Tensei Shite High Elf ni Narimashitaga, Slow Life wa 120-nen de Akimashita - Highelf with a Long Life - Vol. 9 Ch. 44

[Bighomer]

5really great chapter! I like how Aesir seems to have misunderstood his people.

 

[Narmaya-]

chat is it worth to re-read this again? i mean i dont want to cry for a 2nd time lol

 

[Resomius__]

230 years old? i feel somehow he is older than that or does he just pick that age randomly?

I think he went out of the forest with 120, so the whole manga is around 110 years of his time... Na, it kinda makes sense. Maybe he forgot to count a decade or two but the rest makes sense.

 

[qawsedrf21]

I got to be honest with you, i don't remember shit from the early chapters, it's been 4 years. And the only spirits i have seen are the small ones that seem to just go of emotional and simple verbal clues. i didn't even remember there were any higher tier of spirit as it never came up again.

I just looked at chapter 1. "They don't grow old. High Elves live for more than a thousand years, and once their physical form perishes, their spirit goes on to linger in nature until the end of the world itself." And the illustrations is just the small spirits we always see.

Yea same, 2-3y for me, I only vaguely remembered about it too, I rechecked briefly early chapters to refresh on the few glimpses we had on high elf life for this arc, was surprised to find the higher spirit chapter so early yet nothing rly was said and nothing after (unless some higher creature that was shown are counted as higher spirit but wasn't directly said). And no clarification of what type of spirit they become (indeed that image, but higher spirit existance is only revealed later, tho very soon) nor what is "higher" vs normal spirit even is (born that way? can one evolve or devolve into it?), was all left vague (tbf as many things in this manga are, esp on its "magic beings system").
At best we could assume there is at least a difference for elders as high elf guy asked him this ch "did they not come to you?", with MC not saying anything along the lines of "even if they did, it would be hard to tell them apart".

I somehow remember even less details with the chinese continent arc, if those "higher beings" (guardians?) around the dragon counted in some way as "spirit / higher spiritual individuals" (but since he was still the strongest/most important there for being a "higher elf", would still leave it as only him being the potential higher spirit) .. also the whole thing with japan arc and some giant that sat in that tree (tho I think that was some deity or demi-god).

Well we might finally get answers this arc, sad part is that with the release speed this series has, it might take another 1-2y to get them.

 

[Nuggz]

Aesir already reached acceptance while Frieren might still be bargaining.

We readers also kinda accept ...(begrudgely) that this will probably be the last we saw of any of the old cast in mainland except Irena and Wynn.

I'm simply waiting for the very final moment. How beautiful yet heartbreaking it would be for us.

Isn't the entire reason why frieren is going on her journey BACK to the north is because that's where the supposed gateway to the other side is?

 

[w3searcher]

At least they noticed he left

 

[EirikrInnMyrkr]

Even with the high elves, he sees the passage of time. All but one of the elders he grew up with have passed on.

Also, did his conversation with the dragon really take years? I thought it only took months. Man, time has been slipping away from me, too.

 

[Carn109]

Mizuha old now
Also time for a "short" chat

 

[DanYHKim]

This manga’s passage of time is so heartbreaking but beautiful at the same time. I almost didn’t read this but I’m so glad I did.

There is a great disconnect between the passage of time as perceived by a human and by an elf. Dwarves are somewhere between. There is a manga called Yokohama shopping diary in which the main character is a robot. She runs a coffee shop in a post-apocalyptic Japan. She is a single landmark as time moves around her, and the people that she knows come and go. It is in some ways similar in the way that you feel in this manga except that she does not give the passage of time the kind of significance that it has for a living being; even one as long lived as an elf. Eventually one gets the impression of the circular nature of life and its cycles through her eyes, some things changing at breakneck speed while others comfortingly replaying in an eternal circle.


The story of Frieren has a bit of this feeling as well, but I also realized that while an elf may live for millennia, they still do so one day at a time like we do.

 

[DanYHKim]

Also, did his conversation with the dragon really take years? I thought it only took months. Man, time has been slipping away from me, too.

What fascinating idea! And intelligent creature who's perception is so stretched and attenuated over time that one must spend years to pronounce words to them. It brings to mind the scene in Red October (and another submarine movie) where the US Navy ultra-low frequency radio was being used to communicate to a submerged submarine. They had to observe the lazy waves of electromagnetic perturbation passing through them in order to glean a code number. It was a process that took an enormous amount of time at a part of the story with great tension.

Sometime in the 1950s or '60s there was a short science fiction story about astronauts landing on what appeared to all to be a planet with a highly advanced civilization. They were buildings and factories and such like everywhere, but no inhabitants. However there were sculptures everywhere to be found, mining the mundane actions of people in there daily roles. Eventually, they decided to take a sample from one of the statues. They used the laser cutter and chipped off the great toe from a statue of a woman accompanied by a man who looked like a soldier or policeman. And then they went about their business and their other explorations. On their way back to their ship, one among their number noticed that all of the statues had change position. And the female statue that they had sampled had a look of pain and distress on its face, gesturing at a toe that was clearly bleeding .

The Man has his face fixed in a mask of rage and had loosed his weapon, pointing it clearly at their ship. The explorers didn't know if they had only an instant left before the trigger would reach its activation point, or if they had hours, but they knew that they had made a terrible mistake.

And even in real life on our own plain world there are simple organisms that live deep in the crevices of rocks that survive on a time scale in which a cell division may take centuries. They metabolize extremely slowly, and for them the risk of dying by tectonic subduction is very real. Such a creature cannot be detected by any sort of conventional microbiology, and their existence makes it clear that when we search for "signs of life", We are looking for the evidence of a very narrow definition of life "as we know it".

 

[EirikrInnMyrkr]

Sometime in the 1950s or '60s there was a short science fiction story about astronauts landing on what appeared to all to be a planet with a highly advanced civilization. They were buildings and factories and such like everywhere, but no inhabitants. However there were sculptures everywhere to be found, mining the mundane actions of people in there daily roles. Eventually, they decided to take a sample from one of the statues. They used the laser cutter and chipped off the great toe from a statue of a woman accompanied by a man who looked like a soldier or policeman. And then they went about their business and their other explorations. On their way back to their ship, one among their number noticed that all of the statues had change position. And the female statue that they had sampled had a look of pain and distress on its face, gesturing at a toe that was clearly bleeding .

The Man has his face fixed in a mask of rage and had loosed his weapon, pointing it clearly at their ship. The explorers didn't know if they had only an instant left before the trigger would reach its activation point, or if they had hours, but they knew that they had made a terrible mistake.

Do you remember the name of that story or its author? I'd like to read it.

 

[DanYHKim]

Do you remember the name of that story or its author? I'd like to read it.

Not the story, but maybe the original inspiration

Desert Encounter by Ukrainian-Soviet author Igo Rosokhvatsky, originally published in 1961. the most accessible English translation is found in the anthology Russian Science Fiction 1968 edited by Robert Magidoff. Even then, it's kind of impenetrable.

I really wish the version that I remember can be found, but no luck.