“I am Duo Nuo Yi, the Sprite of the Stream! To participate in the event, each person needs to pay three hundred Star Coins as an entry fee…!”
Three hundred Star Coins? Three hundred Star Coins is roughly equivalent to three hundred Soft Girl Coins, enough to buy ten thirty-Star Coin fried pork cutlet sets in the school cafeteria.
An entry fee this high? These sprites are really something!
While Erika was still hesitating, Cielciel, standing beside her, deftly pulled out a small wallet from her pocket, took out six paper bills, and handed them to the Sprite at the entrance.
“Here are six, six hundred Star Coins, for the two of us to enter…!”
Erika lowered her voice and whispered in her ear, “Hey, hey, Cielciel, are you sure? Six hundred Star Coins is no small amount…”
“Since this is Comrade’s first time participating in an event, let me pay for it specially…!”
Erika, left speechless, shrugged and followed her secretary into the auditorium. She had somewhat expected this.
“Wait a moment! I can barely sense any sprite aura on this girl…!” The Sprite guard Duo Nuo Yi at the entrance stopped Erika.
“Uh, I am indeed of the Sprite race.”
“A Sprite wouldn’t talk like that—! Guards—!”
At the command of the blue-haired Sprite guard, many little sprites immediately jumped out from all directions. These middle-school-aged girls held ropes and clubs, their expressions looking fiercely cute. Honestly, I suspect you’re stopping her not because of some so-called sprite aura, but simply because of her way of speaking. It’s well-known that sprites have strange speech quirks…
So, although extremely reluctant, Erika forced herself to wiggle her tongue and palate to enter the venue.
“I am indeed a Sprite da…! Please let me in…!”
So embarrassing! So embarrassing! So embarrassing! I want to die, I want to die, I want to die, I want to die, I want to die…!
An instinctive sense of shame and self-loathing began to spread in her heart.
It felt like being stripped of her skirt and thrown into a giant mass of tentacles to be done with as they pleased, a slimy violation of her young mind.
Only then did the circle of Sprite guards surrounding her look at each other’s faces and nod one after another.
“She is indeed a Sprite…!”
“Welcome da, welcome da…!”
Wuwu~
Having thus imitated Cielciel’s comedian-like tone to enter the event space, she found it packed with sprites wearing all sorts of strange costumes and with various hair colors.
Tables were piled high with empty plates and candy wrappers; it seemed all kinds of snacks were almost finished.
“Comrade! There’s a buffet over there…! Let’s eat first…!” The starving Cielciel grabbed an empty plate and eagerly started serving herself food.
Since Cielciel had spent such a large sum on this buffet, to avoid a loss, she naturally had to eat something too.
In any case, let’s eat first.
The sweet and sour pork and the somewhat cold stir-fried pork with green peppers tasted familiar, reminding her of school cafeteria days, but they were surprisingly good, quite skillfully made.
While sitting at the table eating, Erika didn’t forget to listen to the conversations of the sprites sitting around her.
“Recently, the Elf Aid Society’s fundraising hasn’t been going well…”
“The Rescue Foundation’s situation is also much worse than before… It seems people don’t like us sprites as much as they used to…!”
“However, cherishing and protecting sprites is a truth that has existed for two thousand years, as recorded in the ancient mural ‘Picture of Spirits’…!”
This conversation wasn’t very nutritious, but as long as she didn’t speak herself, listening to these little girls talk like this was quite amusing.
Anyway, the purpose of coming here was to find Noelle’s hidden treasure; everything else was irrelevant!
Erika turned her head and whispered to Cielciel, who was emptying her second plate of food, “So, where exactly is that treasure you mentioned being sold?”
“There’s a Sprite shop over there…! Since we’ve eaten enough, Comrade, shall we go take a look together…?”
“Let’s go.”
Erika followed Cielciel towards a corner of the auditorium arranged like a flea market. It was like children playing house, with straw mats spread on the floor covered in a dazzling array of miscellaneous items. Hmm, there were many things like priced shell fragments and pretty little stones, but few items caught her interest.
“Is it really here?”
“Yes…! See that honey-haired Sprite over there? She’s selling Noelle’s treasure…!”
Following Cielciel’s pointing finger, there was indeed a little sprite with honey-golden shoulder-length hair sitting on the ground.
Sitting down beside her with half-belief, the various items scattered on the floor were a complete mess… Is this pottery?
[Elven Pottery: Depicts two sprites practicing the ancient martial art ‘Watermelon’! Non-sprites also call it ‘Watermelon Way’!]
“Hmm…”
Whether to call it attractive or not, Erika never thought her desire to吐槽 would be so strong today.
Testing the waters, the girl spoke to the honey-haired Sprite, “I heard you’re selling the Demon King Noelle’s treasure here.”
“Guji—” The honey-haired Sprite frowned upon hearing this.
…Sprite race, you win.
“I heard there’s Demon King Noelle’s treasure here…!”
“Shua—” The tightly furrowed brows relaxed again.
Erika: … The girl now just wanted to slip away quickly; she felt she didn’t belong here.
Is this tone some kind of .txt-like suffix? Without it, can you sprites not recognize the sentence?
Aaaaaah!
The Sprite with honey-golden hair looked up and spoke, “I am Ge Er De Nuo Yi, the Spirit of Famous Items and Treasures! To see the Demon King’s treasure, you must first offer three hundred Star Coins as a gift!”
