Read Novel Full Chapter 1328 Stop Bitching
Chapter 1328 Stop Bitching
Clearly, people did care. Around him, several dwarves lurched to their feet.
"An elf?" one shouted, fist slamming against the table. "The greatest smith? That is a lie forged by a madman!"
"I'll sooner castrate myself with a blazing hot anvil than accept that reality!" another shouted.
The elves who heard such shouts stared daggers at the dwarves in one synchronized movement. A few even had their hands hover near their staves.
Queen Myrasyn remained still, but her eyes shifted toward the loud dwarf screaming about castrating himself rather than live in a world with an elf being on top of the smithing world with a calm that somehow sliced deeper than any blade.
The room inside the projection churned with offended pride and unspoken challenges.
The Drowned King wasn't done.
"Queen Myrasyn," he said, turning his helm toward her. "How would you feel if the world stopped calling your people the most beautiful? If the songs replaced your kind with dwarves instead? Imagine the bards declaring them the true children of Mother Nature, not you."
Myrasyn didn't flinch. Her posture didn't shift. Only her eyes tightened, a small movement that carried more weight than the shouting around her.
But others reacted to her.
The elves who had already reached for their staves stiffened again.
"That future doesn't exist," one decreed.
"Nature's grace chooses its own," another added, chin lifting.
Across from them, a dwarf barked a laugh.
"And why can't a dwarf be the most beautiful?" he shot back. Another slammed his palm against his chestplate. "Aye. Let Nature pick who it wants. Why can't her greatest child be us?"
That opened the floodgates.
Elves leaned forward with offended stares.
Dwarves rose out of their seats.
Muttering grew into a noisy tangle that shook the projection's calm.
Through it all, the Drowned King sat on his steed with a posture that radiated smug satisfaction.
He lifted his chin as if soaking in the discord he had created.
"You see?" he said, staring straight at King Ragnar and Queen Myrasyn. "You demand that we, the Covenant, accept something your own people would NEVER accept."
The clash of voices swelled again, louder than before.
Ragnar's patience snapped first.
His fist crashed against the table. The impact rang through the hall like a hammer against a bell. "Sit. You're embarrassing yourselves."
Myrasyn did not raise her voice.
She didn't move a single finger.
She simply spoke.
"Enough."
Her tone carried through the hall with surgical precision.
The elves straightened.
The argument died in a breath.
Order returned, this time under the combined weight of a king's force and a queen's enforced authority.
*Clap.* *Clap.* *Clap.* A slow clap broke the silence.
The Drowned King turned his head.
"Bravo," Quinlan said. "You have a way with words. My expectations were that you, the undead, would be unreasonable creatures who care for nothing beyond their studies and their hatred of the living. But clearly, you're a skilled politician. Perhaps you really were a king once…"
Quinlan rose from his seated position atop the carriage roof until he stood at full height, towering over his companions behind him.
"You've told a good sob story. You even managed to rile your allies to a degree. But I don't understand why you're throwing a hissy fit. Isn't that unbecoming for someone your age?"
A tremor went through the undead.
"Your class was corrected because you weren't worthy of it. The Necromancer title isn't for you or your people. You're corpse animators. You loot cemeteries, strap the rotting bodies to a table, grab a scalpel, and then spend days, weeks, months, maybe even years for all I know reconstructing bodies so you can move them around. The reclassification is as precise as it gets."
His hand dropped to his saber.
"Because this is what true necromancy is."
The blade pulsed once.
"[March of the Damned]."
Blue light spilled out in patterned arcs. Figures emerged from the glow, soldiers with spectral armor and hollow eyes, shaped from the same essence as his elites but rougher around the edges, less defined, more ghostlike.
The Drowned King's horse jerked with a sharp, guttural neigh.
The undead king stared at the new summons without a word.
"Can you do this?" Quinlan asked.
Before the Drowned King could respond, Quinlan lifted his other hand, and the marked pages of his [Necromantic Codex] unfolded beside him. Symbols spun across the air.
"What about this?"
