Mt. Dragonends Chapter 7: The Fifth Human, Elf The centre of the Earth had a core of syrupy, fused metal and magma. The thick bedrock plate that covered the core moved a few centimetres every few years due to convection, and this became the source of earthquakes and other changes in the Earth"s crust.
Plate tectonics could create great mountain ranges and salt lakes. When the plates collided against each other and s.h.i.+fted upwards, they formed mountains, and when parts of the ocean were isolated from the moving continents, they formed salt lakes, which after drying up, turned into salt deserts.
Having continued to live(?) through and watch the Earth"s grand work, the recent formation of the great mountain ranges was a mere trifle.
d.a.m.n huge continents collided and created d.a.m.n huge mountain ranges. Around the time when I reached 10 000 metres in elevation, a long mountain range that was about the same length as five j.a.panese islands connected together, reaching to about 6000~8000 metres long, was formed.
The wind blowing from the ocean hit the mountain range, forming a moist airflow which turned into a sea of clouds, causing a large quant.i.ty of rain to fall and creating a river and lake on a never-before-seen scale. Vegetation grew abundantly on the edges of the river and lake, and eventually that transformed into a forest independent of the waterside.
The forest was a completely different environment from what had been seen on Earth up until now. The dwarves that lived underground, the mermaids that lived in the ocean, the werewolves that lived in the glaciers, and the harpies that lived in the sky – it was an environment that did not match up with the living environments of any of the races.
It did not have the heat required for dwarves to live, nor the water required for the mermaids to live, nor the ice required for the werewolves to live, and the foliage was too much of a hindrance for the harpies to survive.
As such, I once again created a new race.
The fifth human that could live in the forest, the elf.
The elves breathed in the forest"s essence to live.
They could only live in a place with an abundance of vegetation, and as long as they had an abundance of vegetation, they could survive.
Their appearance consisted of blond hair and blue eyes. The men were handsome and the women beautiful, with a slender figure and long ears.
While their blond hair, blue eyes, slender figure and beautiful appearances were decided based on my tastes to make them more "elf-like", there was a good reason for making their ears long. If they weren"t long, they couldn"t hear my voice.
My true form was a mountain, and I survived by absorbing thermal energy. That is why the dwarves who lived inside the mountain and lived by absorbing heat were the closest to me.
The mermaids who lived in water, werewolves who ate ice, and harpies who lived in storms. They were not close to me, but were also not very far. It was because all of them were based upon ecology that naturally and spontaneously formed on Earth. Water, ice, and wind are all fundamentally a part of nature, and were like my (mountain) relatives.
However, the forest that the elves lived and used as food was different.
The forest was an a.s.sembly of living things.
It was something that was finally birthed as a result of the fall of the giant meteorites, the scorching hot world, the frozen silver world, and the world of rain and storms. After many, many months and years, life that had undergone many interwoven, complex evolutions to survive could even be said to be something "unnatural".
After all, it took 4 billion years before such a forest was created. A forest that had never been seen before on Earth"s surface until now. It was a complete newcomer to Earth, very strange and queer, an absurdity, and an alien element that could not be understood.
Naturally, it was completely different from me, who was the oldest mountain that had existed on Earth since its very beginning.
Because it was so different, I had to make their ears bigger or else my words would not reach them.
If I did not purposely make their ears bigger to allow them to perceive sound more efficiently, they would not be able to hear my voice. That was how different the existence of the elves who lived in the forest were from me.
The bond with something that was distant from myself? It would probably grow thin. If even the elves were like this, then if I were to make new human species suitable for Earth"s changing environment, it was possible that eventually it would become impossible for them to understand me.
That is why the elves would be the last of the "human" races that I create. If I made a human race that I couldn"t communicate with, it would absolutely become a source of strife. I would not create life that I could not manage. I learned from the error of my past that became the source of my name, "Dragonends", and also made a promise to Sahela.
That being said, once I finished creating the elves, then at least one of the races would be able to handle the majority of environments. The underground, the ocean, the ice and snow, the sky, the forest and gra.s.slands – all were covered. The wastelands and deserts could be scouted out by the harpies from the sky.
