To celebrate chapter 100, I will post two chapters. Enjoy!
--------------------------------------------------------------
Dex looked directly, with diamond-hard resolve, into Okonnor's green, mocking eyes, and spoke with utter seriousness, in a tone that belonged not to a frightened warrior, but to a negotiating statesman sitting at a table of kings:
"I am not offering you my broken sword, Okonnor, nor am I offering you my currently modest energy as you perceive it. My sword will not alter the course of the war, and my energy will not build you an empire overnight. I am offering you something far more precious than armies, and more valuable than the gold of the vaults in the polluted world of human politics. I am offering you 'Legitimacy'."
Okonnor furrowed his brows in astonishment, tilting his head slightly like someone trying to understand the language of an alien being. "Legitimacy?" he repeated the word as if it were spoiled food.
Dex proceeded to paint a panoramic picture of the future, revealing his deep understanding of the Dark Elves' tragedy: "Look honestly at your reality, Commander. You are a great rebel now, yes, but you are an outcast traitor from the Kingdom of the High Elves, which has issued a death sentence upon you. And you are hunted like a prized beast of prey by the knights of the human Empire. No matter how great your personal strength, and no matter the loyalty of your men, you are ultimately besieged. You live in an open prison."
Dex gestured toward the dark forest winding around them, and continued in a voice carrying a gruff empathy: "You will continue to hide in this sickly forest, trembling at every rumor of a human army's mobilization. You will not build cities, and your children will not see the sunlight outside this fog. You will die slowly in the shadows, or be annihilated in the first serious purge campaign. But... if you agree to an alliance with me, I, the rightful and sole surviving heir to the Duchy of Williams and the rulers of the Western Borders, the geopolitical equation will completely change."
Dex took another step toward the terrifying commander, indifferent to the archers above, raising his voice to dispel the commander's doubts and so the entire forest could hear: "Imagine having a public ally, one who does not operate in the shadows, but commands the most powerful standing army in the West. An ally with the royal authority and political weight to rewrite historical records, and erase the charge of treason and the bounty on your people's name before the Imperial Throne itself. I can grant you legitimate lands, the right to trade, and a life outside this swamp."
Dex concluded his plea with a decisive tone: "We are in the same dark, muddy trench, Okonnor. Our enemy is one, the chaos that will overrun us if my father falls, and our fate is one. I need a drop of the Nectar to reclaim my army and my family from the clutches of treason, and you need someone to provide you with political cover, 'Legitimacy,' and to watch your back in a human world that devours anyone without strong cards to play."
Okonnor shook his head with visible impatience and let out a deep sigh, as if he had just listened to a naive fairytale told by a child before bedtime.
"Naive daydreams and pathetic political romanticism," Okonnor said with absolute coldness. "Legitimacy, Scion of Williams, is not a paper written in palaces. Legitimacy requires overwhelming power to enforce on the ground, and politics requires sharp fangs and claws to protect it from the surrounding wolves. You, with this rank and your exhausted body, do not possess the power to force this alternate reality upon your Emperor, and you certainly, despite your eloquence, are not your father 'Marcus' to terrify your enemies with the mere mention of your name. Flowery words do not parry swords, and political theories do not halt the march of armies."
Okonnor slowly turned his back, as if deciding to end this farce. "I am disappointed. I expected the son of Marcus to give me a compelling reason not to kill him, but you offered nothing but illusions."
In that critical moment, where it seemed human diplomacy and political logic had reached an absolute dead end, crashing against the unforgiving wall of Dark Elf pride, "Lumia" felt that the role of weak human speech had ended.
Lumia had been observing the dialogue all this time in profound silence, hiding beneath her torn black cloak like a statue. But she, with her cosmic mind and an awareness that transcended the boundaries of this material world, realized a fundamental truth: the mentality of the ancient warrior standing before them, who had lived hundreds of years in bloody conflict, did not believe in political theories or promises of the future. They were creatures of pure magic and mana, creatures of the dark forests, and they would not kneel or listen to anything but one thing... absolute, primal, and devastating power.
Lumia stepped forward.
