"Even when you're going to see girls, you need a special guide like this? It just feels... a little strange."
Cui Ciyou looked at the battered copy of the "Interracial Customs Guide" in Zoldat's hand, which the man treated as gospel, with a puzzled expression.
As far as he understood it, wasn't this sort of thing supposed to be very... straightforward? Something you went into by feel?
"Ha! That's where you're wrong!"
Zoldat immediately shot him a smug look that said, "You're still too young."
He drained the last mouthful of ale from his cup, then cleared his throat as though he were about to give a professional lecture to a novice like Cui Ciyou, and posed a profoundly philosophical question.
"Here, Ciyou, let me give you the simplest example."
"Say you've got two choices in front of you."
"One is a fifty-year-old Humanfolk woman, past her prime but still charming, who knows three hundred and sixty positions to please you."
"The other is a five-hundred-year-old Elf woman, beautiful as a flower and eternally youthful, who always looks twenty."
"Which would you choose?"
For Cui Ciyou, a modern soul steeped in all the "good looks are everything" ideas of his previous life, the answer almost slipped straight out.
"Then... the Elf, I suppose?"
He answered quite confidently. "After all, Elves are universally acknowledged as the best-looking race. Almost every one of them is a handsome man or a beautiful woman, right?"
"Exactly! Great minds think alike! Hahahaha!"
Zoldat slapped his thigh triumphantly. "I'd definitely pick the Elf too! After all, who could turn down a fairy who never grows old and always stays that beautiful?"
Then, however, he abruptly changed tack.
"But, Ciyou, do you know something?"
A mysterious, inscrutable smile appeared on his face.
"Aside from Humanfolk like us..."