356 Floral Kane
Returning to White Bone Castle’s conference hall, Floral slowed down her hurried pace.
Under her control, the ancient and venerable stone door gradually closed. Intricate runes latched onto each other, muffling the ear-splitting battle cries from outside.
Only her footsteps echoed in the empty hall.
The luxurious skirt trailing behind Floral etched a lengthy crimson trajectory on the pristine carpet. It was bloody, just like the course she had navigated all these years.
Walking in the empty hall, Floral felt like she was alone again after so many years.
This feeling was like the day she was transformed into a lich by her adoptive parents, or the day she learned that she had been chosen as the incarnation of the Holy Tree Matriarch and was about to hold a divine marriage ceremony with the Father of the Wilderness.
Adoptive parents…
Recalling them, Floral’s lips curled into a bitter smile.
The pair of human adoptive parents who had given her their last name and raised her when she was abandoned told her what the pursuit of truth was. It wasn’t until they brought her to the core of the World Tree that they tore off the facade of love they had been pretending to wear.
Raising an Forest Elf orphan to adulthood was not to better assimilate into foreign cultures, nor was it to look back and experience feelings of kinship that were never felt in the past… The legacy of Frost Lich Nehe—a Judge—the information that could reproduce the brilliance of ice and frost magic, was the only thing they pursued.
In fact, if that were the case, Floral wouldn’t have been unwilling to sacrifice herself for the couple who studied magic—her only family in this world.
This was because ever since she was young, her adoptive parents, who considered themselves scholars, had always told her that kinship was the greatest thing, and the eternal pursuit of truth was greater than kinship.
Other than truth and kinship, everything else was mundane.
Therefore, in order to help her adoptive parents explore the peak of magic, she was willing to sacrifice herself.
However, they weren’t doing all of this to climb the peak of magic. Floral had long seen through the truth from their uncontrollable excitement.
The couple had instructed her too thoroughly—so thoroughly that after the age of 14, to study magic more profoundly and unearth new documents, Floral conjured a demon spirit that even they couldn’t discern and infiltrated a clandestine chamber they believed they had secreted exceedingly well.
Moreover, she heard their private conversation.
It wasn’t to seek the truth. They only planned all of this to find Nehe’s legacy and atone for their sins, allowing them to return to the distant center of power in Platinum City and seek a comeback.
For the ‘mundane’ objects they despised.
She could have bound herself and offered herself up as a lamb to be bartered for the truth with just a dictate from them, but they opted to delude her—employing absurd and feeble lies and a guise that could be seen through in an instant.
Therefore, she didn’t want to let them have their way.
“What’s your name?”
Nehe’s imprint in the soul box asked her when she activated the legacy.
“Floral Kane.”
Facing the power that still filled her with reverence despite after a thousand years, she replied respectfully,
“Kane… What a good last name. Then, are you the one to accept my legacy? Do you know what price you have to pay for this?”
“Death and rebirth,” Floral replied calmly.
“I have to say, you’re too young. This makes the price of your death seem insufficient—one not enough to give you a new life. If it were any of the two people below, they would probably be able to inherit 40% of the experience and talent I left behind. As for you, I’m afraid you can only barely reach 20%.”
Nehe’s remnant mental imprint suggested.
“Then let the two of them pay the price with me. I want 100%.”
“…You might die directly and not be able to be reborn.”
After a moment of silence, Nehe sought confirmation for the last time.
“It doesn’t matter. If that’s the case, it’s also what I pursue.”
…
Although she wasn’t the one who did it, Floral did kill her adoptive parents on the day she reached adulthood.
William Kane’s guess was wrong. Her adoptive parents hadn’t even lived long enough to obtain that terrifying talent.
She should have told William this, but for some reason, she didn’t want to.
Before killing her parents, Floral was very curious about how she would feel afterward.
She had slain her adoptive parents, who had granted her a second life. Despite their thousands of misdeeds and having raised her merely as a sacrifice to exploit one day, every minute and second of life she had known over the years was conferred by the two of them.
Floral didn’t hate her adoptive parents. Instead, she respected and loved them.
Therefore, she had always borne in mind the principle they had instilled—that the quest for truth surpassed kinship and all else. Given that the two of them were unwilling to ascend the pinnacle of magic due to worldly concerns, she chose to tread the path in their lieu.
After killing her adoptive parents, what hit her most was that she didn’t feel anything.
It wasn’t that she was numb and didn’t feel anything, but that ‘feeling’ didn’t exist.
Her heart was as empty as the void between the stars in the night sky. Nothing could fill it.
All meaning dissipated in the depths of her heart. She lost the reason to live and the motivation to die.
Had she not glimpsed the words on Nehe’s manuscript, she would likely have remained in that covert chamber for the rest of her days, seated and pondering the bounds of truth. Nevertheless, Nehe’s final words instilled new drive in her—having inherited the legacy of the Judge, she had his duty of safeguarding Ravenwood.
Floral’s mainspring was once more fastened snugly.
Protect Ravenwood—but in her own way.
She relied on her strength to suppress the eager opposition and deal with the various factions outside, pushing this ancient country out of its corrupt cycle bit by bit.
She made sure that absolute authority was held tightly in her hands and she would deal with all problems with the simplest and most efficient logic, but she wouldn’t care about anyone’s feelings—people called her heartless, but she ignored them. She suppressed any secret rebellion from the opposition.
After leaving behind a trail of corpses and seas of blood, she finally pushed this country three centimeters out of the fire pit.
However, just when she left for a while and loosened her grip ever so slightly…
The blood on Floral’s skirt was left behind from killing the guards when she returned to White Bone Castle.
In her wake, the Oak Council’s spies in the palace raised their arms and rallied to oppose her tyranny and overturn the order she had established.
Only an extremely small number of guards stood on her side, but they were quickly dispatched.
When she and Ebony returned, the entire White Bone Castle’s outer corridor was holding a Holy Communion ceremony.
Perhaps it was because the Oak Council and the palace’s intelligence weren’t synchronized, but the guards and subjects who had sworn loyalty in the past charged at her.
After killing a few waves, they found their forgotten fear again.
Those people retreated and crawled in front of her, begging for forgiveness.
Just like in the past.
However, when she walked into the inner courtyard of White Bone Castle alone and the reinforcements from the Oak Council arrived, those newly emboldened people charged at Ebony, who was left behind as a guard.
It was the same as before.
The illusion of peace and stability over the years even made her forget that she had always been alone.
Floral thought as she sat on the Withering Throne.
Then, she felt unprecedentedly relaxed.
This was because all of this was finally… about to end.
This was because someone would bear this responsibility for her, shoulder the anger and sorrow from 40 million dissipating souls, and help her defeat an enemy she could never defeat.
For Floral, who relied on half-hearted determination and bore the fate of the entire race, this was a kind of liberation akin to a religious experience.
She had spent so many years and committed countless killings just to push this country out of the fire pit by three centimeters.
As for that person, he wanted to extinguish the entire fire pit.
He wanted to snatch the Forest Elves’ fate from the Void Sovereign.
The ether domain connected to the Withering Throne’s circuits, and mana began to fill up again.
Countless demonic spirits flew to every corner of Ravenwood according to Floral’s will.
“All Forest Elf citizens, citizens of Emerald Province, descendants of the Ava State’s conquerors, hello…”
Floral made her voice echo across the land.
Soon, she would be…
It was also at this moment that a glass-like arrow—an arrow stained with the blood of the Holy Spirit’s incarnation—broke through the magic blockade in the hall and sped towards her throat.
Updat𝓮d from freew𝒆bnov𝒆l.co(m)