New Power

It surprised me how quickly Lulu-san had blended into the village.

“Lulu-chan is such a good girl, you know. Unlike kids these days…”

“Hahaha… but Amiru-chan is doing her best in her own way too. She’s younger, so we have to be patient and watch over her in the long run.”

“I suppose you might be right, yeah.”

She seemed to get along especially well with the village elders, and by now Lulu-san had become a kind of bridge between the older folks and the younger ones.

And maybe because her sensibilities were youthful, it looked like she also had passionate support from the young girls.

That “fashion boss” title was no empty boast.

“But Lulu-san is amazing—her age is way more than an old man like me—”

“…(glare)”

“N-not a word. I said nothing.”

Apparently, talking about Lulu-san’s age was strictly forbidden.

Anyone who carelessly let something slip seemed to end up in a situation where they had to keep their head down around the village for a while.

No, seriously—Lulu-san’s influence in Tree Village was way too high…?

And as for Miria-san, she was incredibly popular with the men.

In a slightly different way than Lulu-san, she had also become the village darling.

Miria-san looked like a stunning woman dressed as a man.

Her eyes were sharp, her posture straight, and at her waist she carried a fine sword.

The face she showed in front of everyone was so dignified it felt like a completely different person from the one who had been sobbing in front of me.

“Miria-san, like this?”

“No, that’s not it. With that, your body’s axis is wavering. More like this—so your body stays straight—”

Just like the time she slipped through the barrier and appeared in front of me before Nadja could even react, her physical abilities were extremely high.

Dark Elves were descendants of a people called the Firstborn Elves, a race that once wielded powerful magic with ease.

They had lost the blessing of the World Tree, so their power had diminished greatly—but apparently, even now, almost all of them could still use magic.

Among their specialties, Dark Elves were particularly adept at enhancement magic for the body.

The secret behind her astonishing burst speed had been magic.

She made full use of that strength, and she had naturally ended up in a position where she taught combat to the guards and young people in town.

Right now, she was in the middle of an enthusiastic lesson.

“Like this, and grip it deeper…”

“Y-yes, ma’am!?”

Miria-san layered her hands over his from behind and corrected his posture and sword grip.

The villager boy, letting her do as she pleased, had gone stiff with tension.

Since this kingdom was largely fair-skinned, their impression of dark-skinned people wasn’t very good.

But Miria-san had been very beautiful to begin with, and by eating the World Tree’s fruit every day, her skin tone had slowly begun to lighten.

Simurg-san said it would take decades, but watching her like this, it looked like in just a few more months she might not look that different from an ordinary elf.

With gorgeous, close-quarters personal instruction available for free, Miria-san’s training sessions had become wildly popular.

Amazingly, lots of women applied too, and the ratio of men to women taking the lessons was about six to four.

Even the former bandit guards took part in Miria-san’s instruction.

They could now fully handle Element Fruit, but Element Fruit wasn’t something they could carry infinitely.

Since they needed to conserve fruit at times, sharpening their close-combat ability certainly wasn’t a bad idea.

“…? Is something wrong?”

“N-nothing at all!”

Even seeing the villager boy’s face bright red, Miria-san showed absolutely no sign of noticing anything.

Apparently, she was extremely dense.

She didn’t notice people’s affection—almost not at all.

She was careless about her own appearance too, and it felt like she simply didn’t care how others saw her.

Maybe because Dark Elves lived many times longer than humans, her sense of things like that was completely different from ours.

This might just be a cultural difference.

Anyway, even though the two of them had more or less settled into their roles in the village, I naturally still had them properly carry out their duties managing the World Tree.

Along with that, we decided to gather the World Trees into a single area and create a World Tree grove.

Thanks to that, management became much easier, and now Miria-san and Lulu-san were able to handle it without issues by taking turns.

And perhaps to earn even a little goodwill from Miria-san, the number of people volunteering to guard the World Tree had also been rising lately.

It was a shame she was just happy to have earned the villagers’ trust, without realizing their true motives.

My smile points had been nearly wiped out from the Tycoon Wolf subjugation, but recently there hadn’t been many situations that required points besides the Dark Elves’ visit, so they had been steadily building back up.

Thanks to the powerful trump card of synthesizing an Element Golem, I finally had a way to fight—but while it was certainly strong, it was inefficient.

So I couldn’t just spend points recklessly, and I diligently saved them up—like a housewife carefully tucking away her husband’s earnings into a dresser.

The fact that I could now accumulate smile points from both Guinea and Tree Village.

And the fact that everyone’s gratitude toward me seemed to have grown.

With the synergy of those two factors, I could now receive about seven hundred points per day.

Since it took seven thousand points to deploy a Frazard Wood Golem, that meant one Frazard every ten days.

But between making golems for security and producing Element Fruit to expand our equipment, the points didn’t build up as quickly as I’d expected.

When I finally reached seven thousand points, I decided to focus on Tree Planting again.

My goal was just one thing.

To level up my Tree Planting level—something I hadn’t been able to do because I’d had too much else going on.

After I planted around one hundred fifty trees, a panel of light appeared in front of me for the first time in a while!