Chapter 165: One-Night Motherhood, and the Other Mom is the Queen?

Eldara’s voice rang out, as icy and sharp as a shard of winter glass.

The warm, intimate atmosphere that had settled over the garden was instantly shattered by her words.

“You… you even have a child together?!”

In the silent night, those eight words exploded like a clap of thunder from a clear sky.

Celeste, still holding the little Cyrene who was laser-focused on munching her cake, froze solid. Her brain simply shut down. The gears of her thoughts, jammed by an accusation so utterly absurd, ground to a halt, leaving only the crackle of static in their wake.

‘A… child?”Who? Me? With Elaniel?”Wait… hold on… has the plot’s Astral Express completely derailed? No, this has damn well jumped the tracks and warped into another dimension!”Oh, right, this is another dimension… never mind then…”But a child? How can two women have a child? Even if the tech on Earth advanced to that point, it couldn’t pop out a ready-made four or five-year-old overnight!”Could it be… that the elves’ life sciences have progressed to such a terrifying degree?!’

A barrage of ludicrous question marks ricocheted wildly through her mind, causing her arms, which cradled Cyrene, to go completely stiff.

Across from her, the expression on Elaniel’s face was equally spectacular.

That lazy, alluring smile faded from her lips, replaced first by sheer astonishment, then by a sense of absurdity so deep it was almost comical. She had never, in all her centuries, expected her most loyal, most composed Knight Commander to utter a sentence that could shake the entire palace to its foundations.

She opened her mouth, trying to form an explanation.

But the words caught in her throat. She found herself utterly at a loss for where to even begin.

The entire scene plunged into an eerily deep silence.

The only one unaffected was little Cyrene, nestled in Celeste’s arms. Unaware of the complex thunderstorm brewing in the adult world, she only felt that the arms holding her had suddenly become uncomfortably hard.

The little one squirmed.

Then, she raised the half-eaten little cake in her hand and earnestly offered it to Celeste’s mouth.

In her clear, childish voice, she uttered the second word she had ever learned.

This single word, like the final straw on a camel’s back, precisely and utterly crushed Eldara’s already teetering worldview.

She’s already learned to share food!

What is this if not the deep, instinctual bond between a mother and her child?!

The emotional defenses on Eldara’s perpetually frosty face completely crumbled. Shock, heartache, bewilderment, and a kind of indignant grief—like seeing a peerless, priceless flower she had cultivated for hundreds of years get casually stomped on by a pink-haired pig—all swirled into a chaotic mess on her face.

Her crimson eyes fixed piercingly on Celeste.

That gaze was no longer one of mere scrutiny. It was one of naked accusation and bitter disappointment. It was the look one reserved for an utterly shameless woman who, despite already having a child, still had the gall to wear an innocent “who am I, where am I” expression.

“Your Majesty…”

Eldara’s voice trembled.

With great difficulty, she shifted her gaze to Elaniel, her eyes now filled with the deep pain of someone asking, “How could you be so foolish?”

She wanted to question, to admonish.

But since when were the private affairs of Her Majesty the Queen something a mere subject could comment on?

A sharp, stabbing pain tightened around Eldara’s heart, making it almost impossible to breathe.

Her Majesty the Queen, who had raised her, whom she regarded as an elder sister, even a mother… The monarch she had sworn to protect with her very life…

Had just been… by this otherworldly visitor… so inexplicably…

And they even had a child together!

This little girl had pink hair, just like that otherworlder. But those pointed ears were unmistakably a feature of the Elf Race!

The evidence was irrefutable!

Finally, this battle-hardened Knight Commander, who remained unflinching even before armies of the undead, buckled under the immense mental shock and committed an act utterly unbefitting of her station.

She spun around sharply.

“The northern border situation is urgent, I… I must go handle it!”

She threw out the words almost incoherently, then, with long, stiff strides, she practically fled the garden, her posture one of near-panic.

That retreating figure was resolute, hasty, and even stumbled slightly, completely devoid of its usual gallant composure.

Watching Eldara’s fleeing back, Celeste was utterly dumbfounded.

‘Huh? Why did she run?”Urgent military situation? That sounds like the flimsiest excuse I’ve ever heard! Why did she look at me like I just murdered her entire family?”And what did she mean by that? What does “even have a child together” mean?!’

Utterly confused, Celeste looked down at the pink-haired little girl still munching on cake in her arms, then up at Elaniel, who wore a wry, amused expression.

She finally couldn’t hold back the question that had been burning a hole in her brain.

“Elaniel, she… what did she mean by that just now?”

“Pfft…”

Elaniel finally failed to restrain herself, and a light laugh escaped her lips, leaving Celeste even more baffled. Not only did she not explain, but she instead looked at Celeste and the little Cyrene in her arms with keen interest, a mischievous glint flashing in her wine-red eyes.

“She saw a pink-haired child.”

“With a pair of pointed elven ears.”

“Being held by a similarly pink-haired human.”

