A/N:
Okay, from now on the fic will speed up its pace. It will be more of narration and all for a while, and frequent time skips will appear.
***
The journey to the God Protected Forest with Aisha guiding the path was a quick one. It took two days for the duo to reach the forest.
No dramas with bandits or other cliches as happens in fantasy settings; everything went smoothly as both rode their horses toward the forest.
Aisha lent Damon one of her fellow elves' horses for the journey. Having inherited the skill of horse riding from his previous self, Damon quickly got the hang of it.
[Ability to learn instantly about any subject, weapon, or skill with heightened talent to the highest possible level. Shows progress in percentage.]
{Axe Mastery: 64%}
{Horse Riding: 30%}
Expanding on his already created magic, Damon changed it from weapon mastery to an instant-mastery-type cheat, learning and advancing more and more.
His skill with the axe through duels increased to 50% in a single day. With Aisha as a duel partner, his mastery kept increasing with each fight they had.
The magic improved Damon's learning and imprinted the learned memory directly into his body, so unequipping and re-equipping it repeatedly didn't reset or affect his progress.
Duels with Aisha were fun for Damon, but more than that, they were surprising. Even with an advantage of over a foot in height and physical stats raised to the peak of his race, Aisha was still able to hold her ground against him.
It wasn't just about years of experience or expertise in combat but also her absurd strength.
Whatever her biology was, it granted the dark elves strength far above normal humans—even of this age. Though she wasn't able to match Damon evenly and was weaker in that department, her power was still astonishing.
Well, she wasn't the strongest in the kingdom for nothing. Dueling Aisha boosted Damon's confidence in his physique, but new questions also began to arise in his mind.
Since Damon could overpower Aisha in terms of strength, he already knew his standing in this world.
In the kingdom, only the three dukes and Aisha might be able to challenge him individually in combat. And across the entire continent, fewer than a hundred men might be able to hold their ground against him.
This was about individual prowess only. Adding magic into the equation, he might as well be considered among the top ten at the moment.
Well, adding magic, he could even be placed in the top ranks... placing himself at nineteen along with Aisha, he did it out of humility.
The journey soon came to an end as the duo reached their destination. A dark elf who looked like a young man but was over eighty years old—chief of the dark elves and Aisha's father—Wodan Udgard, welcomed them both.
Wodan, the head of the liberal faction, welcomed the duo with open arms, but Robthor, his brother and leader of the conservative faction, began protesting the moment they arrived.
It was quite a headache dealing with the conflict between the liberals and conservatives, so Damon simply used his magic to rejuvenate the trees nearby.
The display of magic left both factions flabbergasted, and soon, the entire village of dark elves began kneeling one by one, looking at Damon as if a god's angel had descended from heaven.
The degree of their devotion was nothing less than a nightmare for Damon. The dark elves, true to their nature, literally clung to him every second, not letting him be alone for even a moment.
Damon slowly began to work his magic in the areas that required the most attention. After all, he couldn't restore an entire forest on his own, could he?
See, magic here is dependent on magicium. It isn't an energy related to stamina or anything physical; it's an external energy of the nanomachines.
So yes, in theory, it's possible to use magic tirelessly—but only in theory. Practically, the nanomachines in this world are old models customized for this planet, made so that each individual's range is limited.
The number of nanomachines one can employ is capped, so grand magic that could affect the entire world at once is impossible for a single person to perform.
Even with admin access, Damon had a much grander operational scale than any other being on the planet but still had his own usage limits.
This is why, instead of restoring the entire forest at once, Damon visited the core areas that needed attention and healed them.
While doing so, he also introduced the elves to the basics of forest management and its practices, asking them to take part and apply them.
The forest was vast, and depending on magic alone wouldn't do any good, so Damon introduced concepts like periodic thinning and other techniques that Souma would later implement.
Unlike the resistance shown by the conservatives in the original, in this timeline they accepted Damon's words because of his actions and immediately began to employ them seriously.
At Damon's suggestion, the village chief also wrote letters to people he knew in the administration, asking them to petition the royal house for aid and to learn more about forest management.
Yes, Damon planned to dump the teachings onto Souma and raise awareness of forest management in this world this way—after all, in the novel, Souma did an excellent job, and there might be things he knew better.
Remembering the landslide that would affect the forest in a few months, Damon also suggested that the village shift their settlements to a safer area.
Though reluctant and some raised doubts, the elves treated Damon like a saint and his words as prophecy. With that in mind, even though hesitant, they took his advice seriously and planned to temporarily relocate, to observe the situation further and move back once the experts the king sent confirmed the area's safety.
Living in the forest of the dark elves, every day was eventful—filled with work and training. Traveling across key areas to restore the forest and, when free, training with the dark elves themselves.
Expanding his range of skills, Damon learned the famed marksmanship of the elves, the use of other weapons like swords and spears, and also how they employed magic in combat—at least at the entry level, gaining a minimum of one percent progress in each.
After living for a week with them, Damon and Aisha finally left the forest.