Her steps were not like those of humans, nor even the agile steps of Elves. Her movement possessed an unnatural quietness, a quietness that induced nausea in the stomachs of those who watched. Her steps were so light, fluid, and seamless that her bare feet did not seem to touch the dust scattered on the wooden floor. She made not a single sound, no rustle of fabric, no heartbeat, not even the sound of air brushing against her body. It was as if she were floating above the very fabric of reality, gliding through time rather than walking through space.
She stood directly beside Dex, and with her delicate fingers, which looked as though they were crafted from fine porcelain, she grasped the edge of her torn black hood that hid her features and the details of her face from the outside world.
"You doubt our power, Commander of the Shadows?" Lumia said.
Her voice was not loud, nor did it carry anger or emotional threat. Rather, it was calm, deep, and impossibly multi-layered. It was as if multiple voices were speaking simultaneously in a terrifying cosmic harmony. The voice echoed throughout the hanging village, not as a sound emerging from a throat, but as an ancient resonance descending directly from the dome of the sky, a resonance that pierced the physical eardrum and bypassed the senses to reach directly into the magical core and the soul, causing a tremor in the deepest parts of one's being.
"And you think we lack the fangs and claws sufficient to impose our reality upon this fragile world?" Lumia continued her cosmic questioning.
"Then... look closely with your mortal green eyes."
And with a slow, majestic movement, brimming with terrifying divine grandeur, Lumia pulled the hood back from her head and let the large black cloak slide from her shoulders, falling to the ground like a worthless rag.
The moment the fabric restraining her being fell away, it seemed as though a source of cosmic light had just been born in the center of the ancient village of darkness.
Her long silver hair cascaded down her back like a living waterfall of liquid starlight. It moved and undulated slowly, despite the absence of any wind in the area, as if it were breathing and interacting with the hidden currents of mana in space. Her flawless, pristine white skin glowed with a pure inner light. But it was not a warm, holy light that healed wounds and inspired tranquility like the magic of priests; rather, it was a cold, harsh, absolute light, a light resembling the vacuum of deep space where planets freeze and life dies.
Lumia raised her head incredibly slowly, her eyes meeting Okonnor's shocked gaze directly.
Lumia's eyes were not human eyes, nor even Elven eyes with their vertical slits. They were windows overlooking the absolute abyss. Her irises were infinite silver and black vortexes, moving and swirling within them infinitesimally small points of light, resembling entire galaxies being born, expanding, and dying in a fraction of a second, in a terrifying cosmic cycle of creation and nothingness. Looking into her eyes was akin to looking at the end of time itself.
And with this majestic physical and spiritual revelation, Lumia unleashed, for the first time in her existence, the pressure of her "Void Aura" completely and unrestrictedly.
Her aura was not a traditional destructive aura that broke things, burned them, or pushed them away like the aura of the Phoenix or the aura of Dragons. It was the exact opposite. It was a terrifying, negative "gravitational force". It was a field of nothingness that drew the air from lungs, swallowed the light from torches, and parasitically and terrifyingly siphoned the vital mana from the surroundings.
In a fifty-meter radius around Lumia, the laws of physics changed. The shadows of the giant trees around her bent unnaturally, as if being sucked toward a miniature black hole. The hidden Dark Elf warriors above suddenly began losing their balance as the mana they used to cling to the branches dissipated. Some involuntarily fell to their knees on the wooden platform, gasping for air that had become as heavy as mercury. They did not fall out of fear of a powerful monster; they fell in terror of a divine entity, of a living cosmic catastrophe incarnate before them in the form of a slender girl.
Even Okonnor... the legend of the Dark Elves, the man who had faced Dragons, stormed the fortresses of the Empire, and slain its fiercest knights without batting an eye... took a full step backward, something he had not done on a battlefield in a century.
His green eyes widened until they nearly bulged from their sockets, and his mouth fell open in pure shock, ancient obsession, and indescribable primal terror, as he stared at the living incarnation of the ancient myth of the "Fallen Sky," standing there, with absolute calm, beside the human youth Dex Williams.