Julius couldn't help but stare at Luca with an intense, conflicted gaze.
'What exactly is he?' He wondered. 'This isn't the kind of man I was expecting.'
Everything he had read in the reports—the stories of massacres, of battlefields drenched in blood, of destruction left in the hero's wake—had painted a picture of a man driven solely by brute force.
Julius had been convinced that the famed Hero was little more than a muscle-headed killer, someone who only knew how to swing a sword, not someone capable of manipulating crowds or turning tense situations to his favor.
That was why he had devised this little scheme—to subtly turn the elves against him, to corner the Hero using the children as a moral noose and let public sentiment do the rest.
But instead of losing their faith in him, the elves had come to respect him more.
