Chapter 144: Common Sense Among the Elves!

When elven druids first practice shapeshifting, spellcasters are yet unable to fully control their own magical power. Consequently, their transformed size fluctuates uncontrollably based on their innate magic.

Elves with meager magic, even if they transform into sabertoothed tigers, end up no larger than kittens.

Freya’s magical power was naturally formidable; even when she turned into a marmot, she was as massive as a Greater Earth Bear, instantly becoming the second-largest marmot in Teldrassil.

Once they pass the adaptation phase of shapeshifting, druids gradually learn to control their forms, eventually succeeding in returning to their original appearance.

Freya was precisely at this stage. Even without actively controlling her magic, her subconscious would automatically adjust her size according to her living environment.

This was why she kept getting shorter, gradually achieving a balance with her surroundings.

In a human village, playing alongside a bunch of children and sleeping in a two-meter-long bed, the size of a giant bear was obviously completely unsuitable.

If she had lived all along in the howling plains jungle, facing brown bears, sabertoothed tigers, boar-men, and gnoll hunting parties every day, her physique would have instead developed in an even sturdier direction.

Olivia cared little for such matters; the child she raised was naturally better off being plump and robust. If they were all as thin and small as little mice, how much worry would that cause?

The little mouse, tormented by past tragic experiences, suffered from developmental issues not only psychologically but also physically. Under Olivia’s meticulous care, her height had never quite shot up.

Two bowls of barley flatbread a day, now supplemented with a cup of fresh milk, still showed no noticeable increase in her weight.

Holding the little mouse in her arms at night, Olivia would always worry that she would fail to find a marriage partner in the future.

The state of the two little ones left her, as a mother, utterly exhausted in body and mind.

"Can you still turn into a giant bear?"

To comfort Olivia, Freya had no choice but to display her abilities.

She clenched her claws, held her breath hard, and a faint green glow washed over her body. Then, her size expanded rapidly as if she were being inflated, stopping only when she reached a full three meters in height.

Freya, transformed back into a gigantic beast, was immensely proud. She roared as she raced through the large house, chasing the whimpering, barking kobold cubs.

The three-inch-thick oak flooring trembled and groaned beneath her trampling, on the verge of snapping.

The tiny kobolds were sent flying into the air as if sitting on a trampoline, jostled by Freya’s energetic bouncing.

Frightened, Leo hurried over to grab the loose skin at the back of her neck, dragging her out of the house to romp around outside.

Watching Freya scamper off happily with the little mouse while steadily shrinking in size, Olivia finally set her mind at ease and promptly decided to cut Freya’s rations in half.

Leo was equally gratified; his personal excavator had returned!

Through casual chats with Freya, Leo also learned some common knowledge about the elven race, which truly opened his eyes.

Elves are pure magical creatures, cultivating simple consciousness within magical springs rich in arcane power. At birth, they are merely glowing spheres of condensed magical energy.

Strictly speaking, therefore, elves lack a definitive physical form, and they have neither biological parents nor genders.

When adult elves form partnerships, following lengthy training and evaluations, they adopt unshaped magical spritelets beneath the High Court’s magical spring, nurturing them with their own magical power.

Thus, even with lifespans ten times that of humans, the elven population has never grown excessively out of control.

Even if they possessed reproductive capabilities, they could not give birth to pure elves.

The infants born even to two pure-blood elves could only be short-lived half-elves.

Watching one's offspring wither and die prematurely before reaching adulthood (one hundred years of age), with even their spirit bodies unable to return to the magical spring—such grief was evidently more than all elves could bear.

In time, almost all elven couples preferred to wait for the magical spring to nurture a natural spritelet and then strive for the right of adoption.

Unlike other races, elven parents were meticulously selected, trained, and educated by their clans.

Not just anyone could become a parent without preparation.

Moreover, the number of spritelets that Teldrassil’s magical spring could nurture was strictly limited; not even the High Court’s sovereign, the Elven Queen, dared to hoard them selfishly.

In her four-hundred-year lifespan, she had only produced a single descendant: Freya.

Of course, given the carefree and easygoing temperament of the elven race, raising a single offspring successfully was already a magnificent achievement, and wishing for a second was pure extravagance.

If you were to ask the four-hundred-year-old Elven Queen whether state affairs or jumping chess were more important, she would naturally answer state affairs.

In private, however, she still chose jumping chess.

The forms of successfully shaped elves tended to be influenced by their parents, but they were simultaneously shaped by their living environments, relying most heavily upon their own cognition.

The traditional human impression of elves—humanoid figures, pointed ears, deer antlers, and green hair—was indeed the outward appearance most elves adopted when dealing with humans.

However, this was merely one of the forms elves gradually grew accustomed to for the sake of convenient communication when interacting with humanity.

As this human-imitating form grew increasingly popular within elven society, it was now accepted by the majority of elves, who subconsciously molded themselves into this shape and regarded it as their true form.

Yet in Teldrassil, many more elven clans preferred other forms suited to their survival environments.

For instance, the Midrealm Grand Lord Chiseal had spent his childhood companionships entirely surrounded by the Great Snails of Teldrassil, so he too remained a giant snail until adulthood.

Take the Archdruid Bobark, for example; before reaching adulthood, he was a highland marmot.

Still other spritelets would directly shape themselves into ancient trees, bear-men, or elven dragons, becoming the guardians of their clans and bypassing the druidic transformation process.

As a spritelet adopted by the ruler of Teldrassil’s largest clan, the sovereign of the High Court, and the Elven Queen herself, Freya not only inherited her keen intelligence but also possessed an appearance as extraordinarily beautiful as the Elven Queen’s—or so came her own self-narrative.

It was only during her early youth at over sixty years of age that she was handed over to Archdruid Bobark for training, who turned her into a giant marmot and temporarily robbed her of her beauty!

The twenty kobold sniffers dispatched to the Solovy Knight领, each carrying a large wicker basket on their backs, scurried about everywhere within his territory.

Three days later, fifteen of the dogs returned to the village of the Solovy Knight territory.

As for the remaining five golden-furred sniffers, they had wandered off onto the World Tree Avenue, entirely forgetting their duties and sniffing their way straight back to the Kobold Valley.

These golden-furred kobolds, possessing merely the intelligence of a ten-year-old human, acted remarkably dim-witted and flighty whenever their lives were not directly threatened.

Yet Phaysa, having been exposed to Riverbend culture, was unwilling to resort to wilderness customs of culls and abuse.

Therefore, without anyone keeping watch, there was simply no expecting them to remember the rules.

The Riverbend infantryman in charge of the team had initially been anxious, feeling guilty over the loss of five dogs and dreading the sight of Phaysa’s sorrowful gaze.

To his surprise, upon returning, he discovered they had already made it home and had consumed every bit of food meant as a reward for all twenty kobold sniffers.

Nevertheless, the remaining fifteen golden-furred sniffers brought good news to the Knight of Solovy.