Gou is a dark elf in Warhammer

It's neither slow nor fast, but it's not slow either.

It was a time illusion somewhere between despair and a dulled sense of consciousness, a feeling that made it impossible to tell whether one was moving or still.

Then, Asnir roared and pounced!

The roar tore through the air, like the last struggle of a beast dragged into a nightmare.

But he didn't pounce on a person, but on an object—the window railing.

He gripped the railing tightly with both hands, veins bulging and knuckles white, as if he had transformed into a giant, a giant capable of snapping the metal railing in two.

Unfortunately he is not.

He was just an elf, just a dragon prince, a dragon prince who fought on a warhorse.

He is not a strongman, not a barbarian, and certainly not a god.

His arms were trembling, his muscles were groaning, his fingertips were bleeding from the metal, and you could even hear the desperate echo of his knuckles cracking.

After struggling for a moment, he looked out the window at the leaves drifting away and at the gradually forming, massive fleet.

At that moment, he understood everything. Unconsciously, tears streamed down his face. His face contorted in pain, as if all his strength had been suddenly drained away, his body went limp, and he slid against the wall towards the ground. The movement was terrifyingly slow, as if the world was waiting for him to fall. Finally, he lay on the ground like a lump of mud, weeping.

The crying wasn't loud, but it made the air feel thick.

He knew, through his over-interpretation, that it was all over, completely over. As one of the Dragon Princes, he understood them, their pride, and their vulnerability.

Asniel Saln was captured at the Battle of the Val'anchine. After his capture, he and other prisoners of war were taken to Lor'then. Due to his status, he was held in solitary confinement.

That was a disgrace to the courtesy we received.

He considered suicide because he knew why he had been brought to Lortherne. Duruci was going to make him and the other prisoners of war walk around Phoenix Avenue, which was a kind of "prisoner-offering."

He was never afraid of death, but he was afraid of going through that process.

This was something he couldn't accept.

He ordered his soldiers to their deaths, while he himself survived, a situation that tormented and pained him. Afterwards, he had to make a final round; his position destined him to be at the forefront when presenting prisoners.

How does he accept this?

The proud dragon prince walked at the forefront, surrounded by onlookers, pointed at, and watched by acquaintances. He had been to Lorthion before, and more than once. He knew the Itien nobles who had chosen to side with Duruchi, and had even fought alongside them.

Now, his former comrades will watch him walk past in humiliation from both sides of the street.

Doesn't he have any pride? He may have lost, but does his dignity have to be trampled on like this?

However, he couldn't die even if he wanted to.

Everything he experienced after being captured shattered his understanding and broadened his horizons. From the Black Ark to Lorthorn, the cell was specially made, with the floor and walls completely covered, so much so that he couldn't even kill himself by banging his head against the wall.

The tableware was also specially made, so specially made that he determined that if it were inserted into the eye, it would only damage the eyeball.

And then no more.

He even conducted an experiment, picking up the soft fork and stabbing it hard into his palm. The fork bent, but his skin didn't break.

The utensils were so soft that it was easier to just grab them with your hands, or you could even eat them along with the utensils. Besides the utensils, the food was also soft, so you couldn't choke to death. Moreover, the people guarding him also possessed peculiar first aid skills.

He would be quickly rescued if he showed any abnormality.

As for how he knew...

On one occasion, he became a teaching tool.

If his hands and feet hadn't been restrained, he felt he would have taken off at that moment. He believed he could do more than just ride a dragon; he was confident he could pilot a spacecraft into space.

Everything was specially treated, including the garden where he was allowed to exercise.

Besides these, there were also personnel monitoring him at all times. From the moment he roared to the moment he collapsed to the ground, the war dancers sat silently on sofas and chairs in the distance, watching him perform.

The problem is that the war dancers weren't equipped with lethal weapons like short swords and spears, so Duruci didn't give them a chance to disarm him with their bare hands. Instead, they used rubber batons that hurt a lot when they hit them.

