TOMWDET Chapter 182.2
Mortal Chapter (4.2)
Just as Leia had said before, what was there for him to be called a tragedy? The entire Water Tribe submitted to him.
And what was there to pity about Matilda? The entire Winged Tribe, whether passively or actively, had to listen to her words.
“Do you think words like that could shake my resolve?” The Winged Tribe Queen didn’t care. “Clemens, you cannot do it.”
“Even if the Winged Tribe lost its dragon, it would still be a tribe. It’s a Winged Tribe that you could never destroy, no matter how much war you stirred up.”
Just like at the very beginning, those who could fly, those who couldn’t fly, and those in the water had been completely divided into three types.
Incompatible.
“Is that so?” Clemens raised his left hand to chest height, and in the blink of an eye, a large amount of dark elements appeared on his body.
Su Li could see those elements clearly – they weren’t surging from within Clemens’ body, but suddenly, the dark elements scattered among the numerous elemental factors in the outside world seemed to be drawn by some force, continuously being pulled toward Clemens’ direction.
The ring on Su Li’s right index finger could only rely on the instinctive working mode of the elemental absorption device to barely snatch an extremely small portion of the dark elements from this absolute attraction.
Inexplicably, Su Li felt a gaze looking in his direction.
The young man withdrew his attention from watching the working mode of the ring on his index finger and refocused his gaze on the battlefield, but didn’t discover any existence that might be looking at him.
And the dark elements around Clemens were compressed to a terrifying density in just a moment.
The black sphere with dark orange-red edges at the rim seemed to be declaring the inevitable arrival of the word “danger.”
Matilda involuntarily took a step back, and Adonis, who had originally been standing half a step behind her, revealed his full figure.
After the gray crane was stunned for a moment, he said something meaningful, “Does the Queen think that compared to Your Majesty personally fighting against the Beast King as an equal ruler, we are now more suitable to serve as tools for the Beast King to consume his power?”
This conversation, which hadn’t been amplified by elements, was inaudible to Su Li. With his poor lip-reading ability, he could only rely on Adonis’ false smiling face to guess what this gray crane was up to again.
As for the Winged Tribe Queen, Matilda initially felt guilty under Adonis’ gaze, but afterward, what should have been equivalent to anger on her face was twisted into majesty.
Matilda said, “What do you mean by tools? In this battle, no monster beast can retreat!”
Regardless of how base her retreating actions and inner thoughts were, at least on the surface, she was still a king willing to live and die with her subjects.
Adonis cooperatively displayed a moved expression.
Not far away, Adison pulled Asgari to his side, blocking any possible gazes that might be cast over, and the butterfly spirit directly made a vomiting gesture.
To be loyal to the degree of Adonis was simply tantamount to stupidity.
The butterfly spirit thought so now.
And Adonis respectfully told the Queen, “Since you have already prepared for battle, what you should do now is order everyone to meet the enemy.”
“Even though you have never been on the front lines of battle in the past, I imagine that since you dared to abandon the dragon, you must have considerable trump cards in your hands.”
“Your Majesty the Queen, please be sure to let this subject see your power!” Adonis was like a fanatical believer, his gaze burning as he looked at Matilda.
But the Queen who had just been unable to help but place trust in the gray crane suddenly felt like she was being roasted on a fire.
She looked at Adonis in disbelief, but the gray crane’s eyes were as loyal as always… wasn’t it?
Yes, still loyal.
Sincerity seemed to become the killer of the base thoughts in Matilda’s heart.
Her lips moved repeatedly, but in the end she only closed her eyes. When she opened them again, as if she felt no oppressive force from Adonis at all, Matilda said:
“All troops, heed my command! This battle is a war to defend the peace of the Winged Tribe!”
“This battle is a war to declare my dignity to the Beast Tribe!”
“This battle is a war where we will never retreat unless we die in battle!”
Adonis froze in place.
He suddenly felt that something was beyond his expectations.
Matilda shouldn’t have said such words, nor should she have had such a performance.
Just as Clemens had said, she was pitiful, pitifully clinging to the Queen’s position, unwilling to admit defeat. Retreating again and again should have been the most appropriate behavior for this Queen.
But suddenly, Matilda no longer had that desire to retreat.
Was this disguise, or something else? Adonis couldn’t tell.
He could only see his fellow gray cranes and those Winged Tribe soldiers, as if they had been injected with adrenaline, raising their weapons and transforming into various kinds of birds, declaring with their lives that they would never disappoint the Queen’s expectations.
Matilda…
The gray crane suddenly wanted to know what kind of monster beast this really was.
