Chapter 1085, Regret Comes Too Late

Translator: Silavin

 

“Your, Your Majesty!”

 

Staring up at the imperious figure of Irene, the two brown-haired Elves flanking Felletin trembled with a fear they could barely contain. Felletin’s complexion had drained to a ghastly, bloodless white.

 

He had not foreseen that Irene would abandon all concern for the Elf Race’s poisoned  upper echelon to pursue them here, nor that she would strike with such decisive swiftness, cutting down three intruders and reversing the crisis in a single breath.

 

“Felletin. Do you know the weight of your crimes?” The Elf Queen’s gaze settled upon the three figures before her, and her authoritative voice unfurled slowly, deliberate as a drawn blade.

 

“Your Majesty, we lost our reason for a moment…”

 

“Your Majesty, please show mercy…”

 

Beneath that voice, the two brown-haired Elves beside Felletin crashed to their knees with a *thud*, begging ceaselessly for mercy.

 

At this point, the tide had clearly turned against them. Standing before the Elf Queen who held the Life Scepter, how did they even dare to resist?

 

The Elf Queen’s gaze swept over the two of them, then came to rest on Felletin.

 

Looking at the lines of age carved across his face, something surfaced in her memory. It was Felletin, who had devoted every year of a long life to the Elf Race, conscientious and tireless in his duty.

 

A flicker of reluctant compassion passed through the Elf Queen’s eyes.

 

*Ha ha…* Felletin met her gaze, and then, without warning, he began to laugh.

 

The Elf Queen’s brow drew together slightly, but she did not interrupt him. At this juncture, Felletin no longer could resist her Will. Whatever power he might once have commanded, he could no longer raise so much as a ripple in her presence.

 

Amidst that laughter, two streams of tears traced down his cheeks.

 

There was no longer any hope of obtaining what lay within the Tree of Life. He had been driven by selfish desire, used from beginning to end, a chess piece in another’s game from the very first moment to the very last.

 

The standing he had won through a lifetime of hardship, the reputation, all of it had crumbled to smoke and ashes in the wake of this manipulation. It was as though all that he had worked tirelessly for had never existed at all.

 

Worse still, when the histories of the Elf Race were written, his name would remain there as an eternal mark of infamy, a stain that would never fade.

 

Though the Elf Queen had arrived in time to save the Tree of Life from ruin, she could not undo the harm upon those upper echelons of the Elf Race, who had fallen victim to Felletin’s scheme.

 

The antidote to the Blood Devouring Poison was not in Felletin’s hands. It had been given to him by that Blood Beastman, and that person had been blasted beyond any trace of existence. So, where would he get an antidote to right his wrongs now?

 

Within that laughter was the sound of everything. It was a recounting of former glory, a lamentation over the catastrophic blunder made at the twilight of his long life, a grief-stricken sigh breathed out for his own people.

 

*Cough cough…* After some time had passed, Felletin was seized by a violent fit of coughing. His body trembled the way an old man trembles in the grip of a cold wind, small and persistent and uncontrolled.

 

The two brown-haired young Dark Elves at his side moved to support him out of instinct, but after hesitating for a long moment, each held their ground and did not dare to act.

 

Watching the old man, a trace of involuntary pity rose in Qin Yichen’s eyes as well.

 

Dark Elves held the lowest standing within the Elf Race. For a Dark Elf born into such a state to have risen to the rank of Elder, he must have taken a journey and overcome hardships no ordinary person could begin to fathom.

 

After a long moment, Felletin finally stilled his coughing, and the laughter too had gone silent.

 

He had given up now. All he had was the aura of a man at the very end of his days. Having already stood at death’s door, and now stripped of one arm, his physical condition had deteriorated to the most extreme state imaginable.

 

Were it not for the faint thread of breath still moving in and out of him, one might easily have mistaken him for a husk that had died long ago.

 

“Your Majesty. I am a criminal…” After a long silence, Felletin’s clouded eyes finally found the Elf Queen, and what remained of his voice surfaced, barely more than a whisper.

 

The overbearing intensity he had wielded when cornering the Elf Queen was gone. What remained was only a repentant old man at the end of his life.

 

“It was I who let greed and the hunger for power cloud my mind. I wished to overturn the fate of my Clan, and in doing so, allowed myself to be used by Foreign Races, driven to commit this foolish act…”

 

Felletin murmured in a low, halting voice. His presence was growing ever more faint with each passing breath. He looked then as any ordinary old man might look, and his bearing was such that a breath of light wind might have toppled him.

 

As Felletin’s murmuring continued, the cold light in the Elf Queen’s eyes began to recede, giving way to something that resembled compassion.

 

For thousands of years, Felletin had given himself without reservation to the Elf Race. Even the Elf Queen had never imagined that one day he would become the man who had nearly brought about the Elf Race to ruin.

 

Fortunately, the anomaly that was Qin Yichen had entered the picture. Without him, the Tree of Life and her people would today have faced a calamity that they might never recover from.

 

“Your Majesty, you should have waited until he surrendered the antidote before dealing with him.” At last, Felletin seemed to have spent every last reserve of strength that speech had cost him. He sagged back against a branch, half-reclined, still murmuring in a voice that had grown too blurred to be made out clearly.

 

“The Blood Devouring Poison has already been cleared from our people’s bodies.” The Elf Queen drew a quiet breath and spoke at last, her voice clear and even.

 

“Cleared?” Felletin’s pupils contracted. Astonishment, disbelief, and something close to joy entered his eyes all at once.

 

The Blood Devouring Poison had been the linchpin of the entire operation. He knew the Blood Beastmen Race would have prepared it with meticulous care. Even an Elf of deep cultivation would struggle to suppress it for long.

 

How has it been cured? Had the Elves somehow already researched and developed a cure capable of countering the Blood Devouring Poison?

 

Then, why had the Elf Queen yielded and handed over the Life Scepter? Had it all simply been to draw these adversaries out into the open?

 

“You can rest easy now…” The Elf Queen gently breathed out those words, then turned away, as though she could not quite bear to look.

 

In that moment, Felletin’s gaze drifted to Qin Yichen, who had drawn nearer in the distance.

 

“A, a Human?” Looking at Qin Yichen, the vastly experienced Felletin felt his pupils contract, and within his chest, a deep sense of understanding settled into place.

 

The Human Race, regarded across the Myriad Races as the most unfathomably difficult to calculate.

 

From the time they had been raised like livestock, then broken free to claim their own territory and propagate, the rate at which the Human Race’s strength had grown was something that gave even the strongest of Races a certain unease.

 

Felletin also held knowledge of things less widely known. It was precisely this terrifying pace of growth that might one day bring the Human Race to the precipice of annihilation.

 

Though the land of the Myriad Races stretched without visible boundary, after uncountable ages, even its resources had been divided and claimed to their limits. Not one single Race was willing to see another rise to join the ranks of the elites.

 

“I can only hope this young man does not bring ruin upon my people…” From somewhere unseen, a single fallen leaf drifted on the air, settling gently upon Felletin’s brow. His eyes, too, closed softly, following it into stillness.

 

“Elder Felletin!” The instant his eyes shut, both brown-haired Deacons were unable to hold back cries of grief that tore from them unbidden.

 

“Take him away. As for the two of you, report yourselves to the prison cells. You will not leave them for the rest of your lives.”

 

To the grief-stricken cries of the two Dark Elf Deacons, the Elf Queen’s calm and unhurried voice descended like a quiet declaration.