Miles away from the pristine, hyper-luxurious canopy of Ellassara Castle, the architecture of Yggdrasil grew progressively dark, damp, and rustic. Down in the lower roots of the metropolis where the sylvan fog clung heavily to the bark-streets, a small, unremarkable tavern sat hidden from the eyes of the Royal Guard. True to the craftsmanship of the realm, the structure hadn't been built by carpenters; the middle-tier inn had been entirely grown straight out of the ground via low-grade druidic magic, its thick outer wooden walls still rough, mossy, and smelling heavily of aged earth and damp timber.
Inside, tucked away in the furthest, unlit corner of the tavern, sat a solitary figure. The man kept his head low, completely isolated from the local working-class patrons. He was clad in a heavy, tattered black trench coat that completely covered his broad frame, and his face was entirely obscured behind a dark cloth wrap, leaving nothing but his cold, calculating eyes visible under the brim of his hood.
The heavy grown-cedar door of the inn creaked open, letting in a gust of cold night air. Another man, dressed entirely in pristine, form-fitting black leather stealth gear that looked like a common Rogue class template, quietly scanned the tavern before locking eyes on the corner booth. He walked up to him with a swift, soundless pace, his boots making zero noise against the packed earthen floor.
The man in the trench coat didn't look up, his fingers lightly tapping a slow, threatening rhythm against his wooden mug as his contact finally stopped right before his table. The man whispered to the newcomer, his voice a low, raspy gravel that barely carried over the ambient chatter of the tavern. "Were you able to get it done?"
The newcomer didn't answer immediately. He sighed heavily, looking around worriedly as he cast a sharp, paranoid glance around the room to check every table, ensuring no hidden royal spies or palace ears were tracking their perimeter. Once satisfied they were temporarily safe, he leaned down close, speaking in a low, hushed voice.
"I've sent ten of my best men so far," the newcomer said, his eyes darting nervously back to the tattered hood of his superior. "And not a single one of them has returned."
A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the table as the newcomer’s words hung in the damp air of the inn. Ten elite operatives vanished without a trace, turned into silent fertilizer beneath the roots of the capital.
The man in the tattered black trench coat slowly stopped tapping his wooden mug. He leaned back into the shadows of the grown-cedar booth, his eyes narrowing to razor-thin slits. When he spoke again, his whisper carried a bitter, venomous edge.
"As long as that unmoving pillar is around her, you will never get to her," the man hissed, his cloth-wrapped jaw tightening. "Kristorf is a human fortress. The second your men cross the outer threshold of her wing, his snapping turtle soul completely seals the perimeter. Attempting to slip an assassin past him inside Ellassara Castle is a mathematical suicide run."
The newcomer swallowed hard, nervously adjusting the dark leather collar of his stealth gear. "Plus... she almost never leaves her room in the castle anyway. The King has kept her under total, high-security quarantine since the birth night. We can’t stage an accident if she's constantly locked behind five layers of grown-cedar doors and a full vanguard guard detachment."
The newcomer leaned even closer across the sticky wooden table, his voice dropping an octave lower, trembling with a mix of exhaustion and genuine confusion. He looked at the tattered hood of the man in the trench coat, pleading with his eyes.
"And besides... there's no guarantee she'll get the title, right?" the newcomer muttered in a desperate, frantic hush. "Why kill the poor girl now? Why not wait and see if your own daughter gets the title first? That's what you're after anyway, right...?"
A chilling, deathly silence slammed down over the booth.
The man in the black trench coat slowly raised his hands to his face, his silver claws glinting in the dim tavern light as he pulled down the cloth mouth-wrap. The tattered hood fell back, revealing the sharp, aristocratic features and cutthroat emerald eyes of Duke Kornel Dah Evergreen himself. He didn't look like a generic thug; he looked like a supreme High-Elf lord who had stepped directly into the dirt of the lower roots just to supervise an assassination matrix.
Kornel didn't blink. He just stared at his subordinate with an expression of cold, unyielding calculation.
