"Valin... Corvin... and Elidur..."
Patriarch Thorne's deep voice was like condensed ice. He read out these three names word by word, his sharp gaze seemingly able to pierce through the loose black robes to look straight at the familiar faces beneath. He didn't even need to remove their hoods; their unique auras and builds had long allowed him to confirm the identities of these three traitors.
"Speak!" Thorne's voice suddenly rose, carrying unquestionable majesty and suppressed anger. "What exactly was your intention in secretly constructing that sacrifice formation linking to an unknown existence at the bottom of the sacred lake?! Do you know this is playing with fire, dragging the entire clan into a state of eternal damnation?!"
Facing the patriarch's thunderous questioning, the three elves merely kept their heads deeply lowered, lips tightly pursed, responding with stubborn silence. A suffocating confrontation permeated the air.
"Refusing to speak, are we?" Seeing their uncooperative appearance, the anger in Thorne's chest burned even more fiercely. "Do you know what unpredictable disasters unauthorized sacrifices to unknown existences, especially sacrificing the corpse of an Evil God's Progeny, will invite?! This is not just a betrayal of the clan, but a blasphemy against the ancestors, violating the taboo among taboos! What you have committed is a grave crime sufficient to be permanently expelled from the Moon-marked Clan, your souls denied peace!"
The more he spoke, the angrier he became. The staff in his hand trembled slightly from the infused fury, and the gemstone at the tip began to flash with a dangerous light.
"Since you insist on using silence to resist, then don't blame me for disregarding our past ties and resorting to extreme measures! The laws and secrets of the Moon-marked Clan do not allow anyone to trample upon them in this manner!"
As he spoke, he raised the staff high. Powerful mana began to converge, clearly preparing to cast some spell to forcefully extract information or inflict punishment.
"Wait! Patriarch Thorne! Please wait! What... what exactly is going on here?!"
At this time, an anxious and confused voice suddenly interjected, interrupting Thorne's impending spell. The elf Caleno, who had been teleported over along with Valin but wasn't bound, stepped forward urgently, his face written with disbelief and worry.
Thorne paused his movements. His stern gaze turned to Caleno, his tone slightly milder but still cold and hard. "Caleno, this matter has nothing to do with you. I know you were swept up in the spatial magic because you sensed Valin was in danger and tried to rescue him in a moment of desperation. Now step back, do not interfere."
"Nothing to do with me?" Caleno retorted excitedly, pointing at the tightly bound Valin. "Valin is my best friend whom I grew up with! With him like this now, how can you expect me to stay out of it?!"
"Hmph, best friend?" Thorne sneered, his words like cold needles. "If you truly were best friends who talked about everything, how could you be completely oblivious to everything he was doing in secret? Caleno, think carefully, did he really view you as a 'best friend' he could entrust his secrets to? Or rather, in his heart, were you nothing more than someone he could deceive at any time?"
"You...!" Caleno choked on these words, his face instantly turning deadly pale.
He opened his mouth, wanting to defend Valin and himself, but found his mind in chaos. Flashes of his past interactions with Valin flew by rapidly. Certain overlooked details became exceptionally clear at this moment, leaving him temporarily speechless, all his words blocked in his throat.
Ultimately, he gritted his teeth fiercely. Instead of arguing with the patriarch, he turned and rushed to Valin. Grabbing his friend's shoulders with both hands, he shook him vigorously, his voice choked with sobs and urgency:
"Valin! Say something! Tell me this isn't true! Do you have some bitter difficulties? Were you coerced? Say it now, explain it clearly to the patriarch, maybe... maybe you can still fight for leniency! Valin!"
Facing Caleno's almost pleading questions, Valin's body trembled imperceptibly. But he still kept his head dead low, gritting his teeth tightly, and answered with an even deeper silence, as if completely sealing himself in a dark world no one could reach.
Right at this moment, Patriarch Thorne's icy voice sounded again, like a final judgment:
"Valin, I will ask you one last time—do you admit that you, along with Corvin and Elidur, secretly set up that sacrifice formation linking to an unknown existence at the center of Crescent Lake?"
Silence, still a deathly silence.
Seeing this, the last bit of patience in Thorne's eyes was also exhausted. He took a deep breath, preparing to issue the final verdict, and threw out the heaviest words:
"Do you know what potentially even more terrifying disasters your reckless actions will bring to the Moon-marked Clan, which just escaped a crisis?! Are you going to betray Treya's sacrifice back then?! For the continuation of the clan, she willingly..."
