Only rubble, dust, and silence remained in the hall.
Cedric climbed up from the ground, his left arm hanging limp at his side and a massive bulge swelling near his shoulder blade.
It had been shattered when Cass pinned him to the floor.
He did not look at his injuries; he merely stared fixedly at Morgan, anger and confusion swirling within his blood-red eyes.
Along with it was a sliver of disappointment suppressed deep down, one he refused to acknowledge.
“Morgan.”
His voice was raspy, sounding like sandpaper grinding against stone.
“Just now... you hesitated.”
Lia stood up as well.
She did not speak, but her fingers gripped the hilt of her dagger so tightly that her knuckles turned white.
Her ash-white ponytail had come undone, several strands of hair clinging to her sweat-dampened cheeks, her lips pressed into a thin line.
Hewlett stood off to the side, his shield still held up before him, his gaze darting back and forth among them without a word.
Cedric took a step forward, the rubble crunching beneath his feet.
“You hesitated.”
He repeated, his voice even lower than before.
“You believe whatever that old bastard says?”
“Because he said you brought ruin upon us, you really believe you harmed us?”
Morgan remained seated on the stone chair, unmoving.
His hands rested on his knees, his fingers curling slightly as if trying to grasp something invisible.
His gaze fell upon the floor, settling on the shattered fragments of the magic array discs.
It settled on the scattered rubble and dust, looking everywhere except at Cedric.
“Say something!”
Cedric's voice suddenly surged in volume, echoing through the hall.
Lia reached out and took his arm gently, but Cedric shook her off.
He stepped in front of Morgan, leaning over with one hand planted on the stone table while pointing the index finger of his other hand at Morgan's face.
“When we followed you out of the City of a Thousand Towers, not a single one of us hesitated.”
“You said to go to a Forbidden Zone, so we went to a Forbidden Zone.”
“You said to build a sanctuary next to Sathoggua, so we built it.”
“You brought us to this godforsaken place to starve, to be hunted by demons, and to be targeted by those mages!”
His voice was trembling.
“Not one of us ever blamed you.”
“But now!”
He cut himself off.
Morgan finally raised his head.
Those blood-red eyes looked at Cedric—devoid of anger, devoid of excuses, filled only with an overwhelming, suffocating exhaustion.
“You are right.”
Morgan's voice was very faint.
“I hesitated.”
Cedric clenched his fists until his knuckles popped, his jaw tight and his Adam's apple bobbing.
He wanted to curse, to scream, but Morgan's voice sounded once more.
“Because I was thinking... about the future of this sanctuary.”
The moment the words left his lips, silence blanketed the hall for an instant, and Cedric's fury froze in place.
“How long have we stayed in the Withered Wood Wasteland?
“Only half a year.”
Morgan looked around, his eyes sweeping across the uneven stone walls.
He looked at the empty grain sacks stacked in the corner, then at the several Legendaries whose eyes were slightly unfocused from hunger.
“What was our original goal?”
No one answered.
“To leave the Central City-States, go to a remote place outside the Alliance's transport network, and build a city-state belonging solely to half-demons.”
Morgan spoke in a flat voice, as though reading from a yellowed proposal.
“Not having to answer to humans, not having to be treated as test subjects, and not having to live in constant fear that a single official document from the Alliance will drive us all outside the city walls on any given day.”
Cedric's lips moved, but no words came out.
“Yet things did not go as planned.”
Morgan's voice rang out again, no longer flat like reading a proposal.
Instead, it carried a slow, heavy quality, as if turning the pages of an old ledger soaked in blood.
“The Great Sage set his sights on us.”
He raised his head, his gaze resting on Cedric's face before drifting away.
“And in the borderlands, the Dark Tide erupted.”
“The Dark Tide surged forth from the Withered Rift and spread north like a wall, blocking our route to the fringe lands beyond the Alliance's reach.
“Every single path capable of breaking free from the Alliance transport network has been sealed off by demons.”
