Chapter 96: Chapter 96: The Confrontation

The absolute darkness of Elarwyn’s Western bough was suddenly shattered by a violent, jagged flare of Mana. Dozens of Verdia Paladins materialized from behind the weeping shadows of the Kenanga leaves, their flint-tipped spears erupting with a crystalline light that converged on a single, solitary figure standing in the center of the irrigation path.

Mileon, the esteemed member of the Council of Root Guardians, the man once hailed as a pillar of Elven wisdom, stood frozen. In his hand, he still clutched the small, ornate injector filled with the viscous black venom—the physical evidence of his treason.

Governor Caelmir stepped forward from the line of Paladins, his stoic face a mask of profound disappointment and simmering rage. In his trembling hand, he held Dayat’s Rugged Monitoring Tablet. On the screen, the loop of the last few seconds played continuously—a high-definition record of Mileon’s betrayal captured in infrared clarity.

“It is enough, Mileon. The game is over,” Caelmir’s voice was a heavy, ominous rumble. “Drop the artifact. Surrender yourself to the judgment of the Verdia High Law. Do not add more sins to this dying city.”

Mileon remained silent for a heartbeat, his eyes darting from the tablet in Caelmir’s hand to Dayat, who stood in the distance, the GPNVG-18 night-vision goggles still perched atop his head like the eyes of some metallic insect. Then, Mileon began to laugh—a dry, hacking sound that mocked the silence of the night, a sound that felt like sandpaper rubbing against the soul.

“You truly choose to believe that… that toy?” Mileon spat toward the ancient wood of the bough, his face contorting with disdain. “You are more a fool than I thought, Caelmir. You allow a filthy human from another world to dictate our laws with his glass boxes? You have insulted ten thousand years of Elven heritage because you were too tired, too weak, to kneel before the Ancestors!”

“Tradition does not demand the murder of our mother, Mileon!” a female voice screamed from behind the Paladin ranks.

A woman stepped into the light, her moss-green silk robes flowing like liquid in the wind. This was Milea, a fellow member of the High Council. Her face was youthful, yet her eyes possessed a weary wisdom that rivaled the oldest druids. She looked at Mileon with a gaze that was utterly shattered, the look of a sister watching her brother set their home on fire.

“Milea… you joined this circus as well?” Mileon sneered, though his voice flickered with a momentary, ghost-like softness.

“We stood side-by-side during the Siege of the Lamenting Woods a century ago!” Milea’s voice was raspy with grief. “We swore upon the Root of the Universe to protect every inch of Elarwyn until our blood ran dry. What has happened to you? What did the iron-mongers of Brassvale promise you that was worth the life of our guardian?”

“Promise?” Mileon snorted. “Brassvale is merely a hammer, Milea. Queen Verene is the problem. She isolates us, keeping us in this ’purity’ while the world outside grows fat on steam and steel. If Verdia does not evolve, we will become nothing but beautiful fossils waiting to be crushed. I chose to break the old world first so that we could build something stronger from its ashes!”

“By killing the World Tree?” Dayat stepped forward, his voice cutting through the emotional haze like a blade. “Your plan is garbage, Mileon. You aren’t building a ’stronger Verdia.’ You’re just building a mass grave and calling it a foundation.”

Mileon’s face turned a violent shade of crimson. “What do you know, filthy Manusia?!”

In a sudden, frantic motion, Mileon reached into the folds of his silver robes. He pulled out a jagged shard of obsidian crystal that pulsed with a nauseating, obsidian-purple energy. It was a Calamity Shard, a high-tier Abyssal artifact likely smuggled in by the Inquisition’s ghosts.

“Mileon, stop!” Milea screamed.

Too late. Mileon slammed the crystal into the wood of the World Tree beneath his feet.

BOOM!

An explosion of viscous, dark energy erupted, the shockwave throwing several Paladins backward off the branch. The sky above Elarwyn seemed to tear—a jagged, bleeding wound in space-time. A Void Breach opened with a sound like wet silk being ripped apart. From the depths of the rift, the low, guttural growls of Abyssal predators began to echo.

“Master, detecting critical dimensional fluctuation. Initializing low-to-mid-tier biological threat assessment. Dretches and Imps are manifesting within the canopy radius,” Dola’s tactical voice reported.

Hunched, multi-limbed figures with corrosive, leathery skin began to crawl out of the rift, their claws digging into the ancient bark. Above them, smaller, winged creatures with spheres of black hellfire in their hands filled the air. Elarwyn, the city of peace, was being transformed into a branch of hell.

