Until the Elven Nation Attacked 17

So much to do, so little time to do it in. After a sweeping round to make sure everything was in tip top order, as the sun began to peek out over the horizon, mostly hidden beneath the mass of trees that surrounded our country, I found myself joining a group in the midst of preparations to dive into the dangerous, monster filled forest.

"Are you sure about this Savior?"

Meltriss was worried. I couldn't really blame her. The young elves that made up the guard were not the most elite fighters the world had ever seen, but they had months of training.

And man what a trip to learn that it's been a year since I was reincarnated as a futanari elf in a fantasy world. It feels strange, it feels like I've achieved basically nothing, and yet, the world around me has shifted so much. I can barely tell the passage of time sometimes. I can spend several days in a row working on the same thing and only realize it's been three days when someone is sent to remind me I have to go meet someone else.

Miel crossed her arms. "The vehicles are ready, and the armoring should hold," she said, slapping her hand against the Duranium plating of our first successful attempt at creating an usable cargo vehicle. We had needed to do a lot of experimentation to get to this point, a lot of failed projects, but at last my investment into Duranium and its applications had paid off in a big way.

It had the rough shape of a pickup, with a big bed behind a cabin. Thankfully it wasn't too difficult to fit the springs on the suspension to make sure I wouldn't bust my ass in a painful way while riding this thing. And that was important, because although I had the least training with this thing, I was still the best driver.

I would be driving, Meltriss would be riding with me, and six others would escort us on foot, though in the future we would be using bikes. We had even figured out the brakes, which also simplified some of the design. Without a free wheel, the pedals would be forced to always spin with the rear wheels, and that meant I could brake by just stopping the pedals. Fixed gears could brake more easily, though at the cost of not being able to coast at all, which meant the driver would have to keep pedaling.

That meant, however, there had to be a lot of Duranium and Yggdrassil wood reinforcement to a whole lot of parts, which was the reason why it took several months just to make one of these even with several craftselves working together on it. Duranium was still a hard material to work with, though thankfully, we had heaps of it, accumulated over two thousand years of being an useless lump of metal.

With iron for the outer armoring, and some golden metals that vaguely resembled brass for detailing, we had an actually entirely functional truck that even sort of looked like a modern vehicle.

I felt like I was right out of a cartoon driving it though.

"Savior?"

"Oh, right, yeah, I got distracted. Yes, I'm sure we'll be fine," I said.

I've seen how hard these girls train.

"Form up!" Meltriss shouted.

"Yes sir!"

The six escorts were the best of the lot. While, objectively, the Dark Elves in the mines were still better fighters, man to man, or rather elf to elf, as an unit the Elven Armed Forces were probably more effective. Months of training, simulations, simulacrons, wargames, more training, development of weaponry, more training, and also a whole lot of training had resulted in them performing like a well oiled machine.

We also standarized uniforms, and were starting to approach my ideal.

The elves gathered before me and Meltriss, while Miel performed last minute checks on our vehicle, especially the rear drive train, or what passed for it anyway.

"Alright everyone, you know the drill. Fellis and Bea will ride forward, Koto and Terri, you two will escort us. Rita and Tab, you two will cover the rear," Meltriss explained, and each of the elves, all of them of course busty and lovely, acknowledged their orders.

We didn't have a dress uniform yet, but we had something approaching a combat uniform. Naturally, it took the form of green bikinis, but a deeper, darker forest green than the natural color the resin we made most of our clothes from took.

I was partly delighted and partly worried that elves didn't really seem to like the thought of wearing armor. We wound up with a compromise, with monster leather vambraces, gloves and thigh high boots, but it was just uncomfortable to wear anything more than the resin clothes over our crotches or tits, and our long and sensitive ears made it an issue to try to wear most kinds of helmets.

"Alright, gear up, and get ready to move," Meltriss called.

It was our turn to do so, as well. Meltriss turned to me, and gestured to the bag sitting on top of the cart. I nodded and grabbed my equipment from there. They had insisted on gearing me up as well, for my own protection, and I could see the logic. Unfortunately everyone, from the soldiers all the way to our queen Neem, had insisted that I use the prototype Duranium armor.

It took three people to put it on quickly.

First I took off my casual clothes, which didn't take long, and then, I slipped on the dark green leotard that had several belts attached to it, both short and long. Next up was the breastplate, which considering the size of my tits really needed to be a breast plate. Two people were needed to hold it up, one was myself and the other was Meltriss, since it was split into two parts. Miel attached the fastenings on the inner side, belting it to my leotard, and then connected the back and front halves, locking it firmly into place.

It was comfortable enough I suppose, the inside was padded to reduce blunt impacts, and it looked like more of a bustier than a breastplate, but it was the unfortunate reality of being a sexy elf.