“And as long as we remain within the Alliance transport network, we will be discovered sooner or later.”
“Once the Great Sage takes action himself, we won't have the slightest power to fight back.”
His voice trailed off.
“And so, I made what might be the worst decision of my life.”
“I set my sights on the Withered Wood Wasteland—this Forbidden Zone.”
No one spoke in the hall.
The light of the magic glowstones cast deep shadows across Morgan's face, chiseling his resolute yet weary features into something resembling a stone statue.
“Sathoggua, Throat of the Wasteland, a High-tier Epic demon lord.”
“It has slumbered there for who knows how many years.”
“I thought that as long as we built our sanctuary beside it, the Great Sage wouldn't dare strike recklessly.”
“No one would dare wage war directly above a High-tier Epic demon lord, even if he is the Master of the Thousand Towers.”
“At the same time, while the Withered Wood Wasteland is counted among the Forbidden Zones, it ranks at the very bottom.”
“I believed that with our strength, we would be able to barely survive here.”
“I believed I could settle all of you who followed me here in peace.”
He paused.
“But I was wrong.”
“I underestimated the difficulty of surviving in a Forbidden Zone, and I underestimated the methods of the City of a Thousand Towers.”
His eyes swept across those empty grain sacks in the corner.
“A food blockade.”
“Under instructions from the magic families, the surrounding city-states cut off all grain transport routes.”
“If we wanted to buy grain, we could only use intermediaries like the Dalton family to bypass Alliance oversight and sneak it in secretly.”
“Meanwhile, magic towers began springing up in the surrounding city-states, one after another.”
“They were not built for communication; they were built to monitor us.”
“They locked us tightly inside this Withered Wood Wasteland. We cannot leave, and outsiders cannot enter.”
He laughed again—very faintly, very bitterly.
“So Dalton's grain was the sole reason we have managed to survive in this Forbidden Zone until now.”
“Forty-four sacks. Forty-four sacks every month—no more, no less—just enough to keep us all from starving.”
“But a few months ago, Dalton lost contact.”
The air in the hall felt as though it had been sucked dry.
Lia closed her eyes.
Cedric's fists slowly relaxed, then slowly clenched again.
“We have nowhere left to go.”
A hint of emotion finally surfaced in Morgan's voice—neither anger nor sorrow, but a resigned calm born of being backed into a dead end.
“Even without this hunt, we were on the verge of collapse.”
He lowered his head, resting it against his hands.
“So when that old bastard called me a sinner... he wasn't wrong.”
Cedric gritted his teeth, making a crunching sound.
“If we hadn't been targeted by the Sage, why would we ever have come to this!”
His voice exploded in the hall, like a trapped beast locked in a cage for too long finally roaring out.
Then he froze.
He realized what he had just said.
“Morgan, I... I didn't mean it like that...”
Morgan didn't raise his head; he simply waved a hand.
“No, you're right.”
His voice filtered through his fingers, muffled as though separated by a thick wall.
“I was the one who opened Pandora's box.”
“I was the one who actively sought out the Great Sage, handed him my research results, and told him demon energy could break through the bottleneck of the High-tier Epic rank.”
“I thought he would support me, that he would stand on the side of the half-demons.”
He let out a chuckle—very faint, very bitter.
“He did indeed support me.”
“But his plan was to turn every half-demon into his test subject.”
Hewlett walked over, placing a hand on Morgan's shoulder and patting it.
The grip wasn't heavy, but it was solid, like an iron wedge driven into a rock fissure.
“Morgan, this wasn't your fault.”
His voice wasn't loud, but every word rang clear.
“Once the Alliance Council's expulsion resolution against half-demons went into effect, it became a genocide of our entire race.”
“Back then, only the Great Sage had the power to halt the execution of that resolution.”
He paused briefly.
“And what followed proved that going to him was the right choice. At the very least, he was still willing to pretend to stand on our side.”
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