Chapter 26: Reprimanding Your Hero
’I...’
Aeliana opened her mouth with her pale lips trembling uncontrollably but her throat tightened so violently that no words came out.
The crushing shame of his flawlessly accurate assessment paralyzed her tongue.
She wanted to offer an excuse... She wanted to explain that the trauma of watching her previous home burn to ash was a wound that refused to close... She wanted to tell him that the screech of the bats had triggered an unavoidable flashback to the night Lord Kal’s reinforced gates were finally breached.
But looking up into Silas’s cold blue eyes, she realized none of that mattered.
Trauma was not a shield against incompetence. Excuses did not deflect claws, and apologies did not rebuild fallen empires.
"Aeliana, answer me... Do you want to die in the dirt?" Silas demanded. "Is that the grand conclusion? Throwing yourself into the unhinged jaws of a scavenger bat so you don’t have to carry the heavy weight of failure anymore?"
"No..." Aeliana choked out with a single hot tear cutting a clean line through the dried blood and soot on her pale cheek. "I... I just wanted to prove..."
"You proved nothing," Silas interrupted ruthlessly, completely cutting off her excuse before it could even form. "I cannot work with a Hero who fights to die. Aeliana, I am sorry your previous territory fell... I am sorry it was reduced to a pile of gray dust in the dark... but it is gone. You can either keep grieving and let the basin consume you entirely, or you can fight to ensure this territory does not suffer the exact same fate."
Silas stared down at her trembling broken form.
’This is the way to do it...’
Sure being soft with your Heroes was a way for them to trust you more but that wasn’t an excuse for being stupid.
Silas didn’t soften his imposing posture... He refused to look like a pushover who would tolerate blatant insubordination simply because his new Hero had a tragic backstory.
An undisciplined troop or Hero in the Umbral Basin was a dead soldier, and a dead soldier was useless to his grand designs.
He was forging a civilization that would rival the gods, and there was zero room for self-destructive martyrs in his ranks.
’Besides what is she going to teach the other girls?’ Silas thought, what if he had assigned her to protect his troops? She would have risked their lives for no reason... Silas didn’t want any of his people to die, Hero or Troop... All, all of them were valuable.
"The only reason I have not put you down," Silas stated. "is because Eluned asked me to spare you in the mud... If she had not stepped in front of my blade last night, you would have died as a feral monster wandering the ruins of your old life."
’E-eluned?’ She thought, that was the former Spirit of the World Tree... was that her? ’That’s Lady Eluned?’
Back in the Land of Elves, her family used to be die-hard Supporters of Lady Eluned even after her imprisonment.
Her Idol... was a hero for this same Lord!
The words hit her like physical blows, far more devastating than the bat’s sonic screech.
Aeliana squeezed her eyes shut as a fresh wave of tears spilled down her face, mixing with the dark blood on her chin.
He was right... Every single word he spoke was a flawless accurate mirror held directly up to her selfish actions...
She had let her deep grief override her sworn duty.
She had squandered her highly valuable magical reserves on a useless tantrum, putting both herself and her new Sovereign in immediate danger.
She hadn’t been fighting to secure the perimeter... she had been fighting to punish herself for surviving when so many others had already died.
It was a pathetic display of weakness that belonged in the mud, not in the ranks of a rising Lord.
Silas watched the harsh realization truly sink in.
He saw the proud Royal Elf break down under the crushing weight of her own undisciplined failure and he saw the exact moment her suicidal grief burned away, replaced by a burning desire to make amends.
’That’s good...’
His expression remained a mask of cold stone, but he slowly reached over and rolled up the sleeve of his dark combat robes.
The highly geometric emerald rune that Eluned had kissed onto his forearm pulsed softly, casting a faint green glow in the gloom of the ravine.
Silas raised his muscular arm, aiming the glowing mark directly at her ruined, heavily bleeding shoulder.
He didn’t say a word as he channeled a pulse of his foundational sovereign energy directly into the magical tether.
[Aura of Genesis (Emulated) Activated.]
A radiant warm wave of emerald nature magic erupted from his skin, washing completely over the sobbing, battered Elf.
The agonizing, burning pain radiating from her torn shoulder abruptly vanished.
The jagged, ruined muscle fibers and shredded pale skin began to violently knit themselves back together under the divine influence of the SSS-Rank healing aura.
Within seconds, the horrific gaping wound was entirely closed, leaving behind only a small scar on her otherwise flawless skin and even that scar went off.
The ruptured capillaries in her nose immediately sealed, stopping the flow of blood.