We didn't feel comfortable in regular armor. Covering up too much was so uncomfortable we even got itchy.

Next was pulling up a Duranium thong, which I could do on my own, and then Duranium reinforced vambraces and duranium tipped boots, with non-slip soles designed to be usable both inside and outside. Necessary to use the pedals efficiently. Finally, a pair of greaves that would protect me from hitting my shins on the pedals if I did slip.

The faulds over my outer thighs were open on the front and back, meaning, the bottom of my leotard was exposed.

A glance around me showed that everyone's panties were exposed. Such a weird limitation but... Who am I to complain?

Everyone then took their weapons. Everyone, including myself, carried a knife, meant as a general purpose weapon, almost all of them with blades fifteen centimeters long though Meltriss caried a shorter, ten centimeter knife that had been one of our first attempts at creating a standard general use weapon.

The two vanguards carried short swords belted to their waists, and each of them had handheld bowguns, miniature crossbows that could be quickly reloaded. While they didn't have the best range or accuracy at their max range, they had a lot of draw weight and they could be used quickly and in short range situations.

The rearguards had longer swords and shields, but also carried bowguns, though they had heavier equipment loads and thus carried multiple bolt quivers. Our experience with the bowguns suggested they were good for about a thousand shots before they needed maintenance, the strings would get frayed over time. With them being effectively disposable items that would most likely be lost in pitched combats, we opted not to make them out of Yggdrassil wood, so they would deteriorate rather quickly if left unattended.

Our escorts had longbows, made of a single branch from Yggdrassil each, with immense draw weight, and quivers of arrows hanging from their waists. We had to make sure not to lose the arrows, one of regular wood from the forest, fletched in white with the toughest alloys we could make from regular metals, and a second, smaller one, of arrows made from Yggdrassil wood, fletched with monster bird rainbow feathers and tipped with Duranium.

Honestly it was genuinely frightening to see what we could achieve with what was, realistically, super primitive technology.

An Yggdrassil Bow with braided monster sinew as a string, from what had been a weird centaur and minotaur fusion monster apparently named the Bullrusher, had a monstrous draw weight. My max range to reliably hit a target with it was about seven hundred meters, and our two escorts could reliably hit targets up to a kilometer away.

And I don't mean firing in the general direction of our targets. I mean hitting a moving target a kilometer away, nine times out of ten, with the tenth grazing the edge of the target.

I carried my knife, and a short, recurve bow. I was best with those of all the ones I've tried. I can hit things with it, I can fire quickly, and more importantly, I look cool wielding it. Hopefully the most I would do was act as a turret to hit a stray monster.

This is our very first excursion outside the Elven Nation, my very first time stepping into the forest beyond just following the hunters to its edges as they hunted for our meat and leather.

We're not just going to be going into the forest, however. We're going to be going past it. Myself, Meltriss and our escorts, Fellis, Bea, Koto, Terri, Rita and Tab, are going to be going to attempt to carve a path through the forest, mapping a route from the edge fo the forest closest to where we had set the foundations of our future city, to the edge of the forest outside it.

We're moving southwards. The closest saltwater body was the Sea to the south. To reach it, we would need to cross territories contested between the other races.

We had several objectives. The first, to map out what would be the first of our trade routes outside our country. The second, to scout and survey the forest, and bring back the information. Once all the last minute checks were clear, it was time. Neem had wanted to be here, but, I needed her to keep the other elders focused. And I needed all of them, especially now, because we were starting to convince all the elves to move to the centralized location of our city.

Achieved mostly with my penis, mind you, but, achieved nonetheless.

I looked around myself one last time. The seven soldiers with me were not pregnant. I looked at Miel, and a smile made my lips quirk up. Elven pregnancies were entirely new territory. She was six months pregnant, though she looked like she was in her first trimester, with a noticeable baby bump but not a great reduction to her dexterity. Neem was nearly ten months pregnant and she had a much larger belly, she looked like she was deep into her second trimester.

I hoped it was because she was having twins.

Even the goddess could not say accurately how a pregnancy would go between myself and another elf. Our borderline ageless bodies were born fully adult from her fruit, but it seemed like we would need quite a lot of time to be borne from the womb of another elf. Neem getting into her tenth month had long exceeded even the gestation time of humans, the longest of all the short lived races, and she seemed to still be quite far from birth.

But I dismissed the thought.

The amount of elves that weren't pregnant shrank day by day. The Goddess could at least tell me if I succeeded in impregnating them or not. Having everyone centralized in a single location would actually make it easier to care for everyone, and thanks to the Dark Elves working overtime and tirelessly, we had access to water and enough minerals to go around.

It was time for us to do our part.

The warmer and wetter, tropical climates to the south would yield a surprisingly versatile treasure, coconuts, which would have quite a few different applications. They weren't recognized for all their uses in this world, but I had knowledge they didn't.

