Chapter 268: Chapter 263 – Battle’s End and Conclusion

Translator: SFBaka

“Attack him all at once! Think of him like a wild beast even more dangerous than a Riga Rau and deal with him accordingly!”

“Like there’s a wild beast that can compare with this guy!”

I dove right into the group of elves who were frantically exchanging shouts and swung my swords. It looks like the elven warriors decided to try and not take my attacks head-on. The machete-wielders moved to the front and defended the spear-wielders behind them as they tried to chip away my stamina with attacks from beyond my range.

“Kuh……!”

The elven warrior who blocked a blow from my longsword grunted in pain.

The machetes being swung around by the elven warriors were overall on the thicker side, and they should be as long as an average adult’s forearm. They seemed to have been designed with an emphasis on toughness. They packed a hefty wallop and should be pretty easy to wield even in extremely close quarters. In other words, they were also great for defense.

“Whoah there.”

“Wha-!?”

I halted my attacks and deftly stepped to the side. Moments after, a spear shot out and pierced the spot where my body was previously positioned. I suppose that was meant to be a finishing blow. The spear thrust with all his body weight thrown into it missed grandly, and the elven warrior was left wide open.

“Guhaaa!?”

“Gaaah!?”

Of course, I didn’t miss the opening and attacked mercilessly. I struck down the spear-wielding elf along with another elf who tried to cover for him and knocked them both out. There were already close to twenty elves that have collapsed all around me.

“You guys still wanna continue?”

“……We are warriors. We will never surrender without a fight.”

“That so. Fine. Let’s finish this.”

I then prepared to go all-out.

『Absolutely overwhelming! So this is the might of the Sacred Tree’s chosen hero! He knocked down all thirty of our finest elven warriors in an amazing display of skill and strength!』

After the last elven warrior keeled over in defeat, the announcer’s voice echoed throughout the arena. The time it took for me to finish the fight was acceptable, I guess. I felt a somewhat pleasant sense of tiredness.

『From what I’ve seen, it developed into quite a one-sided affair. Just how did it turn out like that?』

『One-sided, is it? It did look like that, and yes, it certainly was as you said. Captain Hiro’s sword attacks were extremely precise, without even a single hint of any mistake. And that’s what ultimately led to this result.』

『No mistakes?』

『Yes. He kept positioning himself in spots where the attacks of our elven warriors would fail to hit him, and continuously slipped past the warrior’s defenses in order to land accurate and powerful strikes at the same time. That led to the spectacle we saw before our eyes earlier.』

『It sounds pretty simple when you say it like that……』

『Of course not. It is absolutely not a simple feat to deal with the ever-changing flow of combat while staying on the move without committing any errors in judgment. It is akin to dancing furiously while crossing a thin tightrope. And he did that for close to ten minutes without committing a single misstep. That is what I meant by him making no mistakes.』

The commentator seemed pretty excited as he enthusiastically performed his live analysis.

I see. So I didn’t make any mistakes in my moves huh. That’s probably true. After all, when Mei trained me in the sword, she made sure to make my body and mind remember how to move with absolute precision until it was practically instinctual. The training was absolutely hellish. I even vomited buckets of blood.

That’s right. I desperately tried to avoid being crushed into meat paste by Mei’s strikes while vomiting blood. My current skills were born from the feeling of desperation to survive that hell.

『I see. That means Captain Hiro’s fighting skills have already reached the realm of grandmasters. Everyone, please give another round of applause to the brave warriors who faced the Sacred Tree’s chosen one, Captain Hiro!』

After the announcer’s remarks, the audience erupted into a din of cheers and applause. I waved my hands at the audience and returned to our group’s waiting area. An excited-looking Mimi came forward to welcome me back.

“Thank you for the hard work, Hiro-sama! You were so cool!”

“Thanks. It was a little troublesome though.”

“You would have had an easier time if you used your own swords huh.”

