Chapter 1224. You Cannot Decapitate Them, They Have No Single Head

Chapter 1224: 1224. You Cannot Decapitate Them, They Have No Single Head

Valentina stared at him, her pupils contracting as the full, terrifying scope of his ambition crystallized in her mind. It wasn’t just a conquest; it was an erasure.

The realization settled in her gut like molten lead. Aethelgard wasn’t the endgame; it was merely the opening gambit.

The world she had spent her entire life protecting, the fragile balance of nations she had helped maintain through decades of diplomacy and magical scholarship, was nothing more than prey waiting to be hunted.

"You don’t want submission," Valentina whispered, her voice cracking with raw disbelief. "You intend to conquer all of Erosyne."

"Every kingdom, every sovereign border, every sacred grove... You want to extinguish the sun itself."

Xerollion didn’t blink.

"I’ve already conquered Aethelgard," he answered, his tone as casual as if he were discussing the weather or mundane lunch plans. "Why would I stop when the horizon is still so full of potential?"

The casual cruelty of his words struck her harder than any physical blow. He wasn’t a tyrant seeking glory; he was a force seeking completion.

Then, the interrogation began in earnest, and it was methodical, brutal in its efficiency. Xerollion didn’t just ask questions; he dissected her knowledge like a surgeon peeling back layers of flesh.

He began with the Valdric Sovereignty to the north, his voice cutting through the silence as he demanded specifics on their rigid military hierarchy.

"Their arcane integration," he pressed, leaning closer. "How deeply does the spellwork penetrate their infantry?"

"I want to know how their soldiers train. Do they treat magic as a tool or as an extension of their own sinew?"

Valentina’s mind raced. She began to speak, her voice strained but carrying the practiced cadence of a scholar.

"They treat it as both," she explained, the words feeling like treason on her tongue. "From childhood, their drills integrate incantation with swordplay."

"A Valdric soldier does not cast a spell; they become the spell..."

"Their crossbow bolts carry enchantments that can pierce standard magical barriers..."

As she spoke, Xerollion’s questions became sharper, more invasive. He moved to the Thornweald Collective, demanding to know the true nature of their druidic federation.

"Their magic," he interjected, "it’s unpredictable... It’s chaotic."

"How does one cage something that answers to no grimoire?"

"What are the limits of their connection to the wild?"

"There are no limits, not in the way you understand them," Valentina replied, her hands gripping the edge of the obsidian desk until her nails threatened to draw blood. "The Thornweald magic responds to blood, to intent, to the raw pulse of the earth itself."

"It can turn against the summoner if their spirit wavers... It is not a discipline; it is a pact."

The interrogation moved west to the Aurelian Compact, and Valentina found herself describing the labyrinthine rivalries between their magical institutions and the centuries-old blood feuds between schools that had shaped magical theory itself.

She spoke of their vast networks and their defensive wards, each detail feeling like she was handing him the keys to their graves.

Finally, he turned to the Sable Reaches.

"The southern blank spot," he mused, his voice dropping to a dangerous register. "Even Aethelgard’s records are incomplete there..."

"Tell me what you know of the whispers, Headmaster... What lies beyond the charted waters?"

Valentina hesitated. The Reaches were a mystery even to her, a place of myth and deadly superstition.

But she saw the way Xerollion watched her, the patient, predatory stillness, and she knew that withholding information would only provoke violence she couldn’t survive.

"The Reaches are... unstable," she said finally, her voice growing steadier despite herself.

The familiar act of recitation, the recalling of historical data, strategic positions, and magical theory, offered her a hollow shelter. It was easier to speak as a headmaster than to speak as a defeated woman.

"Much of it remains unmapped because the geography itself seems to shift."

"But the rumors speak of ancient powers that predate the Apostles... Powers that do not follow the laws of Erosyne."

Xerollion listened with terrifying focus. He didn’t interrupt; he absorbed.