Those rubber sticks weren't thick, but they were extremely elastic. The moment they hit someone, they could instantly throw them off balance, and the pain would spread under the skin, like flames drilling into the muscles.

What's even more ridiculous is that the war dancers never fight Asnir one-on-one; duels are nonexistent. If any of them is attacked, the other war dancers will rush in and swarm them, swinging their rubber batons several times per second, like raindrops, crackling and popping. The exact number... well, more than six times. Six times isn't the limit, it's the minimum.

The siege was not chaotic; rather, it had a rhythm, much like music.

Sure enough, the lead war dancer stood up from the sofa. As he stood up, two more war dancers stood up beside him. Their movements were clean and efficient, without any unnecessary hesitation. They moved in groups of three or three, ensuring no one was left alone, giving Asniel absolutely no chance.

Three war dancers approached Asniel, but they merely glanced at him and made no attempt to help him up. The lead war dancer peered through the railing at the distant sea. When he saw the fleet that had seemingly departed suddenly reappear, he pursed his lips, shook his head with a mournful expression, and then turned and walked towards the sofa.

"What's going on?" asked a warrior still sitting there, her boots propped up on the table. Her tone was casual, even a little bored, as if she were just killing time.

"The fleet is back?" the lead war dancer replied casually, as if repeating a line he had already rehearsed.

"Hehe..." The warrior who asked the question laughed, but the laughter was dry, short, and emotionless.

"Looks like we're in for a busy time ahead?" another warrior joked.

"Make a bet?"

"What are you gambling?"

"How many new companions will he have tomorrow?"

The sounds overlapped and drifted through the room, like a comedy performance deliberately kept low.

People's joys and sorrows are not shared, and Asnir, paralyzed on the ground, became a tool for the war dancers to have fun.

He wasn't even a person; in their eyes, he was merely a phenomenon, an object of observation, a living specimen that could still cry and struggle.

There was no fleet at all; it was all an illusion. The reappearance of the fleet was a trick played by the spellcasters in the Tower of Glory. The illusion was so realistic that it made one's breath catch in their throat. The rise and fall of the waves, the fluttering of the flags, the smell of the sea fog—everything was deceiving one's senses.

As for how this job was done...

It's quite simple; the core lies in the crystal in Liv's hands. It's called crystal, but it's not entirely crystal; it's not composed entirely of silicon dioxide, but also contains other components. Duruci calls it "hafnium," in honor of the Slan priests' contributions and research in that field.

After the final battle at Echoing City, Darkus led a large group of companions into the rift, attempting to close it. During the process, they encountered a series of inexplicable events.

What they experienced was not an ordinary battle or trap, but a chaos where even logic no longer held true. Time seemed to be torn to pieces, direction and concepts were collapsing, and they even doubted whether they still existed in the same world.

Fortunately, with the help of a certain peculiar being, they cleared the level unscathed, without losing a single companion, and just like before, brought out exactly as many as they had brought in. (Chapters 528-539)
In addition, he brought out nearly two thousand lizardmen, among whom were five precious Sran. The appearance of those five Sran was like a miracle; the three who looked exactly alike were the fourth Sran Azuma, while the two who looked exactly alike were the third Sran Taran Quinn.

It was a magical fission, a magical replicator.

Besides the lizardmen and the precious Slan, the technology for manufacturing and applying crystals was also brought out. These crystals didn't sparkle in the light, but rather possessed a deep halo, as if the light was absorbed into them and then expelled in another way. However, it needed further adaptation.

Adaptation is not purely a technical matter, but rather a kind of tuning to the laws of the world. Every experiment carries risks—it may explode, fail, or suddenly exhibit incomprehensible behavior, but it is eventually stabilized.

As time went by and with vigorous research and development, the adaptation was finally achieved.

