Chapter 43: The Elven Fire of Reform and the Treants

Arthur had lived in Fingal for many years and had quite a network among the elves, especially among the women.

Almost every time they passed a street corner, a young and beautiful—though actually who knew how old—female elf would shyly greet him. Arthur would proudly respond in his distinctive style, causing Yang Hao and Teresa to simultaneously show expressions of embarrassment.

“Good morning, sister. Don’t come by these days. My wife turned green the last time she saw you, and if this keeps up, my third leg might get broken too.”

“Good morning, grandma. Thanks for holding back my wife a few months ago, otherwise, I would have been…”

“Hello—”

Watching the twentieth female elf who passed by secretly or openly pinch Arthur’s chest, Teresa couldn’t help but mutter, “Seems like I need to keep a close eye on my puppy.”

“Teresa?”

“Nothing.”

She hugged Yang Hao’s arm, her gaze at all the female elves filled with a woman’s vigilance. Just then, Arthur led them to the curtain wall of Fingal.

Entering the curtain wall through an open door, Arthur, whose face was covered in lipstick marks, took out a handkerchief to wipe them off and pointed to the arrow slits in the wall:

“From here, you can see the farms below directly. If you want to understand elven society, I suggest you watch here for ten minutes. You might end up thinking the same as I do,” he said.

Yang Hao nodded and then stepped forward. 

Through the arrow slit, he could clearly see that a martial arts competition was taking place in the suburban farms below Fingal.

Arthur explained that this was the elves’ daily entertainment. A group of elves, all under thirty, were shooting at moving targets a hundred meters away with longbows. The winner was determined by the number of arrows that hit the target and the scores they achieved. This was a children’s game for the elves.

Arthur paused for a moment, then added that the draw weight of those longbows was very high. If an average human archer played this game, their arms would be completely ruined after less than five shots in an hour.

Yet the elven children were shooting forty arrows in an hour without getting tired.

Hearing this, Yang Hao’s eyes widened as he pointed at the “children” who could hit a target at a hundred meters with precision and said, “You’re telling me that this shooting practice, which is better than the most elite archers of the Roman Imperial Guard, is just a children’s game?”

“These are elves, my lord. Even the elves with the worst vision have better eyesight than the best human archers. Don’t be fooled by their slender build, If they squeeze the door on my third leg, it might break any day. With such a significant difference in physical abilities, you—hey! Nun, don’t hit me with your holy book from the Church of Light! I hate the Church of Light!”

“I worship the Light, not the God of Light, that treacherous bastard! And stop telling dirty jokes in front of my man!”

“You, as His Majesty’s woman, can’t even control him? Are you also the Night Witch?”

“You said before you don’t touch married women.”

“Those noblewomen in the Roman Empire? They flaunted themselves openly in the court. They were just prostitutes with the title of wife. That didn’t violate my principles.”

“Where’s your moral baseline?!”

“It’s called a flexible moral baseline.”

While the two behind him seemed to be arguing, Yang Hao gained a deeper understanding of elven society.

Given the vast difference in physical abilities, what would be considered brutal training akin to torture for humans was merely child’s play for the elves. In other words, for the elves, this wasn’t just a nation where everyone was a soldier as humans understood it.

The phrase didn’t do justice to the situation. The elves were essentially a nation where everyone was a hero or elite.

But despite being such a race, they hadn’t adopted a mandatory conscription system to expand their military. They continued with the old tradition of voluntary enlistment.

Considering the upcoming war, this was something that needed to change.

Deep in thought, Yang Hao casually voiced his opinion: “Although the shooting accuracy seems flawless, without discipline, even the strongest warriors are merely powerful mobs. This applies to elves as well.”

His words made the two bickering behind him calm down. 

Before Teresa could frown and voice her doubts, Arthur agreed first.

“Yes, Your Majesty. An army needs discipline and obedience to orders. These elven youngsters may all be sharpshooters, but once on the battlefield, acting impulsively and delaying orders is the least of our worries. The real danger is losing their composure due to the death of a comrade and, in their impulsiveness, exposing crucial ambushes or other strategies.”

“I’ve decided on the first step of reform starting with recruitment training. By the way, I heard that the Church of Light plans to wage war against the Elven Kingdom.”

“You already know?”

“Sort of.”

During the morning meeting with Fen, Yang Hao had roughly grasped the full extent of the crisis facing the Elven Kingdom.

First and foremost was the diocese’s invasion planned for the end of the year, followed by a potential demon disaster within the next decade, and in between these, the colonial invasion of the Elusia continent by Isugard.

While the latter could be temporarily turned into an ally, the first two must be dealt with.

Yang Hao did not trust the current structure and combat capabilities of these elven recruits on the battlefield.

Therefore, immediately organizing them for military training to understand the essence of being soldiers, enforcing obedience to orders and discipline, was crucial. Additionally, there was the coordination of resources for military reform, known as mobilization.

In Yang Hao’s mind, one point of the elven reform was already clear. That was the reform of the conscription system and the overall mobilization of the Elven Kingdom. 

At least until the diocese’s invasion was repelled, the state of mobilization should not be lifted.

But what next?

Yang Hao quickly urged Arthur to take him to useful places for investigation. Arthur shrugged and, with Yang Hao pushing his wheelchair, pointed the way.

This time, they arrived at a bow-making factory on the other side of the River of Friendship, about ten streets away from Arthur’s home.

Arthur said his wife was working there diligently, but it wouldn’t be a problem to disturb her for a bit.

“And your children?”

“The kids are being taken care of by my mother-in-law’s great-grandparents.”