“Caelmir, get down!” Dayat yelled as an Imp dove toward the Governor.

Dayat’s imagination flared. In less than a second, the sapphire-purple light coalesced. He manifested an HK416 A5, complete with a suppressor, a vertical grip, and a tactical sling. In one fluid motion, he shouldered the rifle and acquired the target.

Puff-puff-puff!

The suppressor coughed three times. Three 5.56mm rounds tore through the Imp’s chest, causing it to disintegrate into black soot before it could even touch Caelmir. Dayat didn’t stop. He knew the Paladins were at a disadvantage; they were trained for ground combat, and fighting flying, climbing demons on slippery, vertical boughs was a nightmare for them.

“Kancil! Guard the Governor! Do not let them get behind the line!” Dayat ordered.

Kancil, hardened by the horrors of the Terragard tunnels, didn’t flinch. He drew his Glock 17, his feet braced wide on the massive branch. When a Dretch tried to lunge from beneath the bough’s edge, Kancil delivered a double-tap with surgical precision.

Bang! Bang!

The rounds shattered the demon’s skull, sending its steaming carcass tumbling into the lightless abyss below. Kancil remained calm, his eyes scanning for flanking maneuvers. He was no longer just a street kid; he was a soldier of two worlds.

In the center of the chaos, Mileon stood within the rift’s epicenter, his eyes now glowing a sickly, manic red under the influence of the shard. He looked at Milea, who was desperately chanting a purification spell to close the breach.

“Mileon! Look at what you are doing! You are killing her!” Milea screamed, tears streaming down her face as she felt the World Tree’s agony. Through Dola’s sensors, Dayat could feel it too—the Mana frequency of the tree was screaming, a distorted, broken radio wave. The sap was beginning to boil within the vascular bundles, reacting violently to the Abyssal corruption.

“The integrity of the Western bough has decreased by 40% due to Abyssal corrosion, Master,” Dola whispered, her pupils vibrating as she processed the data.

Mileon looked at Milea one last time. “Goodbye, old friend. Verdia will be reborn, but there will be no room for the sentimental in its new era!”

Mileon began to chant a high-tier wind incantation, but he laced it with the remains of the black venom. A massive explosion of black, razor-sharp wind erupted from his position, creating a toxic smokescreen that blinded the Paladins.

“Use Nura-Sight! Do not lose the traitor!” Caelmir roared, ordering his men to switch to their mana-vision.

But Mileon had planned for this. From behind the curtain of black smoke, the heavy, rhythmic chugging of a steam engine echoed from the Western sky. A Mechanical Vulture—a massive, illegal aerial unit of the Brassvale Kingdom—emerged from the clouds, its iron wings screeching. It dropped a retrieval hook directly toward Mileon.

Dayat tried to acquire a target through the smoke using his thermal optics. But a swarm of Dretches lunged at him, forcing him to divert his fire to save a group of Paladins who were being dragged toward the edge.

“Dammit! He’s getting extracted!” Dayat cursed as he saw Mileon being pulled upward, away from the Elarwyn boughs and toward the Western border where the Inquisition’s lines held firm.

Milea collapsed onto the bark, her hands clawing at the wood which was now stained with a permanent, blackened rot from the explosion. She watched the shadow of the Mechanical Vulture disappear into the darkness of the night, taking her colleague into the embrace of Verdia’s enemies.

“He… he truly left us,” Milea whispered, her voice a hollow shell of grief.

The battle ended as quickly as it had begun. The Void Breach collapsed violently once Mileon’s shard was exhausted, and the remaining demons were swiftly butchered by the vengeful Paladins. But the victory felt like ashes in their mouths.

Dayat lowered his HK416, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He looked around the sector. The Western bough was scarred with permanent black stains, the Kenanga leaves were scorched, and the groans of the World Tree… they had stopped. Not because the tree was healed, but because it was now too weak to even make a sound.

“Master,” Dola approached him. “The target has successfully escaped into Brassvale territory. Based on the flight trajectory, they are heading toward an Inquisition stronghold.”

Dayat looked at Caelmir, who was being helped up by Kancil. The Governor looked as if he had aged a decade in a single night. He looked at Dayat, then at the weeping Milea.

“He is gone… and he has left a wound I cannot heal,” Caelmir said quietly, staring at the rotting wood of the sacred tree.

Dayat clenched his fist. Mileon might have escaped, but the real war had just been declared. And Elarwyn, the jewel of Verdia, was now standing on the brink of total collapse unless Dayat performed something far more extreme than simple drip-irrigation.

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