"Core classes for elves mean an entirely different thing from core classes for humans," I explained to Licht. "As you know, elves have access to a unique system section—affinity. As an elf, you would be able to invest affinity points into any sub-affinity. For them, classes are heavily reliant on those affinities."

For humans, whether Highbreed or Verdenkind, one's class determines the relevance and irrelevance of various attributes, the distribution of status points, and the type of skills and ability one would unlock. It's similar for elves, except they have an additional parameter—affinity class—which works in a different fashion.

"You're still following?" I asked Licht. He nodded, prompting me to continue.

"Let's take the common core class, Sylvan Enchanter. You might be tempted to think it's the elven equivalent of a wizard, and you'd be right, as it makes an elf's stats MP-reliant, focusing on Perception and Mysticism—the elven attribute equivalents of Intelligence and Wisdom. The skills they're likely to unlock are either magic-type or spell-type. Another thing it does is increase the likelihood of unlocking a sub-affinity of a particular main affinity. For elves, Sylvan Enchanter is a core class because it boosts the likelihood of unlocking the arcane main affinity, while Memory Keeper, also an MP-centric class, is considered a subclass because it provides an increased likelihood of unlocking sub-affinities of several main affinities like Arcane, Artistic, and Elemental."

"Now," I said before posing another question, "what are the five main affinities?"

"Elemental Affinity, Artistic Affinity, Arcane Affinity, Nature Affinity, and Spiritual Affinity," he recited correctly.

"Ding ding ding, you got them all. Now second question, what do these affinities have in common?"

"What they have in common..." Licht echoed, falling into a ponder.

"Come on, it's not particularly hard to guess. It can just be found by the sound of their names."

Since Licht seemed to struggle to figure it out, I answered on his behalf. "The answer is the fact that none of them sound like they'll give you any physical boon."

With the exception of Artistic perhaps, none of the main affinities inspire anything that'll improve one's physical might. In fact, it's a set-in-stone fact that only a small minority of the sub-affinities improve one's likelihood of unlocking skills and abilities related to physical prowess. This shows that elves, from a sub-affinity perspective, aren't particularly advantaged in martial matters. In fact, they're at a certain disadvantage. Their attributes lack a strength equivalent; they only have resilience, which is a bastardized version of vitality that slightly increases elven offense but really pales in comparison to the glorious strength attribute. Agility might increase martial might, but even then, it often manifests more as increased speed.

"All that to say," I explained, "martial classes are kind of a black sheep for elves, and so are their weapons. It's normal that you've stumbled upon any weapon that looked remotely interesting. Like I told you the other day, what you'll find here is scrap, and the only remotely interesting things you might find here are enchanted artifacts, but even then, I doubt they're of any interesting quality."

Taking a sip of her tea, we were outside, in a random restaurant south of our guest mansion. Setting down my cup, I repeated, "If you want to wonder at elven craftsmanship, the Ferron family is where you'll find it."

Licht sighed and took a drink of his tea too, though clearly, it wasn't to his taste.

"Do you have a problem with your 'Trouble?'" I asked, glancing at the sword that I'd never seen him leave behind, save perhaps during their meeting with the patriarch.

He shook his head. "She's fine," he answered, patting the sword. "It's just that I like to gather interesting artifacts, especially swords."

"Oh," I responded, bringing a galette to my mouth. "I'm not really a hoarder myself, but I do understand it. I too like to browse at artifacts, especially magical ones. So, I take it you were expecting unique elven-made artifacts, weren't you?"

He chuckled self-derisively. "That didn't go as planned, did it?"

"It sure didn't. But frankly, if we continue to look, or perhaps just ask for a good recommendation, we might find a shop that has something," I explained.

