“You… you can’t mean… life, magic… that’s the reason you came here…?”
“Hehehehe…”
Melvas lifted his head, his eyes bulging wide. At the same time, he extended his hand. Flames coalesced into a staff. He spun around and swiftly aimed it at Ailin.
“With your insight, can’t you see through it yet? Or are you just dodging the truth?”
“Mel…”
“Kill her.”
The words had barely left his mouth when footsteps pounded rapidly from behind. Ailin sensed the danger and whipped out her longsword in a flash.
Clang—!
Blade met sword. The Leader, already seething with rage and thrilled at last to receive the order to cut down this woman, charged ahead. The specialized blade of frontline Elf soldiers clashed against the Emerald Sword of Northern Border’s general, erupting in a shower of brilliant sparks.
How could some speechifying lobbyist, forever dashing from one rally to the next, hope to match a battle-hardened general?
In a single exchange, Ailin knocked her opponent’s sword aside. Swift as lightning, she drove her fist into his elbow. He yelped in agony, and before his weapon could hit the ground, she had seized it.
And with that, the fight was over…
Pfft—!
Or was it?
Ailin scowled and turned. She had already pieced it together.
A glowing green arrow protruded from her shoulder—an Elf combat staple. Weapons conjured from wind magic packed nearly as much punch as the real thing.
In other words, the Elf army had attacked her.
Row upon row of soldiers hemmed her in, bows drawn and trained on Ailin, treating her like some battlefield straggler or cornered bandit.
Elder Melvas stood at their center.
He had clearly orchestrated this. But whoever pulled his strings remained the true mastermind.
Whatever the case, Ailin had one pressing priority.
With one hand, she snapped off the arrow. Its magical composition offered no relief from the searing pain, but she gritted her teeth and endured. She fished the Communication Artifact from her pocket and, falling back on her old ploy, murmured into it:
“Lady Winter Queen, this is Ailin. I’ve run into an internal Elf rebellion…”
But she got no further. The artifact shattered like brittle ice.
Melvas withdrew the finger he’d used to weave the spell, smirking. “Joining us is your best bet now that you’re out of options. Everyone slips up, but there won’t be a second chance for you, child.”
“Come now. You know full well that only true Elves can rule this land.”
Under the Leader’s watchful eye, Melvas advanced and extended a hand toward Ailin, the young woman slumped against the wall.
Meanwhile, his soldiers fanned out to encircle every subordinate Ailin had brought along. Most of them were mere support and medical staff—hardly a match for drilled troops.
“Join us, or die. This era’s Elves are sharp; I’m not wasting a second offer on you. After all, I’m no god.”
“Refuse, and your people die too.”
Melvas’s hand was gnarled and withered.
His face was no different. In this so-called haven of Elves—cut off from the world, free of petty squabbles—he had endured for over a millennium. He knew the secret to longevity, unlike those hidebound fools who threw their lives away for empty ideals.
“A new era for the Elves dawns, Miss Ailin. You know self-doubt means nothing when bliss is at hand.”
“I trust you’re smarter than that.”
His bulging eyes bored into her, as if the old man meant to wring the right answer from her lips.
Ailin said nothing. Blood bubbled from her shoulder wound, hissing into white smoke where the Elf Arrow had burned her. The air thickened with scorching, metallic reek that turned the stomach.
“Traitor to the Elf Queen—I won’t forgive you, not even in death.”
“Then be the stepping stone for the Elves’ coming of age!” Melvas had no patience for more talk.
As the old saying went, you couldn’t wake someone who was only pretending to sleep. Ailin’s loyalty struck him as pigheaded folly, and he was determined to put an end to it.
Even with resistance all but drained from her, Ailin managed a mocking smile. “How pathetic you are, Melvas. A thousand years old, scraping by on feeble magic alone? Heh… as if.”
This Elf dared mock him with death staring her in the face.
In seconds, a roaring Blazing Flame tornado rose as Melvas’s unanswerable retort.
“We need no Elf Queen any longer. All that dithering brings is torment under endless assaults. You lot are the price for the many’s salvation. Take pride in it.”
His bony hand thrust skyward, lips curling in a faint smile.
The flame tornado raged on for a long, long time.
Elves, killing elves…
Though deploying the full might of his Soul Tier Layer 5 spell against a defenseless little girl was rather like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, it would certainly silence those voices of protest.
Melvas was convinced he had done nothing wrong. This was merely a necessary step in the long march of history, an essential tool of governance.
Exactly.
To forge unity, one needed deep psychological scars—be it through war or famine, plague or massacre. The elves of today clearly hadn’t endured such despair… but manufacturing it was no great challenge.
The raid on the city, the beastmen’s assault: these were his weapons.
In time, the elves who had witnessed it all—those tormented by war, including the Winter Queen’s own followers—would bend the knee to him. As for the bewildered holdouts, a single example would suffice to cow them; fragile minds would inevitably fall in line…
This was an impeccable inevitability.
Or so Melvas believed.
He watched the flames flicker out and fade amid the downpour, satisfied that nothing alive could possibly remain amid the vast expanse of charred ruin before him. He was on the verge of dusting off his hands and turning away to resume his “healing” mission when a voice spoke from behind him:
“Outwardly rational, but in truth a contemptuous and arrogant piece of trash.”
“Who’s there?!”
The words slithered in like poison, killing him bit by bit, each syllable burrowing into his soul.
Melvas whipped his head around in shock—not toward Ailin’s supposed corpse, nor straight ahead.
But off to the side, the direction he had never once considered.
“You…?”
Curved horns sharp as blades, wings of pitch-black dragon hide, an evening gown lending an extra allure to her spectral grace. Amid the darkness, only her draconic eyes gleamed clear.
The moment he glimpsed her true form, it was as if the rain itself had frozen mid-fall.
“I like elves in your innocent state,” she said. “But before letting that foolish brain of yours spin its wheels, try not to overlook your own arrogance.”
Leia’s gaze fixed on him like he was already a corpse.
A white necklace hung at her chest.
Look closely, and you’d see it: within the translucent amber pendant, a silver-haired dragon girl slumbered peacefully, clutching a purple dragon gall to her breast.
“I like elves. I admire that ‘great wisdom in your foolishness,’ your innocence, your simplicity… as if you have no idea where a soul flees when it slips free of its shell.”
The white mist cleared, revealing Ailin behind Leia—unharmed, though she had fainted from her wounds. She had not crumbled to ash as Melvas had foreseen.
The souls of the slain would seek out Xuefei of their own accord. That alone was a massive headache.
Put another way: if those spirits, drunk on mindless slaughter, so much as harmed Xuefei, Leia wouldn’t just punish the selfish elven souls. No, she’d come after the source of it all—this doddering old elf, Melvas.
…
“But you?” Leia’s eyes bulged with sickly fervor, her lips curling upward in what wasn’t quite a smile. “It doesn’t matter.”
Arrogant, lowly souls so frail have no right to purge their obsessions.
