Chapter 5 Forest Protection and History

"Aren't you guys supposed to be elves!! You should value the forests more!!"

Hercule was furious.

The emperor must have turned wicked and tyrannical… Wait, that's me.

"What's with you all of a sudden, Your Majesty?"

Christos tilted his head in puzzlement.

"Because you elves keep chopping down forests without remorse, soil gets washed away causing crop yields to drop."

Hearing what Hercule said, the vassals—Christos, Garphis, Lucanos, Carolina, other chief elven and non-elven vassals, as well as bureaucrats tilted their heads all at once.

Trees chopped down → forests lose water retention capacity → topsoil washed off → fields ruined → crop yields down; though they of course didn't understand this process.

If you leave the forests alone, they will recover eventually.

That's what they had always taken for granted.

"Haah…"

Hercule sighed. Looks like he had to explain it to them.

While we wait for Hercule to explain the importance of nature conservation, let's talk about why Lemurian elves didn't care for forests, as well as the ethnic composition and history of the Lemurian Empire.

Long ago, there existed a place called the Great Forest where many elves called home. But because of population expansion and the sudden decrease in temperature, the elves no longer had enough food to eat. This triggered a large-scale population migration.

Many elves left the Great Forest and settled down on lands without trees. Grasslands, deserts, seas… as well as new forests. The elves scattered themselves all over the world.

Among them, a group of elves embarked on a long, long journey and finally secured for themselves a forest in the middle of a certain peninsula. It was their safe haven. A millennium after they settled down, a young man declared.

"The forest is not enough."

The youth's name was Lemulos.

Lemulos and his companions left the forest to build a city-state on the bank of a river. That city was named Lemuria after its founder, Lemulos.

This was the birth of the Lemurian City-State.

It's said that there were seventy-six elves who followed Lemulos, and including Lemulos himself there were seventy-seven settlers in all. These people were the ancestors of the later Seventy-Seven Sacred Clans.

Thanks to learning agriculture, salt-making, and ironmaking from the surrounding humans while making full use of spirit arts, Lemuria's power grew exponentially and various city-states came under their control.

But then, the powerful Lemuria entered a calamitous crisis.

They couldn't have any children!

Why, you ask? It's because they were all men.

That's right, Lemulos and his jolly companions were all men. Of course they wouldn't have been able to make children with each other; it would have been a miracle if they had.

Thereupon, Lemulos sent a message to his home forest and other elven communities.

"I'm holding a festival! The participation fee is one pig for each person. Women can enter free of charge. There's all the wine you can drink, all the food you can eat!"

Then Lemulos seized all the women who were lured by the invitation, and thus obtained the female population he needed.

Lemurian history texts say that the elves from these women's hometowns—their brothers, fathers and former husbands' animosity and sorrow were resolved through reconciliation, but in truth Lemulos just went to war to shut them up.

…After all, it's hard to admit that the ancestors of current Lemurian elves were a bunch of rapists and their victims.

At that time, a cold snap suddenly arrived.

Lemuria had grain stored so there was no one dying from famine, but things were different in Lemulos' home forest. Numerous elves fell into starvation and requested Lemulos' aid. At that time, Lemulos allegedly said this.

"If you all want to be saved, then leave the forest. Pick up the hoe and do farm work! Also, sorry for stealing your women."

Then many elves said something like, "We can't survive by hunting in the forest anymore. Lemulos is such a genius. We need to get with the times and do agriculture!" and left the forest to immigrate to Lemuria in large numbers.

Thereafter, Lemuria with Lemulos as its leader subjugated the mountain peoples while saying, "You guys are such an eyesore, move down to the plains!" Then they went north and beat the dwarves into submission, "Y'all are quite good at masonry and ironmaking. Teach us or we'll kill you!!" Then they went on to conquer the advanced human civilizations in the south, "Your poems and literature are pretty cool. And teach us how to build ships too. Refuse and you will die!!!"

Afterward, they sailed across the sea to wreck a country on the shore of the opposite continent, then declared, "Thought you could beat us huh!!" as they salted the earth there.

In that fashion, Lemuria expanded its territories…

Yet everyone dies eventually. The long-lived elves were no exception.

Lemulos and his jolly companions died of old age.

