Chương 123: The Stolen Plan

Under the crushing weight of this horrifying combination, the precise physical torment of phoenix fire feeding on his nerve pathways and devouring his body's mana from within, and the overwhelming psychological terror that had stripped him of even the hope of a quick death, the spy broke completely. It wasn't a gradual collapse; it was like a great dam giving way beneath a black flood.

The image of the unbreakable "Silent Killer," that legend the Shadow Organization had long sung to terrorize its enemies, shattered into pieces. The creed of blind loyalty evaporated in the heat of his pain, and in its place was left a broken creature, nothing but a human husk, shaking violently, sobbing and weeping like a child lost in a forest of nightmares.

"Stop... please! I'm begging you! I'll tell you everything! I'll sell every one of them!" the spy screamed, his voice hoarse and torn, hot tears streaming from his eyes to mix with the blood and saliva on his disfigured face. He gasped violently, every breath seeming to tear at his lungs. He had reached the point where he was ready to sell out the entire Empire, sell out its very gods, for a single second's relief from this systematic agony.

Dex extinguished the fire feather in his hand with a slow motion and stepped back, leaving the spy hanging from the burning chains. He said nothing, only gave a slight, cold nod, a signal to begin speaking. The spy began listing the details, and every word that left his charred mouth seemed heavier than the last, like stones dropping into a pool of blood.

"It's... it's not what you think," the spy began, struggling, his chest heaving.

"The attack from outside is just a shell for something bigger, something far filthier. Lord Sylvester Williams... he's the true mastermind. He didn't stop at sending the Sixth Legion under imperial orders to press the border. He sent an entirely different, secret unit. He sent the Organization's own Suicide Squad, and we're part of it. We didn't come to gather intelligence. We're here for purely executive missions.

We wore the stolen dark elf armor, memorized their language and customs, to infiltrate the heart of the village in the middle of the chaos." The spy swallowed his dry throat with great difficulty, his gray eyes rolling in their sockets with horror as he recalled the details of the plan. He went on, his voice shaking: "Our mission isn't to fight face to face. We're not warriors, we're saboteurs. Our real task is to slip down...

to the deepest point, and plant Seeds of Ruin in the main roots of the great tree that holds up your cursed village." Dex's pupils narrowed.

"Seeds of Ruin?"

"Yes," the spy nodded quickly, terrified Dex would reach for the fire again.

"Highly concentrated, unstable chemical mana-bombs. Manufactured in the Organization's secret labs. They don't detonate at once, they're planted in the bark, where they feed slowly on the natural mana flowing through the tree's roots, like greedy parasites. Once they reach critical mass, timed to coincide with the very first shell General Vargas's cannons fire at dawn... they'll all go off in a chain of catastrophic reactions." Did you know this story is from Royal Road?

Read the official version for free and support the author. The spy fell silent for a moment, as if dreading the weight of his next words, but a single look from Dex's eyes made him hurry to continue: "The goal isn't to breach the walls... the goal is to blow out the foundation. The goal is to detonate the great tree from its very roots, bring the entire village crashing down out of the sky, and crush every dark elf beneath millions of tons of burning wood and stone."

Dex went completely still, his eyes widening slightly in the darkness. He wasn't shocked, he was processing the information at the speed of a calculation engine.

"He wants to bring the whole village down out of the sky? One single strike, erasing an entire history?"

"Yes!" the spy confirmed, his voice taking on a note of hysteria.

"He wants total annihilation, not one prisoner left alive. But... there's another surprise. General Vargas, commander of the Vesos Hawks out there, doesn't know a single word of this part of the plan. Lord Sylvester led him to believe he'd be leading a conventional battle to break open the border and reclaim the forest's treasures for the Empire." The spy coughed, blood running from the corner of his mouth, before adding the true catastrophe: "Sylvester plans to bury the imperial army too.

When the great tree collapses, its wreckage won't just fall on the village, the entire great tree will come down on top of the valley where the Sixth Legion is camped. Vargas and his men will be crushed under burning rubble. Sylvester wants to wipe out the forest, wipe out the dark elves, and wipe out the elite Hawks legion in a single stroke. Why? To cover up his greater crime: stealing the World Tree's Nectar. There will be no witnesses, no survivors left to tell what happened.

Sylvester will rise from the ashes as the lone hero, the man who sacrificed an army to break the great threat, and who seized the Emperor's precious treasure for the crown... while keeping the lion's share for himself, to cement his own power." In that moment, amid the rot and damp of the vault, Dex felt a deep cold spread through his veins, a cold that had nothing to do with the air around him, but came from a profound understanding of just how vast the darkness he now faced truly was.

His uncle, Sylvester Williams, was no mere greedy noble hungry for power, no court politician playing games of influence. He was a true monster, a being stripped of even a single atom of human empathy. He was willing to burn an entire legion of his own country's finest soldiers, poison his own elder brother slowly to death, and erase an entire people from existence, all to build himself a staircase of skulls up to the seat of absolute power.

Sylvester's plan was an act of pure evil, brilliant in its bloodiness, flawless in its treachery.

"What a perfect bastard," Dex muttered, his voice low, barely audible. And despite his absolute hatred for his uncle, he felt a strange, twisted sort of respect for the man's devilish intelligence.

"He's not playing the chessboard to win. He wants to burn the board with everyone still on it, just to make sure no one else gets to play. He wants to wipe the table clean." Dex studied the broken spy hanging before him. He had the missing piece of the puzzle now. Tomorrow's battle wouldn't be a mere defense of wooden walls, it would be a fight for survival against a scheduled extermination. Dex turned and prepared to leave.

It was time to turn this devil's blueprint into a weapon that would strike back at the heart of the one who'd forged it.