Chapter 268

“I don’t have time to discuss the nature of your betrayal,” I said as I flooded his body with my mana, creating a drunken effect even as I destroyed certain parts of his mind, forcing him to speak truthfully.

It was near-irreversible, but considering I had no intention of keeping him alive, it was not exactly an unfortunate trade-off for me. Instead, I turned my attention toward my target. “First question. Tell me how the war started...”

That launched an interrogation that lasted for almost an hour, and gave me a lot of answers I had been searching for.

Apparently, what I had learned from Seldanna about the start of the war had been misleading. Her guess had been a few weeks at best, but the traitor claimed that it had been almost a year since they had first come across first undead presence, only to be destroyed immediately...

This launched a long campaign of hide-and-seek, where the undead fought to establish a stronghold where they could spread their power, and the elves from the central city doing their best to squash it — without even bothering to inform the border tribes, apparently, treating them more as a nuisance than potential assistance.

He had summarized dozens of battles to me, each incredible success against the undead... Yet, even as he went through the battles, something was tickling my mind... The battles he described were incredible, worthy of stories, requiring heroics, bravery, and sacrifices... If I hadn’t already used magic to strip him of his ego, I might have assumed he was trying to exaggerate the battles he was in, but that was certainly not the case.

More importantly, only two names were coming across as heroic repeatedly, and he was not included... Prince Arun, and High Priest Ivasaar.

“Suspicious,” I found myself murmuring.

I had fought against the undead many times, and the way those battles unfolded didn’t sound reasonable in the slightest.

“And when you discovered you can trade Divine Spark in that fort?”

“What?” he asked.

I realized we might not be sharing a name. “What you had in that acorn,” I said.

“Essence of Life,” he corrected, which sounded interesting. Maybe it was another valid name, but it was almost like they were deliberately cutting the link between the Gods and the energy they were trading.

“Good, tell me when you heard about that?” I ordered.

“I heard two subordinates of High Priest conspiring to steal some of the acorns and bring them directly for a trade,” he said. “They were talking about a mysterious group trading Undead Essence for a miraculous version of Essence of Life, and for a price, they even extract already absorbed Essence to allow improvement...”

“A good service,” I muttered. The profitable nature of that little offering was certainly fascinating. From what I had seen, it was impossible for the others to absorb two different sources of Divine Spark without conflict, so they wanted to get rid of their weaker source first before replacing it.

And, here they were, Eternals, offering to absorb the weaker source, something they already wanted, for a steep price, and from there, they were offering some kind of exchange service between different Divine Spark — and I doubted they were just doing some equal exchange.

A profitable trade, enough to make me question whether they were here just to profit from the battle ... or their presence actually predated the battle and they were the ones that fueled the battle in the first place.

After all, my memories of Zokras were there to remind me that the Eternals were not above-using undead as convenient patsies for their purpose.

“I wonder if the undead is their only ploy,” I found myself murmuring. After all, the victories of the elves, particularly the High Priest and the Prince, didn’t make much sense either. It almost gave a sense of a choreographed fight.

Pity that was not something the traitor would know. Or would he? “Tell me where you get that acorn from?” I ordered.

“It’s the great invention of the High Priest, allowing us to prevent the undead from resurrecting,” he answered.

Even in a society as structured and xenophobic as the Elven capital.

“But, one more thing to be done,” I murmured as I closed my eyes once more, reaching to Aether Dimension to pull Aether, breaking it down to pure mana, converting it to HP and mana, just in case I met with an emergency.

God Forest had hundreds of thousand of points of mana hidden, of course, but the distance meant that it took a while to reach it. Worse, if anything blocked my access to Aether Dimension, it would also block my access to that stored mana.

I wanted to bring some more.

{Pseudo-HP: 8000}

{Mana: 15000}

With that done, I teleported, ready to shadow Seldanna once more.

It was time to step onto the elven capital.

{Strength: 16 Charisma: 22

Precision: 16 Perception: 16

Agility: 16 Manipulation: 22

Speed: 16 Intelligence: 16

Endurance: 16 Wisdom: 16}

{Purified Divine Spark: 338}

{Pseudo-HP: 8000 Mana: 15000}

{ADDITIONAL SPARKS

Light - Chosen 7.4

Nature - Chosen 10}

{MINIONS

Guardian God Forest - 1452}

Elven Priestess - 70}

[Level: 36 Experience: 631374 / 666000]