Chapter 461 A Meeting with Isolet.
Chapter 461 A Meeting with Isolet.
Strangely, Alvine was not the only one to be disturbed by the self-proclaimed mediator, that was also the case with their enemies.
On Shira, the planet which serves as the main base for enemy troops, strange and similar phenomena also took on a particularly impressive scale.
Instead of the swarms of warships, it was the darkness that manifested itself above them, plunging the entire planet into total darkness.
Chaos soon installed its merciless reign over the planet.
Since Shira's beasts were unaware of everything related to darkness, this anomaly created a tumult between them.
Not to mention the beasts, the other residents, including the monarchs, were all suspicious of this anomaly.
"Sir Leonidas, what should we do? Everything suggests that this bastard was able to locate us without us..-
"Don't panic too much, Nelpheim." Leonidas shakes his head.
Usually sleepwalking, he was quite the opposite of his lazy personality at the moment.
Jabbal frowns while showing a six-meter white halberd in his right hand. "You're the one who spends all his time sleeping, but the strangest thing is your ability to know more about all of us, how do you do it?" He asks with a statistical but thunderous voice.
Leonidas also frowns following Jabbal's question.
"Do you remember when I said we shouldn't trust all our potential allies?"
Malkel nods his head while focusing his perception on the black smoke that prevented them all from seeing beyond. But he immediately slaps his tongue with frustration when he realizes that his actions cannot bring him the expected gain. "I don't know what it's about, but this phenomenon doesn't announce anything good."
"Malkel, I thought I assigned you the protection of our queen? What are you doing here!?" Nelpheim's mood changes instantly when she sees Malkel behind them.
Note that the planet was covered by branches including the leaves of the supreme tree that largely fed it. As a result, before darkness reached the planet, they were repelled by the tree that acted as a protective barrier.
"Ugh! What are you worried about? The danger must necessarily pass through here before reaching our queen; it is, therefore, better to secure the vanguard instead of focusing on the inside."
Nelpheim's face deformed with rage when she heard Malkel's justifications.
"So you left the priestess alone to ensure the protection of our sovereign, in such a drastic moment above all!? How are we going to do if the darkness infiltrates without our knowledge and attacks Lady Hera while she's waking up!?"
"Calm down, Nelpheim, we don't weigh in front of the holder of such power; let's just hope he's not the person we think." Leonidas intervenes between the two before they forget the most important thing.
In addition, his words created innuendo in the minds of his three other colleagues. "Tell us, Leonidas, what exactly are you hiding from us?" The least talkative of them asks Leonidas this question without being interested in the childhood quarrels of Nelpheim and Malkel.
Leonidas frowns following Jabbal's question. "Believe it or not, but I don't know more than you. I simply follow my intuition."
"..."
"This presence is certainly sinister, but I do not feel any malicious intention on its part. It's to wonder if it really came here to harm us." He adds by noticing everyone's silence.
"You said instead that we should not have trusted all our allies; do I've to understand that you weren't just talking about Sir Alfred?" Jabbal decides to push the conversation in his favor.
"Pretty remarkable, little Jaball; don't forget who helped us locate our queen, this child presented himself as an equal to our queen, except that apart from Darkness, our queen had no equal.
--
While the four monarchs were patiently waiting for the enemy to show up, the latter was already on the planet; as Nelpheim feared.
Hundreds of KM underground, following the main root of the supreme tree in-depth, a private room was right in the heart of the core of the planet.
In a way, Shira (the supreme tree) is one with the planet, since the latter has no conscience like Fy.
To reach this room, the only accessible path is, as Malkel said, teleportation.
Even that, it was not synonymous with being given on the first come.
"Huhu, to say that this weak girl is a monarch, how pathetic have these two become over the centuries to accept anyone at their service?" Alvine, more precisely the mysterious entity that only borrows the appearances of others and who pretended to be Alvine for this time, looks at Erza (the priestess) unconscious and lying on the ground with disdain.
"Tsk, it's ironic to see that this little girl had tried to stop me. A simple illusion's arcane was enough to make her succumb to her deepest desires." He continues before walking towards a thick white door strangely larger than all those perceptible to this day.
The door alone was thirty meters long and about five meters thick.
The runes engraved on it were all white and mystical, like flowers from other dimensions. They were engraved on it, not drawn; contrary to what most people do.
Arriving in front of the two huge doors, which were about fifteen times his tall, the mediator frowns with a sneaky little smile.
"According to the memories of the little girl (Erza), this door has remained sealed since time immemorial; so, I wonder how they managed to move (Shiraori) inside." He mumbled his thoughts aloud without worrying about waking Erza, who slept peacefully behind him with a nice smile on her lips.
"Huhu, the answer's obvious, am I wrong?" Suddenly, he takes off and stops once half the way to the top of the big door.
In front of him were two small white spiders so much that they melted into the decor.
The two spiders remained inactive, which is not surprising since they were supposed normally insects.
"Say, how long do you plan to play this ridiculous game with me? I know you're already awake, Isolet; where should I say, Shiraori?" Like an idiot who had been brainwashed, he addressed the two spiders who did nothing more than keep calm over their webs.
-CrCrCrCrCrrrr!!!
But against all odds, the runes engraved on the two large doors began to shine followed by doors' slow openings with unpleasant and metallic sounds.
They did not fully open, but just enough to allow an adult to slip over between each other.
Seeing that the mistress of the place is ready to grant him an audience, (Alvine) goes through the two doors which close up behind him.
"I prefer the name my big brother gave me."
Immediately, a woman's soft and nonchalant voice rings in the mediator's eardrums from the moment he enters the private room of the mistress of the place.
