The Martial Unity

Chapter 3421: Unexpected Source

Rui stared at the Whisperer with a serious gaze as she inhaled deeply from a smoking pipe. Her eyes were red while her expression was a little dazed and lost. The air reeked of the odor of a lit weed, tingling at his senses as he frowned, experiencing a mild haze over his senses for just the briefest moments.

”...What the hell are you smoking? It’s affecting even my constitution, and I have a Martial Body.”

The Whisperer smirked at him with a hint of amusement. ”Have you never tried it, Your Highness? I never expected the most powerful Martial Artist of the Panama Continent to be such a goodie-good. Then again, I shouldn’t be surprised given our earlier meeting.”

Rui waved the air before him, using a breathing technique to dispel the air through the ventilation systems underground quickly, purifying the air before studying the therianthrope elven hybrid with a displeased expression.

”If you’re high, then I’m coming back another time.”

”Relax, Your Highness...” she paused, taking another deep drag, before blowing it into the air with an expression of relief. ”I actually operate better under the influence of the herbs. They’re genetically modified by the Dyloayjosarsa Tribe of the dark elves of West Genora to induce a sensation of euphoric light-headedness, but they don’t reduce cognitive capability. On top of that, as a beastified therianthrope, my resistance is quite high.”

Rui’s eyes widened with surprise as he turned to the pipe she held in her hand. ”...The weed is made by the dark elves?”

She chuckled even as her dazed gaze shifted to Rui with a hint of amusement. ”They specialize in flora, after all. The best weed in the world comes from the dark elves, I can tell you that much. Here in the Hlakaschken Trade Empire, the weed is sold out in the open, since no goods are deemed illegal or prohibited, and from the Hlakaschken Trade Empire, they are shipped into black markets in all nations in all six continents around the entire world.”

Rui stared at the woman as a part of the pure, good-hearted nature of the dark elves was shattered by this revelation. ”How extensive is this?”

”...Not too extensive, but it doesn’t need to be,” the woman remarked, closing her eyes as she deeply dragged from the pipe. ”Out of the millions of elven tribes there are in West Genora, probably around three percent of them specialize in opioids and other similar drugs that provide addictive experiences. However, they are generally frowned upon by the larger community, and thus it is not something that the dark elves advertise to outsiders.”

”Three percent. I suppose that would explain why Amare and I never suspected anything of the sort while we were there,” Rui murmured with an engrossed tone. ”They must have done their best to ensure that we didn’t run into them. Hah, they are hiding plenty of secrets despite all the time we spent there.”

Of course, Rui was hardly surprised by that; even human civilization held many, many secrets from the dark elves, unwilling to divulge them, one of them being Martial Transcendents that only Mother Maeria knew about.

”Three percent...” Rui glanced at the pipe that the woman indulged in with a curious expression.

Three percent was indeed a minute minority of the population, but given how massive the dark elven population was, he couldn’t help but wonder just how many billions and billions of dark elves were producing these drugs and shipping them off to the Hlakaschken Trade Empire.

By selling them legally to international commercial trade hubs with no trade restrictions, they weren’t doing anything illegal, but they were undoubtedly aware of the fact that their drugs were being smuggled illegally into different countries around the globe, across the six continents and the various islands in between.

It reminded Rui not to think of the dark elves as angels of virtue by any means. While their distaste for war and their collectivism and friendliness were generally very good traits, it was also the case that they didn’t have as great an appreciation for the concept of polities and formal political structures.

It was a relatively foreign concept in West Genora.

So much so that the dark elves of West Genora didn’t even have a formal political title for their civilization. People just called them West Genora Elven Civilization because the Taraarnynm couldn’t be bothered to create a formal political structure.

That didn’t mean that they were devoid of systems; they clearly had an overarching system, it was just not codified or formalized in the way that governments were.

The elves didn’t need governments that had a monopoly on state violence, unlike other species of the homo genus, like homo sapien or homo martialus. They were collectivist by nature, allowing them to get by without governments, following a form of anarch-communism in their civilizational structure.

That also meant that they didn’t entirely understand on a fundamental level why the other species needed, even if they understood on paper. Subconsciously, it caused them to have a lower regard for legal structures in other nations, making them much less troubled by their products being banned by government structures.

It was no wonder that they didn’t bother trying to stop it.

They wouldn’t go out of their way to antagonize other nations by directly smuggling their goods into other nations, but they certainly wouldn’t try to stop it if it happened later on down the supply chains.

”Have the dark elves been criticized for this?” Rui raised an eyebrow with a curious expression.

”They have,” she replied, taking another drag from it. ”But at the end of the day, it’s just words. Forty percent of the world’s food comes from Genora, so no one in their mind would even dream of trying to ban elven products, along with all the other flora goods and services that have integrated them into the world’s culture.”

”Fascinating...” Rui remarked with a tone of interest.

”Would you like to try a drag? It’s truly unlike anything that any other civilization has provided, premium high-quality stuff with minimized negative effects.”

”I’m good.” Rui raised a hand. ”I just want the information that was promised. It’s about damn time already.”