“And nearby, stands an Elf Queen…”

Elaniel leaned forward slightly, lowering her voice as if sharing some intimate secret. “Celeste, what do you think she would assume?”

Celeste’s voice shot up an octave, startling little Cyrene, who stopped eating her cake and looked up at her curiously. “She thinks this child is… ours? You’ve got to be kidding me!”

Celeste felt her entire worldview being hammered into dust.

“Having a child isn’t that fast! Besides, how can two women have a child?!”

She thought Eldara’s logic was absurd beyond belief.

However, Elaniel’s next words made her realize that it wasn’t Eldara who was absurd, but this entire world.

“For our Elf Race…” Looking at Celeste’s utterly horrified expression, a faint, suspicious blush actually appeared on Elaniel’s pale cheeks, and her eyes unconsciously drifted away. “…it is possible.”

“And…” She paused, her voice dropping even lower, carrying a strange magnetism as she spoke almost directly against Celeste’s ear. “…it is indeed very fast.”

Celeste: “???”

She felt her brain was completely incapable of processing the Elf Queen’s words.

What did “it is possible” mean?

What did “it is indeed very fast” mean?

This was no longer in the world of science; this was metaphysics! Theology!

Seeing the look of pure, unadulterated shock on Celeste’s face, a look that screamed “Are you fcking kidding me?”, Elaniel took a deep breath, seeming to find the explanation somewhat awkward herself.

Eldara had already fled in a state of emotional collapse; she couldn’t let this “companion” she had so eagerly awaited follow suit.

“Celeste, sit down first.”

Elaniel led her back to the white jade round table.

“This matter… is a long story.” Her voice held a note of gravity. “It involves our Elf Race’s most core… secret of reproduction.”

Celeste sat down stiffly. In her arms, little Cyrene had already finished one cake and was happily starting on a second. She pricked up her ears, ready to hear an elven tale that was about to overturn decades of worldview from two separate lifetimes.

“We elves, due to our long lifespans and innate closeness to nature, actually have rather subdued physical desires. We lean more towards spiritual love,” Elaniel’s voice rang out in the tranquil garden, carrying the weight of a racial secret being shared.

Holding the child, Celeste listened, stunned.

‘Subdued desires? Then what about all those romantic escapades from your youth? Were they just some magical photoshoots?”Yikes… I think I understand why the Human King was so full of Wrath before.”Compared to an ancestor having a past with the neighboring queen, it’s probably even harder to accept that said ancestor was just a human-shaped prop back then, right?’

She silently roasted her in her mind but didn’t dare voice the thoughts, afraid of interrupting the impromptu biology lesson.

“And precisely because of this, our method of reproduction is different from most races. We rarely… well, we rarely conceive life through the method you humans use.”

At this point, Elaniel’s pale cheeks flushed a little more.

Celeste blinked, signaling her understanding. Even a centuries-old veteran occasionally needed to show a little maidenly reserve.

“Then how do you…” Celeste asked curiously.

“The ancient Tree of Life.” Elaniel’s gaze turned towards the ancient tree branch deep in the garden, which was emitting a soft glow. Her eyes became reverent and tender.

“When a pair of elves are deeply in love and decide to have a child of their own, they come together before the Tree of Life to pray.”

“Then, each provides a drop of their own blood, which merges into the tree’s heart.”

“The Tree of Life will use these two drops of blood as a foundation, combining the essences of their two souls, and in an extremely short time, gestate a completely new life.”

Elaniel paused here, glancing at Cyrene, who was single-mindedly tackling her second little cake. She then added a crucial piece of information that nearly made Celeste’s eyes pop out of their sockets.

“also, children gestated by the Mother Tree are born already equivalent to a human child of four or five years old.”

Celeste felt something explode in her mind.

She stared blankly down at the little girl in her arms: pink hair, pointed ears, looking four or five years old, munching on cake.

Then she looked up at the silver-haired, wine-eyed Elf Queen opposite her, who wore an expression that said, “That’s just how it is here.”

A complete, yet utterly preposterous, chain of logic forcefully snapped together in her mind.

Last night, she and Elaniel, two “deeply in love” adults, shared a bed (triggered hidden condition) in the Queen’s chambers (special map).

The location was the Queen’s chambers, the place with the densest life energy in the entire palace, which even housed a branch of the ancient Tree of Life.

Then, tonight, she summoned Mimi.

After absorbing energy from the ancient Tree of Life branch, Mimi transformed from a little pink sprite into a four or five-year-old girl.

This little girl had pink hair like hers (inherited gene A).

And had the pointed ears characteristic of the Elf Race (inherited gene B).

All elements formed a perfectly closed loop.

From Eldara’s perspective, this whole process was seamless, airtight!

She and Elaniel, in the Queen’s chambers, using the power of the ancient Tree of Life, had crafted a child belonging to both of them in a single night!

‘Good grief! I just performed a one-click, painless childbirth?!”What kind of otherworldly childbirth DLC is this? I didn’t pay for this! System, don’t you dare take matters into your own hands!’

[Elysian’s Note: Having a good time with the story? Every single bit helps immensely: