I Found a Door to the Elven Realm-Chapter 91: Last Defensive Efforts before Level 50 Rush

Eren woke up with Griks sleeping in the corner of the living room and Rosa sleeping on the couch three meters away from her.

The kobold had curled into a ball against the wall with her injured leg stretched out. Rosa had her notebook open on her chest and a pen still in her hand. She’d been writing something about patrol routes before passing out.

Emily was already up. He could hear her in the kitchen making breakfast and the smell of Evon bread mixed with something herbal hit his nose. She must have gone to Lyra’s bakery before sunrise because the bread was fresh and still warm.

He got out of bed and walked to the kitchen doorway.

Emily stood at the counter with her back to him. Her hair was down and messy from sleep and her sleeping gown hung loose off one shoulder. She was cutting fruit with a small knife and her hips moved slightly while she worked.

Eren stood there watching her for probably ten seconds too long. The sleeping gown was thin enough that he could see the shape of her waist and the way her shoulder blades moved under the fabric. Days without touching her and his body was already screaming about it.

"Stop staring at my back." She didn’t turn around.

"How do you always know?"

"Because you breathe differently when you stare mister." She put the knife down and turned. She had that soft face she saved for mornings when they were alone but it disappeared the second she glanced at Rosa on the couch. "Sit. Eat. We have a lot to do today."

Eren sat. Emily brought food and slid into the chair next to him instead of across from him. She leaned her head against his shoulder for two seconds and straightened up like nothing happened.

"I’ve been thinking about something." She kept her voice low enough that Rosa couldn’t hear even if she woke up.

"About?"

Emily picked up a piece of fruit and studied it instead of looking at him. "The bonding ritual. For us. Before anything else happens with the other women."

Eren stopped chewing.

"The old way." She turned the fruit in her fingers. "Blood and vow under the totem. Just you and me and Kelion as witness."

Emily had called him husband since the first week but in the elven sense that was just claiming. The bonding ritual was different. Kelion had mentioned it once. Blood shared between two people under the village totem with the oldest elder present. Permanent. The elf version of carving your names into the world itself.

"You want to do the bonding?"

"I want it done before Selena or Lyra or anyone else touches you." She finally looked at him and her eyes were the kind he’d only seen twice before. Not angry or cold but afraid. Emily never showed fear to anyone in this village except him. "You’re mine first silly. I need that before I share you with anyone."

He put his hand on hers. "Then we do it. This week."

"Not this week." Emily’s fingers tightened around his. "Tomorrow. I already talked to Kelion about it."

Eren blinked. "You already-"

"I asked him yesterday while you were out hunting." She leaned in and kissed him once on the mouth. Quick but firm with her teeth catching his bottom lip at the end the way she always did. "Don’t look so surprised mister. Did you think I was going to wait for you to figure out the timing?"

He should’ve known. Emily didn’t wait for anyone to make decisions she’d already made in her head three days ago.

Rosa shifted on the couch. Eren could tell she was awake because her breathing changed and her eyes opened just enough to catch the kiss through her lashes before she closed them again.

She’d seen it. She was pretending she hadn’t.

Yeah. This is going to be fun for absolutely nobody.

After breakfast they cleared the plates and spread everything on the kitchen table. Griks drew a rough map of the forest on a piece of leather using charcoal. Her drawing skills were about as good as a five-year-old’s art project but the information was solid. She marked the kobold patrol routes she knew, the areas where the master’s controlled groups operated and the general direction of the orc camps to the east.

Emily studied the map and added her own knowledge on top of it. Water sources, terrain features, animal paths and the spots where she’d hunted for years. When she drew her marks alongside Griks’s wobbly lines the map started looking like an actual tactical document.

Emily traced the routes with her finger. "Three main approach vectors. Northeast, east and southeast. But the southeast path goes through the swamp and only trolls use that because nothing else can walk through the mud without drowning."

"Orcs can." Griks said quietly. She was sitting at the edge of the table holding her knees. "Orcs walk through anything. Mud. Water. Fire if it’s not too big."

Emily looked at the kobold. "Fire too?"

Griks nodded. "Orc skin is thick. They don’t care about burns the way other races do. My old clan leader said orcs would walk through burning fields just to prove they could."

Emily looked back at the map and her jaw tightened. "Then the swamp isn’t a natural barrier. That changes the south approach completely."

Rosa was sitting at the table too. She couldn’t follow most of the Elvish but she was watching the map take shape and making her own notes.

But her eyes kept drifting from the map to Emily. To the way Emily leaned close to Eren while pointing at routes. To the way Emily’s hand would brush Eren’s forearm when she reached across the table. Small touches that Emily did without thinking because that was just how she existed around him.

Rosa noticed all of it. She wrote things in her notebook and not all of them were about patrol routes.

"This part here." She tapped the southern section. "No marks at all. Nobody goes there?"

Eren translated.

