Chapter 9 - The Farm in Irttat
Chapter 9 : The Nightingale's Past 05
"Later she took me on a long journey. When the dry rations ran out, she'd bring me wild fruit in her beak. We avoided cities, passed through who knows how many mountains and forests, and finally reached Irttat, just as you've seen."
"When we got here, I learned everything that happened in prehistoric times and understood why she turned into a bird, but it was already too late."
Garcia said with a sense of sympathy: "I thought that was just a legend..."
Only Lucita didn't understand and asked in confusion: "Why?"
Garcia helped explain: "In some records of prehistoric history, the war between humans and the other races didn’t end simply with the latter retreating into hiding."
"After their defeat, their exile was far from peaceful. The kings of the elves and the merfolk remained behind in the human world to protect their people."
"At that time, human magic had developed to its peak, so the destructive power of warfare in that era was terrifying. Among the most developed and studied was curse magic. To prevent the long-lived foreign races from rising again, humans seized the opportunity of victory and, using the bodies of the two foreign kings as catalysts, initiated a massive magical ritual to place curses on the foreign races."
"The curse placed upon the elves decreed that any elf who killed a human would transform into a voiceless nightingale, condemned to circle the forest alone until the end of their lifespan."
Mavis couldn't help asking: "But I don't understand. Ten years have passed, so why did she suddenly become like this?"
"That question, I'm afraid, would have to be asked of a real elf." Garcia said with a grave expression: "For the past hundred years, elves have stayed in the Esti Mountains and rarely set foot on the continent, let alone kill anyone. Among Irttat's current residents, except for my sister and me, not one is over a hundred years old, so I've never seen a precedent. You won't find answers in town."
"Then where can we find elves? They won't stand by and watch their own kind die, will they?"
"Hard to say." Garcia shook her head: "Originally the elven race and the town had a very harmonious relationship. If you go into the Peace Forest from the west and walk for about a day, you could see the elves' dwellings. They don't live in groups. Some houses are built in trees, some between cliffs, each house isolated, with no settlements. Back then, if you wanted to find a particular elf, you just needed to knock on a door and ask. They also often came to town to trade herbs for favorite foods and crafts."
"But ten years ago, an elf was tricked away by an outsider man. She left a letter saying she was going out on an adventure with a friend, and that she'd bring back gifts from the human royal capital."
"It's said she was a child of fifty or sixty years old, still in the juvenile period—equivalent to about ten years old for humans. She'd read too many adventure legends and was right in that rebellious phase. The young man who took her away was in his twenties. A man wanting to go on a so-called 'adventure' with a child of about ten, and heading to the royal capital where the craze for elven gemstones was strongest. His intentions were obvious."
"The elves were very angry and sent some warriors to search, but they didn't find her."
“This shouldn't be blamed on the townspeople to begin with, but coincidentally, that man wasn't just a mere outsider." Garcia’s expression darkened: "When that man abducted her, he had another identity—the already domesticated lover of Skloot."
Skloot the carpenter who lived at the south end of town.
"Skloot was even quite satisfied with his beautiful appearance and gentle temperament, and had chosen his bloodline to bear her offspring. She was already six months pregnant at the time. You know that child too, our little Jessica."
"After that, the elves lost trust in Irttat. They seem to have moved away. Many empty houses remain in the western forest. You can still find them if you go now. For ten years, Irttat hasn't seen an elf."
Mavis's brows knitted tightly together, her expression as grave as a mass of undissolvable ink.
"Is there really no way to contact them?" She looked at Garcia hesitantly: "Your mother is a pureblooded elf..."
"I'm an adult, Mavis." Garcia smiled bitterly: "My mother's maternal responsibilities are complete. Right now she's probably out there somewhere, traveling in the wilderness. I can only see her when she comes to visit me. You probably know that the elven race doesn't value family and bloodlines the way humans do, because their lifespans are simply too long."
Mavis fell silent.
Garcia and Elsia were the only two first-generation hybrids in town. The bloodlines of other townspeople had been mixed for who knows how many generations. After such long periods of intermingling, most had even mixed merfolk, elven, dragon, and human bloodlines. They could almost be considered a distinct species.
If the Garcia sisters couldn't contact the elven race, relying on other townspeople was even more impossible.
She asked one last question without hope: "Then, have you thought of what was special about that cold medicine potion?"
As expected, Garcia shook her head heavily and said weakly: "I'll try my best to investigate, Mavis."
The listener could read between the lines about how much confidence the speaker had.
Mavis thanked her and left carrying Sophia.
Lucita watched her go.
Because of her own bizarre sense of smell, she was very invested in this matter and told Garcia: "If there's anything you need me to verify, please feel free to come find me. I really want to figure out what's wrong with my sense of smell too."
Garcia agreed.
"There's one more thing. I have two more vegetable plots at home. I'd like to plant some other things."
Garcia exhaled and walked to the seed shelf. “This entire row is for spring crops. What would you like?”
Colorful fabric pouches lined the shelves, each embroidered with its contents: potatoes, green beans, baby bok choy, spring radishes, cabbage, wheat, barley, rice.
