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「——Lady Weiser, your flute playing is truly beautiful. Would you teach me?」
No matter when, that girl’s smile was always so dazzling. Her long hair, like flowing gold, shimmered beneath the sunlight of the garden…
Seated beside a tree, a woman playing a leaf flute had once looked upon her with great envy.
“Captain General… Captain General!”
Elisis’s quiet prompting finally brought Lai Wei An Se back from her daze. She blinked her eyes slightly and refocused her attention on the scene before her.
“Forgive me, Duke. It seems the Captain General is somewhat fatigued. If you would please—”
Inside a meeting hall in the middle layer of the Crown Giant Tree, a council of nobles regarding the recent anomalies in the Sea of Trees was underway.
Seeing the Captain General silent and seemingly lost in thought, Elisis, the captain of the Quiet Wind Village’s forest domain, spoke up to cover for her.
“Fatigued? Elisis, do you know the situation right now? Do you know what position the person who is so ‘fatigued’ she cannot even answer my question holds?”
Before she could finish, the ruler of the Quiet Wind Village Forest Domain, Duke Arne, cut her off, his face contorted with rage. It seemed he had just directed a question at Lai Wei An Se but had received no response.
“Lai Wei An Se·Nelf… She is the Captain General of the Ranger Corps! The commander of a hundred thousand rangers in this Sea of Trees! At this very moment, when the Royal Court has been attacked and the important ministers of every forest domain have gathered here, she sits there as vacant as if she just woke from sleep! Can such a shameful state really be brushed off with a single word like ‘fatigue’—”
“Ah. I think Arne is just overreacting. The Captain General’s reaction seems perfectly normal to me.”
The one who spoke was an Elf Noble with a sinister air about him.
He rested his chin on his hand, leaning against the armrest of his chair… His languid, half-lidded appearance stood in stark contrast to Duke Arne, who had slammed his palm on the table with eyes blazing.
“Duke Elrend, no one asked for your opinion.”
Duke Arne turned his dark face toward him, practically grinding out each word.
“Hasn’t the meeting already reached the stage of open discussion? Since His Majesty is not present, aren’t we the only ones who can freely speak here? Besides, don’t bring your emotions over your daughter’s injury onto the meeting table… Everyone here knows you’re the fool who nearly started a war with my forest domain just because your daughter got into a minor scuffle with her fellow rangers.”
“You bastard…!”
In the face of his fury, the ruler of the Ancient Forest Domain, Duke Ellend, remained utterly unmoved.
He slowly shifted his gaze toward Lai Wei An Se, then spoke:
“Captain General, please don’t take it to heart. You must have been frightened out of your wits when you received the news as well, weren’t you? A subordinate you personally dispatched on a mission turned out to be the suspect who cast the curse into Mirror Lake.”
“Duke Ellend. Her Majesty the Queen has already made her judgment—the Captain General has nothing to do with this matter.”
Duke Ellend’s words made Elisis furrow her brow.
“Isn’t the investigation still ongoing? The reason she hasn’t been suspended from duty pending review despite being suspect is because Her Majesty has always been merciful, and also out of consideration for the Nelf Family Head’s face and her past achievements.”
He cast a glance at Elisis, then continued in a suddenly cold tone:
“Moreover, based on the current findings, Arne’s precious daughter and that ranger who cast the curse should both be in your squad, Captain Elisis, isn’t that right? You haven’t cleared your own suspicion either, yet here you are defending others without pause? Could it be that the members of your Nelf Family are covering for one another?”
His words stirred a commotion among the assembled nobles and courtiers… A quarrel of mutual suspicion and mutual accusation erupted on the spot.
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Lai Wei An Se left the Crown Giant Tree and headed toward her family’s Giant Tree Nelf.
That meeting… or rather, that quarrel was still ongoing.
Lai Wei An Se did not wait for it to end before excusing herself on the grounds of poor health.
In her place, Elisis and her adjutant remained to continue facing the ministers’ interrogations.
Her departure only intensified the quarrel.
Had it not been for the fact that the Queen’s decision not to restrict her movements already demonstrated, to some degree, the Queen’s trust in her, most of those in that meeting hall would not have let her leave so easily.
“…”
Even now, as she walked through the streets and across the covered bridge, Lai Wei An Se could feel countless eyes watching her every move.
Casting a curse into Mirror Lake while the Queen was participating in the Barrier Trial… This was a great crime of treason.
And Lai Wei An Se and Elisis, who had ties to the now-dead traitor, had naturally become major suspects.
Lai Wei An Se roughly knew which factions those eyes staring at her belonged to.
She knew that the political enemies who had been suppressed by the Nelf Family for centuries—the rulers of the Four Great Forest Domains—would never let this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity slip away.
If she made even the slightest suspicious move, it would immediately become material for these people to attack her and her family in future meetings.
Though the political entities ruling the Sea of Trees had long remained separate… when they gathered together, they ultimately still followed the systems and norms of human society.
And now that the thousand-year-old exclusionism and isolation of the Sea of Trees was gradually being broken by the revolution rising from humanity, the ways of thinking among the Elves manipulating these entities had become unavoidably more and more like those humans.
This was an alienation. Lai Wei An Se believed that her efforts in recent years—struggling against the faction led by Nephtalia—were precisely to prevent this from happening.
As a member of the Nelf Family, she felt it was her duty to help the Fairy Race, amid the drastic changes of the era, retain what was true and discard what was false, marching toward a better future.
Even though she had already fallen behind in the struggle, she still believed that as long as she seized the right opportunity, she could reverse the situation… She had thought so not long ago.
“But Se La… why would she do something like that? Where did that curse come from? And Mother…”
As the Acting Head of the Nelf Family and the Captain General of the Sea of Trees Ranger Corps, she was accustomed to maintaining her composure in any situation, thinking in the clearest and most efficient manner, then making decisions.
But today, when she was berated by Iyue in front of that palace on Lake Heart Island, her composure was utterly shattered.
Mother… did she really do such a thing to Nefi?
When she heard that Se La had died, she could still remain calm. But she could not maintain her usual rationality under her niece’s accusations.
Given her status, her position, and her understanding of Iyue… she should have dismissed the girl’s words as some kind of frantic venting brought on by extreme psychological pressure.
That would not be strange at all, because that child bore such trauma in her heart.
Moreover, the Trial of the Barrier was said to be an Illusion Realm that affected the mind… and Nefi was still unconscious because of it.
Under those circumstances, it was entirely reasonable for her to conjure up some fanciful imaginings and blurt out nonsense while swept up in emotion—
But the look of hatred in Iyue’s eyes at that moment was just as clear and lucid as when the two had first met.
That child was no longer as defiant, cold, and prickly as she once had been… The life-and-death experiences she had endured along her journey had long since transformed her.
Yet her anger was still as clear as when she had been pinned to the ground by the guards, and those eyes of hers, so alike to Iruna’s, still shone just as brightly—
“Sister Weiser, I’m serious. I have met the person I wish to spend my life with. The oath I swore with him shall never waver.”
Just as before, Lai Wei An Se could not dismiss such words as the ravings of someone out of her mind.