The green energy continued to grow denser and spread further, hypnotising everyone that was encompassed within and increasing Zalucard’s power. Everybody was screaming at each other (not just Elf vs Fae anymore) with utter animosity and appeared extremely volatile, but just as the first punch was thrown and Zalucard broke through to the 2nd Stage of Core Refinement, everybody including him froze as a mighty pressure enveloped all their bodies.

This was clearly the work of a powerful person’s aura and for some reason it felt very familiar, but their brains were too addled for them to identify who it belonged to. But in the next moment, the green was dispersed like smoke and sanity began to return to the eyes of the Elves and Fae.

Zalucard was the only person who had remained sane the entire time, but even as a smile remained on his face it looked quite grim. Naturally, he could identify the owner of the domineering aura as the Queen.

Soon, many people also realised the same thing and immediately dropped to their knees and prostrated themselves, begging for mercy and shooting accusations at Zalucard. This was mostly the Elves but even some of the Fae were doing so.

They were not fools. They could see Zalucard’s abnormal appearance (strange symbol and neon eyes) and knew that everything had to do with him. They felt confused and betrayed but their noble hearts demanded that they do what was best, and that was to give up Zalucard for punishment.

Unfortunately, these people only amounted up to about 26% of the Fae. Shockingly, around 60% of them still had a green neon glow in their eyes and were still affected by the green mist. They had turned their envious and ravenous glares towards the Queen who had appeared down the street and was steadily walking closer, and began screaming even more. Some of them even ran towards her with obvious hostile intent, apparently ignorant of the difference in power.

Obviously, they didn’t get very far.

Apart from Zalucard, anyone who had a green glow in their eyes had perished in a single moment. Elf or Fae. Large twisting spears of wood had erupted from the ground and pierced their heads, killing all of them down to the last one with flawless precision. The remaining people didn’t even have time to react before those same branches grabbed them and divided them into 2 groups.

The first group were the people who had lost the crazy green light in their eyes and regained their sanity but didn’t act subservient to the Queen when she appeared, and the other group was just everyone else. The Fae who had prostrated themselves and the Elves.

Zalucard was standing at the forefront of the first group, defiantly glaring back at the Queen who was staring at him, but then he suddenly smirked and said “Your Highness, your beauty truly-”

“Just leave, Zalucard. Take those people with you and leave.” the Queen interrupted him with a cold look in her eyes.

Zalucard’s face actually paled, the symbol on his forehead faded away and the ominous glow in his eyes disappeared. “Your Highness, you cannot do this! This was just a mis-”

The pressure from before suddenly came back with increased power that nearly sent him crumpling to his knees. “From here on forth, you and your group are exiled, and if you ever come back you will die immediately. The only reason you get to keep your beastly life is because of your grand contributions to the Kingdom, something that I thank you for. But I do not have any more patience for your actions anymore, Zalucard, so leave. You have become a danger to our race.”

For a moment, Zalucard just stood there lost, unbelieving of the fact that the Queen had effectively offered him a death sentence. After all, everybody knew that it was impossible to survive alone unless you were in the 4th Realm, something that was too much of a distant dream for him.

The paltry amount of Fae that had been grouped with him were insignificant in the grand scheme of things and wouldn’t be able to truly help him. He was doomed!

Gritting his teeth, he looked at the Fae that had been spared and then the Fae that were with him, who were looking back at him with mixed parts of fear, anger and dependency. The anger wasn’t directed towards him, something he was slightly glad for, but he couldn’t bring himself to care too much at the moment.

“Let’s go.” He said before walking towards the gates of the city without turning back once.

…

The Queen came back to her senses and lifted her head up to look at the demure figure of the Heavenly Daughter before her. She wanted to console her but the plight of her people had her on edge, her muscles and mana thrummed with the need to speed off to stop the war.

“Heavenly Daughter…” the Queen began “May I-”

“You can go.” Ciera interrupted softly.

The Queen winced and guiltily nodded before standing up and vanishing in the next moment.

…

Outside of the Palace, the Elves were surrounding the final group of rebels with faces filled with rage. Everyone had suffered in this war but the winners were the righteous and the losers were the evil. The Elves were more than willing to release their rage on the final members of the rebel group, culling them until there were no more left. They brandished their swords and spears and charged forth with overflowing killing intent.

The rebel group on the other hand weren’t going to just sit there and wait for death so they too pointed their weapons. Funnily enough, it wasn’t just the Fae in the group, there were Elves too. These people were actually the members of Faerie who had joined after the birth of the Fae and had been even more furious about the injustice shown towards the Fae than the Fae themselves.

It was mainly them that were behind the instigation of this rebellion. They were angry that Zalucard and the others had been exiled after doing so much and such emotions kept on rising intensity all these years with no reprieve, and this was the result. But even they would have done anything to reverse the situation. The blood that had been shed this day has been too much!

However, they had already jumped onto the tiger and there was nothing they could do about it now. They could only see things to the end, praying for a miracle to happen… Oh how they wished the Queen were here. They thought that her disappearance had been the best thing to happen to them after Zalucard’s exile, barely even hesitating before plotting their rebellion… Utter foolishness!

Unfortunately, it was too late to realise this now. The death they had been courting for so long was finally about to accept their advances.