[Elara arrived already? That’s insanely fast!]
[Is anyone at the scene? We need a live broadcast! I’m currently on the road!]
[I’m right here! The Holy Spirit Alliance is actually exploding! There are flames shooting into the sky, and warning fireworks are going off everywhere!]
[Confirmed! I can hear the sounds of combat.]
[Elara has the gates blocked. She’s standing right outside the outer sentry tower of the Holy Spirit Alliance, surrounded by a massive escort!]
[Holy shit! She’s parading a whole squad of Water Tribe soldiers, some alive, some dead!]
[Hiss... could it be that the rumors inside the Holy Spirit Alliance are true...]
Updates on the public channel cascaded in real-time, flooding the network with conflicting reports and live commentary feeds.
A vast portion of the audience remained transfixed by the convoy of Water Tribe prisoners Elara had brought in her wake.
Observing from a distance under the pale moonlight, onlookers could clearly discern that the captured aquatic soldiers were entirely broken, drained of vitality and bearing the distinct posture of helpless detainees.
Just behind them, the slain bodies of other water tribe fighters, wrapped simply in rough straw mats, were being dragged along in open trailers.
The elven domain’s soldiers had deliberately hoisted torches aloft while allied spellcasters projected light-enhancing elemental factors across the sector.
This ensured that every spectator observing from the surrounding hills could witness the grim reality with absolute clarity.
Yet the majority of regional observers maintained their primary focus on the volatile state of the Holy Spirit Alliance itself.
Beyond the unbroken chain of perimeter watchtowers, miles deep into the residential zones, raging fires lit up the night sky, carrying a thick stench of acrid smoke across the plains.
The billowing black clouds signaled a massive, destructive incursion.
Had the perimeter lords not just witnessed Elara’s column arriving from the outside, they might easily have concluded that Elara’s forces were launching an all-out assault on the capital.
Yet within the Southern District, the Holy Spirit Alliance stood unchallenged as the largest and most powerful coalition. What domestic force could possibly overwhelm them from within?
If this was not a foreign invasion, the terrifying implication remained: absolute, bloody internal strife.
Why would the Holy Spirit Alliance tear itself apart from the inside out?
A growing number of lords redirected their anxious gazes back toward the line of aquatic corpses displayed so openly by Elara...
Elara frowned deeply as she caught sight of the distant signal flare and rolling smoke.
The distress flare had been dispatched by Marta to signal active combat and urgent escalation, prompting their immediate intervention.
Elara glanced over her shoulder toward the rear of the column. Toji Hisami remained stationed comfortably at the back, perfectly sheltered within the protective perimeter of the Xuanwu Guards.
Unmistakably, profound anomalies were unfolding within the heart of the Holy Spirit Alliance, most likely Musa executing a brutal, pre-emptive internal purge.
Everything was proceeding precisely according to Toji Hisami’s strategic projections. Following Elara’s public ultimatum, the leadership of the Holy Spirit Alliance had finally been driven past their breaking point.
Circumstances forced their hand, compelling them to forcibly stabilize the coalition before Elara could physically reach their doorstep.
Regardless of how bloodthirsty or draconian their methods might be, they operated under the assumption that a swift, overwhelming suppression would bury the scandal.
Yet because Elara had meticulously timed her public broadcast halfway through their transit as instructed by Toji Hisami, the enemy’s timetable had been completely thrown off.
That minor temporal misalignment had triggered a cascading series of tactical failures.
Now, under the relentless scrutiny of the entire Southern District, the internal rot and absolute hypocrisy of the Holy Spirit Alliance lay brutally exposed to the world!
Countless member lords of the alliance monitoring the public channel discussions were struck dumb with horror.
Even certain faction lords who had previously aligned with Musa found their loyalty fracturing in the face of such blatant atrocities, exploding with furious demands on the internal alliance channels.
A handful of dissenters went so far as to mobilize their personal territorial garrisons, marching out of their designated boundaries with the explicit intent of intervening to halt the slaughter.
Meanwhile, amidst the raging inferno consuming the elven sector, maritime waves flooded the woodlands.
The aquatic chieftain Ike drove his combat units forward at breakneck velocity, relentlessly pursuing the fleeing survivors.
The Elephant Man lord charged alongside him, his sanity severely fractured by the sudden, violent death of his close ally, the Tiger Lord.
"Gather the vanguard! We are breaking straight through!"
Elara raised her scepter high, and the elven elites behind her unholstered their weapons in unison.
Flanked by her vanguard, Elara charged directly past the boundary markers into the core territory of the Holy Spirit Alliance.
Sentinels stationed atop the perimeter watchtowers sounded frantic alarm bells, but Elara ignored them entirely, hurtling straight through their lines.
One eager sentinel reached for a heavy siege crossbow to halt the intrusion, only to have his wrist slapped down hard by a companion.
"What are you doing?! They are invading!"
"Invading? Open your eyes and look behind us! Look at what they did to Taima’s domain!"