"Shut up!!!"
Valin, who had been silent all along, was like an ignited powder keg the moment he heard the name "Treya." He abruptly raised his head and let out a heart-wrenching roar!
His eyes were covered in terrifying bloodshot veins due to extreme anger and pain, turning entirely red. He glared dead at Thorne, as if wanting to swallow him alive.
"What—right—do—you—have—to—bring—up—Treya—!"
He spoke word by word, his voice like the wail of a wounded beast, full of deeply ingrained hatred.
Thorne was stunned by his sudden and intense reaction. His words came to an abrupt halt, and he looked at him complexly.
"It was you! It was you bunch of hypocritical elders! You forced her to become that monster's sacrifice!" Valin's tears slid down along with his twisted expression, his voice trembling violently from agitation. "She was clearly still so young! Her life had just begun! She had the brightest smile and the most beautiful hopes for the future! Yet because of your incompetence! Because you were unwilling to step out of the valley to seek new possibilities! So she had to die! Using her vibrant life to exchange for another so-called hundred years of 'peace' for this pathetic clan that only knows how to rely on sacrifices to prolong its miserable existence! On what grounds?! Just on what grounds?!"
'Ah... a classic tragedy of love turning into hate, seeking revenge for a beloved...'
Castorice, listening quietly from the side, already understood in her heart when Valin let out that accusation full of blood and tears. This familiar script seemed to play out continuously no matter which world it was in.
And Valin's next words directly confirmed her guess.
"The purpose of that sacrifice formation..." Valin's voice suddenly became deep and bizarre, carrying a spine-chilling calmness yet containing a madness that sought to destroy everything. "...was to completely end all of this! I want that Evil God's Progeny that devoured Treya's life and future to be completely annihilated! Even more so, I want you old fogeys who are stuck in your ways and only know how to use the sacrifices of others to maintain your own rule... to all be buried with Treya!!"
As his last word fell, a sudden change occurred!
Dense black aura was surging out of Valin's body without any warning, wrapping around his body like tentacles!
Even more horrifying was that the bloodshot redness in his originally furious eyes was rapidly fading, replaced by an icy, deathly silent, entirely non-living pale blue!
That blue rapidly spread, swallowing the whites of his eyes, until the entire inside of his eye sockets turned into two miniature blue moons radiating an eerie light!
These pupils were exactly the same as the "Eye of the Nether Moon," the Evil God's Progeny that had just been "sacrificed"!
"I want you... all of you..." Valin's voice became twisted and hollow, as if mixing the echoes of countless souls. He raised those non-human blue eyes, sweeping over Thorne, Caleno, and everyone present, finally issuing a declaration of destruction:
"To—all—be—buried—with—her—!!!"
"..."
Listening to the person before her making a crazy declaration so standard it belonged to a theatrical villain, Castorice didn't feel tense or angry immediately; instead, she felt a sense of absurd confusion.
She slightly turned her head, looked at Patriarch Thorne with a solemn expression beside her, and asked softly with a tone of pure curiosity:
"Has he... always been this... hm... 'confident'?"
Thorne's gaze remained firmly locked on Valin, whose aura had drastically changed. His brows were tightly locked, and he dared not relax in the slightest.
Hearing Castorice's question, he answered in a deep voice, his tone unprecedentedly severe: "To my knowledge, Valin is meticulous and decisive. He is absolutely not a reckless or impulsive person. Without considerable certainty or a trump card, he would never easily put himself in such a dangerous situation, much less utter such arrogant words at this time."
"I see..."
Hearing this, Castorice rested her fingertips gently on her chin, falling into thought.
Because she truly felt somewhat puzzled. Pollux's massive body exuding terrifying pressure was hovering quietly beside her, and the residual might of instantly killing the Evil God's Progeny was still permeating the area. Even if Valin didn't know exactly who had taken action, he should be clear about the result that "the Evil God's Progeny was instantly annihilated."
Then, relying on what exactly did he dare to so brazenly declare destruction in the face of a power capable of easily slaying an Evil God's Progeny?
Logically, there were only two possibilities: either he held a powerful trump card far exceeding the Evil God's Progeny and capable of overturning the current situation; or the sudden acquisition of power went to his head like cheap wine, plunging him into blind arrogance and self-destructive madness.
