Chapter 328: Evelyn [Bonus - ]
"Yes!" Morwenna nodded vigorously, completely missing the dangerous glint in Eluned’s eyes. "I will do anything!"
"Anything?" Eluned echoed softly.
"Anything," Morwenna confirmed, sealing her own fate in Eluned’s hands.
Eluned’s grin widened into a beaming smile.
She raised her delicate right hand, lazily pointing her index finger toward the hallway leading to the Keep’s kitchen.
"Go make me some tea..." Eluned commanded smoothly.
Morwenna froze as she blinked in utter confusion.
’What does this Bitch want me to do...?’
"Tea?" Morwenna asked.
"Yes, tea," Eluned instructed with her voice becoming specific and unapologetically bossy. "I want tea... Not the dried leaves from the pantry. I want you to go out to the garden, pluck the fresh flowers, and steep them properly. Add a touch of wild honey from Kaelia’s pantry and bring it to me."
Morwenna’s jaw dropped entirely open.
"You... you want me to brew you tea?" Morwenna stammered, her pirate pride instantly flaring up like a struck match. "I am asking you for very important seduction lessons and you are treating me like a damn scullery maid?!"
Eluned let out a soft mocking sigh, looking casually at her manicured nails.
"Well, if you don’t want to learn patience, obedience, and how to properly serve..." Eluned trailed off, giving a dramatic dismissive shrug. "I suppose you can just go back to trying to tackle him in the mud like a feral beast. Let me know how that works out for you. Vir... gin..."
Morwenna gritted her teeth so hard a faint grinding sound echoed loudly in the quiet lounge.
Her stormy gray eyes flared with immense burning irritation.
She absolutely hated being ordered around... She was a captain and she was the one that gave the orders.
But... she desperately wanted Silas.
"Fine," Morwenna grumbled heavily.
She forced herself up from the carpet. With a heavy dramatic sigh of total defeat, she reached directly into her storage ring. It was a prototype that Thora had gotten to make.
With a flash of light, her heavy leather pirate coat vanished.
In its place, she pulled out a frilly ridiculous white kitchen apron, tying it aggressively around her waist over her dark undershirt.
"Three drops of honey with proper steeping," Morwenna muttered angrily to herself.
She turned on her heel and stomped heavily toward the kitchen hallway.
"I swear to the abyss, if this doesn’t actually help me get into his bed, I am going to poison the next cup, weed." Morwenna threatened the empty air.
Eluned watched the terrifying SSS-Rank Dread Queen angrily march into the kitchen wearing a frilly white apron.
The Nature Goddess let out a soft delighted giggle, resting her chin comfortably on her hand.
’Now I can tell her to do whatever I want~’ Eluned thought gleefully, her emerald eyes sparkling with unrestrained mischief.
...
Far out on the crushed, ruined bedrock of the western front, completely ignorant of the domestic hierarchy currently being established in his Keep, Silas stood in the mud.
The Lord of the Blessed Land was entirely focused on the completely surreal situation unfolding directly in front of him.
The terrifying deep purple light of the Mind’s Eye domain washed heavily over the landscape.
His sleek silver armor and imposing dark hood had completely vanished, forcefully stripped away by the perception field.
Standing exactly ten feet away from him, sitting helplessly in the freezing mud, was the Lord of The Unmovable Wall.
She was not a broad-shouldered man with a metallic voice.
She was a petite, undeniably beautiful young woman with long, silky black hair and sharp exhausted dark eyes.
She was swimming entirely inside a massively oversized dark-gray Earth traveler’s hoodie and heavy trousers.
"So," Silas spoke slowly.
His deep voice cut through the quiet suffocating tension of the purple domain.
"If your name isn’t actually Sky... what is it?" Silas asked.
The black-haired girl scowled deeply.
She scrambled up from the mud, furiously dusting off her oversized hoodie.
She didn’t look like a Lord right now.
She looked like an incredibly stressed college student who had just been forcefully dragged out of her dorm room in the middle of a marathon study session.
’I’d know because I used to be one of them...’
Without answering him, she reached deep into the pocket of her hoodie.
She pulled out a slim, expensive-looking silver case and a sleek plasma lighter.