Their descendants who were left behind pondered. How the hell do we keep Lemuria going?

At the time, the elven population of Lemuria was a measly 5%. All the rest was a wonderful group called the subjugated peoples. There was also discord between the elves who originally founded the country and the ones who joined later.

There were two available options.

The first was to steel themselves and duke it out.

And the second was to create harmony. To spread the word that they were all friends, that they were brothers and sisters born on the same Earth.

In the end, Lemuria chose to forge harmony among its people. Nobles and commoners held the same degree of political power. Conquered peoples were granted Lemurian citizenship; everyone was equal.

Consequently, the Lemurian Monarchy collapsed, giving birth to the Lemurian Republic. But it was impossible to just abruptly republicanize, and reconciling all the various ethnic groups wasn't so simple.

Thus a four-hundred-year civil war started. That's long!!

Afterward, a bald, philandering, debt-ridden dark lord who was the descendant of Lemulos (or so he claimed to be) became the emperor and the civil war concluded, but that's a story for another time. Since it seems Hercule had finished his explanation.

The important thing is, Lemuria was founded by people who hated forests so they never had a culture of valuing forests in the first place.

"I understand now, but where did Your Majesty learn of this?" Lucanos probed Hercule.

Lucanos was a clergyman, and in this world, clergymen were the intellectuals among intellectuals. The Church in fact housed a great number of texts.

Among the bishops of the Nova Lemuria, Lucanos was naturally the most well read. Yet even he had never heard of such information about forests.

But when he listened to Hercule's explanation, he found that it made a lot of sense.

"Hmm, that's weird. I read that in a book, but which one was it again?"

Hercule played dumb. There was no way he could say that it was knowledge from his past life.

The concept of past lives didn't exist in the Messiah Faith. If he said anything about his past life, people would definitely think of him as a pagan. For the Lemurian Emperor, who was acknowledged as the Defender of the Messiah Faith, to have pagan ideas would be something unpleasant to think about.

"At any rate, I want to make forest protection laws and begin afforestation. This should help to prevent soil from being washed away."

Hercule recalled the bare hills and their surrounding villages that he used to go inspect with Hadrianus III. Construction and shipbuilding materials; furniture; as well as fuel for heating, cooking, and ironmaking… Wood had numerous uses. There's a perpetual demand for it; and wood was consumed as quickly as it was produced. You could also plant crops after clearing out trees.

The forests in the Lemurian Empire were cut down with such rationale.

When the forests were eventually gone, they moved on to the trees on mountains. But cutting down mountain trees was even bigger bad news than chopping down forests.

Heavy rains would cause soil to erode and wash away farmlands.

A lot of villages had sustained damage because of that. Only people who lived at the foot of mountains knew how disastrous bald mountains truly were.

He had appealed to Hadrianus many times, but was always ignored. To be honest, Hercule's heart would not ache even if those villages were to be destroyed since he felt no connection to them. But when it was huge bad news when he thought about the future decrease in tax revenue.

"Your Majesty, the demand for firewood is currently on the rise. If we restrict people from cutting down trees, the price for firewood would soar up substantially, and prices for iron products and salt would follow. Would the masses' livelihood not be pressured?"

A bureaucrat—the human man named Kroll raised his hand to ask Hercule. Because Hercule had patiently listened to and answered their questions and doubts, as well as consulting them before, the vassals no longer hesitated to speak up.

"Can't we substitute it with coal? Hasn't the supply increased recently?"

"Certainly, in recent years coal has become more commonly used as fuel for cooking, bathing, and heating in the winter… But the majority of firewood is consumed by the iron industry. Since coal can't be used for ironmaking, wouldn't the firewood price rise all the same?"

Upon hearing Kroll's query, the surrounding bureaucrats and vassals showed their agreement, advocating Hercule not to proceed with the lumbering regulation.

But Hercule just tilted his head in puzzlement.

"Why can't coal be used for ironmaking?"

"The sulfur in coal makes iron brittle, Your Majesty."

Garphis replied. Being a soldier in the army, he knew a fair bit about ironmaking.

Hercule clapped his hands as if to signal his comprehension.

"I see, it's because there's no coke. Good thing I found out about this."

He found room for improvement in an unexpected place. Looking at Hercule's amused grin, the vassals displayed perplexed expressions.