Chapter 224: ·Romina’s Nightmare

“Wake up, Romina!”

Nolan gritted his teeth as every muscle in his body bulged beneath the armor of Immovable Bulwark. He held the massive bow back with all his strength, the sharpened blade at the end of the bow limb hovering mere millimeters from his eye.

Romina’s raw power was roughly on par with Elder Ironwood, but her technique and bodily control far surpassed his. At that moment, she was like a desperate leopard driven into a corner, every ounce of strength focused toward the most lethal point possible.

“It’s me, Nolan!” he roared again, trying to bring her back to her senses.

But in Romina’s eyes, reality had already transformed completely.

A grotesque monster’s arm was holding back her beloved greatbow while emitting horrible, incomprehensible shrieks. She could clearly see pus oozing down the creature’s flesh and smell the foul corruption that desecrated nature itself.

The murderous impulse rising within her was impossible to suppress.

“Monster!” she screamed as she poured all her strength into her arms.

To Romina, the world no longer resembled the reality Nolan and Ailindel occupied.

Everything had begun the moment Rosm released that piercing shriek from above.

“Hahahaha! Taste despair!”

The instant his words fell, the floor beneath Nolan and Ailindel exploded apart.

Splurt! Splurt! Two pitch-black, four-armed abominations dripping with foul sludge burst out from underground without warning. They were unbelievably fast.

Nolan and Ailindel, standing closest, had no chance to evade. The creatures’ twisted limbs pierced directly through their chests.

“Gahhhh!” Nolan let out a scream of unbearable agony.

His chest had been torn open, and his flesh began collapsing and melting before Romina’s eyes, pooling together into a writhing lake of blood.

At the very end of his life, he painfully turned toward her. One arm, the only one not restrained by the monster, stretched weakly in her direction.

His lips trembled as he forced out his final plea.

“Save… me…”

One of the four-armed monsters roared excitedly and suddenly exerted force.

Riiip!

Nolan’s dying body was torn apart on the spot. Chunks of flesh and blood exploded everywhere.

Everything happened too quickly. So quickly that Romina’s mind could not process what she had seen, let alone react in time to save him.

She could only stare blankly at the carnage before her, watching the human lord who had traveled beside her die so horribly moments after speaking to her. The world spun around her. For an instant, she nearly lost her grip on her bow.

Romina stared numbly at Nolan’s mangled remains, unable to comprehend how things had ended like this.

How… had it come to this? That man was dead?

To her, Nolan had been the very image of a true hero. He was knowledgeable, capable, and valued his companions deeply. He possessed strength so overwhelming it inspired awe, yet he had never once grown arrogant because of it. He was honest and unwavering, never hiding his personal desires. Yet in Romina’s eyes, even those desires ultimately existed in pursuit of something noble and selfless.

The humans she had met before were either greedy plunderers invading the Borderlands or arrogant explorers blinded by ignorance. They respected neither nature nor other races. They only knew how to take.

Compared to them, Nolan was extraordinarily rare. Though he was not a Wood Elf, he embodied nearly every quality the elves admired most, while also carrying the unique charm of a completely different culture. It drew her in without her even realizing it.

Their time together had not been long, but for someone like Romina, who had spent most of her life isolated from the outside world, this man had gradually occupied more and more of her thoughts. During the days he returned to his territory to prepare for war, she often found herself thinking about him unconsciously, waiting for the sound of the war horns and anticipating his return.

When he truly came back to fulfill his promise, her heart had brimmed with expectation.

When the elders questioned and pressured him, she had felt indignant on his behalf.

When he cleanly exposed the conspiracy hidden within Forest Home, she had felt genuine relief.

Never in her life had another person stirred her emotions so completely.

And now, he was dead.

Dead because of a promise. Dead for a people who had originally meant nothing to him.

Pain and guilt flooded Romina’s heart. If… if the Wood Elves had not been so stubborn and isolationist from the very beginning, perhaps Nolan would never have needed to demand “assistance” as a condition for helping them.

It was us…

The Wood Elves had killed him.

All of those emotions erupted at once, transforming into a fury that threatened to burn everything away.

Elves normally appeared emotionally distant, but once their feelings exploded, they burned hotter than the fiercest volcano.

“Pay for his life, monster!” Romina roared as her power burst forth without reservation, even surpassing her usual limits.

Natural energy gathered around the blade attached to her bow, condensing into a sharp cyan glow that edged closer and closer toward the monster’s head.

Meanwhile, Nolan was suffering in silence.

Ailindel was currently simultaneously restraining more than ten Wood Elf elders and guards with wind bindings while battling the blood vines spreading across the ceiling. She had no spare attention to help him.

And Nolan himself could not bring himself to seriously injure Romina. Even if he wanted to, the Romina before him, driven mad by grief and fury, was no easy opponent.

The moment he heard her call him a monster, he had immediately understood the situation. Rosm, once a spiritualist, had twisted everyone’s perception inside the hall through a horrifying variation of mind spike.

This was the most disgusting aspect of mind spike. If it were simple mental domination, strong-willed individuals still had a chance to break free, or even retaliate against the caster. But distorted cognition was different. 

In Romina’s world, Nolan had likely become something entirely monstrous. The illusion was constructed from the target’s deepest fears, making it logically airtight from their perspective. Unless Romina herself noticed a major contradiction and began questioning the reality of the world around her, escape was impossible. But doubting one’s own reality, especially a reality shaped by one’s subconscious mind, was unimaginably difficult. Especially now, when Romina’s emotions were in complete turmoil. Fear and rage had undoubtedly consumed her entirely, exactly the emotional state Rosm excelled at exploiting.

As a spiritualist, he truly understood how to manipulate emotions.

And now, as his control over the Foundation of Life deepened further, his illusions became even more terrifying. After all, the Foundation itself was directly connected to the souls of the Wood Elves.

This could not continue.

Remaining trapped in distorted cognition for too long would permanently blur the line between illusion and reality. Even after the mind spike was broken, the victim might never fully escape the delusion.

Nolan still had two Focus Elixirs left.

He knew he had to do something.

And once he saved Romina, he swore he was going to beat the living hell out of the bastard above for playing with people’s hearts so freely.