Although he is miles underground, the mediator finds himself in the middle of a field of crystalline white flowers as far as the eye can see.
He did not need to use his magical perception to estimate the size of this field of flowers; moreover, he probably didn't care, considering this detail insignificant.
What intrigued him was rather the only tree that was in the middle of the field.
A tree similar to the one on Alvine's planet, but smaller, measuring barely fifty meters.
Under the tree, was an adult version of Isolet dressed in a white dress and bare feet.
She always had her golden pairs of bracelets on each of her wrists and ankles; her ears were always as sharp as those of the golden elves. Her hair, previously long to the lower back, was even more so, dragging behind her like a wedding veil.
The only perceptible and out-of-the-ordinary difference was her unnatural beauty, her hair the white horn that was on her right temple, and finally, her pupils which were dark black!
'The more dangerous the existence,
the more attractive the appearance.' He couldn't help but mumbling these words in his thoughts when he saw Isolet lying up on one of the tree branches like a fairy queen.
After a moment of silence to contemplate the creature in front of him, the mediator smiles sneakily. "Before I start, I would like to know who I am talking to; a vestige of the past, a naive girl who cherishes her big brother, Or the goddess who no longer thinks like mortals?" He asks without taking one more step to approach Isolat.
But just as he finished his sentence, he realized that his interlocutor was already standing behind him.
All he could see was his long white hair which shone harmoniously with the small gust created by the latter's momentum.
Instead of answering his question, Isolet ties him with a simple snap of her finger with white threads similar to cobwebs.
But strangely, the mediator was still as calm as before, even after seeing Isolet sniff him like an animal.
"I got it, your aura and soul are similar to that of my big brother, but your smell is different." She then mumbles while strolling around the mediator.
"You mean I smell better than him?"
"?!? There's nothing more pleasant than the smell of my big brother; but you should know that, am I wrong?"
"No, I don't see where you're coming from. But let's forget this, don't you plan to ask me who I am?" His smile which threatened to collapse came back as he tried to direct the conversation in his favor.
But Isolet ignores his question. "Unlike him who does not hide what he is, you are like those flowers that surround us, beautiful on the outside, but ugly on the inside; you have everything you need to be hated by me. And conversely, you have nothing that can make me appreciate you; don't you find it strange?" She asks while tightening the grip of her webs on him.
The mediator could feel and even hear most of his bones crack; but despite this pain, he kept his insensitive and fictive smile over his lips. "Khkhkh! I understood the cause of your disinterestedness towards me; it turns out that you were able to spy on my audience with your competitor."
"..."
"Whoops, don't tell me I was right. But on the other hand, I can't know where this imbalance between you comes from. How can you spy on him without him knowing anything?" He continues by seeing Isolet silent for the first time.
“…” Isolet slightly raises her eyebrows without saying anything.
"No, is it possible that you are connected to him? Indeed, the light is not in the shadows but I don't..-KHeuhh!!" Before he finishes his sentence, blood slips out of his mouth following an unbearable pain in his chest.
When he lowered his head, he realized that he had a hole in his chest's left side.
Worse still, an important organ was missing; his heart!
The latter always beat vigorously in Isolet's hand.
"I'm surprised that you have a heart." She mumbles while looking at the bloody pulpit in her palm.
The mediator forces a smile and responds to her sarcasm with a static voice. "I remain a living creature, after all."
"Don't take me for an idiot; I'm talking about the color of your blood. It's strange; how strange, yes, right, it's very strange that your blood is so ungodly."
The mediator's eyes turned red blood as he listened to Isolet's sarcasm.
But Isolet ignored his sudden wrath. She turns her back on him and moves away from him while juggling the mediator's heart in her palm without worrying about staining the flowers in red.
"Are you sure you are the god of wisdom? No, are you even immortal? I ask 'cause this is the first time I have seen someone who tells himself so much while having such red blood. Isn't it supposed to be white? Or maybe golden? And who knows, maybe purple?
"Close it, little ignorant girl. This body's only a vessel that I use for a short time. So make sure you give me back this little jewel." Even if these words look like mockery, the tone of his voice seems to hide a negative anger that, truly, was on the verge of implosion.
Isolet is just satisfied with smiling at his threats. But she gave him back her heart without further delay.
"I am against useless massacres, don't forget my nature, dear fragment." She says while freeing her captive from her threads.
"Thank you; I would say it this way if only you hadn't truffled my heart." He said before tearing his heart out and throwing it away, staining the beautiful garden with red blood.
On this train, it was no longer possible to talk about mortality. But Isolet just smiled in the face of his suicidal act.
"The power of materialization is really a prodigious power; no matter how much I have reached the known summit of the supreme rank, I am always curious to know more about this power," She mumbled while waving her hand, thus, melting the mediator's old heart so that her garden regained its beauty of yesteryear.
The mediator ignores her actions and tries to postpone the discussion on the 'good' rails. "Anyway, since you know about everything that happened between me and your competitor, can we...-
"Before going any further, why are you talking to me about competition? Who decided that? No, that's not the right question, I would rather like to know why you are so determined to change the course of this war into a competition?" She spits out these remarks before the mediator finishes his sentence.
"...I'm the one asking the questions."
"Oh well? Why then? Let me guess, is this your role as a self-proclaimed mediator?"
"...We can say that, in a way."
Following his answer, Isolet sits on a chair she created with her flowers. "...All right then, what exactly do you expect from us?" She said, crossing her arms under her breasts.
Hearing this long-awaited question, the young man also sits down, but on the floor with his legs and arms crossed.
His wound had already healed as if nothing had happened and his sneaky smile was ready to resurface as if his previous growl was only an illusion. "Let's talk about important things now."