Chapter 724: Deep Thoughts
Chapter 724: Deep Thoughts
He needed to strip authority from the entrenched nobility that had convinced him to sign away one of the most potentially valuable assets the kingdom possessed.
He needed to consolidate power in his own hands and rebuild a political structure that wasn’t constantly subject to the manipulations of creatures like Sariel.
And there was only one way to do that.
He needed the support of the one entity in his kingdom who possessed the power to enforce his authority. He needed the emissary from Elysium.
He needed someone or something that existed at a level where the political games of the elven nobility simply couldn’t touch it.
The key to having Jack on his side would be to sway powerful people to back the King in his push for change in the laws. It would make it significantly easier, but it would not be a small feat.
But first, he needed to understand the full scope of what was happening.
On the scrying mirrors, the sky erupted with catastrophic detonations.
Five dragons, creatures that had been positioned at strategic points within the formations, suddenly overcharged their internal power cores simultaneously.
The explosions were so violent that even the magical projection seemed to struggle to display the full magnitude of the destruction. The blast radius expanded outward, obliterating everything in its path.
And then the impossible occurred.
Figures began to materialize from within the smoke clouds. Minotaurs, creatures that had been swallowed, began reforming as they were in the air.
They stepped from the ash with the casual certainty of beings who had experienced a temporary transition rather than death.
Gale’s veins bulged even further. His hands began to tremble, tiny vibrations that indicated his entire musculature was locked at maximum tension. His consciousness was fracturing under the weight of a single, inescapable understanding.
The human’s army didn’t just refuse to die.
The human’s army couldn’t be killed.
An infinite resource pool. An inexhaustible supply of combatants. A force that would continue to fight until every last dragon had been systematically eliminated.
It was a military situation that transcended conventional tactical response. It was apocalyptic in its implications.
Myrine’s palms were now bleeding openly.
Blood dripped from her hands onto the council table, creating small crimson pools that seemed to mock the careful formality of the chamber. Her voice, when she finally spoke again, was barely above a whisper.
"His army regenerates," she said, each word delivered with the weight of someone articulating an absolute truth. "They can’t be killed because killing them is meaningless. They continue to fight. There’s no tactical victory condition because the human possesses a resource pool that is literally infinite."
Her eyes locked onto King Maelor’s position, seeking confirmation, seeking denial, seeking anything that would suggest she was misinterpreting what she was witnessing.
The King’s expression remained perfectly composed. But his hand, the one that rested against the stone armrest, was gripping so tightly that the ancient stone itself was beginning to crack.
Sariel’s internal war was reaching its crescendo.
His consciousness was split between two irreconcilable impulses.
The first was the instinct of self-preservation, to recognize that the human had become so monumentally powerful that opposing him was tantamount to suicide.
The second was the politician’s instinct for opportunity: recognizing that a force this powerful could be leveraged, used, and potentially controlled if one possessed sufficient cunning and leverage.
But the main problem bugging him was how Mira could control dark magic and combine it with fire for a devastating dual magic combination.
She did not possess Dark magic. This was news to him, and would be invaluable news to anyone in The Council.
On the scrying mirrors, the battlefield descended into absolute chaos.
Minotaurs repositioned themselves on the backs of descending dragons. Panthers emerged from camouflage to tear into exposed flesh.
The draconic formations, which had been mostly in formations just moments before, began to collapse under the relentless pressure of an army that refused to stay dead.
Queen Morvanna’s fingers gripped her daughter Rosethiel’s shoulder so tightly that the princess made a small sound of discomfort.
The Queen’s eyes remained locked on the scrying mirror, tracking the systematic dismantling of the draconic brigade with the cold realization that her kingdom’s understanding of military superiority had just been rendered completely obsolete.
King Maelor leaned back in his throne.
His ancient face remained expressionless, but his consciousness was now fully engaged in the process of understanding.
The pieces were beginning to align. The mathematical precision of the human’s deployment.
The casual use of a third magical element, which should have been next to impossible to control 3 elements at once.
The resurrection of a Council member as a bound servant. The scrying mirror is jamming. The infinite regeneration of his army.
These were not the actions of an eighteen-year-old human experimenting with his newfound power.
These were the actions of something far older. Something far more dangerous. Something that had learned to operate within human constraints while possessing capabilities that transcended them entirely.
King Maelor’s hand released its grip on the throne’s armrest.
A small piece of ancient stone fell away, crumbling to dust on the marble floor.
And in that moment of silence, as the observation chamber fell into absolute stillness despite the chaos erupting across the scrying mirrors, the King’s consciousness crystallized around the singular, undeniable truth that he had finally assembled from the evidence.
Jack Kaiser wasn’t just a human with hidden power.
Jack Kaiser was the Soul Warden himself.
The legendary, terrifying, mythological entity that had faded into history.
The creature that elven legend spoke of in whispered, fearful tones. The being that had walked the world centuries ago and fundamentally altered the balance of magical power through sheer force of will and capability.
He had returned. And the elven kingdom had just exiled him.
’Does King Eric know?’
The question detonated through Maelor’s consciousness with the force of a tactical revelation. If the human emperor across the border possessed knowledge of what Jack Kaiser truly was, then the political landscape had shifted beyond recognition.
King Eric would undoubtedly seek to exert control over such an entity operating within his dominion, aiming to leverage its capabilities and align them with his strategic objectives.
But Eric was too cautious for that approach. Eric was too careful. If the human king knew what Jack was, he would have already moved. He would have already taken action.
Which meant Eric didn’t know.
’Does Alaric Kaiser know? Is the father aware of what his son has become?’
That question carried implications that Maelor’s strategic framework was struggling to process.
The legendary warrior of House Kaiser, the human who had survived countless wars and emerged with his dignity and power intact.
If Alaric understood the true nature of his son, then the entire human political structure was operating under assumptions different from those the elven kingdom had calculated.
’And The Council,’ Maelor continued, his internal monologue crystallizing around the implications of what he was witnessing. ’Is The Council aware? Do they know that the Soul Warden walks among them, disguised as a child, operating under the legal framework of a human chosen one?’
Maelor’s eyes flickered across the room until he landed on Sariel.