Shut up, brave man! I don't want to atone for my sins to you!

Upon hearing this, Mulla saluted to the Archon in the wooden house:

“This is what I should do.”

He stepped down.

He didn't take the initiative to talk to Laceline, and Laceline didn't bother to pay attention to him. Charles did say thank you to him, and he returned the thank you, saying you're welcome.

After Mla left, a while passed and the governor of Lentiheim did not come out of the cabin. Lacee became a little impatient and poked Charles with her wand, signaling him to go and get some information.

At this moment, the door of the wooden house suddenly opened.

Then, a rather beautiful female elf walked out of the cabin.

She was wearing a green long skirt that was very elf-like in style, but she was draped over a uniform jacket that looked like a military uniform. Her temples were decorated with pure white star velvet flowers, and her long golden hair was dazzling. Some of it was loose and some was braided into small pigtails. Her facial features were as three-dimensional and delicate as marble statues, and her beautiful emerald eyes were shining with a soft light.

She looked at Charles and smiled very friendly:

"Your Highness, we meet again."

Laceier reacted instantly - it seems that this guy is the weasel who is paying New Year's greetings to Charles, the chicken!

She quickly became alert.

At this time, the female elf also saw her, so she turned her head, looked at her for a moment, and said with some doubt:

"Miss Witch... Have I seen you somewhere before?"

Lacey thought to herself, don't try to get too close to your buddy, we're not that close, but at the same time, she put on enough superficial effort, pretending to be harmless, and answered obediently:

"You should have seen me before. I am the student of the Lord of the White Tower. My teacher brought me to Lentiheim a long time ago."

The consul suddenly realized:

"No wonder."

Then she smiled and said to Rachel and Charles:

"Although both of you have seen me before, you probably don't know my name yet. I am Fuwenna, the governor of Lentiheim. You can just call me Fuwenna."

Since Fuvenna's attitude was so friendly, it was difficult for Lacie to be aggressive towards her.

So she pointed her wand at herself:

"I am... uh, a student of the Lord of the White Tower, the Witch of Dawn and Dusk. You can call me whatever you want."

She pointed at Charles again:

"He is, you know, the hero of this generation of mankind, Ciel."

Fuvenna nodded and shifted her gaze from Rachel to Charles' face again.

"You can come here, I guess you have buried the pastor girl?" She said softly, "But in any case, please express your condolences."

When Charles heard this, his eyes dimmed a little, but he did not show much emotional change. He just said "hmm" softly.

Fuwenna sighed when she saw this:

"Although this is not good... your condition will take longer to adjust... but I'm really sorry, Lentiheim may not be able to hold on for much longer."

She looked worriedly at the fog that enveloped the entire city of Lentiheim.

"You must have guessed," she added, turning to Charles, "that in sending you that coffin I was asking for a favor."

After a brief hesitation, the archon's expression became firm. She looked into Charles' eyes and slowly uttered the sensational words:

"——Brave man, I would like you to kill...kill our mother!"

[To be continued]

-

4. He was crazy

The Archon of Lentiheim asks the hero to help kill their mother.

Lacey's pupils were trembling.

She subconsciously asked:

"Are you... serious? The reason you gave Charles the coffin was so that he could help you kill... your mother?"

When she was a child, Lacey often felt that she was bad enough, otherwise she would not have wanted to make Charles regret her for the rest of his life without any psychological burden. But compared to Fuvenna in front of her, she suddenly felt that she was as pure as a blank sheet of paper.

——She felt that Fuwenna was a little extreme.

In fact, Fuwena seemed to be more extreme than she thought.

Facing the witch's questioning, the governor of the elven city-state did not hesitate at all, and could even be described as calm:

"That's right. You heard it right, Miss Twilight Witch. This has been my only goal from the beginning to the end."

As she spoke, she turned to look at Charles:

"My lord, the situation is urgent. Even if you didn't come to Lentiheim today, the team that planned to invite you over has already prepared and can set off at any time."

Lacey stopped talking.

She sensed something was wrong.

The point of Fuwenna's words is not to kill the elves' mother, but the current situation of Lentiheim.

The governor said that Lentiheim could not hold out for much longer and that the situation could not be delayed any longer. For some reason, this reminded Lacele of the thick fog that enveloped the entire city.

Could it be that Lentiheim was facing some unsolvable crisis, and was this crisis related to the thick fog?

The solution Fuwenna gave was to let Ciel kill the elves' mother...

If Ciel kills the elves' mother, will everything be fine?

There was too little useful information. Under such circumstances, Laciel could only simply and crudely equate "the mother of the elves" with "the thick fog that shrouded Lentiheim."

Charles was also confused, but unlike Rachel, he asked directly:

"What happened in Lentiheim? Why did you ask me to kill your mother?"

Fuwenna shook her head slightly after hearing this and replied:

"It's hard to describe the specific situation, let's talk as we walk."

She made an inviting gesture to the witch and the hero:

"Please come with me, both of you."

After saying that, she turned around and walked into the thick white fog.

Lacie and Charles, who remained where they were, looked at each other.

Lacier lowered her voice and spoke first:

"What do you think?"