Despite being on the lookout for anything remotely interesting—be it artifact shops, restaurants, or anything else—we never asked for recommendations for the simple reason that I didn't want to. This is our third week in the Umbryan capital, and heck, there's nothing more interesting for us to do in this place other than visiting the large capital at random. There was all the past time there was and fair enough it did just enough to keep us all busy, even Aquaflora, who's expressed her dislike for the elven capital as it reminds her of her distressing time in the Argyrian capital. However, when I asked if she was ready to leave, she said no. As a representative to the coalition we were forming, her official duties were complete, and she could technically have returned to her tranquil home. However, she chose to stay. I suspected her decision might have been influenced by a reluctance to embark on the month-long journey back without our vessel, Veilleuse-19. But there was clearly more to her decision: we were here to persuade the patriarch to join our coalition, and she wants to see this mission through to the end. So, we waited, hopeful for something that would sway the patriarch's initially unfavorable decision.

"Well," Licht said, "it's not like free time is an issue for us here."

Oya, what was that, fellow Dungeon Master? Could it be that the sloppy time we've spent here got to you? Well, can't blame you, but it's not good to let go like that. I raised my cup of tea, suddenly noticing something about it.

As the steam wafts up, mingling with the fading light, my eyes narrow slightly. The surface of the tea, barely perceptibly, is vibrating. It’s so faint that under any normal circumstances, it would go unnoticed, but I was no ordinary observer. I set the teacup down with a soft clink against the saucer, my gaze fixed intently on the liquid. The ripples continue, each tiny wave a whisper of distant turmoil.

Licht didn't take long to notice my reaction. He asked, "A problem?"

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"A problem, huh," I said, leaning back in my chair. "Not sure it's fair to call this just a problem, but yes, something happened," I replied with a smile, wrapping up my beignets, before asking him, "Pay the bill."

As soon as he had paid the bill, Licht followed me outside, where I immediately, with a single jump, proceeded to hurl myself at the top of the nearest and highest structure. Licht followed, without much care for the poor rooftop.

"What is it?" he asked with a serious expression.

"Is it it?"

I nodded. "The Argyrian family patriarch is here, and with him, his stampede."

At these words, Licht scanned the horizon, perhaps for the patriarch and the stampede I mentioned, but in my case, I wasn't looking for that, for I knew that while it was upon this capital, it was still at least half a hundred kilometers away.

"What do we do?" Licht asked.

"What do we do," I echoed, before answering, "nothing, we watch what they do," I said, handing over a beignet as I took a seat to observe the scene. And sure enough, after about merely a half dozen minutes, something flashed in the southern horizon, but a quick look around would make one realize that it wasn't just one corner horizon but all four horizons.

In the faraway horizon, there seemed to be a fogged veil that, while looking like it was slowly approaching from the distance, was visible from the inhabited part of the capital. It was closing in fast from all directions.

"That's... that's the ancestral tree, right?" Licht asked.

"Yep," I nodded. "He's shrinking it down, it seems," I said, seeing exactly the logic of the mysterious course of action.

Human monarchs, their sigils upon reaching monarch hood, usually come in the form of a weapon, one that depending on one's class can come in many forms. For elves, their monarch sigil comes in the form of an ancestral tree, one that has a purpose unique to elves and is shared by all elven monarchs. It's the fact that the ancestral tree can be either used as a perfect barrier or a perfect prison. The latter is because it can make it so that nothing can make it in and out. Of course, just because it's "perfect" doesn't mean that it's indestructible. It's perfect in the sense that it is the perfection in the realm the wielder stands in. The ancestral tree's ability to restrain something in or out is exponential to how strong the wielder is, and for elven monarchs, strength is often just the approximation of how many ancestral trees the wielder has acquired, be it by investing 90 affinity points into a sub-affinity or by outsourcing that job to one of its subjects or just by stealing it from another monarch. That's just to say that as someone who has conquered most sub-affinities of the spiritual affinity, the ability to either entrap someone or stop someone from intruding into his domain has only an equal that of two other elven monarchs, the Aurian family matriarch and the one currently heading in this direction.

I watched as the barrier shrank to the point where it stopped at the edge of where the capital habitation were. As it stopped, I saw something happening about the barrier that happened so subtly that it was almost imperceptible, like a light bulb that just slightly dimmed. The barrier's gray lost a little of its foggy radiance.

