Chapter 50: Teresa’s Morning, The Elf Council, Recognition (part 1)

After a period of hard work, on May 10th, the morning of the centennial Elf Council meeting.

Sister Teresa… No. She should now be referred to as “Lady”.

She was naked, covering her face, wrapped in the same blanket on another bed with Yang Hao, who was also naked.

‘What on earth did I do last night? Oh, Light above, as a nun, I did such a thing before marriage, my parents would probably rise from their graves to scold me.’

The nun stared through the gaps between her fingers at the other bed across from her.

That bed was a mess, stained all over. On the white sheets, one could clearly see the marks of last night’s deeds.

What happened last night? Teresa was bewildered as she tried to recall, only vaguely remembering that they went to bed late, and before sleeping, she was the one being pressed down.

Why was she pressed down?

Because Yang Hao had been too exhausted these past few days.

He worked hard, bearing all the pressure on himself, and smiled telling Teresa that it was okay, that he had always lived like this in the Roman Empire.

Thinking about it, it seemed true. After all, the little empress was still young, apparently not even ten years old this year.

The little saint was introverted, having locked herself underground long ago. The little witch simply loved studying magic and didn’t care about the politics of the nation at all.

He had always been able to go through it alone, even if his trusted subordinate Arthur also shared the burden. But how could the blond scumbag who was already bent over from the weight of his work could possibly take on all of Yang Hao’s stress as well?

Teresa seemed a bit dazed at the time. She had a big fight with Yang Hao, accusing him of treating her as an outsider. 

“You consider me an outsider, don’t you?! I’m planning to be your wife, yet you refuse to share your burdens with me.”

She said something silly like that, then stripped Yang Hao of his clothes, intending to let him know who was the superior in this relationship, and then… Then Teresa knew nothing more.

Recalling the intensity of their actions, her mind was filled with nothing but the initial pain and pleasure. That silly puppy was really bad, saying he couldn’t go on but then…

Hiss—

“Wow…”

Thinking of this, Teresa’s face uncontrollably blushed. She covered her face, emitting whimpers like a young animal, and at that moment, Yang Hao reached out and wrapped his arms around her.

His palms were rough, creating a unique friction against the girl’s smooth skin.

This made Teresa, who was inexperienced in such matters, involuntary shiver, especially noticing the surprising warmth coming from Yang Hao’s body, her shivering intensified.

Must stop him—

Before the thought could even fully form, accompanied by a small exclamation, she complied with the sweet nothings she and Yang Hao had shared early in the morning.

They rolled around naked under the covers for an hour or two before getting up.

***

An hour later, a refreshed Yang Hao and a teary-eyed Teresa were brushing their teeth together in the bathroom of their room.

Teresa seemed to be angry at Yang Hao’s actions, or perhaps just out of sheer shyness, she refused to make eye contact with him until now, awkwardly washing her face and brushing her teeth while muttering in a grievous tone.

“I told you to stop moving… ugh… I’m so drained now…”

“Sorry.”

“Hmph… Anyway, how’s the preparation going?”

Despite her annoyance, Teresa was still very concerned about her man’s work situation as they had some time before heading to the elf council.

Yang Hao was confident about this.

Over these five days, he, Arthur, and Narujia had been preparing for today’s elf council meeting.

Setting aside the second successful trade with Issgard and the latter’s renewed request for a meeting to discuss a trade alliance, industrially, Yang Hao and the others were fully prepared.

Considering that the Elven Forest couldn’t possibly grow a full-sized building in five days, what Yang Hao and Arthur ended up with was a model the size of a carriage, grown by the ancient trees.

The model included a scaled-down lathe, molds, and extraction rooms characteristic of elven craftsmanship, complete with wooden enchantment equipment. After repeated experiments over this period, they finally achieved a result on the micro-model.

This was a factory model capable of producing inexpensive arrowheads with high efficiency and without human intervention, after inserting metal ingots. This completely changed the elves’ current situation of having to recycle after use for their consumables, allowing them to freely unleash volleys of arrows in the future without worrying about reserves and using them cautiously.

Arrowheads were just the beginning; the real goal was for the oak tree factory to produce high-precision gun barrels and bullets.

Based on current tests, the oak tree factory truly had this capability, though the cost of increasing precision was a further decrease in production efficiency.