There was nowhere on Earth that my kin cannot reach! They were not only on Earth, but on the Moon too!
Like usual, I made one immortal elf, named him Alvin, and had him become the patriarch of the species.
At first, since it was the first time in a while that a new human species was created, they got along harmoniously based on seniority. However, troublingly, the elves led by Alvin gradually started to be seen as a level lower than the other species.
The elves had poor hearing.
No, on hearing ability alone they far exceeded that of the other species (with Sahela as the sole exception, as she had the strongest hearing ability that exceeded that of the guy with the best ears amongst the elves by a large margin), but even if their ears were big they still couldn"t hear my voice well. They"d ask me to repeat myself like an old man with poor hearing, and with the fragmentary words they could hear, they would try to somehow manage a conversation by making vague responses. There were many such cases of that occurring.
And that became the seed of a standing joke amongst the other races.
Being unable to hear the voice of me, their creator, was plenty of material to make them the target of scorn by the other races that I had created.
Are you guys serious? You couldn"t hear the voice just now? Those are the words of Lord Dragonends, you know? Even though he spoke so clearly? You can"t hear it? You can"t hear it! Ahhh! Elves are really! This is why, you know! Ahhh! The longears are that! Are those ears just decorations!? -and, every time something happened, that is what would be said to them.
Even so, they were a human race that I had worked earnestly to create, a race that should be loved, thus it didn"t reach the point of persecution. However, the trend that the "elves were a level lower than us" – such sentiments could not be erased. There were even people who didn"t even like to see the elves, who were the youngest race, appearing.
Don"t fight, won"t you all just get along. -while on one hand I thought that, on the other, I started thinking that maybe allowing them to have some conflicts in moderation would be more healthy.
After all, for races whose appearances, history, living environments, and abilities were completely different, wasn"t it strange in its own way for all of them to get along perfectly well?
Amongst h.o.m.o sapiens, they had a crazy amount of persecution just based on differences in skin colour. If their languages and religions were different, it"d lead to war. As for the monkeys that were kind of like their slightly hairy relatives, don"t even talk about being friends, they put them in cages and turned them into exhibitions, or raised them like pets, amongst other things.
Compared to that, the five races were getting along way too well.
The power relations.h.i.+p between them was a curious thing, and the elves who continued to p.r.i.c.ked by being seen by the other races as a level lower than them finally started to snap.
[You old-fas.h.i.+oned races are so ancient that mould"s probably growing on all of you. Do you even know what mould is? It"s a creature that lives on land, you know? You don"t know? You don"t know!?] -such comments were then torn apart with counters such as [That"s right, we"re so ancient we"ve been accompanying Lord Dragonends since long ago, isn"t that great?]. As they blundered with their comments, they then took advantage of the werewolves and targeted them, as they had a c.h.i.n.k in their armour.
The werewolf"s leader, Lycan-kun, was the only patriarch amongst the five races who wasn"t on Earth, but was on the Moon instead. To the average werewolf living on Earth, this made things a little awkward.
When the patriarchs led their race to gather at my place to conduct a banquet, only the werewolf"s patriarch was absent. In the long run, it made their position feel weaker.
As such, the elves used that to stir things up indirectly.
What does the head of the werewolves think? Ah, sorry, the head of the werewolves isn"t here. Sorry for our lack of tact. To us elves, it is only natural to have one"s head around so it was unintentional. No offense……-they said things like that.
Hey elves~ your personality"s so bad~.
Incidentally, the antagonistic relations.h.i.+p between elves and dwarves that was common in fantasies didn"t exist here.
Fundamentally speaking, (excluding the dragons) the dwarves were the first to be created, and were led by Sahela, who was the strongest patriarch by a long shot. On top of that, the dwarves prospered right at the foot of Mt. Dragonends, or rather, right under the foot of Mt. Dragonends. As such, the dwarves received both respect and envy from the other races.
As various conflicts between the races were born, upon feeling the dissent reach a level where it would make me sad, Sahela would take Mjӧlnir and head out to strike it down. Due to her helpfulness (?), the era pa.s.sed in a peaceful, yet stimulating manner.
A new wave in history was born about 6 million years after the creation of the elves.
It started from the discovery of the dragon crystals———