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Once we got past the barrier that blocks out O'zet's snoring, we once again took to the trees as we closed in on the tortoise kin village, only stopping for a short while to shroud myself in a drab brown cloak and stuck small branches of leaves to it to break my body's outline.
We landed on the branches near the top canopy of the tree that was covering their village. From there, we had a closer look at what their village life was like.
The three tortoise kin that we followed saw them being welcomed back by their fellow kin. They passed their gathered resources to another group and were handed food and drink, and brought to join a circle sitting around a glowing ember rune, and from the shimmering of the air above the rune, it did not take a genius to figure that it was some form of heating rune, if not for the fact that there was no mana crystal powering the rune.
So either someone from the seated circle was powering it, or my next best guess was that it was being powered by the excess mana that exuded from O'zet.
As I studied this small group, the only thing that I could tell apart was the children from the adults. Other than that, I could not tell the difference between male and female tortoise kin. When I asked Professor Sageira about it, she pointed out to me to focus on the front-facing shell of their pelvic area.
The lowest shell segment of the males was wider and more rounded, while the same shell segment for the females was smaller and angular.
As we watched the village life of the tortoise kin, our focus was mainly on the pile of deadfall wood that the three tortoise kin had collected. To our disappointment, they took the wood inside their burrows, and there were too many tortoise kin around to sneak in and take a peek at the insides of their homes.
{So what's the play? We can search the rest of the mountain for deadfall, but chances are that these tortoise kin have all the good cuts of wood.} I said.
{I say we do as civilized and reasonable people do, approach them calmly and ask them for the wood.} she said with a shrug.
{Ok, but do you know how to communicate with them? I do not recognize what language they are using.} I asked
{Nope, from what I can hear, it is most likely their own language, but that does not mean we cannot communicate. If all else fails, we can just resort to miming.} she says as she leads me towards the outskirts of the village so that we can approach the tortoise kin normally.
***
A few minutes later, as we approached the tortoise kin village, the bushes a dozen meters ahead of us rustled, and two tortoise kin children, no taller than my shin, both of them laden with multiple water skins.
As they cleared the leaves and twigs that caught on them, they caught sight of us, and we stared at each other for a few seconds before dripping all their waterskins and running screaming towards the village.
"Well, there goes our cover. Hopefully, they will be more hospitable now that they will not be caught flat-footed by our appearance." I said as we continued our walk toward the village.
We arrive at the tortoise kin village less than a minute after the two tortoise kin children had run into the village clearing while screaming their warning to the rest of the village. The chaos caused by their warning and both of us entering the clearing after them was immense.
The adults hurried and picked up the children to take shelter in the burrows, while others took up arms in the form of stone-tipped spears. Most of the shafts were not even straight, as if they were made out of tree branches instead of the main trunk of the tree, like normal spears. But despite their shoddy make, I could feel the mana flowing through those crooked shafts, confirming to me that all the wood they were using for the spears was from evolved trees.
The moment they leveled their spears at us, we stopped and raised our hands to show that we meant no harm, but even then, they kept shouting at us in their own tongue that we did not understand. We tried to talk to them in common, but that got them even more aggravated, so we just kept quiet and let them carry on.
After a minute of letting them gas themselves out from shouting, the tortoise kin that looked to be in charge said something to one of the other tortoise kin in the back line, causing him to run off to the burrows.
A few minutes later, a male tortoise kin with more wrinkles than the rest hobbled out of the burrows with the help the tortoise kin sent to of a staff with a mana crystal the size of a child's fist secured to the head of the staff with some dried vines. But despite his old age and infirm-looking body, both of us could feel a lot of mana exuding from his tiny body as he seemed to have spells at the ready to cast at us.
The old mage tortoise kin spoke to the tortoise kin in charge before turning to us and speaking in an old and formal dialect of the elven tongue. [Strangers, who are you and why have you sought us out?]
Professor Sageira and I looked at each other. She then jerked her head at me, signaling me to take the lead on this. I turned to the old mage tortoise kin and gave a short bow as I introduced myself. "Greeting, I am Luke, and this is my companion, Sageira. We come to you this day to enquire on the matter of your wood."