Right at this moment, she felt her arm being gently nudged by a cold and hard object. Castorice came back to her senses, turned her head, and met Pollux's giant dragon eyes.
"What's wrong, Pollux?"
Pollux made no sound. It merely used its majestic head to point suggestively toward Valin, who was shrouded in black aura, and then focused its gaze on Castorice again. The giant pupils conveyed a very clear meaning.
'Need me to completely wipe him out right now?'
"No need for now." Castorice gently shook her head, patted her partner's cold scales, and turned her gaze back to the churning black mist. "Let's first see what exactly he wants to do and to what extent he can go."
"I hope he really has a trump card. Otherwise... if he really thinks he can contend with us relying on this little bit of grace from an evil god..."
Her words paused slightly, and then she sighed, saying somewhat boredly:
"Then I can only say this 'courage' is indeed worthy of 'praise'."
However, as soon as her words fell, another anomaly occurred!
The black mist shrouding Valin, as if hearing their conversation or finally completing some internal ritual, suddenly swelled! Like fire fed with accelerant, it instantly rose several meters high, becoming even denser and emitting a nauseating odor!
Immediately following this, as if it were a signal!
"Ugh, ahhh—!"
Corvin and Elidur, who had remained silent standing beside him, violently spasmed! They let out agonizing howls that didn't sound human. Next, the same dense black aura began to madly surge uncontrollably from their seven orifices and every pore of their bodies! The three masses of black mist vaguely connected in the air, weaving into a rapidly expanding and continuously rotating dark vortex!
"They... they are sacrificing themselves!" Patriarch Thorne, with his vast experience, instantly recognized the terrifying meaning behind this bizarre scene. His expression changed drastically, and he cried out in alarm, "They want to use their own flesh, blood, and souls as the final fuel to completely ignite that evil ritual!"
I absolutely cannot let him finish!
"Nuhta lenden mathomlanta!" (Mana, dispel this filth!)
Almost without hesitation, Thorne quickly pointed his staff. A pure blue radiance rippled outwards like a water wave, rapidly enveloping Valin and the other two.
This was a high-tier purification and exorcism spell, sufficient to disintegrate the convergence of most dark energies.
However, when that blue light containing powerful natural mana touched the churning black mist, it was like a clay ox entering the sea. It only caused a few imperceptible ripples on the surface of the black mist before being completely swallowed and assimilated by that profound darkness, failing to produce any substantial effect!
"It's useless... the Status of this black mist... is too high..." Thorne's heart sank heavily, and his face turned exceedingly ugly. His spell actually couldn't shake the opponent in the slightest!
"Heh... foolish."
From within the black mist came Valin's twisted and mocking voice.
"What we bear is the supreme mighty power of the great Lord 'Nether Moon'! You, Thorne, are but a legendary mage eking out an existence in this world, an existence like an ant, yet you vainly attempt to shake the grace of a deity?! It's simply wishful thinking!"
"Nether Moon... isn't it already dead?!"
Listening to Valin's words, the ominous premonition in Thorne's heart began to spread wildly.
But there was no time to think further now.
He stopped trying to attack the black mist directly. Instead, he rapidly raised his staff, drew an abstruse rune in the air, and began chanting another short incantation.
The next moment, his vision broke free from the constraints of his body, instantly rising high, soaring like a falcon to the top of the firmament over Shadow-fold Valley. From a bird's-eye perspective, he saw the entirety of Shadow-fold Valley.
And the scene reflected in his "eyes" made the soul of this ancient elf, who had weathered countless storms, tremble!
He saw the originally peaceful and tranquil Shadow-fold Valley below, covered by an emerald forest, now looking as if it had been splashed with countless drops of ink!
Streaks and clusters of dense black aura were uncontrollably rising from every corner of the valley!
The treehouse clusters where the elves lived peacefully, the public kitchens wafting with the aroma of food, the forest clearings where children played, and even the quiet halls he was incredibly familiar with, where the strong of the clan went into seclusion to meditate, all had the presence of black mist.
These black auras were like living poisonous snakes, twisting and spreading, echoing each other, rapidly connecting into one. In just a few short breaths, looking as far as the eye could see, the entire Shadow-fold Valley seemed shrouded by a continuously expanding giant black net!
The disaster was no longer confined to the center of the lake. Like a plague, it had unknowingly and silently permeated the foundation of the entire Moon-marked Clan, and at this moment, it was completely detonated.