Battle’s End and Conclusion

"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 everchanging 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.