Silence.
It was not an ordinary silence.
It was suffocating and oppressive, so heavy that it seemed as though the very air had frozen above the summit of the Mountain of Beginning and End.
Every being present was staring at Fafnir.
The king who had returned from the past.
The emperor who had vanished five thousand years ago.
The man whom the ancient legends described as the most arrogant, prideful, and ruthless human to have ever lived.
Fafnir sat upon his newly formed throne, crafted from the skulls of the Superior Races. One leg rested casually over the other, while he propped his head against the fist of his left hand.
His right hand tapped slowly against the armrest.
Tap...
Tap...
Tap...
The simple sound echoed across the summit.
Yet to everyone present, each tap felt like the strike of a hammer against their nerves.
Then Fafnir spoke.
His voice was calm, as though the words he had uttered moments earlier had meant absolutely nothing.
"Did I say something wrong?"
Fafnir looked toward Elena.
A faint smile rested upon his face.
It was not a friendly smile.
It was the smile of a man who had noticed someone desperately trying to suppress their anger and found the sight amusing.
Elena's fists were clenched tightly.
Her nails nearly dug into her palms.
She was angry.
Extremely angry.
The man before her had not merely mentioned her husband's name.
He had called Vlad Dracula—one of the oldest and most powerful monsters in the history of Gandalia—an "old leech."
It was an insult that no vampire could easily tolerate.
Especially not Elena.
But she was not foolish.
She knew who stood before her.
She knew the legend.
She knew the ancient records that spoke of Fafnir.
And she knew that the man sitting before her was not someone whom one could provoke and simply expect to walk away unharmed.
Yet there was something far worse than losing an argument with him.
She was not afraid that Fafnir might defeat her.
She was afraid that he might become angry.
Because if Fafnir became angry...
it would not be her life alone that would be at stake.
The entire summit of the Mountain of Beginning and End could become a graveyard.
A massacre could begin—one that no one would be capable of stopping.
Therefore...
Elena swallowed her anger.
She slowly raised her eyes toward Fafnir.
Then she answered:
"No."
She paused.
She could feel everyone's eyes upon her.
Isabelle.
Vulcan.
Gabriel.
Lilith.
Teresa.
Even the representatives of the lower races were watching her in complete silence.
Then Elena continued:
"But you are still exactly as the legends describe..."
Her gaze remained fixed upon him.
"...you have not changed at all."
The moment those words left her lips, it seemed as though thousands of breaths had stopped simultaneously.
Tension spread throughout the summit.
Everyone was thinking the same thing.
What would Fafnir do?
Would he become angry?
Would he interpret her words as an insult?
Could this simple sentence become the spark that ignited a catastrophe?
The representatives of the lower races watched the exchange with their hearts in their throats.
No one dared move.
Even those who were already prepared to flee at a moment's notice remained where they were, unwilling to make a single movement that Fafnir might misunderstand.
The ancient legends had described him clearly.
Fafnir was not a man who knew mercy.
When his anger was provoked, he made no distinction between the guilty and the innocent.
Anyone who made a mistake in his presence...
could pay for that mistake with their life.
And so, while Elena stood before him, many of those present were already preparing themselves mentally to flee.
Some had begun calculating the distance between themselves and the edge of the summit.
Others considered using spatial abilities.
Some even wondered whether they could survive by leaping from the mountain.
But they all knew the truth.
If Fafnir truly wanted them dead...
escape might not be possible at all.
Then...
Fafnir laughed.
At first, it was a quiet chuckle.
Then it grew louder.
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
The summit seemed to tremble beneath the echo of his laughter.
He raised his head slightly.
"Change?"
Then he laughed again.
"Me?"
"HAHAHAHAHA!"
There was something strange about his laughter.
It was not the laughter of a happy man.
It was the laughter of someone who had been asked such an absurd question that he did not know how to answer it except by laughing.
He continued laughing for several moments.
Then...
the laughter stopped.
His smile vanished.
Suddenly.
It was as though another person had taken his place.
His expression descended into absolute coldness.
His eyes changed.
Moments ago, they had held nothing but indifference.
Now...
they had become terrifyingly cold.
Cold like ice that had remained frozen for ten thousand years.
There was no explosive rage in them.
No visible emotion.
And that was precisely what made them so terrifying.
That coldness conveyed something far more frightening:
The man before them did not even need to become enraged in order to kill.
Then his face changed.
That extraordinarily handsome face, which seemed sculpted to perfection...
twisted.
It was no longer the face of an ordinary man.
It became terrifying.
Savage.
Monstrous.
His features radiated a primordial cruelty, as though something ancient beyond imagination had awakened behind his human visage.
Elena froze.
Her breath caught in her throat.
Then Fafnir opened his mouth.
His voice emerged.
But it was not the voice they had heard moments earlier.
It was terrifying.
Deep.
Demonic.
Primordial.
As though an ancient demon, born before the rise of civilization itself, were speaking through him.
