"This is a secret art of the elven royal family. It cannot be taught to outsiders. Unless... unless..."

"Oh. Never mind, then."

"Eh? Weren't you just asking for it a moment ago?"

"Sounds like a hassle." Banxia waved his hands. "I only wanted it to carry some clothes anyway. If it's that much trouble, I might as well keep the pack."

"..."

Seeing the young man stride forward without a shred of hesitation, the elf hurried over to block him again.

"Th-then how about this! I'll hire you! As payment for exploring the labyrinth, I'll teach you the spatial secret art. How about that?"

"Hmm..."

"What is there even to hesitate about?! Weren't you just saying you wanted it?!"

"Because looking after the weak is a real pain..."

"The weak..." The elf took a deep breath and pressed a hand to her chest. "I swear upon the honor of the royal family that I will never hold you back. Is that sufficient?"

Only then did Banxia take a proper look at the figure before him.

The elf was no longer in the disheveled state from their first meeting, when she'd been forced into a fight with no time to prepare.

Aside from the hands and head, she was now fully clad in black soft armor imbued with magic resistance. Both shoulders bore armor-like magical vambraces, and the magic tool in her hand was clearly no ordinary item. The bright red gem at her forehead was most likely a protective tool for the mental domain as well.

Taken together, she looked every bit an elven magic-tool warrior, outfitted to an absurdly lavish degree.

That is to say, a magic-tool warrior, not the kind of dual-path magic warrior who cultivated both magic and martial arts the way Banxia did.

"Fine. But once we're inside, you follow my orders. Otherwise, forget it."

"...Mm." The elf turned her head aside, mouth pressing into a slight pout.

As the employer — after paying such an exorbitant hiring fee, to still have to swallow her pride and agree to all sorts of conditions. There probably wasn't a single employer in the whole world as pathetic as her.

...She really was just like a fool.

...

The sky gradually darkened. The two finally arrived near the Lova Labyrinth.

It was a wholly primitive forest. Towering ancient trees blotted out most of the moon, and the roars of wild beasts echoed from deep within from time to time, like warnings to uninvited intruders.

"We rest tonight, enter the labyrinth tomorrow morning." Banxia pulled a tent from his backpack, crouched down, and started setting up camp.

His movements were practiced. A few swift motions had the frame propped up, and he ran a quick check to make sure the ground stakes were secure.

"Oh." The elf nodded. "Then I'll go gather some firewood."

A clear division of labor, it actually looked quite decent.

But just as Banxia reached for the tent's guy ropes, he paused.

"Wait." He called out to the elf, who had already taken several steps away. "Where's your tent?"

"..."

"Hey. I didn't bring two tents."

"I-I'm not sleeping with you! I'll take the night watch tonight!" The elf reacted as though her tail had been stepped on, the tips of her ears flushing red.

"Fine." Banxia nodded, said nothing more, and went back to pulling the ropes.

By the time his tent was pitched, the elf had returned carrying an armful of dead branches. The firewood was stacked neatly in the center of camp.

"This is exactly when the importance of magic tools to a warrior truly shines through." The elf stood with a light chuckle, reaching into her storage space to retrieve a fire-starting magic tool.

Finally, a place where she could actually be useful.

Just as that thought crossed her mind,

Pfft.

A small flame danced up from the young man's fingertip and dropped lightly onto the pile of firewood.

The fire caught quickly, orange-red light spreading through the damp, cold dark.

The elf: "..."

She crouched blankly beside the bonfire, feeling the warmth climb. Several long seconds passed before she looked up, face full of bewilderment. "You can use magic too?"

"A little." Banxia said flatly, rummaging dry rations out of his pack. "Adventuring alone, you can't get far without knowing a few spells."

"...That's fair." The elf was quiet for a moment, then accepted the explanation.

Adventurers spent most of their time surviving in the wild, especially someone like this young man who traveled alone. Without a few basic fire spells, he wouldn't even be able to light firewood on a rainy day. Not everyone was like her, carrying a full arsenal of magic tools to handle nearly any situation.

It was just, this person was already powerful to that degree as a warrior, yet he still had energy left over to study magic on top of it.

Martial strength that high, and he could use magic too. That was simply not fair.

The elf let out a soft sigh.

She hugged her knees and sat by the fire, the firelight turning her hair a brilliant, burning gold against the dark of the night.

Before long, her nose twitched. Then, without her permission, a faint rumble rolled out from her stomach.

Gurgle...

She clapped a hand over her belly. The tips of her ears went hot.

She hadn't eaten properly in several days, not since she'd started tracking him. Today she hadn't touched a single thing all day. Now, warmed by the fire, the hunger hit her like it had been multiplied a hundredfold.