Aeliana gasped loudly as the healing flooded her exhausted, entirely drained nervous system.
The throbbing ache in her skull from the sonic blast faded into a manageable pressure.
’I’m healed...’
She looked up at Silas with an overwhelming sense of gratitude warring fiercely with her deep burning shame.
Silas simply lowered his arm.
The emerald rune faded back into his skin. He turned his body slightly, pointing the dripping tip of his dark mythril blade toward the center of the ravine.
"Carry them back," Silas ordered, his voice completely devoid of any warmth.
Aeliana blinked with her green eyes darting toward the massive, scattered pile of twitching, bleeding Umbral Bat corpses covering the jagged rocks.
There were easily thirty of the massive beasts lying in the dirt, their horrific leathery wings draped over the stone.
Each creature weighed well over two hundred pounds of dense, corrupted muscle and bone.
"Every single one," Silas added coldly.
He didn’t wait for her confirmation.
’Phew... I can designate what I want to use this rune to heal.’ Silas thought, for example, he didn’t replenish her mana which made the punishment a lot better.
Silas turned his back to her and began walking slowly back toward the jagged entrance of the ravine with his boots crunching loudly on the rocks, leaving her entirely alone with the carnage.
’N-no...’
Aeliana’s heart clenched painfully inside her chest.
The punishment was severe and deeply humiliating for a Royal Elf who normally floated above the battlefield on currents of wind but she knew, with complete certainty, that it was entirely deserved.
A soldier who broke formation and wasted valuable magical resources became the designated pack mule.
"Yes, my Lord," Aeliana whispered quietly to his retreating back.
She wiped the blood and tears from her pale face with the back of her uninjured hand.
Aeliana forced herself to stand on trembling legs, her empty mana pool aching heavily in her chest like a hollow cavern.
She walked over to the first massive bat corpse resting near the center of the crater.
Normally, an A-Rank Hero of her caliber would simply manifest an invisible arcane tether to levitate the massive load, floating the carcasses behind her effortlessly.
But Aeliana’s mana pool was completely hollowed out. She had zero magical energy left to assist her so she was forced to rely entirely on her raw physical strength.
"Umph..."
She grabbed the thick, bone-lined joint of the bat’s massive right wing. She gritted her teeth, planting her boot firmly against the creature’s mangled ribs, and pulled with all her might.
CRACK!
The sickening wet sound of hollow bone violently snapping echoed loudly off the high canyon walls.
Aeliana forced the massive, leathery appendage to fold inward, ruthlessly crushing the cartilage joints until the wings were tightly wrapped around the monster’s torso like a morbid cocoon.
Her pale hands were instantly coated in a thick, sticky layer of corrosive black blood that stung her skin.
She moved to the next corpse... Then the next... And then the next.
She repeated the brutal, stomach-turning process over and over.
She snapped bones, folded leathery skin, and dragged the massive carcasses into a central pile.
The stench of the dead scavengers was overpowering... it was a deeply foul mixture of rotting sulfur and acidic saliva that made her eyes water.
The physical toll was immense.
She was a Level 15 entity, possessing vastly superhuman vitality, but she was not a heavy infantry warlord like Brida.
Her class was built for backline magical artillery and rapid evasion, not manual hauling.
By the time she had crushed the wings and bundled the thirtieth carcass into the massive pile, her entire body was screaming in agony.
Her muscles burned and her lungs desperately grasped for the thin air of the Umbral Basin. Her borrowed linen robes were entirely soaked through with black gore, clinging uncomfortably to her sweating skin.
’I... I need to prove myself.’
Using torn, bloody strips from her own borrowed robes, she managed to tie the massive pile of bleeding meat into a towering, grotesque bundle.
It looked less like a hunting haul and more like a small mountain of slaughtered nightmares.
She bent down, sliding her slender, bruised shoulders under the makeshift cloth harness she had rigged, and pushed upward with her legs.
The massive weight nearly drove her straight back down to her knees.
"Agh..."
Aeliana let out a strained undignified grunt with her boots slipping slightly against the wet, blood-slicked stones beneath her.
Weighed down by easily six thousand pounds of dead monster, the crushing gravity of the load threatened to snap her spine.
However stabilized her core, forcing her enhanced Level 15 vitality to shoulder the immense burden.
She locked her trembling knees, found her balance, and began the agonizing, incredibly slow march out of the ravine.
Silas kept a slow pace about fifty feet ahead of her.
He never once looked back to check on her progress... He didn’t offer a word of encouragement and he let her carry the physical weight of her own failure in total silence.
