Gou is a dark elf in Warhammer

This isn't the end.

Malekith's gaze swept from the top of Darkus's head to the bottom of his feet, and then back up again, his face bearing a pleased expression that said, "I've finally caught you red-handed."

As if he had finally found an opportunity, he continued to output his output.

Dakos didn't move; he stood there, letting Malekith scrutinize him, his expression as calm as if he were awaiting a trial that had nothing to do with him.

“Look at you,” he raised his hand, pointing at Darkus’s upper body, his tone carrying an exaggerated disdain, “What the hell are you wearing? A brown jacket? Are we going on a picnic? Where’s your robe? Where’s that robe? You…” He paused, as if searching for a suitable adjective, “You look like a merchant who just came back from some remote colony, or one of those who specializes in reselling cheap goods.”

His finger moved down, pointing to the sturdy wool trousers.

"And these pants... sturdy, yes, they are sturdy, but are you going to work on a construction site? Or are you going to farm in the fields? I've known you for so many years, and this is the first time I've seen you dressed like this."

Dakos remained expressionless, standing there quietly, as if Malekith were talking about someone else's clothes, as if Malekith were a chattering fool.

Of course, he didn't look at Malekith with the eyes of someone looking at a fool, but his actions still managed to silence Malekith.

He was dressed somewhat differently today, not wearing his ever-present robe, but suddenly looking "modern." But it wasn't strange at all, at least that's what he thought.

He wore a crisp brown jacket, with binoculars hanging from his chest. His breast pocket was bulging, filled with various items. He wore sturdy black denim trousers, tailored to fit well. On his feet were a pair of Trucé Army standard-issue boots, the laces tied meticulously.

His belt was his signature sash, with a gun holster hanging on his left—a fine leather product by Genevieve, containing the First Man's Blade. On his right was a woven satchel from Horotho, which he was using as a document bag, and it was slightly bulging at the moment.

Overall, it looks like some kind of... mix-and-match style?

After Malekith finally finished his verbal sparring, the so-called "Marekis time," Dakous suddenly brought his legs together, straightened his back, pounded his chest with his right hand, and gave a crisp, standard military salute.

"report!"

Malekith paused for a moment.

He stared at Dakos for a few seconds, waiting for what he would say next.

But Dakota remained motionless, maintaining his salute.

"And then?" After a moment, Marekis raised an eyebrow, his tone tinged with confusion, having not heard anything more.

"report!"

Dakos became a broken record.

Malekith's expression shifted from confusion to silence, then from silence to a familiar urge to curse. He took a deep breath and uttered a single word.

"roll!"

As soon as he finished speaking, he stretched out his hand.

The movement was so natural, as if it had been practiced countless times: palms facing upwards, fingers slightly bent, waiting for something.

Dakos lowered his salute and took the lance from his back. The movement was fluid and practiced; he even seemed to want to perform a flourish. With his right hand gripping the shaft and his left supporting the forehand, he flipped the lance around and handed it steadily to Malekith.

The moment Malekith received it, his arm dipped slightly.

weight.

It was heavier than he had expected.

He stretched out his left hand, then held the gun with both hands, holding it horizontally in front of him. Instead of immediately raising it to aim, he simply held it and scanned the gun inch by inch with his second eye, a perception that transcended sight.

The metallic texture, the grain of the wood, the seams of the magazine, the straightness of the barrel.

Every detail was imaged, superimposed, and reconstructed in his mind.

A moment later, he raised his head and looked at Dakota.

The teasing and mockery from before were gone from those eyes.

"Do we really want to do this?"

This statement was more like a self-answered question. After uttering it, Malekith nodded listlessly. His hand remained on the gun, his fingertips lightly tracing the cold metal surface, but he had no desire to lift it up and examine it closely.

Has that batch of equipment been shipped yet?

"We should be there soon," Darkus said calmly.

“Sigh.” Malekith sighed deeply, a sigh carrying an indescribable heaviness. “In your words, this is technological progress, the development of the times.” He paused. “But do we have that much money?”

Dakos did not answer immediately; he knew what Malekith was talking about.

The tide of the times is sweeping across everyone and every aspect of life. With the advent of steam-powered machinery, traditional military formations had already begun to become obsolete.

But it is not completely outdated.

