Chapter 35 : Chapter 35
Chapter 35. Baptized by Moonlight, Reborn with White Hair
Inside the lord’s keep at dawn, Eli activated the intelligence system as usual.
The pale-blue screen had only just unfolded when another burst of dazzling golden light suddenly erupted, almost piercing straight through his field of vision!
【Gold-Tier Intelligence Acquired!】
【In Nightsong Forest, the entrance to the ancient High Elf ruin, “Moonshadow Sanctuary,” has been located. Its protective barrier requires the power of a specific bloodline to open—the blood of a direct descendant of the La Roche Family. At the core of the ruin, the sacred pool known as “Moonlight Spring” contains the essence of life and moonlight. It can cleanse the marrow and reforge the body, greatly enhancing one’s life-source aptitude and potential.】
Eli’s heart felt as though it had been struck by a heavy hammer. His pupils contracted violently from shock and ecstasy.
So that was what the king’s blood meant.
The direct bloodline of the La Roche Family?!
“So that’s it... so fortune finally smiles on me for once!”
Eli muttered to himself.
Then he suddenly sat bolt upright on the bed, the force of the movement waking Ella from her sleep beside him.
“Eli... what’s wrong?” Ella opened her eyes groggily.
Eli drew in a deep breath and forced himself to calm down, yet the light in his eyes was astonishingly bright.
He leaned down, cupped Ella’s face in both hands, and pressed a burning kiss to her smooth forehead.
“Ella, I need a drop of your blood. Right now. Trust me!”
Ella did not hesitate in the slightest. She merely nodded gently. “Mm.”
Eli immediately took out a sterilized silver needle and, with quick and careful movements, pricked the tip of her slender finger.
At once, a bead of blood as bright as a ruby welled up.
With the utmost care, he drew that precious drop into a crystal vial with an excellent seal and clenched it tightly in his hand.
“Come with me, Ella. We may need to be gone for a day or two.”
Afterward, Eli instructed Estor and Old John to manage the territory in his absence, saying that he might need to leave for a day or two.
Without waiting for Estor’s reply, he took Ella by the hand and headed toward the Wolf-kin camp.
...
“Wolfgang.”
The silver-gray wolf king swiftly appeared at the entrance to the camp, his ice-blue wolf eyes carrying a questioning look.
“Come with me. Just the three of us. Bring these as well.”
Eli tossed several large empty leather waterskins to Wolfgang. “Take us to that ruin. Don’t ask anything.”
Wolfgang caught the waterskins without a word of question and silently hung them from his sturdy belt.
By now, his obedience to Eli’s commands had already become almost instinctive.
Without alerting anyone, the three figures slipped away from the Black Territory camp like ghosts vanishing into the morning mist.
They plunged straight into the vast, dim depths of Nightsong Forest.
With Wolfgang’s sharp sense of smell and direction guiding them, they hurried toward the ruin.
At last, the three of them passed through the waterfall and arrived once more at the place where they had last stopped—the stone door.
Eli’s heart began pounding wildly.
Drawing a deep breath, he pulled the dagger from his waist and, without hesitation, sliced open the pad of his own index finger.
Blood welled out as he stepped forward.
Eli cleverly positioned his body so that it blocked Wolfgang’s view.
Then he swiftly poured Ella’s blood into the crescent-shaped groove in the center of the stone door.
Bzzzz—
It was as though some slumbering beast had been awakened. The entire mountainside trembled violently.
The silver runes that had once lain dim suddenly burst forth with a soft, moon-white radiance.
Layer after layer of intricate patterns lit up, the glow flowing like liquid silver as it instantly spread across the whole stone door.
Rumble...
The massive stone door let out a deep, ancient groan and slowly slid inward.
Wolfgang fell into utter shock and stupefaction. He clearly remembered Lady Ella saying that the place required the king’s blood to open.
Then did that mean Lord Eli... was a king?
Before he could think any further, a surge of fresh air rich with life essence rushed out from within the doorway like a tide, cutting off his thoughts.
Beyond the door was not the darkness they had expected.
Instead, a soft, holy milky-white light filled the entire space.
The sight that greeted their eyes made all three of them stop breathing for an instant.
This was a hall whose magnificence and sanctity defied description.
Its ceiling soared high above, like a night sky inlaid with drifting starlight.
The walls and massive pillars were all formed from a warm white crystal like polished jade, carved with lifelike images of elves, ancient trees, stars, and moons.
The entire hall was spotless, so still and quiet that one could hear one’s own heartbeat.
And at the very center of the hall lay its most arresting feature.
There, in a sacred pool carved from a single enormous piece of moon-white crystal, rested a spring of water so clear it was almost beyond imagining.
The spring water was not transparent, but shone with a dreamlike moonlit hue, like a flowing galaxy.
It constantly radiated a life force and pure energy so dense they were almost tangible.
This was the Moonlight Spring.
Suppressing the shock in his heart, Eli immediately walked to the edge of the sacred pool.
He took out one of the ordinary leather waterskins he had brought and carefully lowered it into the spring.
The spring water seemed almost sentient. It did not splash or scatter, but flowed obediently into the waterskin.
Very soon, one full bag of spring water glowing with a soft moonlit sheen had been filled.
He turned and walked up to Wolfgang, who was still so stunned by the sight before him that he could barely speak, and solemnly handed the waterskin over.
