"Luna! Watch out! WATCH OUT!"
The car goes over a cliff at full speed, but before we begin to fall I use a mana push to send it back to solid ground. Xania looks like she's going to turn into a white demon, you'd think that with all the times this has happened she would have gotten used to it by now.
"Am I still alive? How am I still alive?"
"You're exaggerating, it wasn't that bad."
"Yes it was! We keep crashing into every obstacle we come across, and I don't think that this vehicle is designed to constantly jump like this... it looks like it's going to fall apart at any moment..."
"Perhaps I would need some more practice... at least you have to admit that I got a lot better after figuring out that this other pedal makes the car slow down."
"That feels like something you should have known from the st- EEK!"
Xania's line gets interrupted when a bump on the road sends us flying once again.
"Please! No more! I want to get off this thing already!" She has tears in her eyes even though she always tries to act tough. I cannot help but feel bad for her.
"I understand how you feel, you want to rescue your brother as quickly as possible. Don't worry, I'll speed up as much as possible!"
"No! That's not what I... AAAAH!"
At this speed, we reach the forest in no time, but I cannot stop in time and we end up crashing against a tree. A big piece of the front of the car broke off, and now that I look, the car seems to be busted in quite a few places... I hope that Ranna doesn't get angry, I'll place it back in my storage for now.
"Hey, Xania, are you alright?"
She's standing on her feet and looks fine, but she's not moving, and somehow I think that I can almost see her soul coming out from her mouth.
"Don't you want to search for your brother?"
"Ah!"
Xania took a deep breath; did she manage to suck her soul back inside?
Alright, I don't enjoy doing this, but I guess I'll have to ask the trees to tell me if they know where I can find a young gray demon.
'That way'
Well, that was easy. The red tree moves one of its branches with incandescent leaves to point in the direction where Rax is.
"What's with that tree? It looks like it's on fire."
"That's a tree that absorbed fire mana from an elf. Have you never seen a magic forest before?"
"No, my town is nearby but I've never seen this forest before."
"This is not a normal forest. The trees and plants in this place can be influenced by the mana of elves and change their appearance depending on the element. I have only visited one of these places once before, that I remember. I was probably born in one too."
Fire trees are red and look like they are on fire, water trees are blue and wet, wind trees are very light and swing a lot in the breeze, earth trees almost look like they are made of rocks, and light trees actually emit their own light.
Xania is looking around with amazement. "So this is a magic forest... wait, something is wrong with that tree."
The normal tree closest to me is starting to change. The wood becomes a purple color and becomes twisted, black sap begins to ooze from a few holes, and the branches become thin and take the appearance of tendrils with black leaves at the end.
"What happened? I never thought that a tree could look so... evil."
"That's what a tree with the dark attribute looks like, it must have taken my mana... elves usually call them 'cursed trees'"
"Cursed? So this is a bad thing?"
"No, it's the same as all the other trees. But because it looks so scary, there are a lot of superstitions about it. And since the dark attribute is extremely rare among elves, the few that are born with it are exiled as babies."
"What? Is that the reason why you were sent away?"
"That's supposed to be it, but there might be something else to it..."
We walk for a bit in the direction the tree pointed at until we hear the sound of a tree falling.
A group of demons is fighting against two elves, all of them seem to be using the wind element to cut down the trees. The elves are jumping on the treetops while shooting arrows from their bows, they could not be any more stereotypical if they tried...
It's clear that the elves are outclassed as well as outnumbered, the only reason why this is a fight at all is the assistance of the trees. They are bending their trunks and moving their branches to both attack the demons and protect the elves, as well as releasing the magic stored inside them. Even with that, the demons are still winning, and they look bloodthirsty. If I don't do anything those elves are going to die.
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'Shadow bind'
Since they are spread out I only manage to catch three of them with my first spell.
"Hey! There's another elf over there."
A blue-skinned demon swings a sword at me, it seems like he's using wind mana to make it sharper, but now that I have the 'battle analysis' skill there's no way that it will hit me, I grab his wrist with my hand to stop his attack, and now that I'm touching him, I use 'paralysis' to immobilize him.
