Chapter 98

While she was in the middle of her lecture, someone squeezed between her and Marisia.

Of course, that someone was me.

As I stepped between the two, Aisia, who had been lecturing Marisia, looked at me with a dissatisfied glare.

“What’s the matter?”

Aisia’s voice, directed at me, was, naturally, quite cold.

Well, what can I do?

From an elf’s perspective, Mari, who is still practically a teenager, being involved in dangerous adventurer work with her companions would seem like a bunch of bad humans leading her child astray, if you think about it in terms of past lives.

“Ahem. First, calm down…”

“This isn’t your business to interfere. This is a matter between me and Marisia.”

“Well, that might be true, but…”

“It’s not ‘might be true’! Don’t interfere as an outsider!”

“I’m Mari’s adventurer companion. I’m hardly an outsider…”

“I’m Marisia’s mother! Compared to that, a human you’ve known for less than ten years is practically an outsider!”

I tried to keep the conversation going, but Aisia’s sharp and pointed attitude seemed to reject any further dialogue with me.

No, it didn’t just seem that way—it probably was.

Honestly, if I were in her shoes, I wouldn’t feel like listening either…

But I couldn’t just stay silent.

If I stayed quiet like this, Mari might not only fail to be persuaded to become an adventurer but could also end up stuck in this elf village for at least thirty years.

So, even if it meant being rude, I had to talk to Aisia.

Mari isn’t as much of a child as you think.

In elf culture, twenty-four might be a very young age, but by other human standards, twenty-four is an age where getting married and having children wouldn’t be strange at all.

Instead of outright saying no, why not take the time to talk and understand each other?

I organized my thoughts to persuade Aisia and looked at her.

“First of all…”

“If you try to interfere between me and Marisia one more time, I’ll kick you out of this house right now.”

“…It’s lunchtime. How about we eat something?”

“…”

From the corner of my eye, I could feel Mari glaring at me coldly.

Well, she did say she’d kick me out.

.

.

.

The dining table, gathered for a meal, was filled with nothing but cold silence.

It felt less like a meal and more like prisoners gathered before an execution.

Normally, Aisia, as the host, would have tried to lighten the mood, but right now, she had no desire to do so.

In fact, Aisia was quite unhappy with the current situation.

Of course, no parent would be happy about their child running away from home…

But honestly, considering the duration of the runaway, it wasn’t something Aisia should have been so angry about.

At most, it was less than a year.

She left in spring and returned by the start of summer, so it was more like a camping trip than a runaway.

Frankly, if other elves saw this, they might even say Aisia was overreacting over just a few months.

But the problem was Marisia’s age and the fact that she had chosen to become an adventurer.

At twenty-four, even considering her shorter lifespan as a half-elf, it was still too young by elf cultural standards.

Of course, elves don’t physically mature slower than other races.

Elves, like humans, finish their physical growth around twenty.

But just because they’re physically adults doesn’t mean they’re culturally adults.

In elf society, you’re only considered an adult after about a hundred years.

Even then, Aisia was willing to compromise and let Marisia leave the elf village at fifty.

Of course, like all parents, when the time actually came, who knows how she’d feel…

But still, Aisia, with her relatively open-minded attitude for a young elf in her mid-200s, had planned to let Marisia become independent early.

She had planned to teach Marisia the skills of a forest keeper for exactly thirty years, but she never expected Marisia to run away after less than five years of training.

And on top of that, the job she chose was adventurer.

At twenty-four, that was far too young for such a dangerous job, where her life could be at risk and she could get caught up in all sorts of trouble.

Aisia knew Marisia had a longing for the world outside the elf village, but she never imagined she’d just up and choose to be an adventurer.

If she had known from the start, she wouldn’t have planned to let Marisia become independent at fifty but would have kept her in the elf village until a hundred, like other elves.

So Aisia couldn’t hide her resentment toward this immature young elf who didn’t understand her worries.

Of course, Aisia couldn’t possibly view Marisia’s adventurer companions in a positive light.

Marisia had said she lied to them about running away and begged her not to say anything, but that didn’t stop Aisia from disliking them.

Especially since Marisia seemed more concerned about her companions than her own mother, which only made Aisia feel more resentful.

‘Are those humans you’ve known for less than a year more important than your own mother? What’s the point of raising a daughter…’

As Aisia silently glared at Mari, Kurt came out of the kitchen carrying a large bowl of salad.

It might have seemed odd that it was Kurt, not Aisia, who brought the food, but that was because Kurt had offered to cook.

Kurt had said that since mother and daughter had just reunited, he wanted them to relax and talk while he took care of the cooking.

Normally, letting an outsider into the kitchen would have been uncomfortable, but Aisia saw it as an opportunity and gladly lent him the kitchen.

Not because she accepted Kurt’s goodwill, but because she had other plans.

Aisia looked at the salad Kurt brought with a haughty gaze.

Elf cuisine is extremely simple.

Of course it is.

Elf culture minimizes the use of fire in many aspects of life, including cooking.

And the history of cooking is almost as old as the discovery of fire.

Frying, grilling, steaming, stir-frying—there’s no cooking method that doesn’t use fire.

The methods of cooking are endless, but so are the methods that don’t use fire.

And what about their diet?

They are a race that can’t eat meat by nature.

So the variety of ingredients they can digest is less than half that of other races.

Limited cooking methods and limited ingredients.

But that doesn’t mean elf cuisine is as barbaric as lizardman cuisine.

Of course, elf taste buds aren’t as messed up as lizardmen’s, and above all, they have several times more time than other races.

In elf villages, it’s common to find veteran chefs with hundreds of years of experience.

Even though Aisia’s own cooking skills were lacking, she was still an elf who had lived for about 260 years.

In those 200+ years, Aisia had plenty of opportunities to eat dishes made by elves with centuries of cooking experience.

So while her cooking skills might be poor, her taste buds weren’t.

So no matter what dish was served, she would mercilessly critique it based on her experience.

Any lingering bitterness from improperly removed herbs, dirt not thoroughly washed off, or blemishes from poorly handled vegetables.

Like a picky mother-in-law, she would nitpick every detail to find a reason to kick them out.

That was the background behind Aisia’s willingness to let Kurt cook.

‘Hmph. Lizardman cooking skills are predictable.’

If it had been the dwarf girl who wanted to cook, she wouldn’t have let her into the kitchen.

Dwarves are famous for their craftsmanship, so their cooking would naturally be excellent.

Aisia didn’t want to view Marisia’s companions positively in any way.

In that sense, it was fortunate that it was the lizardman who offered to cook.

It’s as well-known as the fact that lizardmen shed their skin once a year that their traditional food is roughly chopped meat dripping with blood and bitter herbs haphazardly thrown into a bowl.

So if he brought out a sloppy dish, she could nitpick it and kick him out.

Or at least use it to gain the upper hand in future conversations.

Though unspoken, the reason they had come to the Village of the World Tree with Mari was obvious.

They were surely here to ask for permission for Marisia to continue being an adventurer.

Whether Marisia had asked them or they had taken the initiative, it didn’t matter.

Either way, Aisia had no intention of agreeing.

With that thought, Aisia looked at the plate Kurt had brought out.