terribly foolish.

“—And that is what happened.”

“Hmm, hmm. In other words, you thought the World Tree had shone, and then in the next moment, a spirit had been born…”

I nodded while listening to Miria-san’s explanation.

One day, all of a sudden, just as they thought the World Tree had shone, this fluffy spirit had been born in the next moment. The dark elves, including Miria-san, who had seen a spirit for the first time, ended up causing a commotion that was twenty percent excitement and eighty percent panic, and even after making a fuss, they had no idea what to do, so they had apparently come to ask for my judgment for the time being.

“If it came out of the World Tree, then it’s probably related to the leyline in some way, I think… For now, shall we go ask Simurg-san and the others about it once?”

“Yes, I believe that would be the safest choice…”

Aira stared at me, then looked at the spirit happily sunbathing on top of my head, and then looked at me again.

“Woody-sama, you seduce all sorts of things, don’t you?”

“Th-that’s a rather loaded way to say it, isn’t it!?”

Apparently, the spirit’s position had become completely fixed on top of my head, so I headed toward the Wind Muscat garden where Simurg-san and the others were likely to be, with the spirit still in tow…

“Hmm, you brought yet another rare thing…”

“A fire spirit, huh? It may have been drawn in by the firewood used for cooking!”

When I went over to them with the spirit on top of my head, the two of them saw through the true identity of this ball of fur in an instant.

As expected of Divine Beasts-sama, I decided to ask them for the details.

“To begin with, there are countless spirits in this world.”

“The ones you can’t see are often called lesser spirits. Basically, spirits are mischievous, just like my brats.”

Spirits were originally masses of mana, and they liked mana.

Therefore, spirits tended to gather in places where mana easily accumulated, such as mana pools and leylines.

Basically, spirits could not be seen, but spirits that had lived for many long years or accumulated a large amount of mana and grown could apparently become visible to other living beings.

“What is sitting on Woody’s head is a small fire spirit.”

“Even at this size, it’s still small?”

“Greater spirits are often bigger than people. In the case of a greater fire spirit, they usually become massively muscular.”

“This child… would become super muscular…?”

Aira stared fixedly at the spirit.

She might have been imagining what the current spirit would look like after it grew.

I grabbed the spirit sitting on top of my head with my hand and stared at it.

“Myaa.”

This child, crying like a cat, would become buff in the future… I could not imagine it at all, but somehow, I felt like I might not like that very much.

“Incidentally, water spirits become beautiful young ladies, and wind spirits become rather androgynous.”

“Then what would earth spirits become?”

“They often become roundish fatties.”

“I will issue an order banning Woody-sama from water spirits.”

“Why!?”

I could not help retorting to Aira’s unreasonable words.

“However, in that case, it may be happier if you take it to a place with a lot of fire. After all, spirits are pleased by places where their own attribute is active.”

“So the place where they appear and the place they like are different.”

“It is likely due to the influence of the World Tree absorbing mana from the leyline. Under normal circumstances, it is not something that happens very often, but…”

“At this place, nothing that happens is surprising!”

Apparently, this place, where there was a Sanctuary nearby and the World Tree was growing rapidly, had become something like a kind of singularity.

Because it had become a mana spot where a large amount of mana gathered, it seemed that it would not be strange even if supernatural phenomena that normally would not occur took place.

Wenti had become something like that now…?

But in any case, if spirits were going to regularly spring up from now on, that was a problem in its own way.

Apparently they were not harmful, but I also felt somewhat reluctant to drive out this cute, squishy little thing…

“Basically, spirits are capricious, but they also grant blessings to humans. For example, places where fire spirits reside do not suffer major fires, and places where water spirits settle are less likely to suffer water shortages. Though, of course, it also depends on the spirit’s rank, so it cannot be said absolutely.”

“I see…”

Apparently, whether spirits lent their power or not depended on their whim, but simply by being there, they were beings that brought blessings.

Incidentally, crooked people could not see them, and they could not touch them either.

Because of that, even people who had played with spirits when they were little often became unable to see them once they grew up.

“You’re kind of amazing, aren’t you?”

“Meow!”

Still making catlike cries, the fire spirit floated gently through the air.

The round ball of fur also somehow looked like a fat cat, and the more I kept looking at it, the more adorable it seemed.

Perhaps recognizing that place as its fixed position, the spirit climbed onto my head and meowed again.

“If an earth spirit appears, I’d be happy if you brought it to Guinea. That would make both me and the spirit happy, and I think the dwarves would probably be pleased too.”

“The dwarves too?”

“In a mine where a spirit settles, magic iron, which is iron containing a lot of mana, starts to be produced. Dwarves like tinkering with magic iron. Also, they’re all basically childish, so they get along well with spirits too.”

“Ah, I feel like I somehow understand that.”

When Wheel-san said that, I remembered the dwarves.

There were moments when their eyes shone like children absorbed in play.

That certainly might be called pure and childish.

—And so, a new spirit-san came to our village.

Wenti would become known as a village where spirits lived, and elves who had shown no sign of coming until now would start flooding in… but that was another story.