"S-so it was like that...!"

Mason sobbed, overwhelmed by emotions.

His father had explained everything to him.

How the Envy family took on the arduous and rewardless task of protecting the elven population from the mysterious sickness.

How, during the research, some of their family members got infected as well.

The sickness was supposed to be quite easy to heal for humans, but to this very day, only a single elf was completely healed with no rebound.

Mason's mother, Salak.

Mason's father, Rambutan, was the one who made the breakthrough and helped her.

During the treatment, the two of them grew closer and ended up falling in love.

That's how Mason himself ended up being born.

Of course, it all happened after Rambutan's first wife had already passed away.

But then why Salak had to stay hidden away in the basement behind the bars?

Although lord Envy was sacrificing all of his free time to research the cure for the elven disease, not many of their family members shared his enthusiasm.

Some of them had no connection with the elves but still ended up contracting the disease, and although it was always treated in a timely manner, it wasn't the most pleasant experience...

...and they would put the blame on the elves.

It didn't matter that Salak was the first elf to be fully cured.

It didn't matter that Rambutan was pulling money out of his own pocket to continue the research.

The dissatisfied members of the Envy family raised complaints against their current head.

And since the avatar of envy didn't have absolute control over their family like the avatar of pride, Rambutan had to vastly decrease the scope of his actions.

...as well as putting Salak in hiding in order to protect her from the angered clansmen...

But the same couldn't have been done for Mason.

So instead of being the shining beacon of hope for the coexistence between the elves and humans, the young half-elf became a punching bag for his cousins.

Rambutan, watched closely by other influential clansmen, was forced to stay away from his beloved son, despite his own feelings.

...

With no one there to put the blatant lies into question, Mason was looking at his father with a mixture of pride and awe.

That explanation was all that the brown-haired half-elf always wanted to hear.

He got an answer that both put his father in a favorable light and proved that he himself wasn't hated at all.

The opposite, actually!

It wasn't his father's will to be separated from him!

How good that sounded?

Too good to be true.

...and it wasn't the truth...

But Mason didn't WANT to question anything he heard from his parents.

"...I knew it had to be something like that...! I always knew...!"

Mason sobbed, shedding tears of happiness.

"It was... Mason, you've grown up to be such a good boy. Mommy is proud of you!"

Salak was embracing her crying son through the metal bars and her gentle voice was soothing him while she was patting his head.

"We both are."

Lord Envy laughed and joined the group hug.

*THUMP*

A sudden tremor almost knocked the happy family off balance.

"What was that...?"

Mason gasped, anxiously looking around the ceiling, fearful that it might cave in and bury them alive.

"..."

"..."

But Rambutan and Salak were looking straight down, their faces pale as ghosts'.

"...it cannot be..."

Lord Envy suddenly raised his head and shuddered, his eyes trembled as he read through the system message that popped up for him.

"...no..."

Salak had also looked up.

But she wasn't looking at a system message of any sort.

Over the shoulder of her son, the beautiful elven woman was staring at the only cell visible to her from the branching hallway.

The one which had its bars smashed open by the red-haired Pride girl.

Lairs's cell.

The disfigured member of the Dandelions' body - while still pressed to the stone floor by the system's power - started glowing with a light of a skill.

Then, the elven mage twitched...

She used her three-fingered hand to support herself and began standing up.

While she was doing that, the joined fingers split apart, and her whole hand molded back into its original shape.

Lairs was raising back on her feet, and her whole body looked as if it was shedding, discarding all the changes done to her by the skills of Envys.

All changes, all blemishes, and all signs of the sickness were disappearing in a matter of seconds.

Her face which was changed the most, took the longest.

But soon enough, both of her eyes were looking straight at Salak with an almost incomprehensible amount of hatred.

As Lairs's complexion cleared out, and the frail light locks sprouted into a cascade of lush black hair, the elven mage raised both her hands, and the air atop of her palms ignited into fireballs.

Then she took the first step on her restored legs and...

"You fucking treacherous whore of a mother...!"

"...?!"

While speechless Salak trembled, Lairs's low growl alarmed the other two, and so they turned around just in time to witness the flame skill shooting right in their faces.

"!"

