Confronted with Elara's furious outburst, Leric Stormblade remained entirely unperturbed, maintaining his characteristic air of nonchalance.
He tilted his head, nonchalantly inserted his little finger into his ear canal, and proceeded to clean his ear as if he were utterly alone, projecting an aura of serene composure that seemed to declare, "Whatever challenges arise, I shall meet them head-on."
After Elara had somewhat indiscriminately vented her spleen, she observed that his hide was as thick as a fortress wall; he appeared not to have registered a single word of her tirade. Gradually, her temper subsided, and a suspicion began to dawn that there was likely something exceedingly peculiar underlying this entire affair.
"You are neither a fool nor a raving egomaniac. To undertake an action so patently life-threatening, you must surely possess some semblance of a justifiable reason, wouldn't you agree?" Elara inquired, her customary composure now largely restored.
Leric, witnessing her anger dissipate with such alacrity and her usual rationality resurface, experienced a fleeting, almost imperceptible twinge of regret. However, his facial expression instantaneously contorted into a mask of profound, pitiable aggrievement. He began to wail, feigning gross injustice, "By the heavens above! I have been most grievously wronged! I was on the very verge of offering an explanation, but you afforded me absolutely no opportunity to utter a single syllable! And now, to add insult to injury, you complain about me. Truly, I find myself in an utterly unwinnable situation!"
His exaggerated, whining lament, this theatrical portrayal of victimhood, was so transparently false, its artificiality so glaringly obvious, that it couldn't help but evoke a potent, visceral urge to administer a sound thrashing.
Elara, too, felt a nearly irresistible impulse to surge forward and deliver a swift, well-aimed kick, one calculated to send him sprawling into an undignified posture best described as a "hungry dog lunging for scraps."
"Cease this charade immediately and explain yourself with utmost clarity!" Elara snapped, her patience wearing thin. "Are you not in the least concerned that your adoring junior martial brothers might witness you in this utterly shameless state? Were they to glimpse this lazy, slovenly facet of your character, that meticulously cultivated image of the cool, enigmatic 'lone wolf' you've so painstakingly constructed would instantly, irrevocably, shatter into a million irreparable pieces!" She offered him no pleasantries, only a sharp, pointed taunt.
She was, at this moment, in absolutely no mood for playful banter or lighthearted antics; if this calamitous situation was not handled with extreme care and precision, both of them would find themselves embroiled in trouble of monumental proportions.
Leric Stormblade, seemingly intuiting Elara's current state of mind, refrained from refuting her barbs. Instead, he ambled with a lazy gait towards the enormous bundle, bent down, casually selected a slender manual from the pile, and then straightened up.
Once fully upright again, a mysterious, almost mischievous glint illuminating his eyes, he offered the book to Elara with an enigmatic half-smile. He then gestured subtly with his eyes, indicating that she should open the cover and peruse its contents.
Elara accepted the thin manual, her gaze fixed on him with a mixture of doubt and curiosity. She was rather perplexed, utterly unable to divine what convoluted scheme Leric was currently hatching.
"Open it and take a look," Leric coaxed, his tone laced with the conspiratorial eagerness of someone anticipating a highly entertaining spectacle. "Then, all will become crystal clear."
"Could you not simply tell me directly? What is the purpose of all this elaborate secrecy?" Although Elara's face was a mask of unconcealed reluctance, she nevertheless complied, her fingers moving to flip open the book.
The instant she parted the cover, the first page of the manual was revealed. Upon it, inscribed in stark, unambiguous black characters on the plain white paper, were four large words: "Blink Strike Swordplay."
"Ah!" A small gasp escaped Elara's lips; she was slightly taken aback.
The very first book Leric had casually proffered was precisely the item she so desperately sought. This fact alone surprised her somewhat.
"Don't be too quick to succumb to astonishment," Leric interjected, a playful smirk dancing on his lips. "Pray, examine these few volumes as well." He then, in rapid succession, tossed several more manuals towards her.
Elara caught them one by one. After a swift, cursory flip through their pages, she froze, utterly transfixed, her entire being suffused with profound, speechless amazement. Preceding the main textual content of each and every one of these books, the same four black characters—"Blink Strike Swordplay"—were clearly, unmistakably, written.
A considerable expanse of time elapsed before Elara finally managed to tear her gaze away from the astonishing collection of books clutched in her hands.
She slowly lifted her head, extended a trembling finger towards the massive pile of martial arts manuals heaped upon the ground, and stammered, her voice faltering, "You… you don't seriously mean to tell me… that all… all of these… are 'Blink Strike Swordplay' manuals?!"
"Regrettably, Junior Sister Elara, your deduction is entirely accurate," he replied with an exaggerated shrug, spreading his hands wide in a theatrical gesture of feigned helplessness.
However, the subtle, almost imperceptible upturn at the corners of his lips, and the distinct undercurrent of schadenfreude lacing his tone, stood in stark, incongruous contradiction to the ostensible meaning of his words.
"That is utterly impossible! There are nearly a hundred distinct volumes here. How could they all conceivably be iterations of 'Blink Strike Swordplay'?" Elara, completely disregarding his transparent little act, interrogated him with a voice filled with incredulity.
"You ask me? Who, pray tell, am I supposed to ask?" Leric retorted, rolling his eyes dramatically and muttering under his breath. He even managed to adopt an expression suggesting he was still profoundly shaken by the experience. "When I stumbled upon such an extraordinary quantity of identically named manuals tucked away in that forgotten corner of the archives, I confess, I too was quite significantly shocked!"
Then, observing Elara's utterly dumbstruck, speechless countenance—a veritable tableau of stunned disbelief—he could no longer contain himself and erupted into peals of hearty, unrestrained laughter.
For Leric Stormblade, witnessing Elara in such a state of frightened, wide-eyed stupefaction was a rare and exceptionally precious spectacle, a veritable collector's item.
The customary Elara invariably presented an image of unruffled composure, of serene, unshakeable confidence in his presence, as if the very concept of "astonishment" was utterly alien to her lexicon. But Elara's current manifestation—this wooden, dazed, almost childlike bewilderment—made Leric feel that all the considerable risks he had undertaken and all the strenuous effort he had expended in recent days had not been in vain. It was, in his estimation, entirely, unequivocally, worth it.
After a few moments, Elara finally began to emerge from the depths of her profound shock.
Clutching the books tightly in her hand, she lowered her head and appeared to be lost in thought for a brief interlude. Then, she lifted her face, now etched with an expression of deep contemplation, and inquired slowly, her words measured and deliberate, "Have you meticulously inventoried these books? How many are there in total?"
"Naturally, I have counted them, and not merely once, I assure you! There are precisely seventy-four manuals bearing the exact same name," Leric immediately interjected, unhesitatingly furnishing the precise, unequivocal number.
"If I hadn't taken the trouble to ascertain the exact quantity of these volumes," he added, by way of a slight, almost sheepish justification, "and had inadvertently overlooked one or two when returning them, would that not, in truth, precipitate a rather calamitous problem?"
Her fingers gently, almost reverently, brushing against the somewhat yellowed, age-worn pages, Elara slowly began to flip through them, commencing a careful, methodical perusal of the specific manual she currently held in her hands.