As those three words fell, the Five Elders' pupils contracted at once.
Rock's voice was not loud, yet it struck into the deepest part of the Flower Room like a bolt of thunder.
"Why should some people be born to kneel?"
"Why should some people live only to pay taxes, starve, be robbed, and be sold?"
"Why should a child who has never even seen the sea first have to learn to fear pirates, nobles, and the Holy Land?"
"Why do you sit here and decide for the whole world who should suffer, who should remain silent, and who should be sacrificed?"
Imu watched him quietly, their gazes colliding across the sea of pure white flowers.
No thunder exploded, and no blades were drawn, yet at that moment, the air throughout the Flower Room seemed pinned down by two invisible forces.
The Five Elders knelt on either side, their expressions changing abruptly. They felt it.
The massive black ring behind Imu slowly turned. Countless eyes upon it opened at once, and an ancient, icy pressure silently descended.
The sea of pure white flowers stopped swaying. The air froze, and even sound seemed stripped of the right to continue traveling.
The Five Elders' breathing halted as their heads instinctively bowed lower.
But Rock did not lower his head. Purple-black thunder silently spread.
Strands of electric arcs slithered along the ground like dragon scales, gradually holding back the ancient pressure pressing out from the depths of the flower sea.
His Justice coat fluttered slightly. His shoulders did not bend, nor did his gaze retreat.
For an instant, an invisible dividing line seemed to appear in the middle of the pure white flower sea.
On one side stood a throne no one had dared defy for eight hundred years.
On the other stood