One reason is the inertia of the military system; those ancient tactics and formations passed down for thousands of years are not so easily abandoned. Another reason is that the reliability and speed of steam power are indeed not good; it can only serve as an auxiliary force and cannot completely replace the human body.

But when the internal combustion engine appeared...

Everything is different now.

With improved mechanical reliability and increased speed, and the addition of armor plates to vehicles, those behemoths became mobile fortresses, far more effective than any cavalry.

Traditional military formations are completely outdated, and so are the behemoths used as front-line troops. Of course, behemoths can still be used in certain scenarios and terrains.

The method was simple: armored vehicles charged into the enemy ranks at top speed, and the neatly arranged soldiers were harvested like wheat. How can flesh and blood contend with steel?
Even elite soldiers who have trained for twenty years are no different from new recruits at that moment; they are all easily crushed.

Who can withstand this?

Unless trenches are dug, obstacles are erected, or heavy artillery positions are deployed to make ballistae function as anti-tank guns, doing so itself proves the obsolescence of traditional military formations.

You no longer believe that formations can stop the enemy; you've started to believe in fortifications and firepower.

And for Trudeau, it wasn't just about internal combustion engine vehicles.

Some ultimate, top-tier weapons, reserved for when absolutely necessary and not even required to be equipped, are kept in storage, along with their supporting production systems. With just a word, they can be transformed and put into production.

With the emergence of new materials, the entire elven army system will inevitably undergo a complete overhaul.

Even if you don't want to, you have to embrace it.

This has nothing to do with you not embracing, or others embracing; or you not changing, or others changing. And then you'll become the harvested wheat in the next war.

It's simply that the thing already exists and is there.

“Not now, but there will be in the future,” Darkus finally said.

“Yes, not now, but there will be in the future,” Malekith chimed in.

In that instant, he seemed to age ten thousand years, entering a state of near death. He knew how to handle guns; he had handled them before, and he was quite accurate. But now, he didn't handle them, didn't aim, didn't pull the trigger. Instead, he handed the gun back to Dakos, appearing very resistant.

The movements were slow and heavy, as if they were handing over not a gun, but something more important.

Dakos took the gun, slung it over his shoulder, and was about to reach into the bulging pocket on his chest.

Malekith let out a silent laugh.

The laughter was soft, but filled with complex emotions. It wasn't mockery, nor helplessness, but more like... a kind of relief?
“Darkius,” he began, his voice suddenly becoming ethereal, “who are our enemies? Those monkeys, those primitive men?” Darkius’s hand froze in mid-air.

"To divide the world with the lizardmen? They occupy the jungle, while we occupy..." Malekith didn't finish his sentence, but instead looked up at the sky.

"A grand plan? Or..." He paused, his gaze drifting further and further away.

After a moment, he sighed softly.

"Heaven and earth were born together with me, and all things are one with me."

Malekith withdrew his gaze and turned towards the direction of the vortex.

“With the end of the Great Invasion, with the emergence of the Great Vortex,” his voice lowered, “our enemy has always been ourselves, always has been.”

Dakos remained silent. What could he say? Malekith had already provided the answer, using history and his own experience to answer his own question.

Sunlight shone on the two of them, casting long shadows.

"Prosperity and unification? Descendants of our ancestors?"

After a moment, Dakota muttered something and then shook his head.

He didn't know either.

All he knew was that as time passed and the world progressed, one day elves and lizardmen would appear in the universe, just as the ancient saints had descended upon this planet, and would descend upon other planets.

Instead of being like the primitive people Malekith described, mingling together in the same mud pit.

As for the specifics of what will happen then, he doesn't know, he really doesn't know.

"Ok?"

Malekith let out a questioning hum, clearly noticing the dazed look on his face.

"nothing."

Darius snapped out of his reverie and reached into the bulging pocket on his chest, pulling out a wad of paper. His expression instantly shifted, from the pensive thinker to a shrewd, market-savvy vendor, ready to haggle at a market. If he could, he'd even spit in his hand to complete the look.

He casually flipped through the stack of documents, his movements as practiced as if he had done it countless times, before handing it to Malekith.

Malekith didn't take it immediately. He looked down at the stack of documents, then looked up at Dakos with a question mark in his eyes.

Darkus did not respond; he simply maintained the outstretched gesture, slightly raising his chin to indicate that he should take it.