It can be used on a small scale, that is, by hand. It cannot be mass-produced yet because the technology has not yet made a breakthrough, but it will be soon.

But it can also be considered as embarking on a different path?
Yes, we took a different path.

Because there are so many applications and scenarios, so many that even researchers are overwhelmed; so many that the Elven industrial manufacturing has entered the realm of high-precision technology; so many that Dakous believes some technological trees can be cut? Like chips…

Darkus discovered that many technologies that originally required time to accumulate could now be bypassed through the logic of crystals.

We'll seize those pearls in another way.

During this elaborate stunt, the crystal acted as a storage device. To maximize the crystal's effectiveness, the fleet staged a grand spectacle before departing.

The fleet's cruise, the ships' turns, the surge of the waves, the waving of the flags—everything was perfectly recorded. The direction of every gust of wind, the rhythm of every wave, the trajectory of every arrow—all were input into the crystal.

The purpose was to input various images into the crystal and display them, as if the fleet were still there and had never left, and the objective...

After a while, Asniel got up from the ground. The ground was soft, but not dignified. He staggered, like a vampire or necromancer summoning a zombie from a grave, to the sofa, where he sat with the war dancers guarding him. Slumped against the sofa, he stared blankly at the ceiling, its light extremely glaring, a cold white, like the illumination of an operating room, leaving no escape.

The warrior dancers stopped chatting and stared at him intently, sensing that his mental state was extremely off. It was an aura of fragmentation, not anger, not fear, but the prelude to the disintegration of his consciousness.

So much so that when he let out a dry, speechless laugh, the warriors' bodies trembled involuntarily. The laughter was dry and hollow, as if it had been forcibly pulled out from the depths of their chests.

As for why I'm laughing dryly...

Asnil's mind raced, his thoughts wandering to the meeting not long ago to decide who would be regent. If he could, he'd love to travel back in time, grab Imrek by the collar, and drag that idiot out of the meeting room.

Before leaving, he wanted to shout: "This damn regent, let whoever wants to be it be it!"
But none of that is possible.

That dry laugh was a last struggle against a reality from which there was no going back.

If any dragon prince dares to obstruct them, he'll slap them across the face and let those idiots taste the power of his fists, or he'll roar the moment he sees Fennubal...

Thinking of this, he let out a morbid cacophony, a sound even more terrifying than the night owls of the Azsorloth Forest, sending chills down the spines of the surrounding war dancers. It was a laugh somewhere between mockery and despair, like a person on the verge of madness struggling against the last vestiges of reason.

In fact, the warrior dancers' judgment was correct.

At this moment, he was on the verge of collapse. Sometimes he would sigh heavily, as if he wanted to expel all the air and sorrow from his lungs; sometimes he would cover his face and cry, his shoulders shaking silently; and sometimes he would let out that strange, dry laughter, the laughter like sandpaper scraping against iron, piercing, trembling, and desperate.

He seemed to be talking to himself, or debating with some unseen entity. Reason told him to remain calm and maintain his dignity; but the last vestiges of emotion in his heart were crying out, telling himself that none of this should have happened.

As a soldier and a commander, he knew that the tactics Duruci would use next were the classic hammer and anvil tactics, the kind of tactics a commander most wanted to see.

If he could, he would rather be locked in a dungeon and tortured than be in a room with a panoramic view of Lorthorn, where he could clearly see everything that was about to happen.

The view outside the window became a torture device for him; it was all too cruel and too close to a nightmare for him.

He woke up exceptionally early today, so early that he was awake the moment the alarm went off.

At first, he didn't know why the alarm was sounding. But when he saw the people of Asur leaving their homes in an orderly fashion, saw soldiers appearing on the streets, saw the dragons on duty descend, and saw the dragons and raiding ships taking off to change shifts.

At that moment, his heart began to sink.

