Liszt carried the elves with him, while the Invisible Dragon's claws still gripped the bound former Listener and fourteen resistant ancient magicians.
So he did not travel through space, merely wandered continuously along the boundary of matter. Whenever he needed to rest along the way, he would carefully inspect the elves one by one.
Before the sixteen Elf Bugs spat out Bug Grass, there was no way to distinguish their species for the time being.
There was no need to identify the potato Great Elf again. Of the remaining eight Little Elves, he carefully examined the features on their heads and communicated with them through thought, confirming their species. Five of the Little Elves still could not be identified, while the other three had their species basically confirmed.
The first was very easy to identify. A tiny gourd sat atop its head. It was unmistakably a gourd Little Elf, one that had never appeared before.
The second was also easy to identify, because a cluster of little fruits mottled red and green grew atop its head. This was the coffee tree, an important cash crop found in the forests of Flame Island. Coffee was a drink much beloved by nobles, but the Sapphire Grand Duchy did not produce coffee trees and could only import them from the mainland.
Yet great numbers of coffee trees were scattered throughout Flame Island's forests. Harvesting the coffee beans, the fruits of the coffee tree, would become an important industry.
This coffee Little Elf was quite valuable.
The third Little Elf took Liszt some effort to identify. A sapling with enormous buttress roots grew atop its head.
Buttress roots were a prominent feature of trees in certain rainy, sweltering forests. Many trees extended wing-like structures from the base of their trunks, like walls of planks