With trembling fingers, she popped the case open. She pulled out a thin white cigarette and placed it securely between her soft lips.
CLICK! FWOOSH!
A tiny blue flame ignited the tip. She took a long deep drag, holding the smoke in her chest for three entire seconds before slowly exhaling a thick plume of gray smoke into the freezing purple air.
"Haah~"
Silas frowned deeply, his golden-ringed eyes watching her with a mix of genuine curiosity and apprehensiveness.
"You do realize those are terrible for your health, right?" Silas pointed out bluntly. "We are in the Sovereign Realm facing monsters and horrors, and you’re actively choosing to poison your own lungs."
She let out a harsh scoff, taking another heavy drag.
"I have a Lord core, Vespera... or whoever the hell you are," she shot back irritably with the smoke curling rapidly around her dark hair. "Cancer isn’t exactly on my radar. This is the only thing that actually forces my brain to slow down for five damn seconds. Governing a mobile fortress full of meatheads is incredibly stressful."
She flicked a bit of ash onto the shattered bedrock with her sharp dark eyes locking directly onto his.
"And for the record," she continued, her voice losing the arrogant Lord persona and settling into a natural exhausted tone. "It’s Evelyn... My real name is Evelyn."
Silas nodded slowly, fully absorbing the information.
"Evelyn," Silas repeated, testing the name. "It suits you a lot better than Sky. I’m Silas."
Evelyn snorted, rolling her dark eyes.
"Of course it is," Evelyn muttered. "Silas and Evelyn... What nice names, we’re both just a couple of people faking our entire public personas to avoid political bullshit."
"Pretty much," Silas agreed with a small smirk. "Though, I must admit, the oversized hoodie is a bold choice for frontline combat."
"Bite me," Evelyn grumbled, crossing her arms tightly over her chest.
Before they could continue their bizarre unprecedented bonding moment, the heavy purple light of the domain pulsed violently around them again.
The ambient pressure was suffocating.
Evelyn’s sharp dark eyes instantly shifted away from Silas. She tracked the glowing blue lines that were actively etched into the very air itself.
Her brilliant, strategic mind immediately began calculating the raw mana density required to sustain the spatial lock.
"This... this is impossible," Evelyn whispered, her cigarette hanging loosely from her lips. "Hiro is incredibly strong. He’s one of my best vanguards but he doesn’t have the internal mana reserves to cast a domain of this magnitude. This should be physically burning out his mana circuits."
Evelyn wasn’t even aware he had a domain at all, but she wouldn’t admit it.
Silas narrowed his golden eyes, stepping up firmly beside her.
He looked out across the ruined battlefield toward the distant massive crater where the center of the purple light originated.
"Unless he isn’t the one providing the fuel," Silas noted coldly.
Evelyn snapped her fingers, her dark eyes widening in sudden horrific realization.
"Elm!" Evelyn gasped. "He’s tethered to Elm! She’s my backline support... She possesses an incredibly massive ocean-like mana pool, but she has absolutely zero offensive capabilities as of right now and she was acting as a pure living battery for the entire fortress."
That was also the reason why it felt like Elm’s energy had cut off, Evelyn had been thinking maybe she deactivated it but it seemed that was not the case.
’Fuck!’
Evelyn took off in a rapid desperate sprint across the crushed bedrock as she headed straight toward the center of the domain.
"Hiro!" Evelyn screamed at the top of her lungs, completely abandoning her tactical restraint."Hiro, stand down! The duel is over! I surrendered! Cut the connection!"
She ran forward, waving her unarmored arms frantically to get her vanguard’s attention but as she crossed the thirty-yard mark...
HUMMMMM.
A sudden terrifying shift in the spatial pressure directly in front of her occurred.
An invisible concentrated slash of raw mana tore straight through the air, aimed exactly at her center of mass!
Evelyn’s eyes widened in utter horror.
"Fuc—"
She was completely unarmored.
The disguise artifact that provided her passive defenses was entirely offline and the invisible slash was going to cut her completely in half!
SWISH!
A blur of dark movement stepped effortlessly in front of her.
CLANGGGGGGG!
A deafening shockwave of displaced air exploded violently outward.
Silas had drawn his steel longsword with blinding speed.
