Eli shrugged, hands laced behind his head, strolling alone up front like a stray under a soft-gray sky.

The Demonic Lord wore a sliver of mockery on her lips, moving step by step, eyes drifting like dragonflies over this alien land.

She’d been dragged here while unconscious, plucked like a sleeping sparrow in a night storm.

She’d grown up in the countryside, so everything here pricked her curiosity like dew jeweling new grass.

“Keep up,” Eli said, turning back with a helpless sigh, catching Edlyn as she craned her neck like a heron at a riverbank.

She peered left and right, eyes bright. “He—... Hero— I mean, sir, why are all the plants wine-purple?”

Eli shrugged, easy as wind over reeds. “Maybe the Elf Race used to live here.”

“Elves?” She blinked, lashes fluttering like moth wings.

Only pure-blood elves can make plants change color, painters working upon a living canvas.

Eli’s second memory shard lay at the Empire’s border, in the altar of the Crimson Elves of the Kord line.

By common sense, lands held by the Elf Race teem with greenery, thick as summer rain.

Here, only a few stunted trees dot the ground, sparse as scattered bones, so Eli doubted any elves still lived here.

From the first shard’s ghostly guide, the fragment should be in a region packed with Crimson Elves, so it couldn’t be anywhere near here.

Edlyn plucked a wine-purple blade by the roadside, dissecting its veins like a surgeon under moonlight.

She carried a sliver of disgust for the Elf Race, a thorn lodged under the skin.

In the Holy War back then, the coalition rallied every race but the Demon Race—humans, dwarves, orcs, Haixizhe, giants, elves, dragonkin.

For us, nature’s darlings hurt the worst, a tide that reshaped ground and sky whenever battle broke.

Aside from the Hero, the Elf Race wounded the Demon Race more than even the dragonkin, their whims twisting weather like a flicked sleeve.

Yet with the Demon Race’s raw, crushing strength, the alliance kept losing at first.

Edlyn let a proud smile bloom, red as a peony.

Led by that shrewd and overwhelming Demon King of the Thirteenth Army, the coalition’s early battles were a mess, blood washing like rain.

Until... the Hero appeared.

Edlyn shot a glare at the man ahead, a knife-flash under her lashes.

After a triumphant ambush on the coalition, the Demon King’s squad celebrated hard, cups ringing like bells.

That night, the Seventh Army holding that squad vanished, gone like mist at sunrise.

The next day, that damned Hero carried their heads to Overlord City and declared war on her.

Thinking of it, Edlyn tossed the weed, teeth grinding, heel stamping dust like angry thunder.

After the declaration, the Hero ran. She hunted along the road, but he slipped away, and in passing he wrecked several Demon Race cities.

Edlyn was sure the Hero back then wasn’t her match; ten moves, and his life would be gone like a snuffed candle.

Eli, oblivious to the girl’s stomp and storm behind him, scanned the horizon with a furrowed brow, then let out a slow sigh like wind leaving a pine.

“Looks like things were a bit too smooth,” he said. “I wondered why those bandits looked off. They were puppets.”

Eli lifted his gaze, smiling toward a certain empty patch of sky, as if greeting a hidden moon.

Edlyn stepped closer, curiosity tugging at her like a kite string. “What’s wrong, He— sir?”

Eli smiled. “Your grasp of space and puppet arts is impressive. If the stars hadn’t been out of position, I might’ve missed it.”

Seeing Eli speak to thin air instead of her, Edlyn frowned, then tilted her chin to the sky, senses pricking like a cat’s whiskers.

For mages at their level, mana often pours from the sky, a pact sealed with natural elements that agree to speak.

Only after you sign such contracts do you reach Seventh Tier as a High Mage.

Why hadn’t Edlyn noticed at first?

Because she was too weak now—aside from the Demon King’s soul and a newborn level of martial skill, she was just a half-demon child, green as spring bamboo.

Her royal Demon Race danger-sense hadn’t flared, so she never looked up, nor spared a moment for the star map. Carefree came easy when alarms stayed quiet.

After a long breath, the sky rippled, a pond disturbed by an unseen stone.

Three figures drifted down from above, slow as falling petals.

“No wonder. It’s that one,” a young man murmured, rubbing his hands, awe glittering like frost.

The purple-robed girl in the middle smiled. “Senior, sorry. We just wanted to test your strength.”

Eli arched a brow. “Senior? Testing my strength? You from an orphanage?”

The girl blinked, then shook her head again and again, ponytail swishing like a flag. “No, no. We’re a raid party from another world!”

“Huh?”