"..."

"...You didn't forget to pack dry rations too, did you."

Banxia had just taken a bite of his warmed meat ration when he noticed the elf beside him staring at him with a pitiful, practically drooling expression.

"How did you even become an adventurer..." He sighed.

"I-I'm not eating something you've already bitten!" The elf turned her face away, tone stiff, but her stomach chose that exact moment to rumble twice more, and whatever dignity she'd scraped together evaporated on the spot.

"What are you thinking?" Banxia glanced at the piece of dried meat in his hand, the one he'd already bitten into. "I don't have the habit of sharing the same piece of jerky with someone."

"I — I know that..."

The elf still sat perfectly upright, as though the posture alone could preserve some last fragment of royal dignity.

But her nose kept twitching, and the small, careful motion of her swallowing, Banxia had already seen all of it, clear as day.

"Here." He pulled an untouched piece of jerky from his pack and held it out.

"Eh?"

The elf stared at it, momentarily stunned.

"What I'm giving you is obviously something I haven't touched." Banxia patted the pack behind him. "And I never said I only brought one piece."

Before they set off, at his specific reminder, the receptionist had loaded the pack with a full week's worth of rations for an ordinary squad. Between the two of them, being a little careful, three or four days was no problem.

"Th-thank you..." The elf took it with a red face and began eating in small, careful bites.

It wasn't heated. It didn't matter. To someone this hungry, it was the best thing she'd tasted in days.

As she ate, she found herself stealing glances at the young man beside her.

This person never stopped complaining with his mouth, and yet when it actually came to doing something, he was always more thorough and considerate than anyone.

She had come here to repay a favor. And now, before that debt was even settled, she'd gone and incurred another one.

"It's fine." Banxia took a bite of his jerky, tone easy. "Since you hired me, I naturally have to bring you back safe and sound — all around."

"Keeping my word is a very important thing to me, you know."

"..."

The fire crackled. The forest night was quiet.

The elf chewed in small bites, watching the young man's face across the fire, features lit and shadowed in the shifting glow, and found herself thinking that the last few days hadn't turned out so terribly after all.

"Want more?"

"Mm..."

➤ Next: Elf: I Am Not a Pervert!

Chapter 78 - Elf: I Am Not a Pervert!

Early the next morning.

The elf blinked open emerald eyes, still half-asleep, and looked at the daylight filtering through the tent flap.

"It's already morning..."

She had insisted on keeping watch alone last night, but the young man had ignored that entirely and stuck to standard adventurer protocol, splitting the night watch in two, each taking a half.

The thought brought an involuntary smile to the elf's lips.

"...Never honest with himself, is he."

Looking down, the elf found a sleeping bag draped over its wearer.

Miss Elf hadn't even packed travel rations, let alone any other wilderness gear, so naturally everything here belonged to the young man.

Most adventurers' equipment was either caked in filth or simply thrown away the moment it got dirty, swapped out for something new. This sleeping bag was spotlessly clean, clearly something its owner took careful, regular care of.

"I wonder if it smells weird. If it does, I'll just wash it for him later." The elf picked it up and, on some strange impulse, brought it to the nose and sniffed.

Maybe from years of use, a faint but distinct scent lingered in the fabric, something that was unmistakably his.

"My dear Miss Elf employer, the sun's already burning your backside. Time to get up and explore the labyrinth—"

The young man yanked the tent flap open.

"Hey. What are you doing with my sleeping bag?!"

"Wh— what?! You've got it all wrong! I was just—"

Under his disgusted stare, Miss Elf froze. One hand was still clutching a corner of the sleeping bag. Face burning red all the way to the ears, mouth opening and closing, unable to squeeze out a single complete sentence.

"..."

...

Lova Labyrinth, entrance.

With the map to guide them, Banxia and the elf traveled in silence and reached the cave mouth by morning.

According to rumor, this labyrinth was an ancient ruin from the mythological era, one that had only recently surfaced from underground for reasons nobody could explain.

The entire route through the labyrinth descended steadily downward. The entrance yawned deep and dark, a mouth hanging silently open.

Before they went in, Miss Elf suddenly called after the young man.

"Um... before we go in, there's something I need to make clear to the esteemed adventurer."

"No need. I understand."

No, no, no! That perfectly calm expression of yours makes it completely obvious you don't understand anything at all!

Miss Elf screamed inwardly.

"This morning I only wanted to check whether I'd gotten your sleeping bag dirty or left some weird smell on it, so I was going to take it and wash it, "

"You!" Banxia's expression changed. "Don't tell me you've gotten so perverted that you actually used my sleeping bag to do that kind of thing."

