Living in a fantasy world, certain things become staples of minstrels' tales. In male-oriented fantasy novels, you'd find classics like time travel, possession, and reincarnation. But the true stars of these tales are ogres, dragons, and fairies.

Ogres appear most frequently simply because they're common. These giants, obsessed with meat and known to attack humans, generate more bad news than wyverns or worms due to their greater numbers.

It's similar to how modern people are more familiar with car accidents than plane crashes. People plagued by flesh-eating monsters like orcs can easily imagine more ferocious, gigantic, and powerful man-eating giants.

After ogres come dragons and fairies.

These are the complete opposite of ogres in terms of frequency. While ogres regularly emerge to attack livestock and people, dragons and fairies have barely interacted with humans at all.

There are wyvern-like creatures that resemble dragons, but even those are hard to find compared to ogres. Unless you're a pioneer in some remote wilderness, you'd likely live your entire life without knowing what a wyvern even is. Boastful minstrels often exaggerate wyverns into dragons in their tales.

That's what minstrels do—they sing about being attacked by "dragons" whenever they see a wyvern or even just a carnivorous bird that happens to be over 5 meters tall.

"...Is this a fairy?"

"I think so? But why is something that should be in the forest fairy village doing here?"

The final staple is fairies. This category is so broad it's used everywhere—like the tiny creature now perched on the back of my hand.

This little being had been hiding between Grace's shoulder and hair, fidgeting about. Now it had naturally settled on my hand, seemingly attracted to holy power despite the lingering charred pig stench.

The reason fairies feature prominently in minstrels' tales is simple—people don't understand magic well, so fairies make convenient storytelling material.

In 21st century modern society, "fairy" can refer to anything from Greek and Roman nymphs to the small butterfly-winged fairies popularized in the Victorian era, all the way to the voluptuous and sometimes overtly erotic elven races.

But would medieval fantasy kingdoms make such distinctions? Hardly.

The curvaceous temptress who appears from the forest to give a woodcutter a night of dreams before vanishing is a fairy. The spirit of a deep forest spring blessing good people is a fairy. And the butterfly-winged girl resembling Tinkerbell now stretching on the back of my hand is also a fairy.

"Wow! She's so cute...! Wait, she was riding on my shoulder?"

"She was, and then she flew toward me. Could she have helped you see through the barrier?"

"Heh, me getting help from a fairy? What a kind little friend. Maybe she's returning a favor."

Grace and Katie rushed over, their eyes sparkling brightly.

Despite the vast difference between Katie's northern ducal mansion and Grace's rural village hut, both had undoubtedly grown up hearing countless fairy tales. Just as dolls are typical gifts for young girls, stories about fairies are the default tales parents tell their daughters.

You can't exactly tell little girls about man-eating giants who chew people alive or evil dragons that devour livestock and burn down villages.

So naturally, Irene, who would have told such fairy tales to orphans, had somehow slipped between Grace and Katie. The three women pressed close together, their foreheads almost touching as they squealed over the fairy on my hand.

"But, um, can this tiny child really help us?"

"She's small, but... she's a fairy, so I think it's fine."

"No, no, I don't just mean physically small. It hasn't been long since we left those seeds with the forest fairy village."

"That's true."

"At best, she's a week-old baby, right?"

A palm-sized, cute blonde girl. The butterfly wings on her back looked like they were crafted from polished gemstones. A cute fairy with beautiful wings—the perfect embodiment of "icing on the cake."

But more important than her adorable appearance was the fairy buff that had allowed Grace to one-shot the Orc Champion's head.

Tap-tap

Even Han Se-ah, who had been suffering from the viewers' excited speculation, finally approached me, but finding the three women completely surrounding me, she tapped on my armor instead.

"Hey, um, shouldn't we clean up around here first?"

"Ah... you're right."

As Han Se-ah pointed out, judging by the orcs' screams and enraged beast-kin howls coming from all directions, this wasn't really the time to be focusing on the fairy.

