Luo Xun stared into the darkness, his eyes wide open.
He hadn’t just woken up; he hadn’t slept at all.
The bed was excessively soft.
The feather mattress felt like a cloud, and the linen sheets were smooth and smelled of fresh sunlight.
But sleep eluded him.
Too many thoughts were churning in his head, making it throb with pain.
The tragic sight of Silvermoon City, Rommath’s razor-sharp gaze, Alice’s hushed argument with her father—and that House Sunfire, which shouldn’t have existed in the first place.
Then he heard a noise.
It wasn’t speaking; it was something else.
A muffled groan, suppressed but unable to be fully contained, bubbling up from the back of a throat.
It sounded like the low whimper of a beaten beast, only far more…
painful.
The sound was drifting up from downstairs.
Luo Xun sat up without making a sound.
He slipped into his dusty spare hunting gear, stepped barefoot onto the wooden floor, and quietly crept over to the door.
The corridor outside was empty, save for a shaft of moonlight angling in from the window at the far end.
The groans grew clearer, coming from the direction of the staircase.
Luo Xun paused for a second.
This was none of his business.
An outsider like him shouldn’t meddle in an elven household’s private troubles.
Yet, curiosity ultimately overrode his common sense.
He tiptoed down the stairs.
The manor was silent, and most of the rooms were dark.
The groaning drew closer, coming from the direction of the kitchen.
Luo Xun slipped toward it.
The kitchen door was slightly ajar, casting a dim, yellow glow.
He stopped outside and peeked through the crack.
The kitchen was spacious, designed in typical elven fashion.
But right now, it looked like a makeshift medical ward.
A person lay on the long table.
It was a young male elf wearing a servant’s gray robe.
He was curled up, his fingers clawing desperately at his own chest, knuckles white with exertion.
His face was contorted beyond the usual refined elven features; his lips were bitten raw and bleeding, and the veins on his forehead and neck bulged violently.
His entire body shivered—not a standard shudder, but a violent, racking tremor that seemed to seep from the marrow of his bones, seizing every muscle.
What made Luo Xun’s heart sink even more was what he saw with his energy vision.
This elf should have possessed a steady golden aura.
But now, that aura was flickering violently, like a flame whipped by a gale.
Worse yet, the aura was riddled with a dense web of black cracks.
Starting from his chest, these cracks spread outward toward his limbs and head.
With every inch they crawled, the elf’s body convulsed more violently.
What the hell…
was this?
Three people stood by the long table.
One was an older female elf, using a damp cloth to wipe the cold sweat from the young elf’s brow.
Another, who looked like a butler, held a bowl of steaming medicinal broth.
The third was Alice.
She stood by the fireplace with her back to the door, wearing a simple dark-blue house robe, her hair cascading loosely over her shoulders.
The butler carefully poured the medicine down the young elf’s throat.
A few breaths later, the man’s spasms began to ease, turning from violent shaking into minor twitches.
Slowly, he opened his eyes, revealing unfocused, bloodshot blue pupils.
“My Lady…” the elf rasped.
“I’m sorry…
I…
I couldn’t hold it in…” “How long has it been since the onset?” Alice asked, her voice very soft.
“Three…
three days ago…
I thought…
I could endure it…” Alice closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
When she opened them, she reached out and gently patted the young elf’s shoulder.
“Get some rest.
We will find a way tomorrow.” The young elf nodded, tears slipping from the corners of his eyes.
They were tears of shame, not of pain.
The older female elf and the butler helped support the young elf and led him out.
Alice was left alone in the kitchen.
She stood where she was, motionless, staring down at the spilled broth on the table.
Moonlight poured through the window, stretching her shadow long and thin, making her look incredibly lonely.
Luo Xun stood outside the door for a long time.
Reason dictated that he should leave immediately; this was not a scene an outsider should witness.
But he didn’t budge.
His mind was racing, mapping everything he had just seen onto the “game lore” he knew.
Mana addiction.
In the game, the blood elves suffered from mana addiction.
Once the Sunwell exploded and their primary source of energy was cut off, they plunged into withdrawal.
If it got severe enough, they would go mad or die.
But that was just background lore in a game, a mere plot device to explain the story’s direction.
Now, the real version was unfolding right before his eyes in vivid detail.
It wasn’t a debuff icon floating above a character’s head, nor was it a tragedy conveyed through a few lines of dialogue.
It was a real, living elf experiencing a genuine physical and physiological breakdown.
Luo Xun felt his stomach churn.
He suddenly understood why those elves in Silvermoon City had fear in their eyes.
They weren’t afraid of someone from another race; they were afraid of fading away.
They feared they would end up like this, and they feared their loved ones were already going through it.
He also understood why Alice had risked her life to go to that ruined tower in the Ghostlands.
She was looking for a way out.
Not a temporary fix, but a literal lifeline.
Inside the kitchen, Alice finally moved.
She walked over to the fireplace, took a clay jar down from the shelf, and opened it.
It was empty.
She opened another—also empty.
A third, a fourth…
every single jar was bone dry.
She stood there, staring at the empty jars, her shoulders beginning to tremble.
It wasn’t the tremor of crying, but something far more repressed and hopeless.
Like someone standing at the edge of a cliff, looking down into a bottomless abyss, knowing she could save no one—not even herself.
Luo Xun pushed open the door.
The wooden door creaked softly.
Alice whipped around, her golden eyes like those of a startled deer in the moonlight.
When she saw Luo Xun, the panic in her eyes turned to surprise, and then into…
embarrassment?
“How…
why are you here?” her voice was a little raspy.
“Couldn’t sleep,” Luo Xun said, walking into the kitchen, his voice steady.
“I heard a noise, so I came down to check.” Alice fell silent for a few seconds.
Then she turned around, her back to him, and began to clean up the spilled broth on the table.
Her movements were slow, almost mechanical.
“Did you see?” she asked in a low voice.
“I did.” Luo Xun walked over to the side of the table.
Alice didn’t look back.
She rinsed the damp cloth, hung it up, and wiped her hands.
She deliberately slowed down every movement, as if trying to buy time.
The moonlight fell on her profile; her beautiful face was pale as paper.
She stared at those empty jars for a long time.
Luo Xun suddenly realized something.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to talk about it; she just didn’t know how.
How could she explain it?
Should she call it mana addiction?
Should she admit it was a city-wide withdrawal that all of Silvermoon City was suffering through?
Or that she was holding on herself, just barely lasting longer than that young elf?
How humiliating such a confession would be, especially for the proud elves.
Luo Xun stood in the center of the kitchen.
The moonlight stretched his shadow, overlaying it with Alice’s.
This journey to Silvermoon City had only just begun.
And the reason this woman had brought him here might not have been out of simple gratitude for saving her life.