'Wind spear'
Another blue-skinned demon, a female this time, tries to use magic against me, but 'battle analysis' tells me that this attack is too weak to do any damage so I don't even bother defending. She jumps behind a tree, and the next moment, a bunch of copies of her start spreading around.
"Are those illusions?"
Light magic can be used to create visual illusions, and darkness can affect the mind directly. But there's no question that the best element for illusion magic is wind. Air is the medium that carries light, sound, and smell, controlling it allows one to manipulate what other people experience.
But this mage does not seem to be very good at it, her illusions are too obvious, too full of imperfections. I walk straight to the real one, who looks at me with a mix of terror and surprise, I touch her to use 'paralysis' on her as well.
The last demon seems to have been restrained by the trees. The two elves jump down and approach me, a man with brown hair and a blonde woman, which means that their elements are earth and light respectively.
"Thank you for..." The woman stops talking for a moment when she sees my face, her eyes open wide. "You're a dark elf..."
"Don't say that as if we were not of the same race..."
"You... you're not supposed to be here, you need to leave."
She wants me to leave, is it because I'm a 'dark elf' or because she's afraid of me? Probably both.
"You're going to tell her that after she just saved your lives?" Xania, who had stayed away until now, approaches us with an angry expression.
"We're thankful for that. But she's not allowed to enter this forest, I'm very sorry, but that is the law. We will execute these invaders and then we will lead you out of here."
"You're not going to execute anybody, I'll place a curse of weakness on them so that they won't cause more trouble, so don't worry. And we're looking for her brother, we're not leaving until we find him. You two go back to your village."
The elves look at me like they want to say something, but they don't. "Very well." At least they're doing as I told them.
After cursing the demons and letting them go, I'm alone with Xania again.
"Why did you help those elves?"
"What do you mean? The demons were clearly the bad guys here, they were trying to kill them and destroy the forest."
"That's not what I mean. The elves exiled you from their forest just because of your element, don't you hold a grudge against them? You also helped me after I tried to kill you, are you trying to become a saint or something?"
"Is that a weird thing to do? I have all of this power that, honestly, I don't really think I deserve. I don't think I have any excuse to let someone die when it's so easy for me to save them. And look at you, you went from trying to kill me to becoming my ally. Holding grudges is clearly not the way to make people change their minds about me."
"Still, this is not normal..."
"You also seem to be misunderstanding something. The elves did me a favor when they exiled me."
"A favor?"
"How much do you know about elven culture?"
"Pretty much nothing."
Oh! It's nice to be the one who knows more about this type of stuff for once.
"The magic forest provides the elves with everything they need. Food, shelter, protection, cures for their illnesses... it can even prolong their lifespans. But there's a really big catch."
"A catch?"
"The mana that we have inside of us is transformed by our every thought and action, this is true for all races, including the elves. In order to make their mana optimal for the forest, an elf has to follow a very specific lifestyle. Do not leave the forest, do not learn any magic or skills except for what the forest wants you to learn, do not get any hobbies or learn a forbidden profession, you are not even allowed to read books, as obtaining knowledge can also alter your mana, and that's only a few of the rules... there are many more that I don't even know. The more closely an elf follows the rules, the more they will be rewarded by the forest. For example, elves live slightly longer lives than other races on average and look young for most of them, but an elf that follows the rules can get to live for several centuries... What a joke, what's the point of having a long life if you are not allowed to do anything with it?"
"And even with all of that, do all of them chose to stay in the forest?"
"Not all, but most. That's why I'm glad that I was exiled, it scares me to think what my life would have been if I had grown up in such a society, my existence could have been as pointless as theirs. In such a conformist environment, it's no wonder that so many elves have the light element and so few are dark."
I cannot help but wonder if that's the real reason why 'dark elves' are exiled, after all, it's not impossible to change the attribute of small children by educating them a certain way. But the dark element is the desire to change things, to make the world as we want it to be, it's possible that our mere presence here could be seen as a threat to this flawless utopia of theirs.