Starborn Apotheosis: When Demon-Elf Hybrid Unlocks the Primal Codex

The Family

It was not until she saw Asan from afar that Eldrin realized her father was a truly great man.

Yashan is located on the Far Look Peninsula and has a population of more than 100,000 people. The city is built according to the shape of the peninsula, with the highest terrain in the northwestern part of the city, extending in an arc to the south to the islands scattered in the Apennine Sea. The narrow strip-shaped city is like a giant beast at rest, silently creeping between water and sky, with well-kept houses, orderly streets, and twenty-meter-high city walls snaking around it to protect its inhabitants. Outside the city, on the vast plains, there was rich land everywhere, the wide Lane River ran through the city and emptied into the Apennine Sea, providing a never-ending source of water for the endless fields.

There was a small hill in the city of Yashan, and the world-famous Black Rose Castle was built on it. It is a majestic and huge complex that can easily hold more than 3,000 warriors, and on top of the towers that stand tall in every corner, there are even permanent large stone throwers that look down on the city below with a disdainful attitude. However, since the construction of Black Rose Castle, those stone throwers had never been used. Although there had been enemies who had attacked below Asan City, at most, their footsteps had touched the front of Asan City's walls before they were crushed.

Castle is a weapon of defense, Black Rose Castle has reached the ultimate in design, looking at the composite fortress-type building with the castle within the castle as the core, the wooden shooting platform that can be extended from the top of the wall or the archery tower at any time, the passage is like passing through the tunnel-like gates, the ten-meter depth of the castle is set up with five layers of strong and incomparable gates, as well as many other arrangements that are impossible to see directly with the eyes. When the Black Rose Castle was built, it was said that only 1,000 skilled warriors were needed to guard it, and that it was almost impenetrable when well supplied.

Many travelers had visited this city in various capacities, and when they saw the monster that occupied the city's peak, they had to agree with the almost insane boasts of the designer of Black Rose Castle. A noble military man who refused to reveal his name was invited to the castle as a guest, and when he returned, he conducted a sand table exercise on the defenses he saw, and concluded that even if he used a 50,000-strong army with all kinds of soldiers and heavy siege equipment, he would have to pay a heavy price if he wanted to capture the castle.

It was just that it had never really been tested by the fire of war, for the successive lords of the ancient castle had never liked to defend, even when their troops were at an absolute disadvantage, preferring to choose the boundless plains or the deep mountains as a backdrop to destroy their enemies in a war of movement. And they would always win in the end.

Throughout the Holy Alliance, the madness of the Malificus family is well known.

No one wants to fight a madman, not to mention the fact that one or more geniuses will always emerge from this mad family. MalificusThe House's greatest enemy, Duke Joseph of the Lennon Peninsula, once remarked that when madness and genius are combined, the damage is multiplied, not added.

As he spoke these words, Duke Joseph's 20,000 main force had just been defeated by Malificus' 10,000 elite in a long and brutal battle, and less than two thousand had fled. And the fighting power under the command of Joseph, the Son of Iron, is by no means generalized, and is among the best in the entire continent.

After hundreds of years of development, the members of the Malificus family today include two Candidate Lords and seven Counts, with viscounts and barons, not to mention dogs, not far behind. Together, they own a territory of more than 100,000 square kilometers. In the entire Holy Alliance, the history of the Malificus family is not that long, but the strength is definitely not weak, belonging to one of the central forces. However, what is strange is that if other families have so many field nobles, there should be a duke or even a grand duke, but the Malificus Family only has a marquis at the highest level. To know Malificusfamily is the most lack of power and strong, they have a powerful magician, but also high-level warriors, more all kinds of strange and strange high-level occupation, such as dragon vein warlocks, hell magic knights, shadow priests, and so on. The continent of Norland is not peaceful, and it can even be said that war is the norm. The human race occupies less than half of the continent and is at war with a large number of races fighting for space to survive.

Humans are perhaps no less warlike than demons. They have fought not only with the aliens, but also within themselves. The flames of war not only burned in Norland, but also spread to the depths of the ocean and many realms.

