Chapter 229: The Blessed Drink [Bonus - ]
She paused, looking up at him through her long fluttering eyelashes with a small self-deprecating chuckle escaping her lips.
"Hehe~ But after everything that has happened recently... after watching you fight in the Secret Realm, watching our territory grow day by day, and living through all these moments together... I finally have the very first Chapter written down. I... I really wanted you to check it out first before anyone else sees it."
She picked up the top leather journal with gentle care, holding it out toward him with slightly trembling hands.
"Who knows?" Aeli joked nervously, trying to ease her own mounting anxiety. "I could maybe become a best-selling author throughout the realm one day... though I highly doubt it."
Silas reached out, gently taking the heavy journal from her hands. He looked deeply into her green eyes with his expression turning warm and reassuring.
"Don’t be so hard on yourself, Aeli," Silas told her firmly. "Never lack confidence in your own work and for what it’s worth, I actually have quite a bit of experience reading web novels back on Earth. I’ll check it out right now and give you an honest review."
Aeli’s eyes sparkled with deep, overwhelming gratitude. "Thank you, My Lord!"
Silas pulled out the plush wooden chair set at the table and sat down, opening the dark leather cover of the journal.
He flipped past the blank flyleaf to the very first page, glancing at the neat elegant and perfectly uniform elven handwriting covering the paper from top to bottom.
"How many pages is this first Chapter?" Silas asked, thumbing through the thick paper leaves.
"It’s about three pages, My Lord," Aeli answered attentively, stepping closer and leaning eagerly over his shoulder to watch him read.
Silas paused, looking up at her with a raised eyebrow and a dry look. "Three pages? That’s awfully short for a single novel Chapter."
Aeliana’s face instantly reddened.
She looked thoroughly confused by his statement, tilting her head slightly as her delicate ears twitched in confusion.
"Is... is it?" Aeli asked innocently, her voice filled with genuine curiosity and panic. "How long is one Chapter supposed to be?"
Silas chuckled softly, reaching up to pat her shoulder gently to calm her sudden panic.
"Relax, Aeli. In modern web novel formatting back where I come from, a solid proper Chapter is usually at least four to six thousand words... around ten to fifteen dense pages if you’re writing it out by hand but three pages is totally fine for a first draft. Let me see what you’ve got here."
Aeli nodded rapidly, her heart pounding as she stood closely beside his chair with her hands clasped against her ribs while Silas focused his attention back on her handwritten page.
He looked at the very first sentence written at the top of the Chapter, reading the words internally in his thoughts.
’The grand dragon-slaying Lord pinned the trembling elven maiden against the cold silk sheets, his massive two meter pillar of pure masculine dominance throbbing with unspeakable desire as he prepared to claim her maidenhood...’
Silas froze completely solid.
His golden-ringed eyes widened as far as they physically could.
He read the sentence a second time just to make sure his Gold Core wasn’t suffering from magical hallucinations or exhaustion.
He blinked once, twice, staring at the exquisite, graceful elven handwriting ink on the paper, before slowly turning his head to look up at Aeliana standing beside him.
"Aeli..." Silas said, his voice completely flat and dripping with utter disbelief. "...are you writing smut?"
Aeliana’s entire face instantly exploded into a bright, blinding shade of crimson!
Her long elven ears burned red clear to the tips, but she didn’t run away, cover her face, or hide.
Instead, she stood her ground right next to his chair, looking at him with wide and completely innocent eyes.
"Y-Yes, My Lord!" Aeli admitted stammeringly, her cheeks burning like hot coals. "Back when I used to live in the Royal Palace as a Royal Elf... my aunt used to sneak those exact kinds of romance books into the court libraries! So... so I don’t think they are bad at all..."
She tilted her head slightly, looking down at his expression with a mix of intense anxiety and naive curiosity.
"...Do you?"
Silas felt an uncharacteristic warm blush creeping up his own neck.
He cleared his throat loudly, shifting slightly in the wooden chair as he desperately tried to maintain his composure as a stern Warlord.
"I... I don’t either..." Silas muttered, raising a hand to rub the back of his neck. "I was just... taken aback. I wasn’t expecting pillars on page one, line one."
Aeli gulped nervously with her heart hammering wildly against her ribs like a trapped bird as Silas turned his focus back to the leather-bound journal.
’Does he like it?!’ Aeli thought frantically in her head, her fingers tightly clenching the fabric of her dress as her silver eyes watched his pupils move line by line across her handwriting. ’What if he thinks it’s completely ridiculous?! What if he hates it and tells me to stop writing?! I tried my hardest on the descriptions... and I really, really hope he doesn’t realize that the female lead in the story is literally modeled after me, and the male lead is literally him!’
Silas spent the next ten minutes reading through the entire first Chapter carefully, word by word.
Aside from the shockingly explicit, uninhibited adult themes woven directly into the romantic encounter, Aeliana’s prose was surprisingly vivid and engaging.
Her descriptions of the setting, the weight behind the characters’ dialogue, the underlying longing and the building tension were remarkably well-crafted for a first-time author.
She had an undeniable natural talent for storytelling.
’I mean she’s an Elf so it should be expected right?’
When he reached the final line at the bottom of the third page, Silas closed the leather journal with a soft click and set it down on the dark oak table.
He leaned back in his chair, folding his arms as he looked up at the visibly shaking, anxious elf standing beside him.
"Overall," Silas announced, a genuine, warm smile breaking across his face, "it’s actually really good, Aeli... Your descriptive writing is incredible, and the pacing holds the reader’s attention really well."
Aeli let out a massive audible breath of relief, her entire body slumping as if a massive weight had just been physically lifted off her shoulders. "R-Really, My Lord?!"