“Elma-neesan, if Boss used those, the arena would be an ocean of blood already……”

“You can’t block those with blades made of carbon steel or wooden spear shafts after all. Their limbs would fly off like crazy.”

“Don’t say such terrifying stuff with a smiling face please, Big Brother……”

The mechanic sisters were slowly drawing away from us due to Elma and my fearsome remarks. Some people might say the elven warriors didn’t fight at their best since they didn’t use any attack spells, but if that’s how they wanna paint it, then even I didn’t give it my best shot as well. I mean, I didn’t even use my monomolecular swords, laser gun, laser rifle, and power armor coupled with its hatchet guns, heavy weaponry such as its laser launcher, and grenades. Heck, if they really wanted us to go all out, then I would have brought Krishna and Black Lotus. They should already be thankful I didn’t decide to bring Mei. So I was the one who held back even more y’know.

“Anyway, I’ve already fulfilled my job here with this.”

“Yes. I’m really sorry for putting you into so much trouble.”

Nect, who was acting as our host, bowed his head in apology.

“I guess all that’s left is to air my complaints to your mother and get some compensation. It doesn’t really need to be something fancy. Just give my crew some tasty alcohol or pretty ornaments and that will do.”

I’ve already said that to the Grado clan folks. This was the second time now. I’m sure they’ll want to avoid an overlap in their gifts, so we’ll get some nice variety with this.

“Hiro-sama, don’t you want anything for yourself?”

“Nah, I’m good. It’s enough for you guys to get some things in exchange for a little trouble. It’s not like I can get anything I want here anyway.”

If the elves had access to cutting-edge lightweight power armor technology, I’d happily ask for the latest model along with a specialized maintenance package from them, but it doesn’t look like they had anything close to that. Of course, that goes for starship tech as well. Heck, they should be even worse off in that department.

“You really don’t have a lot of desires, don’t you, Hiro?”

“It’s not like that y’know. I do like interesting high-tech items, and if I found something that catches my attention, I’d buy it in a heartbeat. Aside from material stuff like that, I also have healthy levels of the three major desires y’know.”

“Three major desires……”

“No, don’t look at me like that, you pervert.”

“Oh come off it, Boss. Or rather, you immediately zoned in on Boss’s crotch right after hearing ‘three major desires’ huh. You’ve got a dirtier mind than I expected, Whee.”

“Big Sis!!!”

A red-faced Whisker jumped at the grinning Tina and both of them frolicked with each other like children. Yeah, the scene looked rather heartwarming, but these ‘kids’ had the strength to easily lift a barbell weighing over 100 kilograms. I told Nect to leave for the time being so he won’t get caught up in all the craziness.

I watched the merely outwardly cute scuffle for a bit and then turned on the holo-display that’s projecting live footage of the arena that’s installed inside the waiting room. It looks like my battle with the elven warriors was merely treated as an opening event, or rather, an exhibition match. And now, formal matches between elven warriors were just about to begin. So these guys were the main event and I was just some sort of bonus? Well, since lots of people were now gathered here, I guess it was just normal to hold some sort of formal event, but how did this many turn out in attendance when news about the event just came out yesterday? I really don’t get elven culture.

And so, that night, we were invited to partake in a rather luxurious dinner in the best high-class hotel of the Minfa clan territory. All of the dishes served used high-class ingredients like all-natural meat, fruits, and vegetables.

“These are just ordinary ingredients for us though.”

“The situation’s different in space after all. There’s no way to install vast farmlands inside a space colony. And as for livestock, there would be the trouble of dealing with all the biological gas emissions coming from the animals, and there’s really no satisfactory solution even now.”

It goes without saying for humanoids, but livestock has no qualms about belching and farting whenever they felt like it. The amount of gas emitted by the animals from the time they were born to when they finally get butchered for meat would be enormous. Naturally, the larger the animals were compared to humans, or the more numerous they were, the bigger the amount of their emissions. In a place with such limited space like a space colony, it would be very difficult to install systems effective enough to deal with such a copious amount of biological emissions.