Not every guard manning the outer watchtowers belonged to Musa’s fanatical loyalists; the majority were ordinary members who felt a rising tide of nausea and rage at the night’s events.
Elara had made her operational objective explicitly clear: she was marching to rescue her butchered comrades. They possessed neither justification nor desire to impede her.
Subsequent events validated the sentinels’ restraint.
As Elara’s column penetrated deeper into the sprawling sectors of the Holy Spirit Alliance, local patrols simply parted their ranks, offering zero resistance.
The mighty coalition allowed Elara’s force to march unimpeded into the heart of their domain.
Finally, just before reaching the perimeter of the targeted elven settlement, Elara spotted Ai Lan standing triumphantly atop a low, rolling ridge in the distance.
At that exact second, a thunderous crash echoed from the surrounding treeline.
Marta and the elite swordsmen erupted out of the brush, escorting the surviving allied lords and their remaining retainers to safety.
Simultaneously, a massive wall of cascading river water surged in from the rear, bearing Ike and his aquatic enforcers, their weapons drawn and their expressions twisted into masks of murderous intent.
Locking eyes with Elara across the clearing, Ike’s sclera instantly flooded with blood.
The elite units he had dispatched to ambush Elara along her initial route represented the lifelong pride of his territory, and they had been utterly obliterated in a single day!
"Elara! You are begging for death!"
"Ike! You are an unforgivable criminal aiding and abetting monsters!"
Elara and Ike traded venomous retorts. The scepter in her hand flared outward as its decorative wings expanded, deploying a dense lattice of protective elven spells around her position.
The roaring torrent directed by Ike crashed against her barrier, but the concentrated magic output rapidly flash-froze the rushing water into jagged ice crystals, arresting its forward momentum cold.
Elsewhere across the alliance capital, the independent lords who had mobilized their garrisons found themselves abruptly intercepted midway by heavy cordons.
They quickly recognized the uniform insignia of the Alliance United Guards, a standing military force jointly funded and manned by all constituent lords to guarantee the collective security of the coalition.
The personnel serving within the United Guards were drawn from diverse member territories across the alliance.
Yet at that moment, those soldiers displayed a chilling indifference toward their respective masters, offering absolute silence in response to shouted demands.
Cold, unblinking steel was the sole answer they received.
The United Guards firmly barred all local lords from advancing further toward the residential sector.
The lords watching the unfolding betrayal felt a deep, piercing chill settle into their marrow.
Concurrently, as Elara’s vanguard rendezvoused with Marta’s extraction unit, the heavy-plated formations of the half-dragon army materialized from the mist.
They marched into position flanking Elara’s detachment with terrifying discipline, their equipment polished and uniform.
Stepping to the fore of the half-dragon phalanx came Musa himself, clad in full battle regalia.
The half-dragon lord’s face remained utterly devoid of expression, save for his bloodshot eyes, which burned with the volatile instability of a boiling psyche.
Directly behind Ai Lan, her elite orc shock troops assumed combat stances, while behind Elara’s position, the enraged Elephant Man lord led his towering infantry forward, plugging every avenue of retreat with a wall of massive frames.
Sandwiched between Ike’s aquatic forces ahead and the half-dragon phalanx to their flanks, Elara’s group found themselves ringed by hostile combatants on every conceivable vector.
The classic tactical posture of a turtle trapped inside a cooking urn had materialized.
Ai Lan’s earlier gloom dissolved entirely, replaced by a radiant, triumphant smirk.
Surveying the field, she contrasted the overwhelming, crushing strength of her surrounding armies against Elara’s meager, isolated contingent.
"You brought such a pathetic handful of soldiers, yet you possess the audacity to march into the capital and demand explanations. Exactly who gave you such misplaced courage, Elara?"
Ai Lan’s voice dripped with unbridled contempt and a toxic, intoxicating sense of superiority.
She mentally previewed the imminent spectacle of Elara dropping to her knees to plead for mercy.
Though her original faction held a comfortable position of dominance, Elara’s reckless intervention had shattered the delicate facade of their political control.
"A few stray, pathetic lords accompanied by an insignificant rabble, Elara, your life ends tonight!"
"You are the true traitor who sold out the Sacred Realm, not us!"
"With the inevitable ascension of the Holy Sacred Realm, your antiquated ideologies are obsolete! You are nothing more than remnants of a dying era!"
Ai Lan raised her voice deliberately, funneling her mana into the projection so that her declaration carried far across half the territory of the alliance.
Every independent observer listening in caught her words with crystal clarity.
The faces of the surviving lords rescued by Marta turned deathly ashen.
Most of them had sustained grievous injuries during the purge, leaving only two or three bedraggled retainers alive out of their entire domains.
Among them, the male elven lord who, much like Elara, had once been celebrated as a twin pillar of the elven leadership, stood trembling with shame.
Out of all the elven domains participating in this trial session, only his faction and Elara’s had managed to endure, yet he was the sole survivor among his peers who had even managed to salvage his primary territory crystal.
The remaining allied lords of his faction were effectively reduced to political pariahs, standing mere steps away from permanent system elimination.