Silence dawned upon the hall with the announcement as all the elves concluded their conversations and directed their attention to the throne, patiently waiting for the queen to speak with varying expressions across the floor.

While curiosity could be seen in a few of the court members' faces, most of the them had visible bitterness in their expressions as they were looking towards the queen, having already heard of today's topic from other sources.

"First of all, I extend my deepest gratitude to all of you for making your appearances here." the Queen's gaze swept across the members of the court and suddenly stood from the throne, making a light bow to her front.

"My Queen, we have already discussed it many times, but this is not necessary. You are the Queen and our ruler, this is only our duty." an aged court member let out a deep sigh as she did this, trying to persuade her with a helpless look on his face.

"Nonsense, this is the least I can do to thank all of you. Alvein would not be able to function without any of you, you are all more than deserving of this small show of thanks." the queen turned a gentle smile at the elf who spoke out before making an even deeper bow to her front.

"My Queen, you are making light of yourself by saying this. We have all seen the efforts you put into ruling the forest and the work you have done, even back when His Maj..." the elf continued on helplessly, but frantically cut himself off without finishing.

Indeed, he immediately caught a glimpse of the downcast light in the Queen's eyes, feeling a pang of regret as he realised that he had misspoke. The Queen wasn't the only one affected by this, as a heavy atmosphere began to spread across the room.

"His Majesty is currently out on a noble mission to rescue those of our kind, but he will definitely return someday and lead us all again. That was his promise to us, and to all of you."

Thankfully, this did not last long before the Queen spoke out, dispelling the heavy mood within the hall. Although, many of the court members were now looking towards the Queen with looks of pain, knowing that she was the one who was suffering the most from this.

"I'm sure some of you may have already heard, but I have gathered all of you here today because the North has made a new move." unwilling to continuing harping on the previous topic, the Queen moved on to the main agenda for the session, causing the faces of the elves to immediately harden.

"A guard from the southern guardhouse was ambushed by an elite Northern squad yesterday, led by the son of the Northern Chieftain, Cruz." the Queen began to speak about the matter, causing those who hadn't heard any details to raise their eyebrows in doubt.

It wasn't because the matter was extremely serious, but rather because it seemed to be too small an incident to be concerned about if it were just this, as their ears had not been spared about the deeds by the Northern elves in recent times with Cruz's name appearing the most.

"Aurelia happened to be present at that time and was shot in the chest by an arrow. Luckily, she was treated quickly and is now out of danger, resting here in the palace." the queen continued with anger boiling in her voice, starkly contrasting with her gentle demeanour before.

Shocked gasps were heard around the hall as the eyes of several court members shot wide open, finally understanding why the queen called for them so urgently.

"I will let the captain of my daughter's personal guard unit, Ada, go through the rest of the details as she was present during the matter." the queen called upon Ada who walked out from behind the throne and began to talk about the entire chain of events.

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As instructed by the Queen previously, her report was slightly different from the version she yesterday, not mentioning a single word on how Princess Aurelia rushed up to protect Alz from the arrow and changing it to just her getting shot.

However, this minor twist in the facts did not affect the flow of the story as none of the elves present were concerned about why the princess was shot at this point, but rather about the undeniable result that the princess was shot in the chest.

As long as this truth stood by, the reason why she was shot in the first place was irrelevant given the bilateral relations that existed between the Capital and the North.

Their attitude towards the matter also changed as Ada spoke of the reason behind the attacks, speaking of the crossbow Alz made, along with the medicinal powder he concocted that had saved the princess's life.

The Queen also interrupted her speech to explain the details she knew of the crossbow from the report by the southern captain, allowing them to gain better insight on what it actually did and awing many of them with its concept and performance.

On the Queen's orders, Ada had also brought out the glass arrows she retrieved from the scene and showed it to the court, allowing them to view Alz in a new light as they were faced with the various innovations made by him.

Like Alz had expected, the glass arrows didn't manage to catch the eye of anyone present as Ada explained that despite its hardness, it had a major defect of being very brittle and was largely impractical to use.

Yet, the story was different when placed together with Alz's other achievements as the source of the crossbows and concocting the medicinal powder, showing that he had an innovative mind that was capable of achieving more in future.

On top of that, Alz had reportedly also taken down three of the elite Northern fighters when facing off against ten of them alone, a story that while not all of those present seemed to buy, they understood that he wasn't weak at the very least.

Hence, it came at no surprise that when Ada mentioned his youth at the end, another round of gasps was heard across the hall, except that they mostly contained amazement and disbelief this time.

"Your Majesty, I have finished." Ada turned to the Queen and lowered her head as she reported.

"Good job Ada, you may step back." the queen nodded towards her with a pleased smile, to which Ada gave another deep bow to the Queen before returning to her original position with the other personal guards to the side of the throne.

"Everyone, the matter is as Ada has spoken. The Northern Chieftain's son, Cruz is currently being held at the palace and we will need to discuss on how we will handle him." the Queen said, directing the attention of the court to the problem at hand.

An eerie silence fell upon the hall after the Queen's words, as the court members began to exchange gazes between each other uneasily, not knowing how to respond.

In a normal case, they would have most probably chosen to close an eye to the matter and silently bear with the actions of the North, something that they had already been doing over the past few years, even actively going to lengths to cover up some of the incidents.

However, their cover-up might have seemed sufficient to them, but Alz was one of the sharp elves who managed to discover the seams between the threads, piecing together part of the truth from the scrolls in the community library.

An example of such was with the cases of 'The Return', a deadly disease that did actually exist in their race and the only illness that plagued their race.

While this condition did truly exist, real cases were much rarer than those recorded in the scrolls at the community library, with the others being used to conceal the death of elves who died of unnatural causes at the hands of the North.

When Alz had gone through the scrolls back then, he had accurately picked out one such case from the scrolls, allowing him to recognise the hidden dangers in the capital back then alongside other information in the library.

This case was naturally the death of the Calla tribe's acting Chieftain's wife, one of the many murders that were concealed within the scroll.

Yet, nobody present was dense enough to remain oblivious to the rage contained in the Queen's words, as this incident had involved the princess of all elves, almost even causing her to lose her life for this.

They all understood that this was why the Queen brought this matter up to the court, because she did not want a peaceful resolution.

The fifteen of them understood how she felt as well, as there was also anger budding in them, but most of them were still hesitant to step up and speak out now, knowing what making this decision would entail.