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That was exactly why I never wanted to visit the underground city. Those dark elf priestesses were terrifying. Their gazes wandered back and forth between men's faces and crotches, and if you were harassed-even "topping" men had recently become fashionable among them, heaven knew how those evil female elves managed that-complaining to the family matriarchs or the dark elf empress was utterly useless. They would scold the sisters who pounced on you and send them away, but then they would take their place themselves.

Luckily, I was good at Space Magic.

How had this race not been wiped out yet? A couple of years ago, I heard that a few sisters had watched a human movie, fallen for the leading man, and rushed up to the surface to kidnap the poor actor and take him to the underground city. According to the media, what happened next was beyond description-thank goodness Anna hadn't grown up in a place like that.

Seriously, if the Elven Emperor on the sacred tree didn't clean up after these dark-skinned compatriots of his every day, they would definitely incur the wrath of gods and men alike and provoke the whole world into a crusade against them.

"Anna! I'm not letting you down from the ceiling until you've memorized this book on Space Magic theory! Stay away from your dark elf sisters! Stay in the tower and concentrate on memorizing it! Given your race's characteristics, a few days without food won't kill you. If you get thirsty, make yourself a water ball and take a sip!"

With that, I prepared to leave.

"Wait! I've put up with everything else, but you have to take the clothes I got ready for you! The weather in the capital changes a lot, so you have to-" Anna yelled.

"Enough. Still lying? Does the weather have anything to do with this? Do you think I don't know what you young people call yourselves on social media? The Appearance Association?" I sneered.

"Wrong, it's the Looks Association!" Anna said.

I...

I had completely given up on this apprentice!

Then again, being in her teens was far too young for an elf. I was basically raising a little girl. She might have looked like a girl of seventeen or eighteen, but long-lived races tended to develop mentally at a slower pace. Even in modern society, where technological pollution of the environment had generally shortened the life spans of all races, elves could still live for around five hundred years. A normal elf in their teens probably couldn't even speak fluently yet. After all, they had longer to spend in this world, so they didn't need to grow up so quickly. Because Anna had been raised in human society from childhood, she was downright excessively precocious for her race.

An elf who's still a baby in her teens, and she actually wants to date? She can't even learn her spells properly. Will dating increase her knowledge?

Thanks to the internet and television in modern society, dark elves were no longer a rarity to humans. Even people who had never seen a living one in person had surely seen videos, so Anna had integrated into human society very smoothly-too smoothly, in fact... With me backing her, she did whatever she pleased, and by now just about every internet cafe in the city kept a close eye on her. She loved online games, but she wasn't much of a sport, especially when playing competitive games. Whenever she lost, she flew into a rage. She didn't curse people out when she got angry, but she threw magic around and had blown up several internet cafes, costing me quite a bit of money in compensation. Cafe owners' legs went weak at the sight of her; they were just short of putting up signs at their doors saying "No dogs or Anna allowed."

In ancient times, elves were a mysterious race hidden in the deep forests as far as humans were concerned, so there were countless legends—or misunderstandings-of every description about them. Throughout history, humans had always loved making up gossip, and when their imaginations ran too far, they arrived at conclusions a long way from the truth. One of the more famous was that humans had once firmly believed dark elves and their fair-skinned, beautiful, long-legged relatives who lived on the surface were mortal enemies, locked in a fight to the death. I guessed it might have been because dark elves looked so different from the other elven branches in human eyes.

In reality, though, that wasn't the case at all. The dark elves' underground city lay beneath the vast roots of the elves' sacred tree. They were the guards of the Elven Sanctuary, sentinels in the shadows, and they got along very well with the sacred tree elves who lived on the tree. Every time Anna went back to the underground city, she also went up to the sacred tree for a visit. As a result, the Elven Emperor had come to me repeatedly, begging me to keep Anna under control. She ran off into the deep forest whenever she felt like it, then climbed in through his daughter's window, trying to drag her to an internet cafe for an all-nighter.

