The contract was not long, just a single page, but its contents were astounding.
The very first clause stipulated that the elves would pay a ransom of twenty million gold coins for each elven captive. This was something Anbaixiu had brought up purely in passing—some nonsense about promising the dwarves a refund plus triple compensation. He had never imagined he could actually sell an elf for twenty million. In truth, selling one for two million would already make them more valuable than paladins.
Yet the Rose of Decay had stubbornly negotiated this top price into ink. This revenue alone amounted to several hundred million. Anbaixiu's soul fire blazed fiercely, bordering on deflagration from sheer excitement. He could hardly imagine what the Golden Throne would become once infused with hundreds of millions of gold coins. Would it turn directly into a flying palace of pure gold?
The second clause was an incredible bargain as well: every year, Anbaixiu could request up to ten million gold coins' worth of magical materials from the elves, calculated at seventy percent of the prevailing market price. This privileged term would last for a hundred years.
The Rose of Decay said, "The elves' gold reserves are finite, and they need gold to stabilize prices, so future payments can only be made in magic materials."
Anbaixiu replied with great satisfaction, "That's already quite good. Magic materials are sometimes more valuable than gold coins."
Reading further: if these peace talks succeeded, the elves would hand over all the anti-magic weapons they had stockpiled to Anbaixiu, and would subsequently open up their supply of various magical gear to him at the lowest discounts.
The Rose of Decay said without the slightest hesitation, "This clause is the benefit I wanted. You have no objections, do you?"
"Why would I object? We agreed from the beginning that this is our joint business."
Anbaixiu knew the Rose of Decay's lifelong goal was to destroy the Ryan Empire. These anti-magic weapons were the most critical strategic resource for her, and it had been agreed when they first partnered up that they would each take what they needed from the elves.
Anbaixiu got vast sums of gold and magic materials—the hardest currency—while the Rose of Decay secured anti-magic weapons and follow-up cooperation orders, all negotiated under Anbaixiu's name.
All of the above could only be described as making the elves bleed heavily, but not quite emptying their coffers.
However, the clause that followed was rather outrageous.
"'The elves will "lend" me three artifacts for my use?' What's going on here?"
Anbaixiu couldn't wrap his head around it. Could artifacts be lent out like this? Lending elven artifacts to a lich—wouldn't such blasphemy cause the elven pantheon to strike him dead with lightning?
In a sense, an artifact was the ultimate enchanted weapon, but there was a great deal behind what made it so supreme.
Take the continent's most famous artifact, the Ryan Empire's Demonic Dragon Set: once equipped, the wearer was equivalent to a god. Though merely the weakest sort of god, they could freely unleash divine power in the mortal realm, making them practically invincible.
After overthrowing the Demonic Dragon Tyrant, Ryan's founding emperor forged this equipment from the tyrant's corpse. At the same time, his magnificent feat of banishing the dragons earned the blessing of the Lord of the Dawn, making the Demonic Dragon Set truly the strongest artifact on the continent.
The elves were no sloths either. As the race most favored by the gods, how could they lack artifacts?
Perhaps theirs were not as famous as the Demonic Dragon Set, but in power they likely conceded nothing. Items meant to anchor the fortunes of a realm—lending three of them to Anbaixiu? Were the elves insane? Their entire hoard of artifacts might not even reach double digits.
Gold could be saved back up once lost, magic materials could be cultivated anew, and anti-magic weapons could simply be reforged. But artifacts weren't something you could just stockpile at will. Without a deity's blessing, mortals could hardly ever craft one.
This was no longer just bleeding them; this was outright ransacking their house.
It would be a lie to say he wasn't tempted, but Anbaixiu quickly cooled down and said to the Rose of Decay, "Elven artifacts... how did talks even get to this? I'd rather ask for a few hundred million more."
Anbaixiu couldn't be blamed for turning his nose up at them—no matter how great the artifacts were, he couldn't use them.
Although the elven gods wouldn't necessarily strike down every undead on sight, they were ultimately deities of light and nature, the exact opposite of an undead like Anbaixiu who relied solely on dark magic. Even if elven artifacts were placed right in front of him, holding them would only burn his hands—literally burn, to the point of smoking his hand bones.
The Rose of Decay said, "The elves aren't completely stupid either. I wanted more, but they weren't willing to give it. Losing too much gold would severely damage the Silvermoon High Court's economy. Mana addiction is fatal, but an economic collapse is just as deadly. This price is already pressed right up against their bottom line."
Anbaixiu chuckled. "Not quite. They just don't want to lower their quality of life too much. A low-class high elf's daily expenses are more than ten times that of an ordinary human. Even the poorest elf lives a life comparable to human nobility."
The Rose of Decay agreed with Anbaixiu's assessment. The elves had lived the good life for too long; they couldn't stomach plunging back into poverty overnight.
"Catherine understood this, so she refused to back down any further and chose instead to offer herself as a bargaining chip."
Anbaixiu felt as though he had heard something extraordinary, and quickly asked, "What do you mean?"
The Rose of Decay smiled and said, "Those three artifacts are on Catherine. After these negotiations, barring any surprises, she will step down as Elven Queen. As part of the contract, she will 'lend' herself to you for a period of time. Having her work for you is the greatest compensation the elves are offering."
Anbaixiu: "..."
The Rose of Decay closely sensed Anbaixiu's reaction. A lich had no micro-expressions, but fluctuations in soul fire remained. She was eager to see how Anbaixiu would react to receiving such a breathtakingly glamorous Elven Queen.
After holding it in for a long time, Anbaixiu squeezed out a single sentence: "Then I'm going to fucking lose money on meal expenses!"
