Inside the royal palace, within the shadowed calm of his office, Chancellor Lazalit stood motionless as his subordinates delivered their report. At first, his face was unreadable: stoic, detached. But the moment the words landed, his expression shifted sharply.
“She lived?” Lazalit said slowly, the words laced with a quiet menace that made the room feel colder.
“Yes, sir. Lady Mimi survived,” the dwarf confirmed, standing rigid, eyes fixed on the floor, as though afraid even eye contact might provoke punishment.
“So then, you did kill her, didn’t you?” Lazalit demanded, each word dropping like a stone, sharp and deliberate.
The silence that followed was thick with unease. One of the dwarf operatives hesitated, then spoke, his voice faltering.
“N-No, sir… that is, we attempted to, but…” the dwarf stammered, his voice cracking under the pressure as he shrank beneath Lazalit’s withering gaze.
Their excuses spilled out in pieces. Mimi, they explained, hadn’t been alone. She had someone with her, someone incredibly strong. A human. They hadn’t stood a chance. Their attacks had been repelled, their formations broken. They’d been forced to retreat, completely outmatched.
“A human?” Lazalit’s voice dropped, low and dangerous. “Don’t be absurd. You’re my elite unit, dwarves trained beyond the limits of any common soldier. And you’re telling me you lost to one human?”
The operative nodded stiffly, swallowing his shame. “Yes, sir. But this human wasn’t ordinary. He used magic like a master—firing off powerful spells one after another with terrifying speed. He even conjured some kind of barrier around himself. We couldn’t touch him.”
Lazalit’s eyes narrowed. “A magic-user…”
Of all the dwarves in the kingdom, he likely knew more about human magic than anyone else. Or so he thought. In his mind, human mages were a relic of the past: outclassed by warriors, their numbers dwindling, their spells weak and predictable. These days, true strength comes with a blade, not a staff.
“Why would a magic-user be that powerful?” he muttered, almost to himself.
“W-We don’t know, sir. But his casting was unbelievably fast. No chanting, no delay. He just… launched them. And the barrier around him absorbed everything we threw at it.”
Lazalit’s brow twitched. “Wait. Say that again.”
“The barrier, sir?” the dwarf asked hesitantly, unsure which part of his failure was about to be dissected.
“No. Before that,” Lazalit cut in, his voice pressing, as if chasing a thought he didn’t want to believe.
“The way he fired off magic… one spell after another…” the dwarf replied cautiously, his words trailing off under the weight of Lazalit’s growing intensity.
Lazalit’s voice dropped to a whisper, as if speaking to the shadows themselves. “He’s casting without incantation…”
That wasn’t possible. Not according to everything he knew. Humans required incantations to shape and release magic; it was the natural limitation of their kind. Every human mage he’d studied relied on chants, gestures, and time. But if this report was accurate, then this human was different. Exceptionally so.
And that made him dangerous.
If this unidentified mage truly wielded unchanted, high-output magic, then no ordinary assassin would stand a chance against him. Even his elite squad couldn’t touch him.
Lazalit turned away, lost in thought, his fingers drumming against the edge of his desk. Fragments of theory, battlefield records, and old magical treatises spun through his mind like shards of broken glass. He muttered to himself, half-formed calculations and questions slipping from his lips.
Then, slowly, his voice hardened with purpose.
He had reached a conclusion.
“I’ll go myself,” Lazalit said, his voice calm… too calm.
“What?” One of the operatives blinked, thinking he must have misheard. Around the room, the rest of the squad looked up in stunned silence, eyes drifting toward the chancellor as if unsure whether he was joking.
“I said I’ll go,” Lazalit repeated, his tone still level, but colder now, like steel pulled from its sheath. “That human… I’ll kill him with my own hands.”
A tense silence settled over the room. The Dwarven Special Forces members exchanged uneasy glances, clearly wrestling with the unspoken question: He can fight? None of them dared say it aloud. The chancellor’s face betrayed no emotion—no anger, no pride, no doubt. Just that terrifying stillness. And in the face of it, no one could summon the nerve to challenge him.