“Wolfgang, take it.”
Wolfgang’s massive body shook violently. He stared in disbelief at the waterskin in Eli’s hand, then at the dreamlike sacred spring.
Of course he could sense the terrifying power contained within it. This... was nothing less than a divine treasure capable of changing one’s fate.
And his lord... was simply giving him an entire bag?
“My lord... this is far too precious! I...”
Wolfgang’s voice was drier and more shaken than Eli had ever heard it.
“Take it.” Eli’s eyes were warm, yet resolute.
“You are my warrior. Your strength is Black Territory’s strength.
Drink it. Become stronger. Only then can you better protect everything you wish to protect.”
Wolfgang’s ice-blue pupils trembled violently.
He extended his slightly shaking hands and received the bag of Moonlight Spring water with incomparable solemnity, as though accepting the holiest of sacred relics.
Then he bowed to Eli so deeply that his head was nearly buried against his own chest.
“Wolfgang... will follow you unto death!”
Eli said no more.
He turned back to the sacred pool, took out the three large leather waterskins Wolfgang had brought, and began carefully filling them with the spring water.
The water, like living liquid starlight, flowed obediently into the skins, and each one gradually began to radiate a dreamlike moonlit glow.
Just as he was concentrating on filling the third waterskin, with the water nearly about to spill over its mouth—
a pair of slender yet determined arms suddenly wrapped themselves around his waist from behind.
Eli’s body stiffened, and the waterskin in his hands nearly slipped free.
“Ella?” He turned back in surprise.
Ella’s cheek was pressed against his back. Even through their clothes, he could feel her warmth and her slightly hurried breathing.
Her voice sounded softly by his ear. “Eli... I feel... this way... works better...”
Before the last words had even faded, she suddenly exerted force, pulling Eli with her. The balance of both their bodies was lost in an instant.
Splash!
Water flew in all directions as the two of them fell together into the dreamlike Moonlight Spring.
The icy spring water instantly enveloped their whole bodies, but what followed was not a biting chill.
Instead, it was a warmth and comfort like returning to the womb of life itself.
“Ella!” Eli cried out in alarm, instinctively tightening his arms around the soft body in his embrace.
“...Feel it...” Ella’s voice was like a dream-murmur. Her arms wrapped tightly around Eli’s neck, her whole body twining around him like a vine.
Her body trembled faintly in the water, not from cold,
but from the surging, all-pervading flood of miraculous energy.
In that instant, Eli understood her intention.
He hesitated no longer. Wrapping his arms tightly around Ella’s slender yet resilient waist, he drew her even deeper into his embrace.
Like two swans with necks entwined, they clung tightly together and sank into the depths of the sacred pool where moonlight flowed like liquid.
Boom—!
An unimaginably vast and pure power, like a breached river of stars, instantly poured into them through their touching skin and slightly open pores.
That power was gentle, yet incomparably domineering, washing through every limb and every bone.
It seeped into every inch of flesh and blood, cleansing even the deepest marrow.
Eli felt his blood boiling and his bones crackling with sounds that were both burdened and jubilant.
His meridians were wildly expanded and strengthened by the raging torrent of energy.
The Raven Breathing Technique’s battle aura, which had once circulated like a stream, now seemed to have been thrown into a boiling furnace, spinning madly, compressing, refining, and swelling.
The barrier of High Black Iron Tier crumbled in an instant like rotten paper. Lower Bronze Tier... Mid-Bronze Tier.
And in his arms, Ella’s body was undergoing an equally earthshaking transformation.
Her aura climbed visibly, rising in rapid succession from a faint trace of energy all the way to High Black Iron Tier.
Her skin became even more luminous and translucent, as though veiled in a faint layer of moonlight.
At the edge of the pool, Wolfgang had already withdrawn soundlessly and swiftly from the sanctuary the moment the two of them fell into the spring.
Like the most loyal of statues, he stood with his back to the slowly closing stone door.
His ice-blue wolf eyes vigilantly swept across the dim forest outside, while his broad back blocked the entrance completely.
How much time passed, no one could say. It felt like a century, and yet also like only a moment.
The dreamlike moonlit color and glittering points of starlight within the sacred pool rapidly dimmed and faded, like a retreating tide.
The clear spring water returned to the transparency of ordinary water, with not the slightest trace of the supernatural left within it.
Splash. The soft sound of water rose.
Holding Ella in his arms, Eli slowly stood up from the spring.
His hair, which had once been a pure black, had now completely turned into a snowy, immaculate white.
The wet white strands clung to his forehead and neck, lending his deep-set features an added air of mystery.
In his arms, Ella slowly opened her eyes.
Her clear eyes seemed now to have been washed clean by the spring, brighter and deeper than before, flowing with a warm moonlit sheen.
Her aura had stabilized at High Black Iron Tier, and her entire being seemed utterly transformed.
Her skin glowed softly, and her bearing now carried a serenity and nobility born of bloodline itself.
The gray-white strands of hair clinging to her cheeks only added to her breathtakingly pure beauty.
Their eyes met.
The rebirth-like baptism, the transformation of their power, the resonance of bloodline, the sublimation of emotion... all of it was contained within that wordless gaze.
Slowly... gently... Eli pressed Ella down into the spring beneath him...