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We find ourselves in the home of the old tortoise kin mage, sitting hunched over a table with mugs of tea, all of them the size of a child's play set.
When we first met the old tortoise kin mage, it took me a few sentences while introducing ourselves to knock the rust off the elven language I had learned, and through the introductions, we learned that the old tortoise kin mage was named T'Makka.
Due to T'Makka using an older dialect of the elven language while I was using the more standard and formal version, it sometimes took me a while to parse out certain words, but I managed to get by.
After we managed to convince T'Makka that we meant no harm, he invited us into his home to discuss things further. After taking a long sip of his tea, T'Makka addressed us. [So, what is this business with us regarding wood?]
I gave a polite nod as I said, [Indeed, elder T'Makka. We came here in hopes of finding some wood that had fallen from O'zet's evolved trees, only to find the mountain floor clean of everything bigger than a twig. So when we discovered your people had gathered the fallen branches of the evolved trees, we came here in hopes of acquiring some of that wood.]
T'Makka nodded in understanding. [It is natural to be so. Our God, O'zet, has let us live on his mighty back, and in exchange, we tend to all that grows on it.]
At the mention of O'zet's alleged godhood, I raised an eyebrow. [Your god, you say…] I telepathically asked Professor Sageira about O'zet's alleged godhood in case I missed something, and was relieved when she confirmed that O'zet was indeed not a god, lesser or otherwise.
I did not object to T'Makka's profession os O'zet as a god because I knew that denouncing somebody's god to their face when trying to make a good impression was not the wisest thing to do, especially when I wanted something from them.
[Elder T'Makka, may I ask you for the wood that you have collected?] I asked.
[You may, but I am afraid that it is something that I cannot afford to freely give away. Besides the dirt on Lord O'zet's mountain, the wood that falls from his trees is one of the few building materials that are available to us. So, no, I cannot.] T'Makka politely replied.
But that did not make sense. Although they may live on the back of a titan of a tortoise, they were still surrounded by the vast sea of trees that O'zet grassed on. They could have easily gotten building material from O'zet's surroundings.
When I brought up my thoughts to T'Makka, he sighed and said. [You are right, we could, but it is too dangerous.] And when he saw my questioning face, he continued. [Wherever Lord O'zet goes, scavengers follow to hunt anything that runs at his coming, and that includes us if we go out to gather material. And as I am sure a mighty warrior like yourself can observe, we tortoise kin are not the best of fighters, nor do we have the means to transport large amounts of resources from the ground to atop Lord O'zet's shell.]
This sounds like the start of a fetch quest, but I push ahead. [You say that you cannot give your wood away freely. That implies a price, name it.]
***
Half an hour later, I was walking through the forest at O'zet's rear, looking for a suitable tree to cut down for T'Makka's village, but that was just the first of a laundry list of things I was to get on my fetch quest.
As for my reward, T'Makka had shown and offered me two whole logs of evolved trees, bark and all. They were at least ten meters long and around a meter in diameter. When I asked Professor Sageira how valuable each log was, she told me that in its whole, uncut state, the royals may try to take it from me first by legal means, and if that fails, then by political means, and finally by deadly means.
A whole uncut log is enough to have the crafting guilds start shadow wars to secure it for themselves, much less two logs.
Compared to the laundry list of items I am to gather for the tortoise kin, it was practically a steal.
When I came across a suitable tree for harvesting, I drew my sword, activated my aura, and with one smooth swing, cut down the tree that the tortoise kin would use as building material instead of the wood from the precious evolved wood.
As I was trimming away the branches to make transporting easier, I caught the scent of blood on the wind. When I turned in the direction of where the wind was blowing from, I noticed that I was already half surrounded by eight feline predators, each one as big as a horse, and I could feel the mana exuding from their bodies, which told me that they were capable of more strength through mana infusion.
It is times like this that I would have liked to have Professor Sageira tagging along to scare away the wildlife with her presence alone, but she told me that this job was on me if I wanted the wood. She only agreed to store and transport the logs for me.
As for these big cats, seeing that they are not scared by the presence of the snoring O'zet, I can assume that these are the scavengers that take advantage of the big tortoise scaring the local wildlife. And now that they have been noticed, the big cats forgo all notions of stealth and sprint to surround me.
With my free hand, I unfolded the list of things I needed to get and saw that animal pelts were on it. I suppose this saves me the effort of hunting for those pelts.