With our arrival delayed by the fight we enter the intended frontier village the next day. Considering the loot the orcs were carrying, I was fearing the worst, but the village gate looks unbroken, and its inhabitants swamp us upon entry. The village head greets us shortly after entering along with a small crowd. With carefully chosen words and as much respect as possible the village head tell us that they surrendered their food supplies to a group of orcs accompanied by an ogre. Basically, they think we are too late, but are still grateful for our arrival.

"We crossed paths with the ogre and the orcs yesterday. They are all dead, and here are your food supplies." I take out the loot recovered from the orcs from my soul storage. The villagers look ecstatic with relief. I guess food supplies must be running low in this village. I am guessing that our reward from the guild has been sponsored by the local government as this village would clearly struggle to pay the fees to take care of an ogre.

Instead of staying the night we leave the village an hour later as we still have much daylight to use for travelling. We head northwest directly for a familiar mountain pass. We cross paths with a few different beasts on our journey, none particularly troublesome. East of the mountains the wilderness is not as dangerous as it is heavily frequented by hunters. Stronger beasts usually come from beyond the mountains.

As we get close to the pass, I am mindful of the local kobold population. They are the main reason hunters who go beyond the mountains rarely use this pass. Kobolds form primitive tribal societies, use various tools and hunt in packs. They rarely form large raiding parties, but their hunting parties can cooperate if dealing with strong opponents making them a troublesome enemy to just about any hunter.

Kobold look a bit like a cross between a hyena and a human. I like dogs too much to want to compare them to kobolds, and kobolds are definitely not attractive. They seem to be classed as bipedal beasts, unlike beastmen, and from what I have read the beastmen races absolutely hates them. With all beastmen enslaved to humans there is no natural check against the population growth of kobolds which occasionally leads to large hunting missions to thin their numbers.

As we head for the pass a kobold hunting party catch our scent. Using my alert and menu map skills we set a trap for them and annihilate the small party before they can call for help. With no kobolds stalking us we rush to the pass. Ironically beyond the pass life will get a lot harder from past experience.

I have lost track of the number of days we have travelled since the village. Keeping track of time, just doesn't seem important when you are in the wilderness. Survival is far more important. I am reminded of this as we exit the pass at the location I first met Kira, Lawra and Lynne.

The small clearing where I butchered the goblin raiding party is there, but no sign of the fight is left. Since I stored all the goblin corpses in my soul storage, there wasn't much to find in the first place. As we head into the wilderness infested with beasts wanting to kill and eat you I lead the group followed by Kira and Rin, with Nadi forming the rearguard.

A lot of this area has already been mapped out in my menu map from my long stay just west of here. With the detailed map filled out and my current alert skill level I find it easier to warn our party of danger and prepare a counter. Mostly we just deal with suicidal forest rats who have grown numerous this side of the mountain wall.

A couple of days after leaving the mountain pass, my alert skill tells me to check out my map. Within the explored area I can see a familiar beast, the horned beast bear. It seems to be attacking two elves. I have seen elves at the slave market, but these must be elves living in the wild. Turning to the girls I let them know that I have spotted a stronger beast up ahead, and that I will rush ahead to deal with it. As I run, I can hear the girls objecting.

I know I am being reckless, I just don't want the bear to eat the first two free elves I have a chance at meeting in this world. As I get closer I can see two elves and a bear in front of them. One elf, a male I think, is on the ground leaned up against a tree clearly injured. The other, a female, looks uninjured but is only armed with a long knife holding off the bear from her companion.

Charging at full speed making as little noise as possible I summon my great axe as I jump up and deliver a decapitating blow to the bear. The head almost comes clean off. That was a lot easier than before. In all beast bears defense, it looks like a much younger bear than the one I first fought not far from here. As I turn I feel a sharp pain just around my kidney, the elf girl has given me a shallow stab in the joint between my upper and lower armor. Not an accidental stab, but clearly a calculated stab to avoid my good quality armor.

I should have known wild elves would be hostile to humans. As I look towards the female elf, I see her wearily holding her knife out towards me, clearly worried by how little damage her stab caused. As to throw salt on that wound I use a bit of healing magic to stop the bleeding and my super regeneration heals the wound as if it was never there. My armor is still covered in my blood though.

I slap the knife out of the hands of the elf, who is clearly a lot weaker than me. Turning towards the injured male elf, I realize that he is close to dying. Ignoring the frightened female I focus on treating the wounds of the injured male elf. My knowledge of healing magic is far too low to fix his wounds but it is enough to stop his severe bleeding. Though severe, his wounds look relatively shallow. If he has internal injuries I know I will struggle.

While stabilizing the condition of the male elf, the girls arrive. I turn around as I hear something that sounds like a fall. Kira has face-planted the seemingly young female elf on the ground with one arm painfully pulled up behind her back. As I open my mouth to object, Kira beats me to it. "Let me guess while saving their lives from the bear this girl stabbed you in the back." I can't deny that her deductions are spot on.

"She was just scared, and it is all healed up, no harm done." Kira clearly does not agree, but she loosens her grip a bit and pulls up the scared elf with both her arms pulled up behind her back. Grass and dirt covers the delicate face of the elf. She looks to be in pain. "Please let her go, you are hurting her. If you keep an eye on her, she can't harm us." Kira relents and pushed the elf away. For the first time I hear the male elf speaking. "Please spare the young one, she acted out of fear." Looks like the male elf can speak the common tongue of the humans. The female stays quiet, but I suspect she also understands.

I try to assure both elves that we mean them no harm. Both seem convinced that I only saved their lives to make them into slaves. I try to be as honest as I can to hoping that they will see my sincerity. "It is true that if we made you into slaves we could make a tidy profit selling you in a human town, but that does not mean that I want to. Though I have seen elven slaves at the slave market you two are the first free elves I have met."

Knowing that in this world no one does something for nothing they are likely to not believe I saved them out of the goodness of my heart. So what can I say was my underlying agenda for saving them? "The truth is I know very little about free elves, and I have a thirst for knowledge of things I do not know. I saved you because I want to know your perspective of the world rather than that of humans." They are still suspicious of me but seem to have bought my reason for saving them.

The male elf is the one to respond. "You seem sincere and I can teach you a lot about elves, but the one thing I will not tell you is where to find more of my brethren." That last condition is very understandable, and I assure him that I don't want to know in case I accidentally let it slip to humans who would take advantage of that knowledge.

The elves agree to stay with us until the male recovers. I suggest to the girls that we take them to my old home, the mud hut. Our original plan was to make that our base and do hunting trips from it. No one objects to it. Again I have forgotten to ask the name of a new acquaintance. Turning to the elves I ask what I should call them. The old elf responds: "You probably can't pronounce our real names, but in human tongue my name could be shortened to Elanaros, and my younger companion's would be Elianiar.