Chapter 336: A Choice
Evelyn let out a long ragged sigh.
She aggressively rubbed her temples with her soot-stained fingers.
Her head was pounding with a vicious throbbing migraine.
She didn’t want to make roster decisions right now... She didn’t want to play the ruthless Lord calculating unit values either.
All she wanted to do was find a dark, quiet room and sleep for an entire week.
"Just let me handle it, Silas," Evelyn muttered tiredly.
She looked up at him.
Her dark eyes carried a heavy undeniable weight. She was incredibly grateful to Silas for saving Elm.
He had miraculously cured her oldest friend’s shattered core when he had zero obligation to do so.
He could have just let Elm die and taken the territory, but he chose to heal her.
But the aftereffects of this Lord War were catastrophic for her people.
The Unmovable Wall’s infrastructure was damaged, the mana reserves were drained, and her troops were battered, demoralized, and deeply exhausted.
"Silas," Evelyn asked quietly with her voice losing its usual sarcastic edge. "Can I ask for a massive favor?"
Silas crossed his arms over his black tunic.
"Depends on the favor," Silas replied.
"I need time," Evelyn admitted, looking down at the paved stones. "I need permission to keep my people stationed around the borders of the Blessed Land for a week at most... Just until I can gather everyone up, treat the wounded, and reorganize my broken command structure. We can’t move the mobile fortress in this state."
Silas looked at her for a moment. He didn’t even need to consult his internal thoughts for this one.
It was a perfectly reasonable logistical request.
"Granted," Silas nodded. "Take the week. You can park the fortress on the western ridge where you guys stayed before."
Evelyn let out a massive breath of relief, the tension leaving her shoulders.
"I even have a place for your people, the women though to stay inside the walls if they want off the treads," Silas added casually. "I just finished building a new residential complex."
Evelyn frowned. Her stubborn independent pride immediately flared up.
"No," Evelyn rejected the offer instantly, shaking her head. "That’s too much. We can just stay in our own territory. The mobile fortress still has functional barracks as we don’t need charity."
She didn’t want to accept housing handouts from the Lord who had just crushed her entire army on a global broadcast.
POK!
Elm suddenly elbowed Evelyn hard in the ribs.
"Ow!" Evelyn yelped, clutching her side and glaring at her First Hero. "What was that for?!"
Elm stared right back at her with unwavering seriousness.
"We are staying here," Elm told her Lord firmly, leaving no room for debate. "Lord Silas just saved my life when he had absolutely zero obligation to do so. We are not going to insult his hospitality by running away to pout in the fortress. Accept the offer, Evelyn."
Evelyn opened her mouth to argue, ready to defend the honor of her territory.
But she looked into Elm’s stubborn silver eyes and realized it was a losing battle.
Elm had just spent a long time floating in a freezing glass tube... she wasn’t about to go sleep back there.
Evelyn snapped her mouth shut.
She pouted angrily, crossing her arms and looking away from Silas with an irritated huff.
"Fine," Evelyn grumbled. "We will stay."
Her childish pout quickly faded, replaced by the serious expression of a commander as she turned to face her First Hero.
"Elm," Evelyn ordered quietly. "Go back out to the battlefield right now... Secure Hiro and the other heavily wounded commanders."
Elm nodded immediately, standing at attention.
"Get them back into the Unmovable Wall medical bays before they hurt themselves trying to train or march out of stubborn pride," Evelyn instructed. "Make sure the healers are treating them immediately. Lock them in the med-bay if you have to."
"Understood, My Lord," Elm said respectfully.
The white-haired Hero turned around and jogged quickly down the path toward the main gates.
Evelyn watched her go. Once Elm was out of earshot, Evelyn let out another exhausted sigh.
She looked down at her muddy combat boots with her shoulders sagging.
"There were so many casualties today," Evelyn whispered softly.
Her voice cracked slightly.
For the first time since they had met, the successful Lord Sky sounded incredibly vulnerable.
"It has been a very long time since I felt like a rookie," Evelyn confessed, her dark eyes reflecting the trauma of the battlefield. "I have conquered a lot of Zones but watching your Vanguard dismantle my forces..."
She ran her trembling hand through her messy black hair.
"I realize now that from the very beginning, I had no hope of defeating the Blessed Land," Evelyn admitted bitterly. "My tactics were useless and my stats didn’t matter since we were playing an entirely different game."
She clenched her fists inside the pockets of her hoodie.
"Perhaps if I had realized that earlier..." Evelyn muttered, her voice thick with guilt. "If I had just swallowed my damn pride and surrendered an hour sooner, there wouldn’t be so much dea—"
"Stop."
Silas’s deep voice cut through her spiraling thoughts like a steel blade.
Evelyn blinked, looking up at him in surprise.
Silas stood on the stone path with his hands casually in his pockets, his golden-ringed eyes looking down at her with a calm look.
"It is not my place to say this," Silas told her bluntly. "I am not your commander, and I don’t run your territory. But you shouldn’t think too much about the ’what ifs’..."
Evelyn stared at him, caught off guard by his sudden intervention.
"You made the best tactical decision you could with the intelligence you had at the time," Silas pointed out logically. "You didn’t know the extent of my Vanguard’s power so you fought hard. You trusted your heroes and you lost. That is just how the Sovereign Realm works."
He offered her a smirk.
"Besides," Silas joked, his tone lightening up considerably. "You are already old enough as it is. If you stress out any more over things you can’t control, you are going to start losing your hair."
Evelyn froze.
Her dark eyes went incredibly wide with indignation as the guilt instantly evaporated, replaced entirely by offended rage.
"I am twenty-two!" Evelyn shrieked at the top of her lungs. She stepped forward and swung her fist aggressively at his shoulder.
WHACK!