"[Soul Fusion]."
The ghostly soldiers dissolved into streaks of blue and surged into Scar's form. The masked assassin elite stood at the front of the carriage, body still, head raised as the energy threaded through her.
Her entire outline lit with a deep blue shine.
No bones cracked. No limbs reshaped. No grotesque shifts occurred.
Her presence simply expanded, as though someone had taken the idea of her and anchored it more firmly into reality.
Every living person watching felt it instantly, an upgrade, clean and direct.
A necromantic summon enhanced in seconds.
"Master… I feel…" Scar began with a confused whisper. She struggled for words. Then, behind her mask, she visibly smiled with sheer excitement, "I'm stronger than I was as a human…"
This was a big deal. Those who recognized Scar knew she was in her high 60s level-wise before her death. Her being stronger… Definitively so? Was she… in the level 70s now?!
This wasn't the necromancy they knew. There was no corpse to prepare. No hours spent reconstructing a vessel. No stitching. No carving. No assembling.
Just a spell, far too elegant.
And she stood stronger than before.
Even the Drowned King did not hide his shock. His posture crept back a fraction.
Quinlan's tone hardened as Scar's glow lit the planes of his face.
"This is necromancy. If it were up to me, your class would've been called Filthy Graveyard Desecrators. I'd say you were not done dirty at all."
His gaze took in Scar's glowing form, then swept across the Drowned King's army. He scoffed without holding back.
When compared to his Elite Soul, now in reaching Rank 5…
The minions the Drowned King commanded seemed so damned…
Disgusting. Lesser. Incomplete.
All of them.
He looked past the undead to the projection of Ragnar and Myrasyn as he addressed the undead king.
"You brought up an elf becoming a better smith than a dwarf. Or a dwarf becoming the most beautiful being, the most in tune with nature, or whatever. And how they would refuse to accept that reality."
He grinned at the two sovereigns. "You're right. They wouldn't accept it."
His attention returned to the undead.
"But unlike you, who spent your time doing nothing about the change you hate, despite it happening months ago and knowing that I was active in the neighboring Duchy, they would work harder. They'd find ways to fix what they believed was wrong."
His grin disappeared, replaced by a condescending expression, full of scorn.
"They wouldn't be throwing an unsightly hissy fit like you are."
Scar's glow flickered across Quinlan's cheekbones as his irritation grew sharper.
"Stop acting like a damned teenager and act your age, Drowned."
Inside the projection, the same elves and dwarves who had been riled up moments ago now settled back with tight nods. A few even looked satisfied, their pride soothed by Quinlan's words. His point was obvious, and they accepted it.
The undead used hypotheticals that would never happen. Not under their watch. The Drowned King made these hypotheticals sound on the same level as what actually happened to his kind. Just that mere realization angered them.
But Quinlan wasn't done just yet.
"You kidnapped my allies. You threatened young girls with torture and rape. Girls I'm responsible for. But I didn't start screaming at you. I didn't start bitching and moaning as you do now."
His stare bore down on the undead king.
"So let's stop wasting time. We have a war to fight. You clearly aren't done with me. And for what you've done and tried to do to my allies, I'm not done with you either. So I'm suggesting we act like proper adults for once and postpone our conflict until the time is right."
Within the projection, dwarves and elves alike kept nodding with visible approval.
Some exhaled in relief.
Others looked impressed by the presentation alone.
The king and the queen exchanged a single glance.
This time, neither needed to speak for the room to act properly.
The Drowned King tried to play with emotions, but was forced to recognize that he was facing a man who could do it even better. Quinlan had matched the Drowned King's theatrics - and outdid him.
An elf becoming better than dwarves at smithing? He not only didn't believe it impossible, but knew it was an inevitability. Are elves the most beautiful? His girls were the most beautiful, no matter the race. Are elves most in tune with Mother Nature? He had a cheeky existence clinging to his back right this moment, who was more in tune than they could ever dream of.
But he pretended otherwise for the sake of achieving his goals.
And just like this, the conversations were over.
It was time to invade.