“Master... can I ask a selfish favor?” Her voice trembled like a reed in winter wind.

After a long hush, Aphelia unclasped her arms and knelt before the Valkyrie, solemn as a blade laid on a shrine.

“I know it’s rude to ask, but please take me back to the human world...” Her hope flickered like a candle in a draft.

“That’s impossible.” Her reply fell like ice on still water.

Aphelia hadn’t finished when the Valkyrie cut her off, clean as a sword severing silk, and shook her head like a fir in cold wind.

“With your state now, what can you do back there?” Her words struck like hail on stone.

“To draw out that power, your will and body won’t hold.” Her judgment pressed like a mountain of snow.

“What then—march to a noble death?” Her gaze burned like a sun without shadow.

Under that question, Aphelia’s tongue dried like sand, her courage shrinking like frost-bitten grass under that gaze.

“Of course not... but staying in the Demon World is wasting time,” she said, hope clinging like ivy to old brick.

“If I must adapt to this power, I can do it back in the human world,” she added, voice thin as smoke.

She reached for more excuses, yet the Valkyrie’s silence turned them to ash like paper in a brazier.

Even if she returned, the world’s powers loomed like a tide of iron, and she was a lone skiff on black water.

Under that war machine that grinds mountains, even a True God might be dragged from the throne like a statue from its plinth.

Yi and Augustus were caged by the Church like hawks in iron, their wings stiff with frost.

Violet struggled between the beastmen and the duchies, a ship pressed by twin reefs and storm.

Lena—worse still—had been forced from the Elven Forest, wounded deep, her light guttering like a lantern in rain.

Even if she returned now, who could she truly help, like one bucket tossed at a wildfire?

If the Church noticed her, pressure would surge like a floodgate breaking, drowning those she meant to save.

Yet staying in the Demon World, she’d have walked away already, like dust on a road—if not for the Valkyrie’s anchor calm.

Worse, Nero and the others might chain her velvet-tight for the secret of this power, like a bird held by silk.

Borrowing the Demon World’s momentum was a fever-dream now, mist chased by hands at dawn.

Without Nero’s backing as crown prince, with her strength not yet at peak, she was a blade still in the quench.

“Aphelia, I get your fears, but don’t lose your aim so soon,” the Valkyrie said, voice light as sun through cloud.

Seeing Aphelia sink like a stone in a lake, the Valkyrie shook her head and smiled like spring after sleet.

At that small laugh, Aphelia blinked like a startled fawn, rushed forward, and clutched the Valkyrie’s sleeve like a drowning hand to driftwood.

“Master, what should I do!” Her plea rang like steel on steel.

“To change a rot to the bone, you need a drastic cure,” the Valkyrie murmured, cool as moonlight on still water.

“You may have to sever a limb to save the body, clean as a surgeon’s cut through gangrene.”

She stroked Aphelia’s hair, warm as a south wind, bidding her calm like a hand on a skittish mare.

“By your understanding, how deep has the Church sunk its roots in the human world?” Her question coiled like a vine.

Aphelia thought, her brow furrowing like stormed sea, and answered with careful steps like a walker on ice.

“Outside the Holy City, the two empires and the duchies all show the Church’s roots,” she said, voice steady as a drawn bow.

“The East can be ignored for now, but the western duchies are overgrown, ivy on crumbling walls.”

“As the self-styled mouthpiece of gods, the Church wears authority like a crown and wields it like a scepter.”

“With the war against the invading demons just ended, they exploited it like foxes in tall grass, planting puppets in shadow.”

She glanced at the Valkyrie, uneasy as a sparrow under a hawk, and continued after receiving a nod like a lantern’s blink.

“Within the great empires, the Church won’t overreach across the border like roots cracking a road.”

“But given its wartime authority, the empires won’t openly oppose it, nor offer true aid—only cold stares like winter stars.”

At that, Aphelia ground her teeth, anger sparking under ice like embers in sleet.

“This time, the empires still permitted the Church’s move,” she said, voice sharp as sleet on glass.

“They even sacrificed the iron northern line, letting the Northern Duke’s forces bleed, like wolves driven into a gorge.”

“The Church’s power spreads like wildfire in dry grass, hard to halt with bare hands.”

The Valkyrie only shook her head and smiled, a flower opening in frost, unhurried as dawn.

“Aphelia, you don’t see the whole field,” she said, gentle as rain. “Let me show you, so your heart can settle.”

Crimson Flame blossomed from her hand, spiraling into a vast array like a fire-mirror, revealing a scene Aphelia knew by scent and shadow.

“The Elven Forest?!” Her whisper snapped like a twig, her heart dropping like a stone in a well.

Before her, the woods looked dyed in blood-red, leaves wet as rust, trunks dark as old wounds.

She bit her lip till copper bloomed, fingers digging into skin like claws, and blood slid from her knuckles like threads.

Infantry split into squads pushed deeper into Senro, boots chewing earth like millstones grinding grain.