Silas didn’t even try to dodge. He didn’t flinch as her unarmored knuckles bounced harmlessly off his dense muscles.
"Stop calling me old, you stupid teenager!" Evelyn yelled, winding up for another punch. "I am in the prime of my life and I have an immaculate skincare routine!"
"Yeah yeah..."
Silas just laughed, easily catching her wrist in his large hand before she could hit him again.
A few yards away, perfectly hidden behind the thick wooden pillar of the Keep’s expansive front porch, two powerful women were completely frozen in terror.
Eluned and Morwenna had been secretly eavesdropping on the conversation.
Both women suddenly broke out into a cold panicked sweat.
Morwenna swallowed hard, her hand nervously gripping the hilt of her cutlass.
’She is twenty-two...’ Morwenna thought, her stormy gray eyes wide with panic.
Eluned gripped the wooden pillar so tightly her knuckles turned white.
’And he thinks that is old...’ Eluned realized in absolute horror.
They were both ancient immortal beings.
Morwenna had sailed the phantom seas and pillaged the oceans for well over centuries.
Eluned was a literal Nature Goddess who had existed for countless generations, watching forests rise and fall.
’Does this mean he is going to start making jokes about our age too?!’ Morwenna mouthed silently to the First Wife with her pirate bravado completely shattered.
Eluned furiously shook her head, her beautiful emerald eyes filled with terrified dread.
’We take our real ages to the grave,’ Eluned mouthed back aggressively. ’If he asks, I am twenty-one.’
Out in the courtyard, the synchronized sound of marching boots echoed across the stone pathways, saving Silas from dealing with a potentially lethal domestic crisis.
Gunnhild and the girls had returned from the gates.
They were leading a massive group of women from the Unmovable Wall directly into the center of the Keep’s courtyard.
There were well over a hundred women gathered on the grass.
They made up almost the entirety of the surviving female faction from Evelyn’s army.
There were heavily armored knights carrying dented shields, agile scouts with torn cloaks, and a large group of soot-stained dwarven blacksmiths clutching their heavy hammers.
They looked exhausted.
Their armors were heavily dented, their uniforms were torn from the elemental blasts, and many of them sported fresh white bandages wrapped tightly around their arms and heads.
They stopped marching, forming up in the center of the grassy courtyard.
A tense heavy silence fell over the massive group.
They all looked up at Silas standing on the pathway.
Their expressions were incredibly varied. Some looked at him with blatant wide-eyed fear. Some looked at him with quiet simmering resentment and some looked at him with undeniable awe.
It seemed he was the one who had commanded the monsters that decisively won the Lord War against their supposedly invincible mobile fortress.
By the brutal laws of the Sovereign Realm, he now had the absolute right to dictate exactly what happened to them.
Then, the women shifted their collective gaze.
They looked past Silas and saw Evelyn standing there in her oversized gray hoodie.
The atmosphere in the courtyard instantly shifted.
The fear and the resentment completely melted away. It was replaced by a deep sorrow.
They looked at their Lord with heartbreaking apologies written all over their dirty faces. They felt incredibly guilty for failing to hold the line as they felt like they had let her down.
Silas watched the silent exchange carefully.
He liked what he saw... He liked it a lot.
These women weren’t mindless mercenaries who only cared about their next paycheck or survival.
They possessed genuine fierce loyalty to their commander and that in itself was a very valuable trait.
Evelyn stepped forward, pulling her hand out of Silas’s grip. She looked out at her battered broken soldiers.
"I am sorry," Evelyn spoke loudly, her voice carrying clearly across the quiet courtyard. "I led you into a battle we could not win."
The women immediately shook their heads.
"Do not apologize, My Lord!" a tall female knight called out from the front row, slamming her fist over her dented breastplate. "We failed to protect the Vanguard!"
"You gave us everything, Lord Sky!" another scout shouted fiercely from the back. "You built the fortress for us!"
"We were blessed just to know you!" a stout dwarven woman yelled, slamming her heavy iron hammer against her steel shield. "We’d ride the treads to hell for you!"
Evelyn smiled sadly, fighting back the tears welling in her dark eyes.
She stepped back, giving Silas the floor. She had led them as far as she could.
...Now, it was up to him.
Silas stepped forward.
He cleared his throat.
"Attention," Silas commanded.
His deep voice instantly silenced the murmuring crowd as the aura of a Lord radiated naturally from his frame, completely commanding the space.
"I am Silas Graves," Silas introduced himself formally.
A ripple of extreme visible confusion swept through the ranks of the Unmovable Wall soldiers.
They looked around frantically. They searched the courtyard for the terrifying, one-armed woman in silver armor who had decimated their front lines.
"I am Lord Vespera as well," Silas stated bluntly, dropping the bomb.
The women gasped collectively.
"The Vespera identity was a combat disguise used for the broadcast," Silas explained smoothly, not offering any apologies for the deception. "This is the true me. I am the Lord of the Blessed Land..."
He let the massive revelation sink in for a moment.
He watched their shocked faces process the reality that they had been beaten by him.
"I am well aware that this transition is quite abrupt," Silas continued, pacing slowly and deliberately in front of the crowd. "But as of right now, you need to know the terms of the wager that ended this war."
He stopped pacing and looked directly at the front row of knights.
"Your Lord made a choice before the battle began," Silas revealed. "She agreed that if the Blessed Land won the Lord War, she would give me seventy women from your ranks as compensation."
A heavy anxious murmur broke out among the soldiers.
They looked at each other nervously, wondering who was going to be dragged away in chains to serve the enemy Lord.
"I am now calling in that debt," Silas declared loudly.
He raised his hand, pointing to the empty pristine patch of green grass on the left side of the courtyard.
"But... I am giving you a choice," Silas told them.