"You can plant wild greens if you want, but I don't stock those seeds here. You'd have to find them yourself in the forest and grasslands. If you want to plant wheat and barley, now isn't the best time. Wait another month or two."
Lucita’s eyes lingered on the potatoes and couldn't help swallowing, as though she could already taste their starchy texture.
Body memory? she wondered. I must have really loved eating potatoes before.
"I will grow potatoes," she said decisively. "And also some spring radish seeds."
Crops like wheat and rice matured too slowly. She was just starting to farm and needed some immediate positive feedback.
Having been delayed all afternoon, the sky was now darkening.
She put the radish seeds in her small shoulder bag, carried a sack of potatoes in her right hand, and returned home in the gradually westward-slanting sunset.
She took out two potatoes from the sack, washed them clean, boiled them in hot water until cooked, peeled them to reveal two plump cooked potatoes, sprinkled coarse salt and peppercorns on them, and ate them with hot milk. Another hasty dinner.
For someone who has lost their sense of smell, even the most delicious food would be far less enjoyable. Lucita couldn't smell any fragrance and had no appetite at all. She had no motivation to make any complicated meals.
The most urgent matter was still to figure out her physical condition so she could make further judgments about her lost memory, sense of smell, and various other circumstances.
She had only been awake for a short three days, and settling down had consumed almost all her time. Last night, through the town chronicles, she'd directly faced the truth of this world and shockingly absorbed too much information that was difficult to digest. But regarding her own condition, she knew almost nothing. She could only slowly unravel and explore bit by bit.
The first step was determining her bloodline.
Irttat only had five hundred years of history. Townspeople's lifespans were usually around two hundred years, so by today there had been over ten generations. Innate abilities were very important to townspeople, or very commonly used, so usually a person's bloodlines would be confirmed from birth. When mothers chose to conceive children, they would even select bloodlines for certain talents.
But Lucita was different.
Perhaps the old Lucita had known her bloodline, but this knowledge had been lost along with her lost memories. Now she could only explore slowly.
Testing her innate abilities would be the most direct method.
Lucita spent half the day searching in the study. "History of Elves," "The Fate of Mixed Bloods," "Call of the Deep Sea—Mystery of the Merfolk Curse" piled up on the desk. Some were obviously speculative unofficial histories, their titles full of sensational appeal, requiring careful discernment. Another considerable workload.
Elven talents were divided into two categories: healing and life.
The arts of healing were self-explanatory and needed no elaboration. The arts of life were mostly related to stimulating plant growth, not only very useful in planting but could also be used for attacks.
As mentioned by Mavis, the vines Sophia had used were one such manifestation.
Merfolk talents involved mental influence. Mental influence seemed to have many developable uses, such as healing, hypnosis, hallucination, attacks, and so on. Their main method of casting was through sound waves.
The legend in unofficial histories about merfolk loving to sing wasn't groundless either.
Dragon talents were related to space. Currently developed uses included spatial transfer, spatial switching, creating alternate dimensions, and so on. A typical example was the message feather box—Kong Cui feathers containing dragon bloodline could be used to create spatial transfer tools.
Wait... Lucita thought with a strange expression, why would birds have dragon bloodline?
Setting that aside for now.
Following the casting rituals compiled in the reference books, she decided to try a few first.
She was grateful to whoever compiled this textbook. She had thought such spells among the foreign races were all passed down orally, but luckily their educational philosophy was very advanced.
Healing arts were easy to verify. Lucita used the kitchen knife to cut a gash on her wrist, hissed, and following the book's instructions, tried staring at the wound, sensing the vitality of tissue and blood, attempting to use mental force to control them to grow together.
Her mental force seemed too weak to stop the flowing blood from dripping, but the surrounding tissue seemed affected. The wound was healing at a slow pace.
Though slow, it was visible to the naked eye.
After the wound healed, the skin was as smooth as new, without leaving any scar. Only the blood remaining on the skin's surface proved she wasn't dreaming.
She had elven bloodline?
Usually even pureblooded elves could only have one type of innate ability, but having detected her special ability, Lucita was in a somewhat excited state. She became a bit greedy and ran to the pea field, attempting to stimulate the pea sprouts.
The casting method for life-type spells was similar to healing arts—in fact, the casting methods for all these racial talents were similar. They didn't need any incantations. Perhaps because these abilities were innate to them, usually they only needed mental control to use these abilities.
She wondered if magic was the same.
By this time, daylight had completely faded. A crescent moon was hidden in the clouds, and the only light source in the courtyard was the two sturgeon-eye lamps hanging by the door, dimly illuminating the pea field in the yard.
She tried sensing several times but couldn't feel the life force of the pea seeds, let alone stimulate them.
Lucita wasn't disappointed. She returned to her room with great interest, planning to find an opportunity to try mental spells and spatial spells.
It was said that as Irttat's heritage continued, the townspeople's bloodlines crossed generation after generation. Many townspeople were hybrids of all four races including humans, another portion were three-race hybrids, and first-generation hybrids were only the Garcia sisters.
She must have other bloodlines too. Perhaps she could develop other talents?
First encountering innate abilities, Lucita was so excited she tossed and turned, temporarily forgetting even the problems appearing in her body.
Another good night's sleep.
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