Putting myself in the head of the patriarch, I saw that the worst thing he could potentially do is allow the fight that's bound to happen to take place here on his domain, because if it does, all these people would be trampled to death, and that's not necessary because of the beasts that make up the stampede, but just the intensity of the battle there will be between the two monarchs.

So the smart thing to do is to take the battle there—to him and his stampede. Now, as a monarch, he'll need his sigil to fight, but that sigil is currently being used to protect the capital. So will he go fight sigil-less? Nope. Then will he leave the capital barrier-less? Neither. So that left him with the only one reasonable alternative, the one to leave a portion of the ancestral tree here to do what it's always done: protecting the elves of his domain. But being only a portion of it, it's naturally not as potent as the full thing. If I had to estimate the strength he deployed for the barrier without it being a complete handicap for the battle he's going to fight, I'd say that the barrier has the potency of at best half a dozen ancestral trees combined. That was a lot, but I doubt that was enough, but well, let's just observe because that's what I intended to do, just observe, to see what kind of "man" that Umbryan monarch is, how he compares to the Argyrian family patriarch, how he holds true to his belief that he doesn't need the help of the coalition we offer, or, should he be proven wrong in his judgment, just how overinflated his pride was.

"Did I miss something?" Licht asked as he watched the capital population take onto the street to march toward the center of the capital like ants through their colony’s corridor to a common destination—the center of the capital. Only a minority were doing the opposite and making their way toward the southern edges; they were doing so at rapid speed, making it clear that they were the "fighter" portion of the population.

"That's his doing," I explained. "I think the patriarch gave a short explanation of the situation to his people through the link they share through the ancestral tree."

“I see,” Licht nodded. "Watching this, I think I finally understand Aquaflora's aversion to this place. This is kinda creepy."

I chuckled at the comment.

That was a bit high for dungeon masters like us to think of anyone as creepy, but well, okay, I guess.

"It was understandably creepy, I give, but clearly for elves who lived under this, this was most likely just normal to have such a link tying them to their patriarch. After all, from the moment they're born, they have a relationship similar to worker ants to their queen with their monarch, so from their perspective, it's normal.

For Licht and me, I could understand finding it creepy, but at the same time, I found it particularly fascinating. Humans, even half-breeds like Aquaflora, seem kind of creeped out by the sight of such hive-like operationality, so I'm really curious how humans being subject to an ancestral tree would behave. Human monarchs have subjects just like patriarchs and matriarchs do, but theirs come in the form of an oath—an oath that gives a system titles that come in the form of King, nobles, and such. Elven monarchs too get system titles, but they get theirs at the very birth. Theirs is part of their nature; it is, in fact, what makes their nature, so it's not hard to understand why elves tend to be more connected to their power than humans, even with their oaths, are.

Heck, look at myself; I spat on it plenty of times without ever suffering any consequences for it, so I was curious if an ancestral wielder tree gave a human a title because that's something they can do as a monarch to a human. What kind of relationship would there be between the monarch and the subject? One like that of the elves and their monarch, or a conditional bond like the one that linked me to Cleon? I wanted to know.

I was still thinking about it when I caught something in the corner of my eyes from the center of the city, where the patriarch's estate was. Something flying approached at breakneck speed. As it closed in, the flying entity came into a slow flight, allowing Licht to behold what it was—a large creature, one might easily assume to be a mythical beast as it was a creature similar in race as the loong Aquaflora is bonded with, save that this one had two things about it that made it clear that it was something entirely different.

First, it dwarfed her bonded creature, making the size difference stark; her creature looked like a tiny snake next to a max-level Frostfang serpent. Even more pronounced was the difference in their forms. The creature, while shaped like a lloong was clearly not a real one but an ethereal manifestation, crackling with electrical energy. This spectral being was obviously a familiar—one that belonged to the elf riding it—Patriarch Linh of the Umbryan family.

He clearly noticed us as he slowed his flight and looked our way. I stared back, expecting him to say something, but it seemed he had no intention of stopping. Understanding his decision from this, I chose to smile and wave, a gesture he barely acknowledged as he directed his phantasmal beast southward to battle.

As he made it past the barrier, the words naturally escaped my mouth, "Arrogant fool."