Jost was dumbfounded. Today just wasn't his day.
He sent a probing attack, only to feel it be swallowed up by... something.
It just disappeared.
Both from sight and from his senses. His connection through the mana was severed. He didn't know where it went or how it got swallowed up. But... how was that possible? Something that humongous couldn't just go missing. His connection to an object created by his own skill, connected through its own mana, couldn't—no, shouldn't—just disappear like that. Who did this?
Jost was sure whoever was behind the silhouette he couldn't distinguish was perhaps an Enlightened Sage, or even a Legendary Being.
Yet old fogies like that shouldn't just be walking around destroying empires. They surely had much better things to do. Why were they in his little empire?
Suddenly, just as the boulder disappeared out of nowhere, it reappeared out of nowhere. This time it was smaller, yet still large enough to damage what remained of the kingdoms.
This couldn't have been an accident. He had tried to divert some of the boulders, but could only move those that were close to hitting the place where his daughters were busy fighting the mercenaries.
Jost sighed.
"Perhaps I've enjoyed a period of peace for far too long."
Then suddenly, a chilling, eerie voice of rang out behind him.
"Yo."
He froze, feeling his body break out in a cold sweat. He turned around to check where the voice came from.
A dark silhouette that seemed to carry its own background appeared. It was the size of a teenage elf. Flowing white-silver hair reached its back, while blue eyes that seemed to stare into one's soul looked at him. The outline of a neat and pristine robe around him.
His heartbeat quickened as he felt his instincts retreat. As he tried to "feel" out this individual, he felt like he would die if he tried to probe the person before him. If he even attempted to sense an ounce of anything about him, he was sure his fate would not end well.
He was about to speak, but suddenly, faster than he realized—or perhaps even long before he had turned around, he wasn't sure—he was moved.
His body found itself in a space he could only describe as "somewhere." It didn't feel like the same space or area he had been in before. For one, he could "see" the outline of the world, yet he felt as though he were inside a room with transparent walls. He couldn't interact with the world anymore.
He knew resistance was futile. He was no fool. Either this person was a True Sage close to becoming a Legendary Being or someone even higher. If so, before this man, he was simply a toddler.
Only his father could perhaps lend some assistance, but with spatial skills like this, he doubted his father had the means or the time to break open and enter this spatial place, if he could even find it.
Jost looked at the haunting silhouette and asked,
"Senior, may I ask why you have come to find fault with my little empire?"
Dante chuckled, amused by the humble, victimized words Jost used. Still, he shrugged and said,
"I need to sharpen my disciple. In order for that to occur, she needs to experience real lfe."
Jost, who was still terrified and apprehensive, nodded.
'So the dark silhouette is his subordinate?... Then... you wish to tell me my own subordinates died simply because he wished to train his own? Really?'
Jost looked at the figure with defeat and anger as he asked,
"How long will Senior continue with this?"
Dante smiled as he shrugged.
"Mhmm, depends, I need her moral alignment to reaches at least... what do you call it... 'morally gray?' 'Anti-hero?' Yeah, that one. So long as she becomes 'corrupted' I'd be pleased."
Jost looked at the girl, or rather the silhouette of Vexion, who had stopped running after realizing she was in no danger. The girl brightened up with a smile as she simply waited.
The girl had massacred and destroyed an entire kingdom and cruelly tortured her victims. From what he saw, was she not already pure evil?
Was this not exactly what he wanted?
Jost wanted to ask, but merely kept his eyes on his daughters, who were fighting a group of mercenaries that had survived. They were even on the winning side, as they had other soldiers from the empire beside them.
Dante noticed where he was staring and chuckled inwardly.
'Things have progressed enough. Time to make sure things go out with a bang.'
Jost saw Dante turn his head toward his subordinate and heard him say,
"You may begin the show. We are running out of time."
Vexion, who heard her master's voice from... somewhere in space, bowed.
She had known her master was somewhere, but he hadn't even met with her, and he had let her put on the pathetic display of fleeing from her enemy in panic.
She puffed out her cheeks cutely. Though only her outline could be seen, she mostly looked like a shadowed silhouette to everyone except Dante.
She pumped herself up as she looked at her mercenaries, who were losing the battle against Lexa, Lexi, and the empire's soldiers.
She gave a cold smirk as she turned her attention to the bodies that had been taken off her, namely the bodies of Kai, Sheva, and Lee.
Smiling, she stepped forward, yet with each step she would reappear meters ahead. Appearing near the bodies, she saw Sheva still barely alive from the beating she had given her.
Vexion smiled and used Pull to step—or rather move so fast that she left behind mirages, making it seem as though she had merely taken a step before appearing somewhere else.
She chuckled as she appeared above the skirmish between Lexa, Lexi, the empire soldiers, and her mercenaries.
...............…..
Lexa and Lexi were shocked and hurt to the core.
They were a poor race, or rather an unlucky one.
The territory they controlled was wedged between the pure elves to the left and the barbarian tribes to the right. They controlled very little territory and were always fighting one of the two, or sometimes both. They even had to deal with the monsters in the forest, who monopolized a portion of their lands.
Yet... yet! The dark elves still found the time to fight amongst themselves.
Petty squabbles and wars would erupt between kingdoms and sometimes even empires.
Lexa swung her sword sideways, cutting down another one of her own people.
As a dark elf, one who loved her people, had been raised well in a kind family, and understood when to be kind and when to be ruthless...
Or so she thought.
Each time she swung her sword and cut down one of her own people, she felt a pang of pain in her chest.
She and Lexi were angered.
Both by their enemies—or rather, their own kind—and by their own actions.
Lexa didn't understand.
Even if, as these mercenaries claimed, they had no choice but to fight against her empire because the being who threatened them had given them no other way out...
They still took great delight in it.
They killed wantonly and didn't even grant the civilians a chance to flee. They had already wiped out an entire kingdom.
Lexa was in deep pain.
She had prepared her sword for her enemies—humans, pure elves, barbarian tribes, and the like—not her own people, the dark elves.
Especially when they were, at least on this continent, under the constant threat of extermination.
Lexi was like her sister. Both Lexi and Lexa simply felt pain as they tried to take down these mercenaries and save their fellow dark elves.
Lexa and Lexi had soldiers from the empire as backup, so they never truly found themselves under great threat.
The battlefield was a kingdom with only a few houses and buildings barely standing, surrounded by debris, broken homes, and the bodies of their own kind.
It nauseated her, but she tried her best.
She wasn't naive. At least, that's what she liked to believe.
She wasn't universally kind like the Young Lord who had saved her sister years ago pretended to be.
He was cruel, evil, and simply heinous in his methods.
Despite being so powerful that he could spare those far weaker than himself, he still chose to kill them.
Moreover, she could see and sense that he cared for nothing but himself.
He even killed his own kind.
Even in this desperate situation, as Lexa killed the dark elf mercenaries, she reassured herself that kindness still bloomed in her heart because she cared, she felt guilt, and she wasn't enjoying this.
If she could, if she had the power to subdue these people peacefully and bring them under arrest, she would.
However, as Lexa and Lexi fought, a heavy aura filled with terrifying pressure descended upon them.
The pressure was so vast and overwhelming that Lexa, Lexi, and everyone around them, except for the mercenaries, slowed in their movements.
They looked up to see the silhouette of a curvy female elf descending from the sky.
The silhouette had three bodies floating in the air.