Mason cowered and raised his arms, trying to protect his head.

Salak flinched and closed her eyes, hugging her son tighter.

Only Lord Envy kept his head clear enough to step in and use a barrier skill to protect them all.

"Fucking whore! Filth! Fucking traitor! Through all those fucking years I fucking believed that you were fucking abducted, but you fucking whore of a mother betrayed your own fucking family?! Your whole race?!"

Lairs was hurting her own throat with shouts so loud that even the elves still blocking their ears heard her and realized the pressure of the system disappeared.

"And the rest of you fuckers! Get the fuck up! Those with support skills raising the fucking magic defense - use it and then help the rest! FUCKING MOVE IT!"

The elven mage roared at other elves while throwing fireball after fireball at Rambutan and his family with one hand, and aimed her other hand at the first elf she saw.

"GAH!"

"?!"

Hearing the pained voice shocked Lairs.

At first, she thought that it came from the elf she cast the MDF rising skill and momentarily stopped the onslaught of the attacks, horrified that she had used an offensive skill on one of her own kind.

"Father?!"

"Rambutan!"

But the shocked screams of Mason and Salak quickly cleared that misunderstanding.

The pained gasp didn't come from the caged elf, who was now in the middle of turning back to his original form, but from lord Envy himself!

While still keeping up the defensive skill, Rambutan's body started changing, melting, and molding into a completely different person.

That process looked exactly like what happened to Lairs, with the only difference being that Lairs's beauty returned while Rambutan's beauty vanished.

After just a few seconds, the sculpture-level beauty of the avatar of envy was gone.

And so was his height.

The real Rambutan Envy was a short, sickly-looking man with a severely malnourished body.

Oversized clothes were hanging off of him like from a scarecrow and helped hide any deformities.

But the part that was still perfectly visible and coincidentally was the only part that didn't change, was Rambutan's piercing green eyes.

"Don't look at me...!"

The pitiful-looking green-eyed man tried to hide his face in shame without putting his family in danger but didn't manage to cover for his lisping.

"Father...! What does that....?"

Mason gasped, staring wide-eyed at the man barely reaching his chest, who was supposed to be his imposing father.

Suddenly, gentle hands turned Mason's head away from the cowering Rambutan and guided him against the black-haired elf unleashing a ridiculous amount of fireballs at them.

"It's her fault! She's one of the bad elves who learned to control the disease your father was researching! An evil witch who must have infiltrated this place to kill him so he could not find the cure!"

Salak called with righteous fury, spouting lies she coined on the spot without even batting an eye.

"B-bad elves?"

Mason stuttered trembling in confusion, looking fearfully at his mother.

"You fucking...! That's how you're calling your own fucking flesh and blood...?"

Lairs managed to hear Salak even through the sound of the exploding fire spells, and asked back, pale as a ghost, stopping the offensive.

"Foul-mouthed witch, it's no use trying to confuse us with your lies! I have only one child, and he's right here! I have no connection with you!"

Salak scoffed at her and proudly raised her head.

"...so fucking be it...!"

Lairs's beautiful face twisted with an angry grimace and the fire burning on top of her palms changed into tens of tiny crackling bolts of lightning.

Out of all the nature-based magic skill types, the electric ones had the highest barrier-skill piercing power.

That only showed that up until then, Lairs was just buying time for the other elves to recover.

Now she was actually set to harm the mother who outright rejected her.

The black-haired elven mage outstretched her hand, aiming at the little family huddled together behind a barrier.

But before she attacked, she quickly glanced to the side...

...at all the freed elves looking back at her, awaiting her by the exit.

Not even one of them got on the stairs yet, all of them were waiting for their last brethren to come.

"The fuck are you waiting for? Get the fuck out of here!"

Lairs frowned and shouted at the beautiful but visibly malnourished prisoners.

"Go up! And if you see a big-ass fucking blue corpse puppet, don't ever fucking attack him!"

She added and looked back at her opponents, who haven't done anything except defending even while she was distracted, while the other elves finally began escaping the basement.

"...fuck, at least I can make sure that those fuckers won't stab you all in the back. My fucking mother has too much fucking experience in doing that..."

Lairs sighed and shot her first lightning bolt.