Once the demon commander was taken away, all of the elders couldn't help letting out a sigh of relief.
They had never expected this thing that they had thought to be trivial to be this serious.
That also made them much more grateful towards me since I had been the one that had saved them from this.
After taking some time to calm down, the elders turned back to face us.
I had been sitting there calmly waiting for the elders to finish calming down and when they faced me, I revealed a serious look as I waited for them to speak.
The elders all gave a nod of appreciation when they saw this, before the green haired elder suddenly bowed her head. After this, the other elders followed suit and also bowed their heads to me which caught me off guard.
I was about to say something, but the green haired elder said, "Thank you for everything that you've done. If it wasn't for your help, it really would be hard to tell what would have happened with the demons."
I opened my mouth before closing it again as I was torn on what to say in response to this.
But in the end, I just simply said, "It was nothing."
The green haired elder looked up again and said, "You were discussing the matter of the dispute between our people. I would like to put an end to that now. We will allow your people to chop more trees from the forest and we'll even show you where some of the better quality older trees that need to be disposed of are, but before that…"
After a slight pause, the green haired elder said, "Before that, we have a small request that we need to make."
I slightly knitted my brows when I heard this, but then they relaxed and I said with a nod, "What is it?"
The green haired elder had a difficult look on her face and she hesitated a bit, but she still said, "We would like to ask that you wait a bit before you start the logging."
I was surprised when I heard this.
The green haired elder saw this and thought that I had taken offense with this, so she quickly added, "It isn't that we have a problem with cooperating with you, it's just that…the forest needs some time to recover the magic power that was lost. Before that, it would be dangerous for the forest if we were to cut down trees. I hope that you can understand."
I knew that she had mistaken my expression, so I quickly said with a smile, "No, no, that isn't a problem at all. I understand the circumstances and I don't mind this at all."
Hearing this, the green haired elder and the other elders let out a sigh of relief.
For these humans that had done so much and had even risked their lives to help them, it really was hard for them to ask even more of them.
But I couldn't help being surprised by the fact that they found this difficult in the first place.
This was a very simple and reasonable request, but the elves found it hard to make it.
It really seemed like the elves really were something else.
After a long silence, it was as if I had suddenly thought of something as I said, "Actually, I have something else that I want to discuss with you."
The elders were caught off guard by this, but the green haired elder said, "If there's anything that we can do for our saviours, please ask."
I shook my head before saying, "It isn't like that. I was just wondering if we could talk about cooperation between us?"
The elders looked at each other with confused looks before the green haired elder asked, "Cooperation? What do you mean by that?"
I said with a friendly smile on my face, "I can see that you are doing well for yourselves, but I am sure that there are things that you would want from human society. So I was wondering if we could start trading between our two sides."
The elders looked at each other with confused looks again, but this time, there was a different emotion in their eyes.
It seemed like they were tempted a bit by the offer that I had made.
It was true that the elves preferred living as one with nature, but that didn't mean that they didn't have any desires at all.
There were some things that the humans had that they had wanted before, but they didn't trade with humans, so they couldn't get them. The only times that they could get them was when elven travelers came and traded these items with them.
So these human items could be considered very rare.
If they were able to directly trade with the humans, that would naturally be an improvement.
But the elves didn't build any meaningful relationships with the humans and they liked keeping to themselves, so trading with them was impossible to begin with.
However, this was a very special situation.
I was someone that was in charge of a town and Haley was here as the representative of her company. As long as we worked together with the elven village, there was no way that we wouldn't be able to set up a trade network with the elven village.
The elders didn't say anything at first as they just kept looking at each other.
With the way that they were looking at each other, it was as if they were using their eyes to discuss what they wanted to do.
So I just patiently waited for them to finish.
After a long period of silence, the green haired elder finally said with a nod, "Alright, we can discuss this further after everything has been settled."
I gave a nod in agreement when I heard this.
It seemed like they wanted to wait a bit before deciding this, but it made sense since there were other things that they wanted to deal with.
The only one who looked impatiently right now was…Haley.
She could smell the profit that came from this since elven goods were very rare to begin with.
Every single thing that had come from the elves had been treated as a special object in human society. So anything that could be proven to come from the elves would always be sold for a high price.
If they could open up the trades with the elves and directly get stuff from them, then she was sure that she would make a large profit from this.
So she was disappointed that this couldn't be set right now.
The sooner that she started, the sooner she would be able to build her network.
But at the same time, she knew that rushing this would just lead to failure.
So she had no choice but to accept this for now.
After this had been settled, there was nothing else for us to do.
So the elven elders were about to send us back to the house they gave us when suddenly…
"Wait, you can't leave yet." The green haired elder suddenly said this.