Later, he saw the dark clouds that shrouded Lorthorn appear out of thin air. It was not a natural weather change, but a sky torn apart by magic, a prelude to war. The low humming coming from the dark clouds was like the breath of a dragon, or the sigh of fate.

He saw the flight formation take off in an orderly fashion and enter the dark clouds. At that moment, he knew—Imrek was coming.

He knew that Imrek had successfully awakened the dragon, and he also knew that Duruch had already begun preparations before Imrek even arrived; the terror of that premonition sent shivers down his spine.

He couldn't fathom how they knew, how they orchestrated everything with such precision, down to the second. He believed there must be a traitor, a traitor among the Dragon Princes, who had leaked the information through magical communication.

But he couldn't figure out who it could be, or why they would do it. Names flashed through his mind, but none of them allowed him to truly identify them.

He even suspected that perhaps this was not betrayal, but an inevitable fate? It was the gods who gave Duruci instructions, and the gods abandoned the Kingdom of Caledo.

As Asniel was lost in thought, the time quietly arrived at noon.

"coming!"

This word was like a switch, instantly igniting a fragile string in Asniel's heart. Although he didn't want to see what happened next, he still jumped up from the sofa as if he were being manipulated.

His movements were swift and agile; he leaped onto the table, then jumped again, landing on the ground, and with a slide, rushed to the fence. He pushed aside the war dancer beside him and gripped the fence tightly with both hands.

He looked up, gazing towards the vast ocean.

The sky was cracking open, revealing a sky filled with dragons of various colors—gold, crimson, silver, and white—intertwining to create a dazzling stream of light. There were also bronze and copper-colored figures, gleaming with a metallic sheen under the refraction of light, as if hundreds of shattered mirrors in the sky were simultaneously reflecting a destructive light. Their scales shimmered in the sunlight, sharp as if cut by knives, and their wings beat rapidly through the air, creating a gale that seemed to boil the sea below.

Ten, then another ten, so many that they were impossible to count.

The dense shadows stretched across the entire sky, blocking out the light and the last hope. As a member of the Dragon Prince, he had never seen a more magnificent sight in his life.

Seeing a single dragon on the battlefield is an immense honor, but witnessing such a massive herd of dragons take flight is like an entire era being reborn in the sky.

He should have felt honored and excited, but he couldn't be happy.

He's not happy at all, he's going crazy.

He was like a hysterical madman, his lips trembling, emitting incoherent growls. He gripped the railing tightly, squeezing so hard that his nails broke, just to confirm that he was still alive.

At that moment, his rationality shattered like glass.

Because he could clearly see that the dragon's flight altitude was rapidly decreasing; it was not a defensive posture, nor a ceremonial procession, but a hunt.

The dragons swooped down, flipped, folded their wings, and then unfolded them again, the trajectory of their pincer attack resembling intersecting blades, drawing deadly arcs across the sky. In a tidal wave of thousands, the dragons surged towards the fleet.

He knew it was over, completely over. Those idiots hadn't seen through the illusion and had still launched an attack on the fleet.

A mythical collision, a clash between the ancient and the modern, a war between dragons and iron. The air was torn apart, the waves were overturned, the hulls disintegrated, and the soldiers were vaporized into ashes. Dragon flames exploded into countless orbs of light in the same instant, like stars falling.

Unfortunately, none of this will happen.

Because it was a fleet that existed only in the naked eye, without any substance; that fleet was formed through illusion—he knew this almost desperately.

When he saw the dragon begin to swoop down, he closed his eyes in anguish.

He dared not watch, nor did he want to watch, because he knew that this epic scene would become a nightmare for the rest of his life.

Then, he was pulled away by the swarm of war dancers. They were shouting something, but he couldn't hear them. His ears were filled with a deafening roar, torn apart by the wind and the dragon's howl. He didn't resist, he didn't struggle, he just let the war dancers pull him away. Every muscle in his body was trembling, yet he had lost all his strength.

However, he still turned back and took one last look. (End of Chapter)