Not the ruler he had initially defined, who could solve the gray crane clan’s predicament through mere flattery and dedication, nor the weakling he now thought her to be, who would only choose to flee rather than face battle head-on.
But…
The fact that Matilda had thought of running away before was also true.
“Are you really prepared to participate in battle?” Adonis asked, tilting his head.
But Matilda smiled. “Not at all. What I’ve always wanted to do is stay in the Queen’s palace without going out, rather than having to personally face war.”
Conspiracies and schemes could be played with all one’s cunning, and the art of ruling subordinates could also be disguised with various clever tricks. But a trembling body simply couldn’t be concealed in a situation like this.
“I’m not prepared to participate in the struggle at all.” Matilda wanted to shout, but she didn’t. “But not taking action is no longer an option, is it?”
“Except for me, except for me as the Winged Tribe Queen, other Winged Tribe monster beasts wouldn’t even be adequate as tools to consume Clemens’ power.”
The dark elemental operation mode that even Su Li could see – how could monster beasts who were originally extremely familiar with elements fail to discover it?
Choosing to let others go forward while retreating herself at this time would be the most foolish choice.
Even the Winged Tribe monster beasts might suddenly turn their weapons on her, the Queen, in a desperate battle where victory was impossible.
After all, perhaps that way, they could exchange for their survival.
“I’m not yet so stupid that I can’t see reality clearly. The desire to escape is a heart that fears death, but choosing to face battle is just a heart that fears the death of other monster beasts.”
“Everyone is very afraid, and I’m no exception. But whether it’s today or in the future, having chosen to drive the dragon out of the Winged Tribe, I never left myself a way out. I would have to go to the battlefield sooner or later… it’s just that until just now, I was still fantasizing that this could be postponed indefinitely.”
“But actually, none of it matters.” Matilda’s eyes were bright, without gloom.
This performance, compared to various behavioral patterns that had been thoroughly analyzed by Clemens, was simply bizarre.
She continued. “Whether it’s driving Elvi away, or putting various labels on her, or saying various things that don’t match my inner thoughts at all – I don’t care about any of these.”
“No one taught me how to be a ruler.” For the first time, Matilda had a heart that didn’t want to disappoint someone’s trust. “But Adonis…”
“From the moment you chose to become my close minister, I felt for the first time that I had some responsibility I wanted to bear.”
The Winged Tribe wasn’t a king’s one-man show.
Leia’s hegemony could make the Water Tribe follow his every decision, and the various rules Clemens established for the Beast Tribe also made the monster beasts under him offer unconditional devotion upward.
Only the Winged Tribe.
The Queen had no absolute authority; what truly controlled the entire Winged Tribe was the council of elders.
What kind of real king was one who always stayed in her own palace?
The council of elders formulated commands, decided on commands, and finally had Matilda, like a tool, announce them.
She still had to act as if all the decisions were her own.
A ruler, even without the absolutely tribal control power of the Beast King, or the tyrannical power of the Water Tribe’s ruler Leia, should at least be able to take responsibility.
Matilda had thus found countless explanations, constructing reasons for driving Elvi away.
Ridiculous – still fearing that Elvi would suddenly go mad on the battlefield and turn her enemies toward herself?
On a battlefield where dragons participated, how many Winged Tribe monster beasts would presumptuously step forward to “help” – really meaning to cause trouble?
The wind field manipulation of wind elements wasn’t suitable for having one’s own people near Elvi, who was fighting with full power.
But what else could she do without making excuses?
Aquatic monster beasts listened to Leia, the ruler; land monster beasts followed the rules established by Clemens; and the Winged Tribe Queen obeyed the council of elders’ orders…
This had already become an unshakable rule constructed on the foundation of time.
The Winged Tribe Queen acted illogically, was short-sighted, couldn’t see her subordinates’ contributions, couldn’t give appropriate rewards, and was determined to survive any battle herself;
Weak, only knew petty tricks, couldn’t accomplish anything significant…
Matilda accepted all these labels.
However…
“Has Adonis ever heard that the number of transformed monster beasts who commit suicide is much higher than those who die in battle?”
“If you’ve heard of it, that would be wonderful. If you haven’t heard of it, then I…” Matilda smiled, “will tell you now.”
“I’m sick of being controlled by the council of elders! Even if I don’t want to go out, that should be based on my own thoughts, not being restricted from leaving. Every time I hear subjects report that Elvi has achieved another victory for me, I want to personally see that kind of dragon who can command the battlefield.”
“She must be very impressive.”
But even now, even after Elvi had been a transformed monster beast for over two hundred years, the number of times Matilda had actually seen her could be counted on one hand.
