Chapter 101: He Knows Everything
Ambrose felt a twinge of regret. Letting his old friend Flynn escape back then had been a mistake.
There were very few people who truly knew the truth behind the disaster at Alkhemia. If that old bastard decided to spread rumors, Ambrose would find it hard to clear his name even if he wanted to. After all, he was a lich. In the Nine Kingdoms, accusing a lich of atrocities wasn't slander; rather, it was foresight.
Still, this elven woman was a much better captive than Cicero. At least she was willing to talk.
Cicero was an old hand who had survived countless ventures and weathered even the largest of storms. Ambrose's "mind-reading" tricks worked poorly on him.
It was just like watching horror movies: the first time, your face might distort in fear, but after enough exposure, you would grow numb. Ambrose's technique of provoking emotional reactions through conversation and reading the resulting microexpressions lost effectiveness over time. Cicero had developed resistance alarmingly quickly.
The other captured elves were all seasoned veterans as well. They constantly adjusted their mental state, carefully concealing their true thoughts.
But this elf was different.
After immobilizing her with a Human Stasis spell, Ambrose studied her carefully and asked, "Are you even an adult? Judging by your looks, you can't be more than a hundred and twenty."
Seven years among elves roughly equaled one human year, meaning that adulthood was attained roughly at the age of one hundred and twenty. A Legendary Spellcraft offshoot had once featured an author writing a "true story" about his eighty-year-old loli elf wife. He kept updating it for years—but even by the time he had to seek out medication to keep himself going, she still hadn't come of age.