The other elves in the trees had the same reaction as Apollo.
All of them suddenly knitted their brows as if something had changed.
There were even a few of them that had suddenly stumbled and almost fell off the branches of the trees they were standing on.
Apollo grabbed his chest and seemed to try to stabilize himself, but his breathing became heavier and even his face couldn't help turning red.
He looked around himself as if he was trying to find the source of this strange disturbance, but in the end, he wasn't able to find it.
At this, he turned to look down at me with narrowed eyes before asking, "What did you do?"
The tone of his voice almost made it seem like he was certain that I was the one that had caused whatever was affecting him right now.
When I heard this, I just revealed a confused look as I asked, "What do you mean?"
But even then, Apollo wouldn't relax his expression as he looked at me with this same certain look.
Seeing that it wasn't working, I released that fake confused look and said, "How did you figure it out?"
Apollo narrowed his eyes even more when he heard this, but he didn't say a thing.
When he didn't respond, I said, "Do you want to know what I did?"
Apollo looked at me with a very strange look that was both doubtful and curious as to what I had actually done. In the end, he gave a nod in response to this question.
"Well…" I slowly drew this out, as if I was playing with him.
When Apollo heard this, he immediately narrowed his eyes even more as a vein popped out on his forehead.
It was almost as if he was about to pop a vein with how much it was throbbing. It was as if he really wanted to rip me apart with his bare hands with the look that he was giving me.
But he couldn't do that since he was under the effects of this strange thing.
He didn't know what it was, but he could feel his body burning up and his breathing becoming faster.
When he thought about it, it was almost as if he was…
But how was that possible?
Seeing that his expression was getting worse, I didn't stop teasing him at all as I said, "Well, it's a very interesting thing that I did. You see, when I came out of the village this morning, I was thinking to myself that it really was a nice day and that I should…"
I kept going on like this, talking about all kinds of different things that seemed trivial and unrelated to the situation at hand.
The more that Apollo listened to this, the more annoyed he became.
Finally, he couldn't take it anymore and shouted, "Get to the point!"
I just said with a calm smile, "I'm getting there, I'm getting there."
Then I kept wasting even more of his time by talking about all kinds of different trivial things again.
The more time that I wasted, the worse the look on their faces became.
This time, Apollo snapped even sooner as he said, "That's enough! You're just wasting ti…"
His voice trailed off as he said this before he suddenly revealed a look of understanding.
That was right, he had hit the nail on the head!
I was just wasting time by talking about all these trivial things and I had no intention of telling him anything useful.
As he realized this, Apollo quickly checked his body and found that he was in a worse condition compared to before.
The only reason that he had played along with Zwein in the first place was to see if he could get him to slip up and tell them what they were afflicted with. But now he realized that he had been played with, he couldn't help losing his temper.
Instead of being the one in control, he was the one that had been controlled.
This was a fatal blow to his pride.
Since he wouldn't be able to get the information that he wanted and it seemed like the situation was getting more and more dire, there was no need to hesitate.
Apollo raised his hand to wave it for the rest of the elves to attack, but he found that he didn't even have the strength to do that anymore.
Most of the other elves were completely under the effect of this strange thing that was around them, so they couldn't summon any strength.
It didn't take long before they tilted forward, falling down from the trees they had been on.
It was a good thing that they still could control their bodies to a certain extent, so they were able to land on the ground. Otherwise, with how high up they were and how hard they were falling, they definitely would have been injured.
Even so…there wasn't much that they could do.
This heat that was coming from inside of them…it was not something that they could resist.
Apollo found that it was the same for him…
Even if he wanted to do something, he found that he didn't have the strength to move a single muscle.
Apollo looked back up at me and asked, "What did you do to us?"
I just looked back at him with a faint smile on my lips and said, "What did I do?"
The look of rage in Apollo's eyes became even stronger when he heard this.
But that look of rage was quickly replaced with a look of fear when he saw the cloaked figures coming closer.
These cloaked figures had their swords raised, as if they were about to finish them off.
When the threat to his life came closer, Apollo couldn't keep acting tough anymore.
He tried to move back, but he fell to the ground, landing on his butt.
When he did so, I couldn't help revealing a surprised look before letting a laugh escape.