In such a chaotic and complicated situation, it is not difficult for the Malificus family, which has many geniuses, to come up with a duke or even a founding grand duke. As long as they focus their resources on expanding outward, acquiring enough territories from foreigners and firmly occupying them, establishing a complete civil, economic, and judicial system, and coordinating and balancing the distribution of interests within the family, a duke will be produced in two generations at the most. At least half of the dukes of the Holy Alliance were created this way, so in the eyes of the nobles of other kingdoms, the Holy Alliance Empire is a big camp of thugs and bumpkins, and the Imperial Emperor is the biggest thug of them all. It's just that everything that reaches a certain level will bring about a qualitative change, and the same goes for the outbreaks. The outburst of the Holy Alliance royal family crossed the critical point of people's psychological tolerance, so it won the respect and honor of the majority of the old nobility.

Malificus was no less outrageous, just too short a history, and the fatal thing about short histories is that there wasn't enough accumulation of wealth and power. And they were too mad to earn respect.

The current patriarch of Malificus, the Marquis of Gorton, is himself an example of an outlier. He was only a third-level novice warrior when he began training fifteen years ago. Ten years ago, he used his personal strength and political and military talents to conquer the Elven Royal Court in the Forest of Eternal Night in one fell swoop, shaking the entire Holy Alliance! There are not many people who dare to attack the elven territory, but the only one who dared to go deep into the Forest of Eternal Night with only fifty knights and more than a thousand soldiers was Gordon, and he succeeded!

Now, at the age of thirty-three, Gordon has become a Marquis and has taken up residence in the Old Castle of the Black Rose, where he has been given the MalificusMalificus exclusively reserved for the patriarch of the clan. Territory.

In the mouths of those who cherished him, Gordon's experience was a legend, and legends were still being written. But the Marquis of Gordon's absolute influence, aside from the Castle of the Black Rose, was only in the territories he had fought for himself. The other members of the Malificus family usually ignore his orders. In Malificus, the title of Patriarch is a mere honor, if not for the ancient Castle of the Black Rose and Yama.

Heraldry and historians of the SpecializationMalificus family tree once concluded that the family's failure to produce an Archduke was due to the fact that the independence and rebelliousness that runs through the blood of the family, with each Malificus unwilling to submit to another, even if that person was his father.

This is not a rigorous argument, and the scholar who made it is not very knowledgeable, let alone famous. In fact, the scholar would have been forced to live on the streets if he hadn't been able to get his research back in exchange for a grant from one of the nobles of the Malificus family. If he were really good at what he does, he wouldn't be researching such a narrow-minded family. And the scholar's ultimate goal was precisely to live on the streets and die of misery and disease. It is said that when his research was sent to the desk of the then Malificus Patriarch, the Patriarch casually flipped through it and ordered a ban on any Malificus person giving him any form of patronage. And the Malificus, who have a tradition of rebellion, were surprisingly obedient this time, carrying out the Patriarch's orders in full.

There's only one real reason for this, and that's that this piece, which is piled high with fluff throughout, has a conclusion that's damn near right, despite its confusing logic, absurd examples, and full of catchall and childish conjecture.

The distance from the village of Rutherland to Yashan was over three thousand kilometers, and the journey took less than half a month. Along the way, Mordred told Eldrin many things about the Malificus family, including some of the customs and divisions of power on various continents. By the time he arrived in Yashan, Eldrin already knew quite a bit about the family.

Family, that's a completely new word for Eldrin. In the past, he even had a vague idea of his father, so how could he possibly know what family was? But judging from Mordred's attitude, this knight of great power was very attached to family. The concept of family here was much broader, it included not only the main and secondary bloodlines, but also the lesser nobles and knights who followed the main family, they could all be considered people within the family. The bloodline is the link that binds the family together, but the meaning is not limited to blood. Many special bloodlines would possess unique abilities, and the combination of different bloodlines would often produce new abilities. The abilities of certain bloodlines were extremely powerful, powerful enough to make people chase after them regardless. Because of this, nobility and family took on a whole new meaning in the world of Norland, where marriages were not only for political alliances, but often to create powerful offspring.

By the time Eldrin stood in front of the gates of the Old Castle of the Black Rose, he should have had a good understanding of Malificus. But little Eldrin felt even more confused, and everything Mordred had poured into his mind without a system was like a broken jigsaw puzzle that couldn't be put together into a complete picture.