Overlord Volume 15 (Travel in The LOTR Forest)

Dark elves tribe ( Despair)

Momon walked nonchalantly in the direction of the cave's entrance. Right about now, the dark elves' hunter troupe would return from their trip outside with Aura alongside them. Momon wanted to go see whether or not she had been able to make friends amongst the other dark elves.

As Momon and Hamsuke trotted along on their way to the entrance, behind them four sorry figures closely followed with a grim expression on their faces. The worst of the lot was Camus, whose face displayed a large purple bruise just beneath his left eye as he grumbled something incomprehensible. The other three elves were not in a much better state as they looked quite ragged and likewise had unpleasant looks on their faces as they silently followed behind Momon.

"Damn that inhuman bastard! What the hell is up with that ridiculous strength?"

Camus could not help but softly mutter those words as he walked behind Momon with his head slumped.

He was the leader of the hunter troupe and frequently came face to face with creatures of a demonic lineage, but today he had actually lost to a mere human. The shame he felt was not something that could be described with words alone.

In the moment where he thought that he had gotten the drop on his opponent, he instead had been countered with the hilt of Momon's weapon and smashed to the side of the practice ring. The worst part was that he had never even seen it coming; even though he closely observed his opponent whilst executing his moves, he had been unable to so much as sense the moment when the counterattack began.

Camus' subordinates were not much better off. When they saw their leader getting thrashed, they lost their self-control and charged at Momon in blind rage.

The only result that they achieved was being thrown to the side like ragdolls by Momon's insane strength.

By right, the four of them should have been thrown into prison for assaulting a foreign guest, but Momon instead laughed off the incident as a case of getting too excited during a practice bout and said that he wouldn't say a word of this to their elder.

In truth, Ainz said these words as he fully understood that there must be some kind of uncorrectable grudge between dark elves and humans, deeper than anything that he had imagined before. To punish them for what was probably a justified hatred against humans would be unjust. Ainz more than anyone knew what kind of cruelty humans were truly capable off. Besides, since he posed as Momon he needed to give off a feeling of being different from ordinary humans so that the elves would at least trust him a little.

All this only had an opposite effect on Camus and his men as they viewed his actions as their enemy taking pity on them. But now they wouldn't dare to voice any complaints or make sneering remarks as they were now the losers. To say anything more would only bring greater shame to them.

Finally, the group walked out of the cave as they saw how the sun was already setting and around this time the hunter troupe should be returning with their spoils.

During the day, Momon had toured most of the cavern and seen much of the cave's natural beauty, but now finally the time had come to pick up the twins and head back to the elder to finish their dealings.

"Say, Camus-dono, when exactly is the hunter party due to arrive back? I hope they won't be too long as it would be rather rude to present them to the elder late at night."

Camus didn't even raise his head as he emotionlessly answered Momon's question.

" At night, the cave will be closed, so naturally they will return here before that happens, Momon..."

There was not even a "san" added to that sentence as Camus lifelessly kept looking at the he could, Camus would not answer Momon at all, but now that he had nowhere to put his face anymore from sheer shame, it was best to just calmly answer any questions and hope that this horrible day would be over as quickly as possible.

Finally, several figures began to emerge from the forest as Momon and the other leves noticed around twenty demi-humans slowly walking towards the cave.

It didn't take long for them to notice that the way these elves moved was odd. Their postures were crooked and their shoulders slumped, not to mention their heads were lowered to the point their chins almost touched their chests.

All this painted an almost exaggerated picture of depression as it looked as if each of these elves had lost all will to live.

Amongst them there was only one exception.

Just one elf seemed happy and elated as it cheerfully trotted towards the cave's entrance whilst it carried something behind it that looked like the fur of a large animal. Although, what animal this fur belonged to was hard to tell.

The elf's ears were unlike the rest of the groups were, not drooping, and instead were raised high and proudly as the elf child skipped over to Momon as soon as it saw him.

Of course, this elf child was none other than Aura who happily greeted her lord in disguise with a V-sign as soon as she got close.

Camus on the other hand turned to his vice-captain who was in charge of leading the troupe in his absence. He was worried that they might have encountered some kind of danger as even his vice-captain was extremely depressed.

"Arthon, what the hell happened to you? Did you have another encounter with a demonic beast or one of its kin?"

The elf that Camus addressed finally looked dejectedly as he heard his commander almost shouting at him.

"Oh, captain-san, you were actually talking to me? I just assumed that such an insignificant bug like myself is unworthy of being noticed by other lifeforms."

Hearing these words, Camus' face turned green as he could not begin to comprehend what could have caused this kind of depression. Could the hunter troupe have encountered some kind of depression virus?

"Spit it out you son of the red leaf clan! What in the world happened to you?"

Having lost all patience, he finally shouted at the top of his lungs. But all it seemed to do was cause the already extremely depressed vice-captain to fall on his knees with his arms grasping his head.

After some quiet sobbing, the vice-captain finally looked up at Camus and softly spoke through his tears.

"Captain-san... let's just give up."