Aeliana stumbled over the jagged black rocks. The massive pile of dead bats shifted precariously on her back with every single step, threatening to topple her over into the mud.
The rotting, foul stench of the beasts completely filled her nose, making her stomach churn violently and the black blood actively soaked through her linen tunic, stinging her bare shoulders and running down her spine in cold uncomfortable streams.
Her pointed ears twitched as she heard the distant, echoing howls of other scavengers in the deep woods, drawn by the smell of the slaughter.
Without her mana, she was entirely defenseless if another pack descended upon them.
She had to rely entirely on the man walking ahead of her to keep the perimeter clear.
"My Lord, I’m so—"
Her legs gave out.
She fell hard onto her hands and knees with the massive bundle of dead bats crashing heavily against her back and pressing her face directly into the dirt.
The rough, unforgiving stone bit deeply into her palms, scraping away layers of skin and leaving bloody streaks on the rocks.
She stayed there for a fleeting second, staring blankly at the ash-covered dirt.
Her lungs burned... Her arms shook violently... The overwhelming urge to simply collapse, surrender to the exhaustion, and weep bitterly fought violently against her deep-seated elven pride.
She had suffered so much. She had lost her home. Why was she being subjected to this barbaric humiliating torture?
But she looked up.
Through the dense, gray mist of the dead forest, she saw the tall, broad silhouette of her Lord walking steadily onward.
He wasn’t a tyrant torturing her for amusement... He was an unyielding pillar of survival in a world specifically designed to break them down and kill them...
He was forcing her to understand the exact price of weakness.
Silas wasn’t wrong... He wasn’t wrong at all... If she surrendered to her exhaustion here, she was no better than the gray dust scattering in the wind.
Aeliana swallowed her pride.
She pushed herself back to her feet, her muscles screaming in protest.
"Agh!"
Aeliana adjusted the massive bleeding burden on her back, wiping a mixture of sweat and black blood from her forehead, and kept walking.
One agonizing step at a time.
By the time the towering, imposing black steel walls of the Blessed Land finally came into view, piercing through the dense fog, Aeliana was operating on nothing but blind desperate willpower.
Her vision swam with dark spots of extreme exhaustion. Every muscle fiber in her legs felt as though it had been set on fire.
The heavy, enchanted steel gates groaned open as they approached the perimeter.
Standing exactly in the center of the pristine, beautifully paved stone courtyard was Eluned.
The Goddess of Nature looked impossibly radiant, her emerald silk dress was immaculate, entirely free of dirt or ash and her silver-green hair flowed perfectly down her back.
Neatly stacked beside the Goddess in a flawless, highly geometric, perfectly measured pile were more than one hundred and fifty units of highly refined Ironwood lumber.
"The harvest is complete, my Lord... I even added extra." Eluned announced happily, her glowing emerald eyes immediately locking onto Silas the moment he crossed the threshold.
Silas finally allowed his cold demeanor to drop.
The terrifying warlord vanished, replaced by the warm appreciative Sovereign.
He smiled genuinely, walking directly up to the Goddess and gently patting the top of her silver-green head.
"Excellent work, Eluned... You’re amazing." Silas praised. "This is exactly what we needed to lay the foundation."
Eluned practically beamed under the physical praise, her possessive, deeply affectionate nature highly satisfied by his undivided attention.
She loved being useful to him... She loved proving her superiority over the others...
"Hehe~ You should hug me nex—"
But as she leaned happily into his touch, her emerald gaze drifted slightly past his broad shoulder toward the open gates.
The Goddess blinked... Her delicate, flawless brow furrowed in deep, highly comical confusion.
Stumbling blindly through the main gates, fifty feet behind Silas, was Aeliana.
The beautiful, notoriously haughty Royal Elf was completely unrecognizable.
She was entirely buried beneath a towering, horrific, incredibly foul-smelling mountain of bleeding, crushed bat corpses.
Her normally pristine silver hair was plastered to her skull with dark gore. Her face was smeared with soot and dirt.
Her legs were visibly, violently shaking with every step, and she looked like she was about to face-plant directly onto the clean stone tiles.
"My Lord... what is she doing?" Eluned asked, tilting her head to the side, genuinely baffled by the grotesque sight. "Why is she carrying the beasts manually like a common pack mule? Did she forget how to weave spells?"
Silas didn’t even turn around to look at the exhausted, staggering Elf.
He kept his hand resting comfortably on Eluned’s soft hair.
"She is on punishment," Silas stated firmly, leaving zero room for debate. "Do not try to change my mind, and do not offer her your magical assistance. She carries that burden until I say otherwise."