He stood firmly planted in the mud directly in front of Evelyn, the flat of his heavy steel blade completely intercepting the invisible spatial slash.
The force of the parry pushed Silas back half an inch, his boots leaving thick trenches in the dirt, but his Gold Core frame held the line effortlessly.
"What the hell?!" Evelyn shrieked, stumbling backward and falling onto her hands in the freezing mud. "He... he just attacked me! I’m his Lord!"
Silas smoothly lowered his steel longsword with his golden-ringed eyes locking onto the distant figure of Hiro standing far away in the crater.
"He can’t see you, Evelyn," Silas explained coldly.
He instantly mapped the entire combat scenario, according to what they had heard from Hiro talking with other Heroes on the Listening Runes.
’I didn’t think his domain was going to be this massive though...’
"His physical eyes are gone, and this domain is a spatial lock," Silas continued, not taking his eyes off the threat. "He isn’t looking at faces or reading signatures. He is reading pure spatial awareness and hostile intent and right now from what I can guess, his brain is processing the entire battlefield as a massive threat."
Silas flicked his blade, sending the lingering spatial friction harmlessly into the dirt.
"Because he is relying on a fragile external battery to sustain this massive spell like you said," Silas deduced sharply, "I guess his automatic targeting parameters are likely set to indiscriminately repel any approaching spell or fast-moving entity to protect his absolute focus. To him, you aren’t Evelyn. You are just another hostile mass of atoms rushing his position."
Evelyn stared at Silas in awe.
In less than five seconds, the Lord of the Blessed Land had perfectly analyzed the exact weakness and targeting mechanism of her own vanguard’s ultimate ability.
"Then... what do we do?" Evelyn asked, hurriedly pushing herself up from the mud. "If he keeps this domain active, it’s going to fry his internal circuits... He can’t handle Elm’s raw output for more than a few minutes without causing permanent brain damage. We have to cut the power on Elm."
Evelyn looked at Silas, her dark eyes filled with urgent desperate stress.
"And you, why aren’t you running over there to save your girls?" Evelyn asked, genuinely confused by his calm demeanor. "They are trapped in an domain against an enemy who can manipulate space itself. Doesn’t that worry you?"
Silas let out a soft amused scoff.
He didn’t look worried, he looked incredibly calm as she said.
Silas slowly lifted his chin, his glowing golden eyes looking high up into the dark purple sky.
Hovering effortlessly in the air, glowing with brilliant celestial radiance, was the Astrea Archon of the Stars.
And currently descending rapidly from the dark clouds was the massive, seventy-foot-long Primordial Crimson Dragon.
"Worry about them?" Silas repeated, shaking his head. "Evelyn, my girls are much harder to deal with than this. On the other hand..."
Silas looked down at Evelyn with a completely straight face.
"I’m hoping they don’t accidentally turn your guy into a red smear on the bedrock before we figure out how to safely shut this down," Silas admitted bluntly. "Let’s go find this Elm battery of yours before he completely fries his own brain."
Evelyn stared at him for a second, then quickly nodded. She tossed her half-smoked cigarette entirely into the mud.
"Follow me," Evelyn ordered.
She took off in a rapid sprint toward the eastern ridge where her command lines and support units were securely situated.
Silas kept his longsword drawn, effortlessly keeping pace with the stressed hoodie-wearing Lord as they navigated rapidly through the dark purple hellscape.
’I want to learn about how she differs her identities...’
...
Meanwhile, exactly in the center of the massive sixty-foot crater.
Hiro stood perfectly still.
To the outside world, he looked like an untouchable serene god of space.
His hands rested calmly at his sides.
The brilliant, piercing blue light leaked flawlessly from his empty eye sockets, mapping the spatial layout of the entire Umbral Basin.
But internally, Hiro was in agonizing hell.
’Forgive me, My Lord,’ Hiro thought desperately.
His mind was burning with white-hot pain.
The raw unfiltered power of Elm’s massive mana pool was forcefully surging through his relatively fragile internal circuits.
His brain was attempting to consciously process the exact spatial coordinates, the atomic structure, and the kinetic trajectories of billions of variables simultaneously.
It was as one would say, a sensory overload.