Similarly, on our path south, we would cross a human country, and humans had another thing I wanted quite a lot. Hemp. The THC content of this world's hemp was nowhere near enough, at least not yet, to be used for recreational or pain relieving purposes, but it had many other uses, and it could certainly come in handy, especially to replace a large number of our current inferior choices.

There are only so many vines we can take from the goddess' body before it starts being problematic after all.

"This is exciting!" Fellis the vanguard stated.

"I know right? We get to finally put our training to use, and the Savior's here with us too!" Bea added, speaking giddily.

"Cut the chitchat, if everyone's ready- then we're set," Meltriss said, smirking.

I nodded. "We're ready," I said, clenching my fist. "Alright girls, I want to speak first," I said, climbing aboard the cabin. We had made sure to include a panel that could be removed to create something of a sun roof, mostly so someone could climb on top of the cabin if needed. I used the raised position to speak, puffing out my chest. "We're taking a gigantic step now," I said, "each of you will become one of the pioneers that will be written down in our history," I said, "as the ones who took the first step towards diplomacy. We are Envoys of our Queen, the grand elder Neem, we are the envoys of our goddess, the mother tree who watches over us all," I said.

They all turned to me, watching intently, even Miel.

"That means that each of you is a precious existence, one that cannot be replaced," I said, "so this is your first priority, by order of the goddess, of our queen, and even myself," I intoned, raising my hand, opening my fist and then bringing it back down, pointing at the group with an open palm. "Return from this mission alive and in one piece!" I called. "Take care of your body, take care of your spirit, protect yourselves as you would protect your sister elves and as you would your queen!"

They all nodded, expressions of determination.

"No reckless actions! No attempts to impress the savior!" Meltriss added, glaring at the troops. "Copy?"

"Yes sir!" they all replied.

"Good, good girls," I said, nodding. "We will not camp in the forest."

It was full of bugs, and I do not look forward to being unable to relax because I am constantly squashing mosquitos. Plus even if we are immune to most of the possible diseases that can be gotten in the forest, we're not immune to everything, and I really don't want to test where our endurance ends.

"We will carve our way through, we will knock down trees, we will kill monsters, we will flatten the ground," I said, gesturing to the tools on the bed of our quadcycle truck, "and we will dominate the nature that refuses to bow to the goddess' will!"

They cheered.

"Forward!" I called, "let this be the first of our conquests, over the monsters that entrap us in our lands!"

I pumped my fist in the air, and they followed after me.

Miel giggled. "You're really excited, huh savior?" she said. As I got under the sunroof and sat on the cabin, she approached me, climbing on it, and kissing my lips. I responded to her kiss and we made out for a few seconds, before I let her go. "Come back safe, okay? Everyone's really worried. And don't worry, I'll have that project you asked me for complete by the time you come back!"

Right. A very important project. Crafters and magicians came together and produced one of our most important advancements yet.

"I hope you do," I said, caressing her cheek, and bringing a hand down to her exposed, growing tummy. "For all of us."

She nodded with a smirk.

The vanguard went first. Then, it was time for me and Meltriss. I climbed into the cabin again, and Meltriss stood on the bed. We had stored supplies and trade goods on the bed, in improvised boxes. Rough bungee cords tied them down, mostly made of the same resin as our clothes, not quite as stretchy but much tougher than what we wore.

I took a deep breath, and then with one final glance at Miel, and one final glance at the distant town, where many elves milled about, even as many buildings continued to be constructed and many more were being planned out...

I caught a glimpse of Neem, walking around with several others, using a clipboard to personally inspect the homes being built, making sure that everything matched the plans we've come up with, that everything is up to the codes we had written.

She sent a smile my way, and I smiled back. Even after a year of it, the insanity of our senses still shocks me sometimes, I can just focus into someone so far away and see her clearly, and she can see me back.

And then, it was time. I began to pedal, slowly at first, and then the single-gear box cranked to life. I could even hear the chain protest a little but then everything started to move. It felt strange for a moment to hear only the groaning and creaking of the parts underneath me. Parts of it were bolted together. Parts of it were held in place with screws. Several parts of the frame used wooden joinery.

I began to move, and push forward, at a slow, but steady pace. The space between the trees was at its narrowest about a kilometer into the forest, it would be the tightest squeeze, and we were certain we would make it through there, we just had to map out the route to do it.

The escorts followed, and I moved on the path the vanguards marked, even as they cleared the vegetation ahead of us.

As we began to move, and it became a sort of autopilot process, my brain started to wander, as I thought of coconuts.

I could imagine myself, wearing a microbikini at the beach, sipping on some coconut milk, while watching sexy elves in high leg bloomers and sporty tops playing beach volleyball.