"South is mostly open ground and the slime field." Emily said. "Weakest defense. The trees are too spread apart to build a proper wall between them and we don’t have enough manpower to dig a trench."

Rosa circled the spot twice and went back to writing. Eren recognized her thinking face from three years of dating. She was chewing on more than military information.

..

By noon Eren had a defense plan. Not a good one but better than what they had before which was basically "Emily kills everything and we pray."

He pulled Thadric aside after the morning patrol rotation. "The east wall needs to be as strong as the north."

Thadric wiped sawdust off his hands. He’d already been cutting timber since dawn because the man couldn’t sit still when he was nervous. "East wall at north-wall strength? Eren that’s four days of work with everyone helping. And right now half the village is too scared to go near the treeline."

"What if I do the heavy lifting and you handle the design? I can carry the logs, hammer the stakes and dig the foundation holes. You tell me where everything goes."

Thadric scratched his chin and looked at the shed next to them. "And how exactly are you going to do four days of lumber work in-"

Eren punched the side of the shed. The wall cracked and a plank fell off. "Sorry about that. But you get the point."

Thadric looked at the broken wall, then at Eren’s hand, then at the wall. His expression went through surprise, calculation and something close to excitement. "You’re going to fix that right?"

"After the barricade."

"Two days." Thadric held up two fingers. "If you can really do the lifting and I handle the engineering, two days for the east wall. But I’m going to need you working from sunrise to sunset and not complaining about splinters."

"Deal."

Thadric was already walking toward his workshop before Eren finished the word. The man was happiest when he had a project and a deadline.

Nimbo and Mel got their assignment right after. Eren found them sparring near the training area. Mel noticed Eren first and stopped mid-swing. She always noticed him first. Her Edge Enhance skill made her blades glow faintly silver and she looked like a character from one of those anime shows where the girls are too powerful for their age.

"Starting tonight you two are on official night patrol."

Nimbo lowered his shield. "Night patrol? Just us?"

"Just you. From sunset to midnight." Eren held up one of the Earth flashlights. "You walk the full perimeter. If you see anything, anything at all, you shine this toward the village and one of us comes to check."

Mel twirled her dagger. "And if something attacks before you get there?"

"You don’t engage. You fall back and signal." He looked at her directly. "I mean it Mel. If I find out you charged at an orc because you thought it would be fun, I’m taking your daggers for a week."

Mel’s grin dropped. "You wouldn’t."

"Try me."

She looked at him for a couple seconds and apparently decided he wasn’t bluffing because she sheathed both daggers with a huff. "Fine. Signal first. But if it’s just a slime I’m killing it."

"Slimes are fair game." Eren almost smiled but kept it serious. "Everything else, you signal."

Nimbo took the flashlight and clicked it on and off three times. He did this every single time he touched a flashlight.

"We won’t let you down." He said and his voice was steady even if his hands weren’t quite there yet.

"I know you won’t."

The afternoon split into two projects. Eren hauled dark pinewood logs for the east barricade while Rabbu-i ran her second magitech experiment in the clearing behind Selena’s restaurant. She’d brought three small mana stones from Eren’s dungeon stockpile and one of the metal zippo lighters from Earth.

Thadric positioned himself behind a tree before the experiment started. The last one had left him with trust issues.

Rabbu-i held the zippo in one hand and a mana stone in the other. She was standing close enough to Eren that he could smell the forest herb soap she made. "Metal holds mana better than the plastic. If I channel through the mechanism slowly instead of forcing the energy-"

"Is it going to explode?" Thadric called from behind his tree.

"Probably not."

"You said probably. I’m staying here."

Rabbu-i ignored him and closed her eyes. The mana stone dimmed as she directed energy into the zippo. The metal started warming up with a shimmer like heat rising off asphalt on a summer road.

The flint wheel spun on its own. A flame appeared and it was blue instead of the normal orange. Clean and steady. It held for nine seconds before the zippo got too hot and Rabbu-i dropped it with a hiss.

"Nine seconds." Eren picked it up after it cooled. The metal was discolored but intact. "Better than three."

Rabbu-i took it back and turned it over in her hands. "The concept works. But I need something that can hold mana without overheating." She looked at the crystal shards in Eren’s belt pouch. "Those crystals from the deer. Can I have one?"

Emily answered from her watching spot ten meters away. "One. Not more."

Rabbu-i looked over her shoulder at Emily and smiled. "One is enough. For now."

Emily’s left eye twitched. Eren looked at the ground because getting involved in whatever was happening between those two was a death sentence no matter which side he picked.

Rosa stood in the restaurant doorway with her arms crossed watching the whole exchange. She’d been watching Emily all day. Not obviously. She was subtle about it the way she’d been subtle about checking Eren’s phone back when they dated on Earth.

Rosa had spent three years as the only woman in Eren’s life and she was good at that job. Now she was watching Emily control a room without raising her voice. Emily had said "one" and Rabbu-i backed off. No shouting. No weapon. Just two words and the whole dynamic shifted.

