"I'll say it one last time—you’re flimsy candles in a gale; Alicia’s side is a cliff. With that, how will you win?"

"You—!" His voice sparked like flint in dry grass.

"What about me? Am I not speaking the truth?" The truth rang like cold iron on stone.

"The Elvenfolk have long held deep hatred for humans, thorns under green canopies. They command ancient magics like hidden rivers. Now they’re allied with Alicia."

"The Daemons and the Beastfolk—leave them aside for now. No one can pin down their tie to Alicia, but smoke signals pass between their camps."

"The Dragonfolk, too—reports say they’re winging back to the Mystic Realm on thunder wings. Any one with real strength can topple half a town with a tail like a landslide."

"And Alicia’s group? I don’t know. I can’t gauge how strong Alicia is now, but that little one is mist slipping through my fingers."

"So that’s it: she holds at least two powerhouse races, and her own power is unfathomable. Against that storm, how do you fight?"

It was the first time King Alex spilled so many words. It was the first time his voice burned this hot, sparks fanned by Gill’s goading.

As King Alex spoke on, Gill’s face darkened like gathering clouds. Three furrows creased his brow like claw marks.

Their gazes locked like crossed blades. Neither blinked, like a child’s game—blink and you lose.

Three minutes...

What fits in three minutes? Pour warm water, steam rising. Steep a hot tea, scent like rain. Slurp a mouthful of instant noodles. Finish a love song. Read a chapter as drizzle taps the eaves.

For Gill, three minutes is a tide to raze a castle of thoughts and rebuild it, brick by brick, into a cleaner answer.

Now too. After roughly three minutes, the old man’s and Gill’s eyes burned red, blood threads veining the whites like cracked ice.

"Fine, you win!" The words hit like a thrown stone.

He blinked fast like a moth shaking off ash, released the fistful of cloth, and dropped back into his seat. Dorado said nothing, a lake with no ripples.

When the sting ebbed, Gill hooked both boots on the table, crossed his legs, and wore a boss’s swagger like storm armor.

"Talk. You dote on your daughter, so you must have a fix. If not, I’ll strike the Mystic Realm for humanity’s last sliver of hope."

It sounded righteous as a temple bell, but plain speech was this: if you can’t rein in your girl, I’ll do it myself.

Well... in the end, that lined up with King Alex’s heart like wind at his back.

"My way is to make peace, got it? They’re human, we’re human. More so, they’re my daughters. There’s no reason they’d harm humans."

"Who knows if they’re still human, with the moon already behind clouds?"

King Alex barely finished when Gill cut in, voice loud as a drum, as if he wanted the whole world to hear.

"What do you mean? You think my daughters aren’t human?" His anger flared like dry straw.

"Yeah, that’s exactly it. You think a human can get that strong? Intel says that golden-haired girl soloed the Dragon King, a thunderbolt splitting a peak."

"What? That report’s not in my files!" His files were barren as dust on a shelf.

"You think I don’t know your country? Tech so backward, no recon at all—you should’ve rusted out already, like gears in the rain."

"You—!" His teeth flashed like knives in torchlight.

They teetered on the edge of eruption, old fury not softer than a grown man’s. Without a mediator, this room would ignite like dry tinder.

So Dorado became the firebreak, slapping the table; the other two, like nets hauled from dark water, stopped struggling.

Bang—! The sound cracked like thunder over a plain.

"Enough! Had your fill of noise? Is this the time to quibble over human or not? We should be talking the future of humanity, a compass in a storm."

Dorado raised two fingers, her face set like stone.

"Now—two choices." A fork in the road, mist on both paths.

"One: follow the old man’s lead, go for talks. The red-haired one is his blood daughter; the blonde is his adopted daughter."

"With his status, we can reach those two with ease, then tug the talks toward ground that favors us, like current to our shore."

"Two: follow you—" she pointed at Gill, "—and charge. Humanity isn’t weak; it won’t be certain doom, but there will be blood, spears in rain."

"All right. Let’s vote." Stones in a bowl, fate in a palm.

"One or two?" Left path or right.

That was the end of debate. The answer would be born in the next beat; humanity’s fate hung on three raised hands like feathers on a scale.

On one side, parley. Two outcomes. Success: we live without losses, but rank and profit sink like anchors. Failure: our end speaks for itself.

On the other, attack first. With three—no, just two—kingdoms, we face Elvenfolk and the Dragonfolk to come, chasing a sliver of survival like a firefly at dusk.

"Decided?" A hand hovered over the go stone.

As the caller, Dorado held the rudder and asked again.

King Alex nodded, like a tree bending in wind.

Gill nodded too, like a blade agreeing to the whetstone.

"All right. On three. Left hand for One. Right hand for Two."

"Three—!"

"Two—!"

"One—!"

"Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!"