"I define you," he said calmly, his voice neither raised nor cruel, yet carrying a weight that pressed upon reality itself, "to be a dead man."
The forest answered with silence.
Leaves froze mid-rustle. Birds cut their songs short as if erased. The wind stilled, the air locking in place, as if breath itself were withdrawing from the world. Life paused, not in fear, but in obedience.
The elf stood motionless.
His eyes remained open, still bright with life, yet there was nothing behind them. His mind was gone. His spirit severed. His body remained upright only out of habit, a vessel emptied in an instant. The definition had been spoken. The conclusion was absolute.
His bow slipped from lifeless fingers. His hand followed, slack and unresponsive. Then, as though the world finally remembered gravity, his body collapsed into the earth with a dull, final thud.
He was dead.
For a heartbeat, the watching elves did not move. Then rage shattered their shock.
Arrows screamed through the air, loosed in a frantic volley meant to erase Veldra and Lucien before either could respond. The forest filled with the hiss of death.
Lucien did not remain where he stood.
He moved, and Physics cried.
Gravity recoiled. Space buckled. One moment, he was before them, the next he was gone, motion compressed into something too fast to be followed, too violent to be measured.
He was already behind them.
Claws ignited, cold and merciless. He tore through the elves as though they were paper caught in a storm. Some fell with punctured hearts, eyes wide in disbelief. Others lost their heads in a single, fluid motion. Some simply died, no sound, no mercy, no chance to understand how.
Blood erupted across the clearing, painting the grass in violent red. It pooled, splashed, and soaked into the earth like the roots of a crimson tree. Screams died quickly. Resistance vanished even faster.
Within moments, there was nothing left alive.
Veldra stood still, absorbing the aftermath.
So this is the power of a name, he thought.
The carnage unsettled him. Not the death but the stain it left behind. The forest had done nothing to deserve defilement.
He lifted his hand.
With a single, dismissive gesture, the blood vanished. Grass straightened. Colour returned. The clearing was restored to pristine green, as if the massacre had never occurred.
As though the forest itself had been rewritten.
The two turned and walked away.
They did not look back.
With every step they took, more elves emerged from the forest.
They slipped out from behind trunks and branches, from the canopy above and the undergrowth below, silent and coordinated. One by one, then dozens. The sound of leaves shifting under light feet formed a slow, tightening rhythm.
They encircled Veldra and Lucien.
The Elves closed in steadily, methodically, until there was no longer room to walk, only to stand. Bows were drawn, eyes fixed. Numbers pressed in from every direction, not yet attacking, but demanding submission through sheer presence.
Lucien's jaw tightened. His fingers flexed at his side, irritation crawling up his spine.
Veldra felt something sharper, annoyance, cold and controlled.
He removed his hand from behind his back and raised it slightly.
The effect was immediate.
The elves halted as if an invisible line had been drawn across the ground. Muscles tensed. Breaths were held.
"Must we go through this?" Veldra asked, his voice steady, carrying without effort. "I came only to see your king, who is my subject. Why throw away your lives as if they are worth nothing?"
"This is loyalty!, Not that you would understand, you self-appointed ruler!" one of them shouted, his voice breaking the stillness.
The cry spread. Voices rose together, sharp and unified, echoing through the trees.
Veldra did not raise his voice.
"That is not loyalty," he said calmly. "That is stupidity. And delusion." His gaze swept over them, not with anger, but with weary certainty. "I will give you a chance. Let this end here. Step aside, and no harm will come to you."
No one laughed.
No one sneered.
Instead, they grew quiet.
And then they moved.
They were not rushing to advance. Instead, they took slow, deliberate steps forward, tightening the circle once more. The distance closed until only ten feet remained between steel and flesh.
Then a single figure stepped out.
He advanced two more feet, breaking the formation.
He was different from the others. Brown eyes, sharp and resolute. Black hair pulled back neatly. Golden armour caught what little light filtered through the canopy, clean and well-kept, paired with white boots untouched by dirt. He carried a sword, not a bow.
A warrior, not a hunter.
He stood tall, six feet and two inches and his posture spoke of confidence that was earned, not borrowed.
"Not a chance," the leader said.
His eyes locked onto Veldra's, unflinching.
"I see," Veldra replied quietly. "So it is death that you choose."
At that moment, a sound echoed inside his mind.
Use Prismora.
Veldra stiffened.
He turned his head slightly, scanning his surroundings. Lucien stood beside him, alert. The elves remained tense and hostile. No one else was there.
He looked again, this time reaching inward, extending his perception as far as it would go. It was limited, far from complete, but it was enough to confirm one thing.
There was no one else.
There was no source.
No being or entity.
Just them.
Veldra could not conclude who that was just yet.
Seeing no need for restraint, no reason for conclusion, Veldra stepped into battle.
Distance ceased to matter.
The eight feet between them collapsed into nothing as Veldra appeared before the elf in an instant. One hand rested calmly behind his back. The other closed around the elf's neck.
His grip tightened.
Bone groaned. Flesh compressed. The pressure mounted until the head seemed ready to burst free from the body itself.
"Krrrgg-ghhrrh-", "Ku-rgg-st…op…you bas-"
The sounds were not words, only ruined attempts at speech. His vocal cords shredded. His trachea snapped. The spine dislocated with a sickening crack. Blood began to pour from his ears, nose, and eyes in thick streams. His already pale skin drained further of colour, while his face swelled into a deep, violent red, veins bulging grotesquely as if his skull could no longer contain what was inside.
Veldra squeezed harder.
There was no scream.
The head burst.
Blood sprayed outward from the ruptured neck in a violent bloom, splattering the air before gravity dragged it down. Veldra released his grip. The body dropped to the ground with a heavy, final thud. loud, unmistakable, and without mercy.
"That is one out of fifty."
A chime echoed before him; clear, mechanical, and audible to him alone.
== <<[| You have received a quest |]>> ==
== <<[| QUEST |]>> ==
Objective: Eliminate all elves surrounding you
Count: 1 / 50
Status: pending
== <<[| --- |]>> ==
Veldra exhaled slowly.
He stepped forward and walked across the lifeless body, bones cracking beneath his weight. He did not acknowledge it as a corpse, only as something beneath him. Dirt would have been treated with more care.
The remaining elves stiffened.
Groans of rage rippled through them, mixed with something far less dignified. Fear. They had not expected such immediacy. Such contempt. Such effortless killing.
Shit… this isn't going well, one of the elves at the back thought, nails digging into his palm as his brows knit tightly together. There are fifty of us… and he still advances?
"Attack!" someone shouted, panic sharpening the command.
The elves roared in unison, drawing their bows and raising them toward the sky. Arrows were loosed upward in a massive volley, climbing higher and higher until they vanished from sight.
For a moment, there was only silence.
Then the arrows returned.
They fell like judgment, screaming through the air at devastating speed, every single one marked toward a single target: Veldra.
He did not flinch.
Veldra raised his hand as white mist coiled around his fingers, dense and luminous. The energy stretched outward, expanding like living fog, forming a veil that enveloped both Veldra and Lucien. Arrows struck it and vanished, shattered, dissolved, erased before they could reach flesh.
He had known they were coming.
He was ready.
Veldra's eyes hardened, voice low and venomous as he stared at the encircling elves.
"You're dead now."