Malekith took it, and the moment he held it in his hand, a difficult expression immediately appeared on his face. It was somewhere between confusion, speechlessness, and "Are you kidding me?" His lips twitched slightly, and his eyebrows rose and fell repeatedly, as if he were doing some kind of extreme facial muscle exercise.

That was a stack of banknotes.

It is called banknote, and it is banknote, but its function is obviously to be spent.

It's not paper money, because it's too stiff. Nor is it a metal coin, because it's too thin and too large.

Malekith looked at the stack of papers in his hand over and over, his gaze falling on the details of each one.

No face value.

No profile picture.

There was only color, vibrant yet not glaring, like a carefully blended gradient, a kind of dazzling technique. Each image was printed with a picture on the background—some were pyramids, some forests, some waves, some starry skies. The lines of those pictures were simple yet exquisite, possessing a kind of magic that made it impossible to look away.

Next to the picture were two words printed on it.

casual.

spend.

Malekith stared at those two words for a long time, his expression becoming increasingly tense.

"The materials used for an ID card?" He looked up, his voice tinged with disbelief. "Ink?"

Darkus ignored Malekith's inscrutable expression. He reached into another bulging breast pocket, this time pulling out a palm-sized metal box. Its silver-gray exterior was angular and unremarkable.

But then he gently pushed and pulled at a certain spot with his thumb.

The box seemed to come alive, clicking softly a few times before unfolding into a completely different form. A lens protruded from one end, a comfortable grip extended from the body, and several intricate dials were revealed on the side.

Miniature camera.

Dakous raised the lens, squinted one eye, and first used his finger to adjust the parameters of a dial according to the current lighting. Then he adjusted another dial, and the aperture ring on the side of the lens contracted and opened as he turned it. Next was the focus ring; he twisted it a few times and calibrated it towards a distant point.

He then stepped back a few paces and pointed the camera at Malekith.

Malekith looked up and glanced at Darkus.

He didn't ask: What are you doing?

Because he knew what Darkus was doing; they had known each other for so long that they could read each other's intentions from a single gesture.

He was just going along with it.

Marekis mimicked Darkus's mercenary demeanor, a wide, slightly mocking smile playing on his lips. He casually held up the wad of "spend as you please" bills in front of him, even turning his body slightly to the side in a pose that appeared effortless but was clearly carefully planned.

The shutter is pressed.

There was no click, only a very slight "tap," as if something had vibrated gently.

Dakos glanced down at a small display area on the back of the camera and nodded in satisfaction. Then he walked back to Malekith, put the camera away, turning it back into an unassuming metal box, and tucked it back into his pocket.

“I’ll take your picture,” he said casually, as if he were remarking on the nice weather, “so it can be your portrait on a banknote.”

Malekith was stunned; his expression underwent a complete transformation in that instant, from smugness to confusion to astonishment.

One second he was still immersed in his impromptu performance with his mercenary expression, the next second Dakota's casual remark about the image of a banknote was like a bucket of ice water poured over him from head to toe.

"you!"

He clenched his fist into the hand still holding the banknotes, raising it in mid-air, the veins on the back of his hand bulging. The stack of "spend as you please" notes were innocently squeezed in his palm, crumpled into a ball, the edges curling up, making a slight rubbing sound.

No, it wasn't paper, but some kind of tougher material. It made a rustling sound when squeezed, but ultimately it didn't break.

The emotions contained in that "you" were rich enough: anger, shock, speechlessness, and a hint of something that couldn't be hidden... a mixture of laughter and tears? But the fist ultimately stopped in mid-air, like a hesitant eagle circling its prey for three seconds before finally folding its wings.

Malekith took a deep breath and then slowly exhaled.

He loosened his fist and looked down at the wad of "banknotes" he had been clutching. The exquisite colors, the background of the pyramids and the starry sky, and the two words "casual" and "spend" were now all crumpled with fine creases. He tried to smooth them out with his other hand, his movements clumsy, as if he were dealing with something he both wanted to destroy and couldn't bear to part with.

Then he looked up at Dakos.

The anger in those eyes had mostly subsided, replaced by a complex, indescribable emotion.

"Don't use my picture as your profile picture!" His tone was much calmer than before, but there was still a hint of gritted teeth in his voice. "Just like before."

He then shoved the wad of banknotes into Dakos's arms, turned away, and looked elsewhere, no longer glancing at Dakos. (End of Chapter)