Chương 155: Ghosts That Do Not Sleep (Part One)

While the first threads of dawn, with their cold silver light, were desperately trying to cut their way through the thick layers of smoke and drifting ash that still enveloped the sky above Falus Forest, the earth exhaled in relief. Celebrations of victory, tinged with the bitterness of grief and loss, began to spread through every corner of the dark elf village.

The sounds of the elves' mournful chants, those ancient melodies sung to bid farewell to the souls that had returned to nature's embrace, mingled with the faint and hesitant laughter of the survivors. The warriors still could not believe they had escaped the clutches of that Imperial Legion which had been considered an unstoppable force. The camp fires illuminated faces smeared with blood and mud, while warm embraces consoled grieving hearts.

Yet far from the victors' clamor, in the most sacred spot in the dark elf village, a different kind of quiet reigned. Inside the Sacred Healing Chamber, carved with extraordinary care into the heart of the ancient World Tree's trunk, Dex and Lumia lay in a state of forced unconsciousness.

The air inside the legendary room was saturated with the fragrance of rare medicinal herbs that grow only in the depths of Falus, and the place was filled with gentle green magical pulses radiating from the living walls of the tree. The forest itself, with all the life energy it possessed, was attempting to gather up the wounds of the heroes who had driven their bodies to the brink of destruction to protect it.

And yet, at the very moment when everyone, from Okonnor down to the youngest elf in the village, believed the danger had passed with the withdrawal of the shattered Imperial Army's remnants, another kind of danger was moving through the darkness. A silent danger, colder than northern ice. A danger that carried no banners fluttering in the wind, launched no battle cries to terrify enemies, and knew nothing in its vocabulary of mercy or hesitation.

In the abandoned battlefield, where the bodies of Imperial soldiers and elf warriors lay scattered like shattered chess pieces after a bloody match, where the remnants of the melted Eclipse Cannons still emitted faint hissing sounds and groaned with the pain of defeat and cooling metal, five fluid shadows moved without warning. These shadows produced no sound whatsoever as they moved over dry leaves and broken weapons, as though they were an inseparable part of the cold night air itself.

They were not Imperial soldiers left behind, and they were not ordinary mercenaries searching for plunder. They wore faded gray cloaks that did not stir in the wind, cloaks made from a legendary material known as Void Weave: cloth treated alchemically to absorb surrounding light and magical frequencies, rendering its wearer nearly invisible even to the most powerful detection enchantments.

Their faces were covered entirely by blank white masks, devoid of any human features, no eyes, no nose, no mouth, save for a single symbol drawn with terrifying precision on the forehead: a weeping eye in deep purple, staring at the world with cold contempt. These were The Collectors, the elite, covert, and most enigmatic unit of the Shadow Organization. Their task was not to fight on the front lines.

They were specialists in disaster assessment, the retrieval of valuable magical assets, and the analysis of rare mana data in the aftermath of major battles. The first shadow, apparently the commander, stopped above the spot where General Vargas had vaporized. He raised his hand, covered by a fine metal gauntlet, and passed it through the ash.

"Target One, General Vargas, fully neutralized. His earth core, which was considered at the peak of A+ rank, has dissolved into nothing without leaving any recyclable energy trace. Target Two, the Eclipse Cannons, technically destroyed, their primary magical arrays shattered. The Imperial military mission has failed comprehensively," he said in a flat, mechanical voice devoid of any human inflection, as though reading a stockroom inventory report rather than the death of the continent's most powerful general.

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"However..." added a second Collector, whose body moved with a strange and unsettling serpentine flexibility, as he bent to retrieve a charred and torn fragment of Dex's jacket that had fallen in the midst of combat. He brought the fragment close to his silent white mask and began to smell it. This was no biological act of smelling, he was using the superior mana-perception sense that had been implanted into his brain.

And suddenly, the Collector's body gave a faint shudder, an extremely rare physical reaction for killers stripped of their emotions.

"This mana... the residual mana in these burned fibers carries a thermal signature that defies logic. It exceeds the boundaries of ordinary fire mana combustion. In its wave frequencies, it reminds me of a legendary entity that has not appeared in any record since the age of the first dragons and the primordial beasts. This human who felled Vargas, he is no ordinary person. It appears he has awakened a power unknown to the records."

On another section of the destroyed battlefield, a third Collector was crouching on his knees above the spot where Lumia had used her abilities to tear apart the fabric of space. From beneath the edge of his white mask, he extended a tongue, abnormally long, covered in fine glowing magical tattoos. He began sweeping it through the air like a serpent tasting charged air particles.

"The spatial mana residue here is astonishing," the third Collector whispered in a voice resembling the rustle of dead leaves.

"It is no ordinary spatial magic of the kind studied in mage towers, which depends on folding distances. This mana is alien, pure to the point of revulsion, cutting through the very fabric of reality itself. The silver-haired girl is no mere gifted void mage. She carries in her veins the key to something far greater." The five Collectors exchanged silent glances behind their masks. Through the encrypted telepathic network that connected their minds, calculations were shifting at the speed of lightning.

To the Shadow Organization, territories, borders, cities, and even armies were nothing but childish games belonging to arrogant emperors and kings. Their true objective was the Bloodline, the primordial powers, and control over the very laws that governed the cosmos itself. The intelligence they had gathered in mere minutes from analyzing this rubble was worth more in strategic value than the lives of a thousand generals in the mold of the great Vargas.

"Decision: mission objectives revised from assessment to retrieval of living assets," the commander pronounced through the mental link in his cold voice, rising slowly.

"We must obtain a pure sample of her blood, or preferably, take the body entirely before she regains consciousness and activates her complex innate defenses. As for the human bearing the signature of an unknown beast, he is to be terminated immediately, as there is insufficient data on the viability of his retrieval, and to forestall the incalculable risks that may arise upon his awakening." Without any further words, the Collectors began their infiltration toward the village.

The elven defenses were tighter than anything seen on any previous night, hundreds of warriors filled the hanging wooden corridors, nerve-paralysis poisoned arrows trained on every shifting shrub, and detection enchantments that sensed body heat and the pulse of hearts filled the air like an invisible net. But the Collectors did not walk upon the ground as ordinary beings do. They were masters of the Shadow Dimension, a dark and cold parallel dimension that lay just beneath the surface of the physical world.

They merged with the darkness stretching beneath the tree trunks, transforming into near-spectral matter and passing through the powerful magical defenses as a sharp knife passes through warm butter. To them, the elves' conventional magic, built on the elements of nature, was nothing more than an open and outdated book that was easy to circumvent. They arrived with the lightness of ghosts at the entrance to the Sacred Healing Chamber at the World Tree's main trunk.

The two elite dark elf warriors standing guard at the door, men so intensely focused that they could hear the heartbeat of insects beneath tree bark, dropped suddenly to their knees and then to the ground without making a single sound. There was little blood scattered, only extremely fine incisions and terrifying wounds at the throat, cut with invisible blades made of solid mana that dissolved the tissue before severing it.

The heavy wooden door swung open slowly, and the five killers entered the room in absolute silence.