"That kind of thing?" The elf blinked, then went crimson and frantically pushed back. "I told you! You've completely misunderstood! And, I-I am not a pervert!"

"Then why were you sitting there hugging my sleeping bag and sniffing it like some creep this morning?" Banxia took a suspicious half-step closer.

"I told you! It was a misunderstanding!"

"A misunderstanding. So my eyes deceived me? Or maybe there's a monster around here capable of scrambling my senses?" He pressed forward, step by step.

Miss Elf was so frustrated that tears were welling up, and there was absolutely no idea how to explain it.

Then the expression on that face shifted, because the young man suddenly laughed.

"All right, I'll stop. I'm joking." Banxia waved a hand.

He knew perfectly well that the person in front of him was just a tsundere elf, nowhere near depraved enough for any of that. The journey had simply been too dull, and he hadn't been able to resist.

"A-Are you an idiot?! Idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot! Orc!"

"Hey, 'orc' isn't an insult," Banxia said, correcting her with a straight face.

He had to defend the honor of the orcs he had gotten to know so personally.

"Hmph." Miss Elf turned away and decided the conversation with this human was over for the time being.

"..."

Banxia didn't push further.

They were still prickly with each other, but the moment they stepped into the Lova Labyrinth, both of them set aside the earlier banter.

For Banxia, this was his first time tackling the specific environment of a labyrinth, so he was naturally a degree more careful than usual.

The elf's shift was different: pure, unguarded reverence for a ruin that had survived from the mythological era.

"It's actually this huge..."

They had to walk a long way through the first floor before it really sank in that they had underestimated the place. The first floor alone was the size of an entire city. The two of them wandered for most of the day without finding any entrance to the next level.

The deeper they pushed, though, the more the signs piled up, scattered weapon fragments, low-tier monster corpses, traps appearing several times more densely than near the entrance. In name it was just the first floor of a labyrinth, but in Banxia's eyes it was already its own self-contained world, food chain and all.

"A mythological-era labyrinth. Definitely worth clearing properly."

If the structure ran easy to hard, then the path they were on now was almost certainly pointing toward the next floor.

How long had they been walking? Hard to say.

The labyrinth was pitch-black and sunless. Time dissolved into nothing.

"New stairs. This has to be the entrance to the next floor." The elf's eyes lit up.

"But the path isn't at its end yet." Banxia looked into the deeper darkness ahead, then glanced down at the descending passage underfoot.

The architecture was identical to the entrance they had used coming in, descend here, and they would hit the second basement floor.

"In mythological-era labyrinths, the builders always liked to hide extra rooms. Keep going and we might find one." Miss Elf offered the observation, though the tone made it clear there was no enthusiasm for it. "Most of those hidden rooms are guarded by monsters well above the current floor's tier, and the rewards are usually pitifully meager. So most adventurers skip them when clearing a labyrinth. Not worth the trouble."

"I see." Banxia nodded.

"Since you understand, let's get to the second floor. Move fast enough and we might even catch up with the vanguard group, "

"Decided. We're checking the hidden room."

"Eh?"

"Aren't you curious? What kind of monsters are waiting in there? Could be a rare species that went extinct on the surface long ago." Banxia was already walking forward, interest clearly piqued.

"Is it really worth it for a reason like that?" Miss Elf could not begin to understand him.

But remembering the agreement they had made before entering, there was nothing to do but exhale quietly and begin activating every ancient magic artifact, one by one.

Holding all of them active for an extended stretch would drain stamina faster, but that was simply the nature of hidden rooms. Dangerous territory, full stop.

RUMBLE,

The young man stepped on a flagstone that sank under his weight.

The walls on all sides slid open at once. Countless blades shot out from hidden compartments.

"Watch out!" the elf shouted.

Every trap along the way so far had already been sprung by someone else. The elf had nearly forgotten the things existed.

Already moving forward, the elf heard him say, in an utterly offhand voice,

"Sever."

Invisible slashes burst outward in all directions with the young man at the center, shredding every incoming blade and grinding the wall mechanisms to dust.

Miss Elf stopped short, pulling back the outstretched foot.

Right. I was worried for nothing.

This was the adventurer who had killed the Demonic Poison Dragon in a single move. However fierce a mythological-era labyrinth might be, the first few floors were probably no different from a walk in the park to him.

"Weren't traps supposed to spawn monsters? Why is it nothing but scrap metal?" Banxia kicked a broken blade out of his way, thoroughly unimpressed.

So you stepped on it on purpose!

Standing in the shower of iron shavings, Miss Elf suddenly felt that every last bit of that concern had been completely unnecessary.

➤ Next: Hidden Room