“Uh…” 

Unable to imagine a scene of a family living together for dozens of generations, Yang Hao and Sister Teresa looked at each other silently, seeing the envy in each other’s eyes. Both blushed simultaneously, then quickly turned back to focus on their work.

They entered the bow-making factory, and before Arthur could excitedly slap his wheelchair and stand up, a cold elf with blond hair and blue eyes approached him with a stick.

The stick seemed to be enchanted with rare enchantments. From Yang Hao’s limited knowledge, he could tell that the stick was covered with enchantment runes for “Durability,” “Pain,” and “Non-lethal.”

A mage capable of such enchantments would, in the capital of the Roman Empire, surely have nobles and landlords exhausting their fortunes to hire them. 

But here, for the elves, they could casually enchant an ordinary wooden stick?

Just to break the legs of a cheating husband?

She looked expressionlessly at the sweating Arthur, then glanced at Yang Hao and Teresa standing far behind him who didn’t intend to intervene. 

Finally, she turned her gaze back to Arthur.

Her eyes flitted between Arthur’s broken left leg, his intact right leg, and the area in between.

“Arthur, my husband.”

The elf’s cold voice made the sweat on Arthur’s forehead flow like a waterfall.

“Do you remember the promise we made to each other when we got married? Now I find out that last month, while I was working diligently, you were having an affair with Helivia in the bathroom of the office two floors above me. When I asked about it, you said you had a stomachache and needed to be in the bathroom for over two hours? Now, choose. Left leg, right leg, or the third leg? Since I also need your third leg, I’ll break it four times and have a mage heal it each time. I’ll break it four times in front of that woman you slept with seven times this year. So, what do you choose?”

“Um, well, Viya… I’ll, I’ll choose the left leg. If the right leg is broken too, I won’t be able to explain it to the kids.”

“Oh.”

The elf, whom Arthur called Viya, nodded and then raised the exquisite, almost art-like wooden stick in her hand, delivering a heavy blow to Arthur’s left leg.

Arthur showed his toughness, not even groaning in response to his wife’s enchanted stick. He merely displayed a familiar expression of pain and quickly clung to his wife’s leg.

“Viya, my dear wife, now that my lord is here, at least let me guide him properly?”

“Naturally.”

She shrugged, placing the undamaged stick on the ground, then put her hand on Arthur’s bleeding left leg.

With a burst of green light, the bleeding stopped, but the leg remained broken, showing no signs of healing.

Why didn’t this woman just beat Arthur to death?

Teresa felt it wasn’t enough to vent her anger. 

At this moment, Viya turned Arthur’s wheelchair around and pushed him to Yang Hao.

“Thank you for taking care of my useless husband before,” she said. “And I have also heard of your deeds and the matter with the young empress. Please be assured, it is not you who is wrong, but the barbarians of Roman.”

“Thank you. But is Arthur alright?” Yang Hao pointed to the silent Arthur.

“It’s fine. It’s just a broken leg. In a month, I’ll have that woman come over and chop off his leg, then perform a limb regeneration spell. Though they might end up ‘treating’ each other for more than an hour in bed, so I’ll be watching the entire time.”

“Oh… well… you seem to have quite a happy family life.”

“Thank you. That’s what everyone says.”

“Uh…” 

A thousand words, but none seemed appropriate to say.

Seeing the female manager nearby who hadn’t forgotten to greet Arthur, Yang Hao and Teresa exchanged a glance, noticing the increased exhaustion in each other’s eyes.

To stay married even under these circumstances, Yang Hao and Teresa couldn’t say much other than to wish Arthur happiness in his family life.

This time, it was Viya, whose head seemed to emit a faint green glow, who took over the explanation from Arthur.

From what they had seen along the way, Yang Hao and Teresa had every reason to suspect that the female elves in the bow-making factory might have had more encounters with Arthur than Viya, his lawful wife.

But even so, Viya still loved Arthur, and Arthur loved Viya from the bottom of his heart. Perhaps this was the elves’ traditional value of honoring commitments.

He made it clear when they got married that he would definitely cheat, and she said she would break his legs if he did. In such a situation, if they were still willing to marry and become a family, this leg-breaking couple truly was a happy family.

In any case, back to the point.

“This is the workshop where longbows are made. As you can see, we still adhere to the elven tradition of handcrafted production.”

Viya explained, pointing to a craftsman engrossed in carving a bow: “As for our longbows… Arthur should have already explained it to you. Our tribe has been doing this for thousands of years, and we continue to do so even now.”

“I see. So, are the arrows produced elsewhere?”

“Sort of. The place where arrows are produced is located in the oak grove north of Fingal, around the oak tree mine. Only there can we get a supply of minerals.”

“The Oak Tree Mine—is that a place name?”

“It’s not just a place name. The mine is worked by the ancient trees of the Elven Forest that we have commissioned.”

“Oh?”

This made Yang Hao’s eyes widen again. To have ancient trees do the mining?

No way, could the rumors about the ancient elven trees being able to stand up be true?

He looked at Arthur, who finally nodded and confirmed, “There are treants that can stand up, but most ancient trees are rooted and immobile. Even so, the trees of the Elven Forest have formed a symbiotic relationship with the elves. Without damaging the environment, the ancient trees mine minerals for the elves. Can you understand, Your Majesty? Elves don’t need miners to dig for minerals. As long as it’s within the Elven Forest, minerals can be collected by the ancient trees. That’s why arrow manufacturing and other metal-related production facilities are set up around those mining areas.”

“I’m just surprised the rumors are true,” Yang Hao said.

“You didn’t even show this expression when you found out that my title Night Emperor was true back in the day!”

Viya smacked in the head the excited Arthur, who then watched as he obediently and pitifully lowered his head.