What the heck is ‘Spirit of Famous Items and Treasures’… Erika felt curious, and the golden-haired Sprite who called herself Ge Er De Nuo Yi happened to kindly explain for her.
“Treasure Spirits possess keen perception, able to accurately distinguish authenticity…! And everything handled by me, Ge Er De Nuo Yi, is genuine treasure…! Not like those common fakes…!”
“Shua.” Without a word, Cielciel directly pulled out her wallet from her pocket, rolled out three hundred-Star Coin bills, and handed them to Ge Er De Nuo Yi.
“Please let us see this so-called treasure…!”
Ge Er De Nuo Yi satisfactorily put away the money, let out a sinister “hehehe” laugh, then rummaged in her arms for a while before pulling out a small wooden box.
“To dig this out, I turned over the entire floor of the Ark…! This is truly an extraordinary treasure…!”
Could a pencil-case-sized box really contain Demon King Noelle’s hidden treasure? Though skeptical, when the girl slowly opened the box completely, she admitted she was greatly surprised.
Four miniature bowling-pin-like objects stood on a central plate, surrounded by dough-like text—EMBER.
“Buzz buzz buzz.”
As if becoming sentient the moment it met her gaze, it emitted light, flooding the girl’s mind with massive information.
[Ember: High-level physical destruction spell: Power scales with the caster’s rank, damage proportional to mana consumption.]
A high-level physical destruction spell? Does that mean it’s an active magic spell? Once obtained, it provides a powerful attack method?
If it’s truly related to direct combat power improvement, that’s exactly one of the spells the girl dreams of!
I really want to try its effect soon, uhehe~
“Snap!” “Ten seconds—Ding! The three hundred-Star Coin viewing session is over! If you want to see more, please pay or place an order!” The Treasure Spirit Ge Er De Nuo Yi directly closed and sealed the wooden box with a mischievous smile.
“Uh, Cielciel… I have no money left now… The teaching assistant’s pay is just too little…” Although Cielciel regretfully wiggled her little finger, Erika had already gotten all the information she wanted, so she didn’t mind.
“Will we encounter something like this again in the future?”
“Yes! Next week’s Elf Night is also worth looking forward to…! After all, Treasure Spirits always come here to set up stalls…!”
Erika increasingly felt that participating in this event was a wise choice. Ehehe, freeloading makes me happy!
I must come freeload again next week! Ah, I mean, come browse again!
[You are getting closer and closer to becoming a proper Half-Elf!]
[Class: Half-Elf’s level has increased…! Half-Elf Lv.5 -> Lv.6]
[Now, the magical instincts of the Sprite race within you are beginning to stir…!]
“Shua shua shua.” Erika immediately felt a strange coolness pass directly through her clothes, brush over her body, and envelop her from head to toe.
She could instinctively sense something called mana rapidly increasing. To make an analogy, it was like her MP pool increasing from around one hundred to one hundred twenty.
It seems leveling up as a Half-Elf actually comes with increased mana. Reaching level six indeed started to show some changes.
The Half-Elf class does have some merits; I thought it only had drawbacks. The mana-increasing Half-Elf class and the strange spells she can currently use seem to have a pretty good synergistic effect.
After all, those strange spells inherited from Noelle consume a considerable amount of mana; a slight misstep could leave Erika completely drained.
In any case, she was now eager to try the newly learned destruction spell. Deciding to leave with Cielciel first, Erika hopped and hummed a little tune as she walked towards the Faculty Dormitory, planning to see Cielciel back.
“Starting tomorrow, I’ll have to go hungry for several days…”
Under the fluorescent stone streetlights, Cielciel looked at her empty wallet, pouting with a face full of gloom.
“Da… da.” The girl, who had been taking little skipping steps, her safety shorts peeking out from under her swaying skirt, stopped. Only then did she remember this girl had spent a lot of money for her.
A full six hundred Star Coins… On average, a faculty member’s daily wage is two hundred Star Coins, meaning this girl spent three days’ wages at once.
“You should have saved more, why be so extravagant?” “But at least I could help Comrade…!”
“You…”
“If Comrade Erika can sound the alarm in this discriminatory world, then I, Xi Er Nuo Yi, can completely accept going hungry for a few days and enduring the old maid Professor’s tyranny…!”
“Cielciel, you…”
Erika suddenly felt a surge of warmth in her chest. Though clumsy and silly in many ways, she realized more than once that Cielciel was her most loyal and pure companion.
“Ah—!” Suddenly, Cielciel’s body floated unnaturally into the air.
“Could it be I, Cielciel, have finally grown wings like a real Succubus and can fly into the sky…?”
“No, you idiot! This is…”
The reason Cielciel floated into the air was because her long, thin Succubus tail was grabbed and lifted by a huge hand. “Noisy little brat…!”
Suddenly appearing before them was a tall man, probably over two meters tall? At least, Erika had to crane her neck to barely see his face by the fluorescent light.
Cielciel struggled desperately like a little mouse caught by its tail, “Please put Cielciel down quickly…! My tail is going to break…!”
But the man didn’t stop his rough handling. Instead, he turned his gaze to the girl and roared at her, “Erika Angelina, so this is where you ran off to? Daring to miss the Silver Wing Corps meeting just to hang out with this weird little brat?”