"Because waiting is a gamble, and House Evergreen does not gamble with the sovereign line," Kornel hissed, his voice a freezing whisper that cut like ice. "My daughter, Talestia, possesses a high-tier beast soul, yes. But as long as the late Queen's direct bloodline draws breath, the Appraisal Stone will always favor her lineage by default. If the Glitch survives to touch that terminal at the debut party, the system's baseline inheritance metrics will automatically lock her into the matriarchal track. I am not killing a 'poor girl.' I am surgically removing a biological variable before it can ruin our family's entire thirty-thousand-year political destiny."
"But if we fail before the Appraisal Ceremony..." the newcomer stammered, his eyes darting frantically to Kornel’s cold emerald gaze. "What happens then? Artwin’s grip on her will only tighten once her Class is out in the open."
A slow, malicious grin broke across the Duke's sharp face. His eyes lit up with a terrifying, predatory spark.
"Oh... yes," Kornel whispered, a soft, chilling laugh bubbling up from his throat. "Yes, that is exactly what we will do. Isolation can protect a child, but it cannot protect a royal heir from the ancient laws of education. The moment she touches that stone, she will be legally required to attend the royal preparatory academy. Even the King cannot bypass the supreme education protocols of the First Pillar."
The newcomer blinked, leaning in. "You mean... we strike her while she’s a student?"
"Better than that," Kornel hissed, his voice dropping into a dark, gleeful rasp. "As an Evergreen lord, I sit at the head of the academic board. Once she is enrolled, I will forcefully push for her class to conduct their mandatory field exam inside that place. I will push for them to use the new dungeon that formed in the Queen's wake."
The newcomer gasped, his face draining of what little color it had left. "The catastrophe site? The spatial rift left behind by her death?"
"Exactly!" Duke Kornel threw his head back, letting out a sharp, echoed burst of villainous laughter that sent a shiver down the spine of every patron in the tavern. "Hahaha! Think of the poetic justice of it all! To be slaughtered inside a hundred-floor scaling dungeon completely framed by your own mother's monstrous power! Let Artwin hide her behind his unmoving vanguard knights for now. The second she steps into The Queen's Lament, she belongs to me."
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WORLD TREE HISTORICAL LOG // THE ENERGY COMPONENT SOURCE
======================================================================
▶ FILE CLASSIFICATION : [RESTRICTED MASTER DATA // LEVEL 04 SYLVAN CLEARANCE]
▶ METRIC ENGINE SOURCE: MASTER ARCHIVE INTERNAL RADION LEDGER
▶ RE-ROLL TERMINOLOGY : MANA ENHANCEMENT MATRIX // FACTION VARIANCE
[THE HISTORICAL ENERGY OVERLAP PROFILE]
The environmental fuel source that the modern entities of Befredon call
"Mana" is not a natural atmospheric property or a mystical gift from
the canopy.
The planetary tracking ledger hardcodes this resource as ancient,
high-potency **Divine Radiation Fallout**.
This radioactive energy grid is the direct lingering residue of the War
of the Gods that violently ruptured the planet two million years ago.
When the old human pantheon and celestial architectures clashed with
unbridled, world-shaking velocity, their final high-tier spell processing
passes completely vaporized their divine cores. The resulting cataclysm
saturated the atmosphere, continents, and soil with a lethal, immortal
fallout matrix.
[THE SYSTEM ENERGY MATRIX METRICS]
█ THE RADION RESERVOIR OVERLAY
- SYSTEM PROPERTY : The World Tree acts as a global filtration engine,
siphoning the raw, toxic divine fallout from the
deep underworld veins and processing it into a
gamified energy network.
- BIOLOGICAL IMPACT: Modern generations draw this energy grid into their
absorption pathway reservoirs to channel spells,
reinforce cellular walls, and activate core specs.
█ THE CULTURAL BIAS DATABASE
- BEFREDON FACTION : The elven and beast-kin societies view this processed
fallout as a holy blessing, calling it "Mana."
- KIRRA DATA LOGS : The thirty-five-year-old corporate worker brain
accurately identifies this field as an active,
radioactive battery network that requires strict
internal filtration control to prevent total cellular
system failure.
======================================================================