He said:
"This world does not deserve to have someone of my greatness and might change for its sake..."
Everyone's breathing stopped.
Then he continued:
"Rather, the world should change for me."
His words carried an arrogance beyond description.
He looked directly at Elena.
"Do you understand, you?"
Elena could not answer.
Her body was frozen.
But Fafnir did not wait for her response.
He continued:
"Do not ever dare to judge this great one by your wretched and trivial standards."
The words crashed over the summit like thunder.
No one moved.
Almost no one breathed.
Everyone stared at Fafnir.
Even the six rulers of the Superior Races seemed to have lost the ability to think.
They had known that Fafnir was arrogant.
They had read it in the ancient records.
They had heard the stories.
They knew how he spoke to kings.
They knew how he treated other races.
But knowing something...
was one thing.
Witnessing it with their own eyes...
was another.
For a man to command the world itself to change for his sake rather than change himself for the world...
was a level of arrogance they had never imagined could truly exist.
Whispers began spreading through the stands.
They were barely audible.
Fearful.
"What arrogance..."
"My God..."
"I think I'm going to piss myself just looking at that face and hearing that voice..."
"Change the world for his sake?"
"This is the first time in my nine-hundred-year life that I've ever heard such arrogant words..."
Yet even as they whispered...
their voices grew quieter and quieter.
They were afraid he might hear them.
As for the six rulers...
their faces had gone pale.
Some stared at Fafnir as though desperately trying to comprehend what they were witnessing.
Isabelle...
was among those who had never lived through the Primordial War.
She had been born after it ended.
Nevertheless, she had read the ancient accounts and historical records.
She had read about the "Greatest Human."
She had read about his pride.
His arrogance.
His cruelty.
His brutality.
But she had never imagined the legend could be like this.
She had never imagined that, after five thousand years, the man would stand before the world and simply declare that the world itself should change for his sake.
As for Vulcan...
he stared at Fafnir with widened eyes.
He too had read about this man.
But everything he had read in the ancient records now seemed far clearer.
The records had been understated.
Reality was worse.
Gabriel...
remained silent.
Yet his sacred aura had become noticeably more turbulent.
He watched Fafnir with extreme caution.
He was trying to comprehend the level of power standing before him.
But the harder he tried...
the stronger his sense of danger became.
Then there was Lilith.
She was not afraid in the same way as the others.
Quite the opposite.
The obsessive expression on her face had only grown more intense.
Her pink eyes burned as she stared at Fafnir.
His overwhelming arrogance did not repel her.
Instead...
it seemed to make him even more fascinating in her eyes.
A small smile appeared on her lips.
She whispered to herself:
"Magnificent..."
Teresa, however...
was completely different.
She gazed at Fafnir with eyes filled with a strange mixture of tenderness, memories, and guilt.
She had known this man five thousand years ago.
She had known him before he became nothing more than a legend in history books.
And because of that...
she knew something the others did not.
This arrogance...
was not an act.
Fafnir truly believed it.
He believed that he should never bow to the world.
The world should bow to him.
But the person suffering the most in that moment...
was Elena.
She was the woman Fafnir had addressed directly.
She was trembling.
A tremor she could not control.
She felt a chill spreading through her body.
She could not even move her lips.
Then, suddenly, she felt her legs give out.
Her knees could no longer support her.
She collapsed back into her throne.
She continued staring at Fafnir.
She could not utter a single word.
She was no longer thinking about her husband.
Nor about the insult.
Nor even about her own dignity.
Her mind was occupied by only one thought:
How do I survive this?
Fafnir...
continued looking at her for several moments.
Then the savage coldness in his eyes began to fade.
The terrifying expression disappeared from his face.
His handsome features returned to normal.
That demonic voice vanished.
His voice returned to its previous calm state.
As though nothing had happened.
As though the terrifying man who had appeared moments earlier had never existed.
Silence returned.
A long, heavy silence.
No one dared speak.
No one dared move.
Even the sound of the wind seemed to have disappeared.
Everyone was still trying to comprehend what had just happened.
Then...
Fafnir returned to his previous posture.
He crossed one leg over the other.
Rested his head against his left fist.
And his right hand began tapping against the armrest once again.
Tap...
Tap...
Tap...
Then he spoke calmly.
"Now..."
His eyes swept across everyone present.
"Since this great one has honored you with his presence..."
His fingers stopped tapping for a moment.
Then he continued:
"Let the meeting begin."
No one dared object.
No one even dared show their astonishment.
They all understood something at that moment.
This was no longer a meeting between seven Superior Races.
And Fafnir was no longer merely the representative of humanity.
From the moment he had appeared...
he had become the center of the entire summit.
The six rulers remained seated upon their thrones.
The armies of the lower races watched from the stands.
Yet everyone felt that there was only one throne whose presence dominated the entire summit.
Fafnir's throne.
And the man seated upon it was no longer merely a human emperor returned from history.
The Sovereign had returned.
And with him...
had returned the age the entire world once feared.
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