Shota's Isekai NTR Adventure

Going back a few days...

”Why is there no mana in this place?”

I wasn’t the one that asked this question, it was one of the younger magicians that couldn’t help asking this question in the end.

This was something that they had been curious about this entire time, it was just that they had never thought of how to ask this question. It wasn’t as if they were close enough to actually ask this of the wood elementals.

In fact, the wood elementals ignored them most of the time if they weren’t talking to me.

Which was why it took the impulsive young magician to ask this question.

Though when that young magician did ask it, it wasn’t as if he got an answer from the wood elementals.

The wood elementals just acted as if he had never asked this question in the first place and continued with what they were doing.

So in the end, there was an awkward look that was left on the face of the young magician.

Which was why I stepped in to mediate between them.

”I’m curious about this as well.”

Even if the wood elementals could ignore the young magician, that didn’t mean that they were able to ignore me.

After a while, the wood elementals finally explained what it was about this place that made all of the mana disappear.

In fact, it was actually quite simple.

”We had to use it for ourselves to survive.”

It turned out that in order to survive, the wood elementals had been using the mana that should have existed in this place. They took all of it for themselves which meant that there was nothing left for the dinosaurs that lived in this place.

It might have seemed selfish, but this place had been created for them in the first place.

So it was more of a debate of whether all of this belonged to them to begin with.

Even if they took it, it was something that should have belonged to them.

”But even if you take all of the mana, what about the creatures that lived here in the beginning. It isn’t as if you would have taken all of their mana when they would be able to generate mana on their own.”

The wood elementals didn’t answer when one of the magicians raised this concern.

The way that they acted, it was as if there was something that they were trying to hide.

Whatever it was would most likely be related to what the magician was talking about.

Seeing the way that they acted, we really couldn’t help thinking the worst of them.

After all, it really seemed a bit too suspicious...

The wood elementals could also see the way that we were looking at them and they could guess what we were thinking. When that happened, it seemed like it finally stirred them into action.

”It isn’t what you think it is. We would never do something like that.”

Though I didn’t show it, the others still looked at the wood elementals with looks of doubt.

It was clear that they didn’t seem to believe what the wood elementals were saying.

This put more pressure on the wood elementals until they had no choice but to tell the truth.

It was just that the truth wasn’t as bad as we thought.

”When they died of natural causes, we took the mana from them.”

The magicians were the ones that were the most confused since there was something that they still questioned.

”Even if you only took the mana from them after their deaths, wouldn’t they still have passed on their ability to control mana to their offspring? It doesn’t make sense that none of the current inhabitants of this place can’t control mana at all.”

I was the one that answered on behalf of the wood elementals.

”That all depends on if there is an environment to nurture it.”

”Huh?” The magicians looked at me with confused looks when I said this.

I just looked at them and calmly said, ”It’s very simple. Talent doesn’t decide everything.”

For these magicians who had been raised in a society where one’s aptitude for controlling mana was everything, that just didn’t make sense at all. After all, talent was the most important thing in this case.

So they couldn’t understand when someone was contradicting this.

However, I just stuck by my words as well as I said, ”Even if they have talent, it doesn’t matter if it can’t manifest in an environment suited for that talent. If they can’t make it bloom, then eventually that talent will disappear.”

”So you’re saying that because they couldn’t use that ability, they slowly lost that ability...” The magicians and even the scholars seemed interested in this topic.

The wood elementals on the other hand had surprised looks as they said, ”How did you know that this is what happened?”

They had observed everything that happened in these woods, so naturally they knew what happened to the dinosaurs over the many long years. They knew that they lost more and more of their ability with each generation until it completely disappeared.

I couldn’t help giving a secret bitter laugh when I saw them acting this way.

After all, how was I supposed to tell them that this was common knowledge in my past life?

This was nothing more than a simple case of natural selection and how the ability to control mana regressed because it wasn’t being used. This was something that everyone knew in my past life since there were many parts of the human that became vestigial after many years of evolution.

But the concept of evolution was a foreign one to the scholars of this continent.

They were still at the medieval stage since that was the setting of the game, so they certainly wouldn’t understand if I started telling them about evolution.

That was why I just left it there without explaining.

At the very least, that explained why there was no mana in this place at all.