I really had to rein Anna in. If I didn't, she was going to work a miracle—the elves really would start hunting down the dark elves!

I'd told Anna this many times, but every time she changed the subject. "Even His Majesty the Elven Emperor has learned to take selfies with his phone. Teacher, did you transmigrate here from the legendary era? Tell me yourself, how many phones have you broken? I don't earn much writing novels, and every time I buy you one, you blow it up. I'm really at my wit's end!"

Naturally, I ended up raising a hand and plastering her against the wall.

A mage who spent her spare time at internet cafes, playing games and writing novels—which I'd heard were terribly filthy—and had even been sent to prison for fighting in a bar. Prison! Good heavens, I, her teacher, had lived thirty years without ever seeing the inside of a prison!

"Teacher, you're practically turning into a statue from staying inside the tower all the time."

"Nonsense. I don't stay inside all the time. Who was it that went deep into half-orc territory ten years ago and rescued you from a cage?"

Anna rolled her eyes skyward. Because of her skin color, the whites of her eyes were especially infuriating, so naturally, she ended up embedded even deeper in the wall.

I told the butler to keep an eye on Anna, then reluctantly stuffed the things she had prepared into my space ring and went out.

My mage tower was closed to visitors, especially the politicians from the capital. They knew nothing about academic matters, and their heads were full of strange things every day, leaving no room for knowledge to squeeze in. They had repeatedly offered to send a private aircraft to pick me up, but I didn't want reporters taking pictures of me all the way there, so I slipped into the public airship station. It was a little slower, but I found it more comfortable than aircraft or the floating light rail and such, and I could enjoy the scenery along the way.

But the weather turned bad halfway there, and it started to rain. I had no choice but to go into the cabin and look over my spell notes, then sleep for a while. By the time I woke up, we'd reached the capital, and the weather had cleared again. The bright sunshine almost made me feel as if something good was about to happen.

Huh? That classical-looking building over there is the capital's famous great library, isn't it? The last time I came for a summit, the politicians gave me such a headache that I didn't remember I'd forgotten to visit the library until after I got home. I have to take a look this time. My research into Space Magic has recently hit a bottleneck, so I should try my luck and see if I can find some valuable material.

Hmm... Come to think of it, the summit opens tomorrow. Don't I have to give a speech onstage?

Sigh... What am I supposed to talk about? Lately I've only been researching Space Magic and Mental Magic, but the problem is, if I talk about Space Magic, everyone in the audience will smile and applaud, yet they won't have the faintest idea what I'm saying. The vast majority of people, and even quite a few mages, can't tell the difference between the principles behind Magitech teleporters and spatial teleportation spells!

Sigh. But if I talk about Mental Magic theory, the ignorant media will treat me as a dangerous person. Quite a few reporters are sorely lacking in professional knowledge. They can host shows and read the news, but they don't know the first thing about spells. Mental Magic and Soul Magic are two entirely separate systems. Soul Magic can be classified as Necromancy Spells, but Mental Magic is something all mages can use-as long as they have mental power, they can use it! Yet quite a few reporters actually confuse the two. If I talk about Mental Magic, I might be labeled a "dark mage promoting dangerous spells."

Back then, all I did was cast a harmless Shadow Dance... I really am just a neutral mage, but now the whole continent thinks I'm a "dark mage"...

In fact, I didn't know a single Black Magic spell.

My teacher had told me that I could only approach Black Magic once I was one hundred percent certain I could control it. If a three-year-old picked up a peerless divine weapon, he would only chop off his own little hand. Only when a mage had grown enough not to lose his way amid endless knowledge, not to be led astray by the power in his hands, and not to yield to the shadows deep in his heart and use precious knowledge for evil purposes could he try to become a dark mage who placed no restrictions on what he studied.

That was why my teacher's priest friend had always maintained that the dark priests of the Shadow Moon Temple were generally of even higher moral character than priests of light.