Occasionally, he would interject with a question so precise, so surgically targeted at a specific vulnerability she hadn’t even considered, that it made her blood run cold. He wasn’t just listening; he was already constructing.

As she spoke, she could almost see the invisible web forming in his mind, a grand, bloody strategy for continental conquest, each piece of information she provided snapping into place like a bolt in a loaded crossbow.

"The Valdric Sovereignty won’t fall the way Aethelgard did," Valentina said.

The words slipped out before she could strangle them, her old instincts as a strategist overriding the terror that should have kept her silent.

Even now, her mind functioned like a clockwork mechanism of tactical assessment, a reflex born of decades of studying warfare. "They don’t centralize their power like we do."

"Our system relies on a throne, a headmaster, a singular point of failure."

"But the Valdrics? They are a web."

"Kill their highest commander, shatter their archmage, and three more will already be moving into position to claim the authority before the blood has even dried on the battlefield."

"You cannot decapitate them because they have no single head."

"Noted," Xerollion said.

The word was clipped, devoid of inflection, yet it carried the weight of a death sentence. Valentina felt a sickening twist in her gut, a bitter, poisonous satisfaction.

Her own expertise, the culmination of a lifetime of study and sleepless nights spent defending her borders, was being harvested like wheat.

She was feeding the monster the very blueprints he needed to dismantle the world. She was, in effect, sharpening the blade that would eventually find her own throat.

For what felt like hours, the interrogation continued. The air in the office grew stale and heavy, charged with the oppressive magical residue that always seemed to cling to Xerollion like a shroud.

They moved through the geography of power: the druidic ferocity of the Thornweald, the institutional arrogance of the Aurelian Compact, and the shifting nightmares of the Sable Reaches.

Valentina spoke until her throat felt raw, her voice becoming a hollow recitation of facts, a shield of intellectual detachment that protected her from the reality of her treason.

Then, without warning, the atmosphere shifted. The temperature didn’t just drop; it felt as though the oxygen had been sucked out of the room, leaving only a vacuum of pure dread.

Xerollion leaned forward. The movement was slow and deliberate, like a predator closing the distance before the killing strike.

"Celestina," he said.

The name hit Valentina like a physical blow. Her breath hitched audibly in the silence of the room. Her entire body went rigid, every muscle locking into a state of frozen terror.

The name was a wound she had kept cauterized for decades, a secret buried beneath layers of academic prestige and political maneuvering.

"Your sister," Xerollion continued, his voice dropping to a register that felt unnervingly intimate, almost conversational. "The founder of the Legion of Anti Reincarnators."

"Tell me everything you know about her."

Valentina’s pupils dilated until her eyes seemed almost entirely black. Her heart thundered against her ribs with such violence she feared he could see her chest convulsing.

’How?’ The question screamed in her mind. ’How could he possibly know?’

This was not public record. This was not something found in the dusty archives of the Grand Academy.

This was a ghost story she had whispered only to the dead.

"How did you—" Valentina began, her voice cracking, the facade of the composed headmaster shattering completely.

"I know a great many things, Valentina," Xerollion interrupted.

His voice wasn’t cruel; it was worse. It was certain, and it was omniscient.

"I know about the pact she forged in the dark."

"I know about her contract with Kaeleth..."

"I know about the whispered atrocities of Solmordia..."

He paused, letting each name sink into her like poisoned needles.

"I know about the Seam House," he pressed, his gaze boring through her skull as if he could read the very synapses firing in her brain. "And I know about the thirty years you have spent playing the silent guardian."

"Thirty years of watching her from the shadows, pulling strings from behind a desk to protect a sister who would likely despise you if she knew what you had become."

Valentina felt the world tilt. The room seemed to spin, the cracked portrait of the Archmage on the wall blurring into a grotesque smear of paint.

The interrogation had ceased to be about kingdoms and armies. It had become a surgical strike against her soul.