However, this was acceptable. After all, aside from transport workers, these factories didn’t require elves to work inside.

Considering the budget, each oak tree factory would specialize in the production of one type of product, so under Arthur’s advice, Yang Hao also left plenty of room for modification in the factories.

The elves would need about 10 oak tree factories to meet the upcoming war and transformation demands.

Two factories would be used to produce arrowheads that were still in use, and the remaining eight would produce parts for the new-style rifles. More precisely, the various components needed for the imitation new-style rifles that Arthur was working on.

When it came to the new-style rifles, Arthur’s shrewdness must be acknowledged.

Although known for his lasciviousness, when Arthur channeled his energy into his intellect, he exhibited unparalleled strength.

With Arthur’s efforts, they managed to replicate the new-style rifle from Isugard in less than two days, creating an improved model named the Capa 1404 rifle.

This rifle, stronger than its mother, utilized unique minerals from the Elven Forest. It was adapted to fit the physical prowess of elves by increasing the caliber and utilizing explosive minerals abundant in the magical minerals previously almost unused by elves as the primer. This modification resulted in increased initial speed and penetration of the bullets.

Actual tests showed that this new-style rifle had an effective lethal range of 900 meters in the hands of an elf, capable of penetrating standard wooden shields from that distance. With the elves’ innate ability to enchant the rifle and bullets, its power could be even further enhanced.

This was precisely the weapon the elves needed. Seeing the testers abandoning their longbows for the Capa 1404, handling it as if it were a beloved wife, filled Yang Hao and Arthur with a sense of satisfaction and pride, believing they had done something great.

Not only did they achieve tangible results in firearms and industry, but Narujia’s golems also saw significant improvements with the assistance of elven mages.

According to the mages, golems could only be created by the Ling people using their unique magic. Thus, production was inevitably dependent on the total population of the Ling people, which was a given.

However, after collaborating with the Ling people, they still managed to make improvements in control over the golems.

Similar to scripting for robots on Earth, golems could now autonomously determine who was an ally and who was an enemy based on preset instructions and magical guidance, and react accordingly to each.

Consequently, even with rudimentary control, the Ling people could easily command golems to perform more complex tasks under improved magical guidance, such as archery, in theory.

Since archery was theoretically possible, specially customized large-caliber firearms—or even cannons—for golems also became possible.

However, designing these would require time, a significant amount of time. Yang Hao didn’t have that much time, so he had no choice but to burden Arthur with this task.

This poor blond man accepted the job, but he started to frequently request leaves of absence in the last two days. Considering Arthur was also on the verge of a romantic disaster, Yang Hao offered his understanding.

“Just like that, I really worry if Arthur might one day die in some elf’s bed.”

After washing up, while holding the still sulking nun, Yang Hao secretly glanced at the mess on the other bed, contemplating how to get it cleaned without attracting Fen’s attention.

But it seemed impossible. So, noticing they still had some time before heading out for breakfast and meeting up with everyone, he brought up Arthur’s situation again.

During this time, Yang Hao fully understood the pathological emotions of the elves.

No matter where, as long as it was outside the Green Courtyard, Yang Hao could always see several familiar figures stealthily observing Arthur from a distance.

Sometimes there were a few, sometimes there were more than a dozen, spread out, hostile to each other, yet stubbornly loving the same person.

Arthur didn’t dare to look back at those female elves. As a consequence, he took three days off to deal with personal matters.

Hopefully, when he came over today, his legs would still be in good condition.

Yang Hao sighed, while the little nun curled up in his arms complained, “I’m more worried that you’ll kill me someday. Pervert, an insatiable virgin! I’d rather use my hands to satisfy you than let you touch me again.”

“Teresa, are you uncomfortable?”

“Just because it felt so damn good that I even had the urge to degenerate, that’s why I have to restrain myself—wait a minute?! You tricked me into talking! Bad puppy!”

Punching and kicking, but Yang Hao found this to be very blissful.

If only the little empress and the former court chief were also in the Elven Kingdom.

He sighed at the thought, yet also knew he couldn’t rush things. Everything had to wait until after defeating the invasion from the diocese.

***

On the other side, in the largest indoor court of the Green Courtyard.

The masters of the Elven Kingdom, also known as the old elves, had already arrived one after another.

Today was an important day. Regardless of their profession, these masters were here to see if the human regent could bring about positive changes for the elves.

Some of the stubborn old elves were deeply skeptical. After all, a human regent was still a human regent. Could he truly understand the significance of coexistence between the Elven Forest and the elves, understand the elves’ stubbornness and society?

Some of the reformist old elves were confident. Even if he was a human regent, he had already demonstrated his capabilities in the Roman Empire.

Perhaps there would be discomfort at the beginning, but if given time, the Elven Kingdom would surely be well-governed by him.

Both sides engaged in fierce debate, while those in the neutral camp caught in the middle expressed that whether to support or oppose, they would still need to wait for him to present tangible evidence.

Regarding this, Fen simply expressed her appreciation for Yang Hao. This is very common among elves. Doubts, directly expressed. Affection, directly shown. Hatred, directly resolved with bow and arrow.

Elves were such a whimsical and stubborn race, thus, Fen’s remarks didn’t provoke any strangeness among the old elves. It only made their discussion even more heated.

“What I’m most worried about is that the Regent may not consider the relationship between the elves and the Elven Forest as our ally from Bayerzost  would… I’m concerned that he still plans to carry out the kind of polluting reforms in the Elven Forest that were done in the Roman Empire, especially considering the impact of magic pollution on us,” a stubborn old elf said worriedly.

“As a race that relies on magic to live, pure magic is beneficial to us, conversely, polluted magic can harm our bodies and affect our health. Some of the veterans who were injured during the Demonic Calamity War have not fully recovered from the demonic corruption to this day. If he is really determined to pollute the Elven Forest, it’s hard to say whether this would be good or bad for us.”

Elves were a perfect race that depended on magic to live. The quality of magic directly affected the quality of life for elves.

Therefore, the concerns of the stubborn old elves were not unfounded. Their bottom line was that pollution could not appear inside the Elven Forest, or to put it another way, pollution that affected the purity of magic must be avoided.

For the progressive old elves, this seemed to be a trivial matter that didn’t warrant concern.

“Although the Regent may not be politically savvy, after all, he was just the adopted brother of the former Emperor of the Roman Empire, dedicated to reform. But he indeed understands the way of reforming according to local conditions. Based on my observations over the past few days, he respects the forest, our traditions, and the recent activities he’s been involved in do not affect the harmony between the Elven Forest and the elves. So in a sense, I personally have a lot of confidence in him. But then again, hasn’t our Fen already given him the appropriate rewards?”

The progressive old elves had been observing Yang Hao’s work for a while now. To say the least, they were very satisfied with what he had done.

Although they were not entirely sure if the things he had developed had practical value, his respect for the Elven Forest and the elves indeed qualified him to receive the elves’ recognition and allegiance.

Even if this attempt failed, he just needed some time to make improvements.

But then again, why hasn’t Fen firmly secured the Regent in Caparia?

For a moment, this doubt made all elves once again turn their gaze to Fen, who sat on the throne. Fen just gave a stiff chuckle in response, indicating that she had her arrangements in place.

In fact, she had already learned about what happened last night between the nun and the Regent through elven magic, and was currently pondering what to do.

Amidst the noisy debate, the elf council was fully assembled by 10 a.m.

It was after the old elves took their seats according to their social status and duties that Yang Hao and his entourage arrived.

Dressed in an all-black outfit was naturally the Regent, Yang Hao.

The pale-faced blond man was his subordinate, Arthur.

The one in a nun’s habit making prayer gestures was Sister Teresa.

There were also several accompanying elf mages. Were they planning to use magic to let everyone in the hall understand events happening thousands of miles away?

Fen pondered, suddenly realizing something.

The chieftain of the Ling tribe, Narujia, seemed not to have come. Fen, lost in thought, was informed by her loyal servant loyal servant Kenna that Narujia did not seem very eager to come because her tribespeople had already healed today.

“She’s a good child who values her own kin more.” Fen smiled and gave her assessment, “And she trusts that Regent His Majesty will succeed, hence her choice not to appear. Hehe, let’s wait and see.”

She looked forward to Yang Hao bringing change to Caparia, firmly believing this would be the most memorable achievement for the elves in thousands of years.