Chapter : 206

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"How dare the King of ZulFarah allow this!" the senior knight roared, his voice booming with absolute outrage. His mask could not hide the fury in his body language. He was leaning forward, his gauntlets still pressed against the table, his massive shoulders shaking with anger. "Utilizing Black Magicians to threaten the stability of the entire planet is a severe, unforgivable international crime! This is not just an act of aggression against the Belmontia Empire! This is an act of war against civilization itself!"

Another masked figure, this one wearing a sleek silver mask with sharp, angular features, pointed an angry finger across the table. "We were fools to show them mercy during the last border war!" she shouted, her voice sharp and biting. "We never should have spared them! We should have completely destroyed their government, dismantled their military, and installed our own puppet rulers when we had the chance! Our kindness has been repaid with treachery, and now the entire continent is paying the price!"

More voices joined the chorus. A ruler in a bone-white mask stood up and demanded an immediate preemptive strike on ZulFarah's military installations. Another in a crimson mask called for the full mobilization of the Empire's armies. A third, wearing a mask shaped like a snarling beast, slammed his hand on the table and declared that the only language ZulFarah understood was force, and it was time to speak it fluently.

The warmongers were in full voice now. They fed off each other's anger, building a wall of sound and fury that bounced off the stone walls and filled the chamber with a deafening roar. Words like "invasion" and "occupation" and "total war" flew across the table like arrows. Plans were being sketched out in broad, violent strokes. March routes were being proposed. Targets were being named. The momentum was building toward a single, overwhelming conclusion: the Belmontia Empire should launch a full-scale, bloody military invasion of ZulFarah, and they should do it immediately.

The few rulers who were not shouting looked uncomfortable but did not speak up. The tide of anger was too strong, too fast. To oppose it now would be to stand in front of a charging army, and nobody in this room had the courage to do that. Nobody, that is, except for the figure sitting silently at the far end of the table, his single glowing purple eye watching the chaos unfold without moving.

Behind his mask, Ken let out a long, quiet, internal sigh. "War," he thought with the deepest, most heartfelt disgust. "Of course they want war. Because war is loud. War means marching and shouting and explosions. War means people knocking on your door at six in the morning telling you that you have been drafted. War means no afternoon naps. War means the potato farm gets postponed indefinitely. I hate war. I hate everything about war. And I especially hate that I have to be the one to stop these idiots from starting one."

Ken shifted slightly in his uncomfortable chair. The dramatic cape rustled. The glowing purple eye dimmed for a fraction of a second, then flared back to full brightness. It was time. He really, really did not want to do this. But if he did not, these people were going to plunge the entire continent into a brutal, bloody conflict, and his quiet, peaceful life would be the first casualty.

---

Lancelot slowly raised a single, dark-gloved finger.

Just one finger. The index finger of his right hand, lifted off the arm of his chair with the casual, unhurried motion of a man raising his hand in a classroom. It was such a small gesture, so simple and so quiet, that it should have been swallowed by the noise of the shouting rulers. But it was not. The moment that finger rose, the entire chamber went dead silent. Every voice stopped. Every movement froze. The rage, the shouting, the war plans, all of it evaporated like morning dew under a scorching sun.

It was not magic. It was not a spell. It was sheer, absolute, unfiltered terror. Every single ruler at that table knew what Lancelot was capable of. They had seen his power. They had heard the stories. They knew that the masked figure sitting at the end of the table had single-handedly eliminated threats that entire armies could not handle. And they knew, with the certainty of the sun rising in the east, that when Lancelot raised his finger, you stopped talking and you started listening. Immediately. No exceptions.

The silence that followed was not just quiet. It was the kind of silence that presses against your ears, the kind that makes your heartbeat sound like a drum. The eleven rulers sat rigid in their chairs, their masked faces turned toward Lancelot, waiting. Even the senior knight who had been slamming his fists on the table was perfectly still, his armored hands resting flat on the obsidian surface like a student caught misbehaving by the principal.

Lancelot let the silence hang for exactly three seconds. Not two. Not four. Three. It was the perfect amount of time to let the tension build without making it feel like he was stalling. Anime Logic demanded precision, even in dramatic timing.

"Gentlemen," Lancelot said. His voice was calm, cold, and as heavy as a mountain pressing down on the earth. It carried across the chamber with the authority of a god passing judgment. "You are being incredibly hasty."

The words were simple, but the way he said them made them feel like a physical weight. The senior knight's shoulders dropped slightly, as if someone had placed a bag of sand on them. The silver-masked ruler who had been pointing fingers sat back in her chair, her hand lowering to her lap.

"A panicked invasion is sloppy," Lancelot continued, his glowing purple eye moving slowly from one ruler to the next, making eye contact with each of them in turn. Or at least, making eye contact with their masks, which was somehow even more intimidating. "You are reacting to fear with force, and force without strategy is nothing but destruction. You would send your armies across the border into a nation that has been preparing for exactly this scenario. You would march your soldiers into traps that ZulFarah has been laying for months, perhaps years. And you would do it all because you are angry, and anger makes people stupid."

Nobody said a word. The chamber was so quiet that the faint hum of the pocket dimension's containment barrier could be heard, a low, almost musical drone that seemed to underscore Lancelot's words like a somber soundtrack.

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