Charles was silent for a moment, then he whispered:

"I can't imagine her motive for lying to me."

Rachel agreed with what Charles said. She didn't think the governor of Lentiheim would lie to Charles about such a thing, but she always felt that there was a weird feeling in Lentiheim...

So, after a brief hesitation, she made a decision:

"Let's follow them and see what's going on. Anyway, if we really want to leave, the elves can't stop us."

After all, one of them is the only student of the Lord of the White Tower, and the other is a current hero who possesses the forbidden spell. Even if Lentiheim is in danger now, they can find a way to escape.

Charles felt that what Lacie said made sense, so he nodded and deliberately put his hand on the hilt of the holy sword to ensure that he could draw the holy sword at any time.

Then, he caught up with Fuwenna and whispered to Lacier:

"Please follow closely."

Lacele understood that Charles was doing this for her own good - as long as she stayed close to him, he would always be able to come back and protect her.

But she didn't need Charles' protection. In this city-state belonging to the elves, the role that Charles could play might not be greater than that of her, the Witch of Dawn and Dusk.

Thinking of this, the witch quickly caught up with the hero and took the initiative to put herself under the hero's protection.

"It's a free bodyguard anyway, why not take it?"

she thought triumphantly.

……

By noon, the fog in the city still showed no signs of dissipating. Visibility was extremely low and pedestrians had to stick together to avoid getting separated. Of course, in such bad weather conditions, no elves could be seen going out on the streets.

Fuwenna found an old bronze lantern from somewhere and lit it up. Strangely enough, the almost impenetrable fog suddenly dissipated as soon as the lantern illuminated it, as if it had encountered its natural enemy.

Then, under the effect of the bronze lantern, a hole with a radius of about five meters appeared.

The three of them walked in the cave. The thick white fog dissipated in front of them, but quickly and quietly closed behind them.

Lacier, who was at the back, was curious about this and asked quietly:

"Madam Archon, where did you get that lantern in your hand? Why can it dispel the fog?"

Fuwenna, who was holding the lantern, turned around and patiently answered her question:

"This lantern is a sacred object passed down by our elf ancestors. Unfortunately, we still don't know why it can dispel the fog in the city."

"In fact..." She smiled bitterly, "We only discovered its ability to dispel the fog in the city not long ago."

As the archon of Lentiheim spoke, he stared at the obscure but regular patterns on the bronze lantern in his hand with a complicated expression.

"Our civilization has a very long history," Fuwena said softly, "so we have lost a lot of important knowledge."

"--Like the purpose of this lantern, and the origin of Lentiheim's current situation, and..."

The Archon suddenly stopped.

“Here we are,” she said.

Then she raised the lantern high in her hand.

Large patches of fog dissipated as the Archon moved, and the outline of a huge building quietly appeared in front of the three people.

Like a sleeping giant, it has an extremely solid shell made of some unknown material, covered with lush vines and verdant leaves.

The lantern could only disperse the fog within a certain range, so most of the main body of the building was still hidden in the fog. Lacele and Charles could only see the tip of the iceberg at most.

It was cold, silent, and had the texture of cast iron, yet it seemed alive and ready to wake from its long sleep at any moment.

Rachel imagined the scene for a moment—

The shadow of the giant creature appeared and disappeared in the thick fog. Its limbs were slender, but its torso was bloated and cumbersome, and it had the characteristics of both a mollusk and an arthropod. It walked on the ground, but it seemed to be swimming in the deep sea. People on the ground had no way of observing its huge body hidden in the thick fog. They could only see its long and slender tentacles like stick insects sticking straight down from the thick fog, like several pillars piercing the sky.

The witch couldn't help but shudder.

She didn't know why she had such a strange fantasy, perhaps it was because of the thick fog that enveloped the entire city-state and the strange atmosphere lingering on the building in front of her.

At this time, Fuwenna was already standing in front of the door of the building.

"Every elf in Lentiheim was born from the Elf Mother Tree..." She said softly, placing her palm on the door, "I wonder if you have heard of this in the outside world."

Charles said nothing, but Laciel nodded.

"I have heard that. Those bards always say that, but they also say that you elves have a queen who is both beautiful and elegant."

Fuwenna smiled upon hearing this, but the meaning of that smile was unclear:

"Although we elves don't have a beautiful and elegant queen, only me, the Archon, at least those bards said one thing right—"

After a strange buzzing sound, the door in front of the three people opened, and then a strange sweet fragrance wafted out from behind the door.

Fuwenna stood by the door, staring at the scene inside, slowly exhaled, and said softly:

"They are right. Every elf in Lentiheim was born by the Matron."

At this time, Lacie and Charles finally saw the scene inside the door.

They saw pools, or breeding pools, connected together in a honeycomb structure, and each pool was filled with some kind of light green, viscous liquid, which was continuously emitting a strange sweet fragrance into the air.

"Come in," the consul said to them.

The witch and the brave man walked into the door involuntarily.

As the distance shortened, they discovered more details that could not be observed outside the door.

Most of the breeding pools were empty except for light green liquid, but in a very few of them, they found embryos, elf embryos.