Within each squad stood mages, their robes like moving sigils, while ironclad infantry formed a steel screen like a cliff of shields.

Cross an unseen line, and the mages loosed wide flame, scythes of fire sweeping the forest like harvesters in a sea of green.

“This is the Church’s joint purge army with the duchies,” the Valkyrie said, disdain curling like smoke.

“Last time they went too deep, and the elves bit back with home-field fangs, costing them dearly like a stag gored by its prey.”

“They rely on traitor elves and fleet bombardments, and think themselves invincible—peacocks strutting on a cliff.”

“The Church stays as arrogant and foolish as ever,” she added, a laugh like a bell. “Lena’s Queen of Spells title isn’t hollow.”

Aphelia exhaled, clouds parting in her chest like fog pierced by sun, hope returning like a swallow.

So Lena hadn’t fallen after the last message; instead she’d carved a lesson, a scar across the Church’s pride.

Yet the war still burned like a peat fire, slow but stubborn, devouring from beneath.

Mid-tier mages couldn’t raze the forest to stumps, but with numbers they could cut a road like ants gnawing a path.

As the army pushed on without fear, trampling leaf and fern like iron rain, the elves’ counterattack finally sprang.

Hidden traps woke like vipers, and the forest spat teeth—explosions flared, spikes lunged, death flew from green shadow.

One trigger birthed ten, and ten birthed a storm, a chain of killing devices flicking out like thorns from a briar.

Several squads vanished at once, swallowed like stones in a bog, with no ripples left to mark them.

Most squads, though, used the sacrifice ahead; mages raised layered shields like stacked panes of light.

The trap-storm broke upon them like surf on rock, roaring loud but dying at the edge of glass.

Those mages showed no scholar’s airs; they tore scrolls like bread and slapped quick buffs on the shields like nails in oak.

Iron infantry became a true steel flood, reinforced and rolling, and their advance even quickened like a river after rain.

“Valkyrie... at this pace, unless there’s a wide-area strike—” Aphelia began, but her words froze like breath in snow.

After the first traps, the army advanced a long stretch unopposed, the quiet wrong as a calm before lightning.

No interference spells came, as if the elves had yielded, like a hunter who leaves the path open.

Then the vanguard slowed without noticing, their steps heavy as mud, and no signal warned of the coming blow.

Mages in the formation felt knives of pain drive through their skulls, and their minds flooded with shadow like ink in water.

Negative effects piled like stones on a chest, and they lost their grip on spells like hands numb from cold.

Ironclad infantry around them staggered too, but their bodies were oaks in wind, stronger than the willow-fragile mages.

They tried to shield the mages, raising steel like walls, but the moment had already passed like a bird through mist.

As the shields failed, arrows screamed from the forest like rain of needles, threading gaps with cruel precision.

They punched clean through falling mages’ skulls, each hit a cold nail in wood, and silence followed like a held breath.

From the deep green, arrays flared like foxfire, and elven riders burst forth on leopards, blades like moonlit scythes.

In forest war, they were wind on grass, while the iron cans crawled like turtles, shields up in a shrinking shell.

Those heavy-cut greatblades were forged for such foes, and one charge scythed the formation like wheat before harvest.

Prepared arrays lit again, beacons marking scattered human knots like stars on a hunter’s map.

With riders and archers pinning them like thorns, elven mages began a free bombardment, thunder raining from the canopy.

What looked like a triumphant human advance flipped like a tide under a new moon, and the counter surged green and bright.

But what snagged Aphelia’s mind like a hook was the cause that felled those mages like felled pines.

“Valkyrie, since when do Nature Elves use tactics like that?” she asked, doubt curling like smoke.

“And those effects that toppled the mages—what in the shadows were they?” Her eyes were flints striking.

The Valkyrie smiled and asked in return, her words a ripple on a still pond. “What elves would fight that way?”

“Could it be... the Dark Elves who left the Nature Elves and went underground?” Her disbelief shivered like glass.

“Yes,” the Valkyrie said, nodding like a slow drum. “Lena, one of the Elven monarchs, prepared to join hands long ago.”

“She even arranged quiet ‘smuggling’ of Dark Elves when the war began, like seeds hidden under mulch.”

“This war won’t end soon,” she said, calm as granite. “The Church lost initiative and will be dragged at the forest’s rim.”

“They’ll never touch the World Tree’s core, forever reaching like thirsty hands toward a sealed well.”

At that, Aphelia’s lungs loosened like knots untied; Lena, as ever, had kept a card under silk.

Given the Dark Elves’ history with the Nature Elves, this truce was a bridge built stone by stone long before rain.

“Now you can rest easier about Lena, right, Aphelia?” The Valkyrie folded the Crimson Flame away like a fan, her tone soft as dusk.

“I’m easy about Sister Lena,” Aphelia murmured, worry pooling again like rain in a hollow, “but the others...”