※

The remaining orcs were dealt with in a thoroughly anticlimactic manner.

First, the Orc Champion who should have been their focal point had died pathetically, and the named orcs who could be considered his lieutenants had died even more pathetically beforehand.

If you think about military formation, if the Orc Champion was at the center, wouldn't his named-rank lieutenants be around him? And my self-destructing lightning had ground up the Orc Champion and everything nearby...

As a result, the named-rank officers had been wiped out en masse, and immediately after, the Orc Champion had his brain blown through by a sniper in what was essentially an assassination. Orcs devastated in this manner couldn't possibly stand against beast-kin charging with their buffs active.

The result was mana stones piled like mountains.

"Hmm, certainly... bodies turning into stones. This means we can't use them as fertilizer."

"I guess we can't say 'turn the invaders into fertilizer' anymore."

The beast-kin clicked their tongues as they watched the orcs transform into mana stones. Was offering invaders' corpses to the forest religiously important to them? Their disappointment over such a strange detail was quite remarkable.

Still, thanks to the beast-kin who had burned with rage against the orcs who had harmed their kin, the cleanup ended instantly. In fact, the time spent collecting mana stones in the broken forest and regrouping to return to the village took longer than the actual battle.

Just because the beast-kin ate fruits from the forest didn't mean they lacked economic concepts like trade and currency, so they diligently collected the mana stones.

"What? So you defeated one of the Four Heavenly Kings already?"

"But we've only just finished stabilization and are about to start our research."

The pace had been so rapid that even the mages who had come to research were taken aback.

The mages who had remained in the village had barely extracted mana from the Starry Warbler and were just starting their research, while those who had taken interest in the baby jewel dragon had only managed to feed it a few times.

Their research had barely begun—it was embarrassing to even call it that—and now they were suddenly presented with the byproducts of a Four Heavenly King and Orc Champion. No wonder the mages were flustered.

A large mana stone and the ritual tool for creating one-on-one duel barriers. Along with massive orc tusks, bones, and orc-specific feathered ornaments left behind by the pathetically deceased Champion. The mages' expressions were truly peculiar, as if they had high expectations for the Champion because of the enlightened orc.

But their ambiguous expressions, like they'd bitten into something strange, didn't last long.

"Oh, ohhh? What is this?"

"I think the forest fairies call it a fairy."

The mages' faces melted into silly grins as the fairy that had been using Grace's hair as a nest and hiding around her nape and shoulder suddenly flew over.

Naturally, they weren't entranced by the palm-sized fairy, but were simply delighted that a creature straight out of minstrel nonsense had flown in on its own. A newly born fairy—if they could take charge of raising it, how many papers could they squeeze out of its growth, ecology, and byproducts?

Han Se-ah also hoped the mages would clearly explain the fairy's buff.

Unfortunately, there was a major obstacle.

"Laat?"

"So, how do we communicate with it?"

"That's something we'll have to figure out... but it doesn't seem willing to leave Grace's side."

The obstacle was the language barrier.

Of course, this fairy had emerged from a flower bud bloomed from a large forest seed less than a week ago. While herbivores might run from birth to survive, it would be strange if a fairy could speak human language fluently right after being born.

How could we ask about skills when we couldn't communicate?

Whether Grace had become stronger thanks to the fairy's blessing, why it was obsessed with Grace's nape while ignoring everyone else, how it had instantly traveled from the 61st floor forest fairy village to the 70th floor.

We had plenty of questions, but all we got in response was humming.

Either a short "laat" in a pleasant high pitch, or a longer "luuut" in a slightly lower tone. Roughly interpreted, the high-pitched "laat" probably meant "like" and the low-pitched "luuut" meant "dislike."

"Hmm, maybe it's not that it won't leave Grace, but that it dislikes men."

"Well, it is a fairy after all."

It would cling to our party members singing "laat" but flee with a "luuut" when the old Tower mages approached.

...Considering it came to me with a "laat," it might just be a fairy with a serious crush.

Enjoy the chappy!