"Really," Silas nodded firmly. "You’ve got a real gift for prose but since you asked for my critique and advice, there are a few technical things you definitely need to work on. First off... your scale and measurements are completely wild."
Silas picked up the journal again, flipping it open to page two and pointing his calloused finger at a specific line halfway down the sheet.
"Right here," Silas pointed out, chuckling softly. "You wrote that the male lead’s sword was ’two meters long’ when describing his personal weapon during the bed scene. Aeli... two meters is over six feet long. That isn’t a human anatomical organ... that is a literal siege spear or a war pike. You mistook inches for meters."
Aeli stared at the line he was pointing at, her eyes widening as she calculated the horror of what she had written.
She instantly covered her entire face with both hands, letting out a mortified high-pitched squeak that echoed softly down the library aisle.
"Oh gods!" Aeli squealed through her fingers, her ears drooping. "Two meters?! I... I mixed up the units from the trade books!"
Silas laughed warmly, standing up from the chair and giving her shoulder a reassuring, firm pat.
"It’s fine. It’s an easy fix. Just adjust the measurements to realistic numbers, expand the setup and buildup a bit more before jumping straight into the heavy action, and you’re good to go. You’ve got real potential, Aeli."
Aeli slowly uncovered her blushing face, looking up at him with a deeply flattered heart-melting smile that lit up her green eyes.
She picked up the leather journal from the table, holding it tightly against her chest as if it were a prized treasure, and bowed deeply to him.
"Thank you so much, My Lord!" Aeli said earnestly, her voice filled with newfound determination and confidence. "I will take every single piece of your advice into consideration and rewrite the entire Chapter immediately!"
"Good luck," Silas smiled, giving her soft silver hair one last pat. "Just don’t stay up all night writing. We have work to do tomorrow."
Silas turned and walked back toward the spiraling wooden stairs, descending smoothly to the ground floor.
He exchanged friendly greetings with a few more of the Vanguard and other girls studying at the tables, waved a quiet goodbye to Reina and the little wolf pup at the reception counter, and pushed open the heavy oak double doors, stepping back out into the snow-filled courtyard.
He pulled his black coat tight around his broad shoulders against the falling snow with his boots crunching quietly as he walked across the courtyard toward the territory’s dedicated kitchen facility... the Culinary Haven.
He reached the heavy timber doors of the building, reaching out his hand to push them open.
"Let’s see how this brewing project is going..." Silas muttered quietly to himself as he stepped over the threshold.
However, the second the heavy wooden door swung fully open, Silas’s eyes went wide.
He froze completely dead in his tracks with his feet glued to the floorboards as his brain desperately struggled to process the apocalyptic chaos unfolding inside the room.
He truly did not expect what he saw.
The Culinary Haven was in disarray.
Standing right in the center of the main room, right next to the smoking copper brewing stills, was Morwenna.
The tough legendary Pirate Queen was holding a massive wooden tankard filled to the brim with a strange, glowing, thick white liquid.
With a fierce grin, she threw her head back and downed the entire cup in a single continuous and terrifying gulp.
GULP! GULP! GULP!
The exact second the white liquid hit her stomach, Morwenna’s feral gray eyes went completely blank.
Her knees instantly buckled beneath her, and the fearsome pirate collapsed sideways like a felled tree, landing face-first onto the wooden floorboards with a thud, completely knocked out cold!
’Huh...?’
Beside her at the long dining table was Eluned. The ancient SSS-Rank Nature Goddess was already completely face-down on the oak table, thoroughly knocked out cold.
’Eluned, knocked out? How strong is that thing?!’
Her long silver-green hair was splayed wildly across the wood, and her lips were moving softly as she mumbled coherent nonsense into the tablecloth.
"Thorns... sweet apples... my Lord’s chest is so warm... pirate is a filthy bilge-rat... mmm..."
Off to the right side of the room, Kaelia, the territory’s elite master chef, was slumped over a pile of flour sacks, fast asleep with a sweet peaceful smile on her face, completely out cold from tasting her own creation.
Even Talira, the devastatingly arrogant Primordial Crimson Dragon, was caught directly in the middle of the carnage.
The terrifying dragon was sitting cross-legged in the far corner of the room, her flawless face burning an intense glowing bright shade of crimson.
Her vertical reptilian pupils were totally unfocused and crossed as she played mindlessly with her small scaled dragon wings, gently petting her own red feathers and whispering softly to them in a high-pitched voice.
"Good girls... you’re such good little wings... yes you are... best wings in the world..."
That was how Silas knew without a single shadow of a doubt that the ancient dragon was thoroughly blasted drunk.
And standing right in the dead center of the main dining table, towering over the fallen, unconscious bodies of her comrades like a conquering warlord, was Thora.
The heavily muscled dwarf forge-mistress was completely wild.
She had stripped off her thick leather blacksmith apron and her tunic, standing atop the wooden furniture in just her undershirt and trousers.
Held high in her right hand, being spun vigorously around her head like a victory lasso, was Kaelia’s lacy white bra!
Thora executed a hilarious victory dance on top of the oak table, her booming voice echoing off the rafters as she roared at the top of her lungs.
"WOOOOOOOH! WE CREATED ALCOHOL, LADIES! LET’S CALL IT THE BLESSED DRINK!"
"What the hell are you all doing?" Silas demanded, his voice flat as he stood in the open doorway of the Culinary Haven, staring at the chaotic scene before him.
Thora snapped her head toward the entrance with a wild victorious grin spreading across her flushed face.
She wiped a stray drop of sweat from her brow, tossing her head back with a booming laugh that shook the copper kettles hanging from the ceiling beams.
"Welcome to the Culinary Haven, My Lord!" Thora shouted over the humming heat of the brewing stills, waving her arm wide in a grand dramatic flourish. "You’re just in time to witness history in the making!"