Rosa went back inside and wrote something in her notebook. She underlined it twice.

Eren spent the rest of the afternoon carrying logs. Two dark pinewood trunks at a time on his shoulders which would’ve needed a forklift on Earth but felt like grocery bags at Level 40.

Rosa walked over to where Griks was sitting near the garden during one of his trips. She sat down next to the kobold and pulled a piece of bread from her pocket. Split it and handed half to Griks without a word.

Griks sniffed it like Rury sniffed everything. Then she bit in and her eyes went wide. "This good."

"Lyra makes it." Rosa pointed toward the bakery. "The shy one."

"Red face elf. Yes." Griks ate the rest in two bites.

Rosa started pointing at things and saying the Elvish words. Griks would repeat them and sometimes correct Rosa’s pronunciation. At one point Rosa tried to say "friend" and the tonal structure got her again. Griks made a clicking sound that Eren realized was laughter.

First time Griks had laughed since arriving.

Rosa grinned. "What did I actually say?"

Griks couldn’t explain so she just kept clicking and shaking her head.

Eren watched them from across the garden while carrying logs. Rosa caught his eye for a second and he could tell she wanted to ask him something. But she turned back to Griks instead.

She’s been looking at me like that all day. Whatever she’s building up to is going to be a conversation I’m not ready for.

Fury came back from the evening patrol just before Eren was planning to sleep. The wolf sat down at the garden gate with his ears flat and his nose twitching toward the south.

[New tracks on the south path.] His voice was careful. [Not kobold. Bigger. The feet are flat and wide like they belong to something very heavy.]

"How fresh?"

[Today. This afternoon while you were building the wall.]

"How many sets?"

[Three. Walking together in a line. They stopped near the field where the Earth-woman kills slimes and looked at the village for a while. Then they turned back east.] Fury paused. [They weren’t hunting. They were counting.]

That last part hit Eren harder than the tracks themselves. Scouts who stopped to observe and then left. That was organized intelligence gathering.

He found Emily in the bedroom. She was lying on her side with her hand on her belly but opened her eyes the second he walked in.

"Something happened." Not a question. She could read his face from across the room.

"Fury found orc tracks on the south path. Three scouts. They stopped near the slime field where Rosa trains and watched the village before heading back east."

Emily pushed herself up and sat on the edge of the bed. She was quiet for a few seconds while her hunter brain processed the information. "The south side is wide open. No barricade, no stakes, just flat ground and scattered trees."

"I know."

"And Rosa goes there every morning with Nimbo."

"I know that too."

Emily reached for her katana on the wall hook and held it across her lap. Not because she was going to fight right now but because it helped her think. She always held a weapon when she was planning something serious.

"We finish the east wall tomorrow and start the south wall the day after. And nobody goes past the village edge without at least one of us with them. Not Rosa, not Nimbo, not even Mel." She pointed the sheathed katana at Eren. "And you. You need to get to Level 50 as fast as possible. Stop holding back on the hunting trips."

"I’m not holding-"

"You are. You’ve been fighting Level 20 trolls when you should be pushing deeper into the forest for higher targets. You’re Level 40 with stats over 50. You can handle Level 30 creatures solo and you know it." She set the katana down next to her. "We don’t have the luxury of being careful anymore mister. If orcs are mapping our south side then the attack is closer than Griks thought."

She was right. He’d been grinding safe targets out of habit when he should’ve been pushing his limits.

"I’m also going to Earth in the morning. I need to grab something."

Emily tilted her head. "What kind of something?"

"A small flying machine with a camera. On Earth we use them to see things from the air without being there. If I can get one working here I can fly it over the forest and count how many orcs are actually camped out there."

Emily thought about this for a moment. "A flying eye that you control from the ground?"

"Basically."

"Get two." She lay back down and pulled the blanket over herself. "And come back before noon. I don’t want you on that side longer than you need to be."

Eren lay down next to her. She pulled his arm around her waist and pressed her back against his chest. The no-touching rule didn’t apply to sleeping because Emily still needed him close at night even if she couldn’t have anything else.

Her hair smelled like the herbal soap. Her skin was warm against his and the thin gown did nothing to hide anything.

"About tomorrow night." She whispered it so quiet he almost missed it.

"The bonding?"

"Kelion said he can do it after sunset. Under the totem. Just us three." Her hand found his and pressed it against her belly. "Before the world gets any crazier. I want your blood mixed with mine under that tree. Then whatever comes after, I can handle it."

Eren pressed his lips against the back of her neck. She shivered. "Tomorrow night then."

"Tomorrow night." Emily repeated it. Her hand stayed on his and her breathing slowed down until she was asleep.

I am marrying now huh...

From the living room he could hear Rosa turning on the couch.

Three orc scouts had walked past the place where Rosa killed slimes every morning and sat there watching the village.

And nobody had noticed until tonight.