That’s why in space colonies, it became standard to use food cartridges filled with edible paste made out of phytoplankton, zooplankton, and a bit of vegetable matter to produce various food items through processing them with automatic cookers.

There are some small exceptions, like the cultured meat plant we visited back in the Alein system. Those facilities genetically bred and butchered creatures specifically created with an emphasis on reducing biological emissions as much as possible to ultimately reduce the burden on a colony’s life support systems as well. That made it possible to produce protein-rich meat with high efficiency and lesser risks. Well, accidents do happen occasionally though. By the way, the meat products we regularly consume back on the ship aren’t cultured meats but synthetic meats instead. They were basically chemically synthesized animal proteins.

“And that’s why all-natural meat, fruit, and vegetable products are treated as super high-class items out in space. Your eyeballs would probably pop out in shock if you saw how much they cost over there. I think the cheapest cut of high-class Kobe beef goes for 1000 Enels per hundred grams.”

“A thousand Enels for just one hundred grams of meat…… That truly is expensive.”

And so, I enjoyed my meal while conversing with Nect.

“Nect, my dear Nect, Mother is really sorry, so please forgive me already.”

“Hm? I’m sorry, but I couldn’t quite hear you, Mother.”

A beautiful elven woman was served something that looked like a dark gray mouse on a plate while I, my crew members, and Nect were happily munching on Minfa-style luxury dishes. Minfa clan’s leader, Ms. Miriam, kept apologizing to her son with tears in her eyes.

“Come now, Mother. Why aren’t you eating the food Hiro-san specially brought over from his ship? Aren’t you happy? That is apparently a food item with a complete nutritional balance. It’s a precious item that you can’t normally eat here in Theta, so please eat the whole plateful without leaving any leftovers.”

Nect was smiling, but his eyes weren’t. Miriam teared up even more. She no longer had any dignity as both a clan leader and a mother. Or rather, elves generally look very young for their age, so Miriam and Nect actually looked like siblings instead of mother and son.

Eh? What’s on top of Miriam’s plate, you ask? Oh, it’s just unprocessed food cartridge paste you know.

By the way, the drink served to her was made using one of the recipes brought over by Nect last time that had the most peculiar taste.

“Your drink is also a crystallization of the wisdom of the Minfa clan. They say it’s rather healthy for you. It’s the perfect drink for a clan leader like you, Mother.”

“Please, mercy…”

“No. In the first place, you shouldn’t be apologizing to me, right?”

“I’m really, really sorry everyone. Everything was all due to my impulsiveness.”

“Just what were you thinking in the first place by doing something that lowered the reputation of the entire clan?”

“B-But Zesh also agreed y’know.”

“And I wonder how Chief Zesh is doing under Tinia’s watch right now?”

It seems Nect contacted Tinia immediately the moment he found out about today’s event. He revealed that Zesh sent warriors over to participate in the event as well and told Tinia to give him a proper dressing down.

That’s all well and good, but the two culprits are each leader of two of the three major elven clans, right? What about their authority or something? Was the position of clan leader a lot more trivial than I first thought?

“What are we gonna do about those two?”

“Watching them is interesting, so just leave them be.”

I answered Elma as I brought a slice of steak cooked from some unfamiliar animal’s meat to my mouth. Ah, delicious. The sauce was especially exquisite.

“Tonight seems to be Miriam-san’s treat, everyone. So don’t hold back on her account and eat and drink as much as you like.”

“Yes, please don’t be reserved. I’m not the one paying though. Oh, and this Millendorf white wine pairs really well with the Ram Dau steak. Please, try some.”

The moment she heard the wine’s name, Miriam’s face paled considerably. It looks like the wine was pretty expensive huh. I don’t know exactly how today’s events turned out the way they did, but seeing the main culprit’s face get drained of color in despair did relieve some of my annoyance.