Was this Elven Queen out of her mind? What did an aloof, worldly detached lich like him want with an Elven Queen? Keep her around just to slow down his experiments?
She was only coming to work, not selling herself into slavery. Anbaixiu couldn't even turn around and resell her to someone else, yet he would have to feed and house Her Majesty, who had been pampered for countless years. The cost was anything but low.
After pondering for a moment, Anbaixiu came to a conclusion: "Is this elf girl's guilt so heavy that she wants to atone for her sins this way?"
The Rose of Decay nodded. "Clearly. Catherine feels she brought tremendous losses upon the elven race, so she wants to torment herself through this pointless method."
"Living mortals are emotion-driven creatures, always doing irrational things. Sacrificing herself in exchange for her clan's rebirth just to make her conscience feel better. Tsk, childish schoolgirl nonsense."
Sacrificing oneself seemed noble, but in truth it was an escape. Catherine had no confidence she could keep hiding her secret, no confidence in facing the public backlash once it was exposed, and even less confidence in remaining a good Elven Queen under such conditions. Indenturing herself to atone was the easiest way out.
Had elven customs not forbidden suicide, she would probably have ended her own life long ago.
The Rose of Decay agreed with Anbaixiu's assessment. Catherine was indeed a naive girl, likely because her talent was so exceptional that she had been sheltered too thoroughly since childhood. Then again, there was nothing unusual about that. With her peerless talent and beauty, traveling the continent might well have sparked wars between nations, so she had certainly grown up cherished by all elves.
Under such circumstances, she hadn't turned into a selfish, twisted woman; she was merely somewhat naive, and still willing to sacrifice herself for her people. That already spoke volumes of her good nature.
From this angle, the elves had actually shown good taste in choosing their queen.
"Working for a lich counts as penance? These high elves are as arrogant as ever," Anbaixiu remarked with a sigh. "Still, Lady Rose, since you agreed to this condition, you must have other plans for Her Majesty?"
"Why don't I sublease this Elven Queen to you?" Anbaixiu suggested.
The Rose of Decay kept her smile steady, but was delighted inside that Anbaixiu was actually willing to part with such a stunning beauty. This time, it couldn't be said that undead were immune to physical allure; even the Rose of Decay found the Elven Queen's charm difficult to resist, nearly capitulating to her tears several times during negotiations.
Fortunately, each time her heart softened, the Rose of Decay reminded herself that this was preparation to destroy Ryan, instantly hardening her resolve back to stone.
The fact that Anbaixiu rejected such an astounding gift without hesitation made the Rose of Decay all the more certain that he had developed true feelings for her; he was surely being so decisive out of fear that she might misunderstand.
"You truly seem to understand me," the Rose of Decay said wistfully. "Catherine is indeed a very useful card. Undead like us can barely resist her charm, but mortals won't be able to hold out. Handled properly, she might just cause the Ryan Empire to collapse from within."
Anbaixiu rubbed his hands together and asked eagerly, "So what you're saying is, you accept the sublease?"
How much should he charge for the sublease? Given the Elven Queen's worth, billing by the second was the least he should do!
The Rose of Decay said, "Don't be so hasty to talk about that. Have you forgotten that we have to pay a price as well? Your sealing technique must be handed over in its entirety to the elves. This is a buyout; we won't be able to keep bleeding them."
"I prepared myself for that long ago. This is a matter of life and death for them. Even if I kept the technique in my hands, once they got samples, they would spare no effort to crack it. The elves' overall magical strength far surpasses mine; cracking it is only a matter of time. Better to extort a tidy sum in one clean strike."
It wasn't that Anbaixiu hadn't considered milking the elves indefinitely through intellectual property, but careful thought showed it was impossible.
The elves weren't incompetent; they simply hadn't thought in the direction of the Weave. Relying on sharp intuition, Anbaixiu had picked the most viable path out of countless possibilities, theoretically saving centuries of research.
Then there was knowledge regarding the Weave—something the elves couldn't access, leaving them with no way to begin researching it.
However, now that Anbaixiu had produced a finished product, the difficulty of reverse engineering it dropped a hundredfold.
It was like the internet in his previous life: hackers couldn't make good games on their own, but no matter how formidable a game company was, they couldn't prevent hackers from cracking their code, releasing a free educational copy within three days.
And that was merely entertainment, not a life-saving medicine on which survival depended.
Faced with the threat of extinction, the elves would stop at nothing, and they certainly wouldn't care about copyright. Even if Anbaixiu layered encryption upon encryption to delay their cracking, the only result would be an outbreak of mana addiction, followed by the elves venting all their fury upon him.
By that point, right and wrong, cause and effect would be irrelevant; they would simply need a target for their wrath.
It was just business; there was no need to fight the elves to the death. A one-time buyout was best.
Seeing that Anbaixiu didn't mind, the Rose of Decay continued, "One more thing: all these terms are only to be executed after the peace talks succeed."
Anbaixiu said, "According to our prior plan, the dwarves get most of the City of Alchemy's land, while the elves get the systematic alchemical industrial districts to mass-produce the sealing scrolls that cure mana addiction. That's the most perfect outcome. Let's hope no further accidents happen during these peace talks."
Even as he spoke the words, Anbaixiu felt a faint trace of unease.
Whenever an ill premonition struck, bad things invariably followed. And the most agonizing part was that Anbaixiu could do nothing but wait for the mishap to fall.
After some thought, Anbaixiu said to the Rose of Decay, "There are still a few days before the negotiations. Let's make some extra preparations."
When fate tells you misfortune is coming, yet leaves it unclear whether it will be a mere scratch or the loss of your life, the only sensible response is to prepare as if you are about to be mortally wounded.
Chapter 129