“I like that, and I’ve never wanted to be called a Queen by others. A king is a king, a king who can bear everything, yet always has the feminine prefix added, as if it’s incredibly unbelievable for existences like me to sit on the throne.”
“I also heard that there are always some idiots on the battlefield who deliberately call Elvi ‘Miss Dragon.’ Those trash clearly know that when Elvi was human, she was the sole heir of the new generation in an entire family.”
“Just because someone said that if she had had an older or younger brother, then after being transformed into a dragon and escaping to the human world with her intelligence, she wouldn’t have been deceived and harmed by humans…”
Matilda gripped the weapon in her hand tightly. She looked at Clemens, who had instantly aimed at each other, and said her final words before charging toward her opponent. “No matter how ridiculous my small resentment is, I still want to say…”
“Men are all stupid, idiotic, fucking morons!”
Adonis was no exception…
Otherwise, how could he possibly pledge loyalty to a Queen without real power?
This idiot who wanted to become the Queen’s force had never thought about why so many gray cranes ended up as cannon fodder on the Winged Tribe’s front lines.
That was clearly the most obvious warning!
How could there be monster beasts so blind that they couldn’t detect even a hint of undercurrents, still thinking that the king was using the deaths of his clansmen to test his degree of loyalty?
Unless the one being served was genuinely sick.
But it didn’t matter – Matilda didn’t care about this.
Anyway, Adonis wasn’t the only idiot.
Matilda charged toward Clemens.
This was destined to be a brutal battle.
An existence who could directly control elements without absorbing them into the body and transforming them into his own power simply couldn’t be resisted by a small bird.
Especially a small bird that had been kept in captivity.
Having never experienced wind and rain, never flown through thunderstorms.
What did Matilda have to fight Clemens with?
—Her life.
She charged directly toward Clemens’ position, and the compressed and condensed dark elemental sphere was directly pierced by the long-handled greatsword in her hand.
In the shadow that seemed to turn the entire world from light to darkness, the pressure brought by the powerful elemental force caused Matilda’s internal organs to suffer continuous compression. Blood flowed down the corners of her mouth, and the red traces seemed completely unsuited to the dignified Queen who had always sat on the throne before…
But this color was especially suited to the ruler who had chosen to bear the burden of the entire Winged Tribe.
The battle between the two rang out with clashing sounds, and in the blink of an eye, they had exchanged over a hundred moves.
When Matilda approached once, she was still thinking that she had never imagined she could get so close to the Beast King.
She continuously converted her body’s elements into forward momentum, and the light in her eyes penetrated through the dark elements controlled by Clemens.
Matilda cursed loudly. “I didn’t want to live anyway. Rather than living like a dog, I’d rather abandon those chaotic responsibilities and fate, and live truly for once before dying, following only my own thoughts!”
Matilda aimed her weapon at Clemens’ heart.
But…
A red-legged falconet, no matter how much this so-called world’s smallest bird of prey wanted to achieve victory, the transformed Matilda could only endow this strike with nothing more than everything a red-legged falconet had.
And for a tiger, a tiger that had not yet shown its true form until now, this was simply like an infant wielding a toy knife…
“Everything about you looks like a joke to me.” Clemens’ mouth once again curved into a smile.
The boundless abnormal sensation made Matilda tremble uncontrollably, but what truly made her despair was the dark elements that truly enveloped the entire world in an instant, turning the world from light to darkness…
“Why can’t we see anything?” A certain Winged Tribe soldier panicked and nearly turned his weapon on his own people.
“I don’t know!”
“It’s because the dark element concentration is too high, directly affecting vision.”
“Don’t panic! Maintain formation, don’t forget that we are the Winged Tribe that soars across the sky. No matter how fierce those Beast Tribe members are, they can’t fly…”
The four words “can’t fly” could no longer be spoken.
To ensure that aerial combat could cause deep damage to the ground while not being affected by the ground, most Winged Tribe members flew at heights generally between 100 to 300 meters.
This range allowed elemental attacks to have downward inertia while preventing ground monster beasts from hitting the flying Winged Tribe with their elemental attacks.
It was a natural war advantage possessed by the Winged Tribe.
But now…
This advantage had been shattered.
Matilda finally understood why no land monster beast would choose to stay beside Clemens—
A giant tiger over a hundred meters tall, surrounded by countless dark elemental bands. Those elemental factors from the outside world seemed to see an inseparable other half, continuously, continuously flowing into Clemens’ body.
This couldn’t even be called cultivation; it was like…
Countless existences had always been looking forward to Clemens becoming stronger.
The enormously massive tiger needed only one leap, and countless Winged Tribe monster beasts in the air became a mass of pulp under the sweeping of the tiger’s tail and claws.