Chapter 655 Much Needed Rest
The next minutes were a massacre. The wolves outnumbered the guards under him two-to-one, and were of the same level as them, too.
The pack tactics of the beasts made quick work of them, and the fewer soldiers remained, the more wolves ganged up on the guards.
The commander held his own against Genie and White, although not without taking some damage, but they quickly overran him, as well.
The moment he fell, and burst into particles, he reappeared inside the training floor, where the old gnomish mage was clapping his hands.
"Wonderful! What a glorious way to go out! Swinging with the might of ten men! How wonderful!" the gnome shouted, clapping his hands like a groupie.
Rodney wasn't in the mood for this and saw himself out.
He met Mary in the stairwell, where she was sitting on a step, her gaze empty.
"How bad was it?" he asked her, stopping next to her.
The commander, caught deep in a daze of her own making, barely looked at him.
"At first, we were an equal match. Then he showed us why he was king… To think I thought the queen was a monster yesterday…"
Rodney looked at her with empathy. He knew what she meant.
He kept walking toward the bottom floor, letting his feet guide him as his mind replayed the last fight of the simulation.
He had been a close match for the two ginormous wolves. At some point, he even thought he could win.
But then he started getting nipped at the heels by the dire wolves, and his chances dropped like a stone in a lake.
'To think he controls such beasts and can fuse with them, to gain their strength… We misjudged his power… Maybe this was his way of reminding us?'
Rodney let his thought wander, as his body dragged itself toward the throne room, where he knew he would find the king and queen waiting for him.
Reaching there, the doors opened for him, and he let himself in.
On the dais where the thrones were, two people smiled at him as he entered.
Astaroth, who was back on his throne, his face looking worn and tired. And Phoenix, who seemed proud of something.
At the bottom of the dais, on her knee with her hand to her chest, Commander Alena.
He copied her posture and clamored something close to what she had said moments before he entered.
"King Astaroth. I humbly accept this defeat and promise to train and get strong enough that I shall no longer know such shame. I swear my eternal loyalty to you."
"As do I!" a voice echoed from the entrance of the room, where Mary Kadmus had just burst into the room.
She rushed toward her two peers and knelt.
Astaroth smiled genuinely at them, his eyes heavy with exhaustion. He was still reeling from using Royal Protection.
"Thank you. All three of you. It warms my heart that you finally accept me as your ruler, without conditions or afterthoughts. But in the shape I am right now, a child could beat me into submission, hehe.
"How about we reconvene in a few hours, get some rest, and comfort the soldiers that their defeat was nothing shameful?"
The three commanders looked at the king and nodded. He indeed looked like he was about to pass out.
So they sprung to their feet and excused themselves.
It was a good idea to take their men and make sure they weren't scarred for life by this humiliating beat-down.
The Sentinels' commander especially knew how badly her troops had suffered. Soldiers were proud people.
Being ordered to flee, and then getting hunted like wild game, was not something easy to overcome, mentally. She knew she had a lot of work ahead of herself.
She would have to not only reinstate their pride and courage. But she also needed to make sure she trained all her troops enough that the same thing didn't happen in the upcoming Military Exercises.
If this had happened on the continental scale of the exercise's broadcasts, she would never recover from that shame.
The same could be said about the other two commanders, who had to motivate their regiments into a positive loop of training and expansion.
It was a tough journey ahead, to prove their worth for the exercises of the following year.
They couldn't let the Sentinels hog all the glory, could they?
As all three of them left the room, Astaroth sighed tiredly.
"Hehe. You really shouldn't abuse that power. It makes you weaker than a level-one monster," Phoenix teased him.
"I know. But did you see how strong it makes me? I could probably take on a dungeon on my own if I could stay in that state long enough."
Astaroth's mind filled with images of him clearing out dungeons in solo, and his heart filled with glee. Of course, it was a fantasy, and nothing else.
He knew Khalor took on dungeons solo, but with his legacy skills, giving him access to an army of undead, it was hardly solo.
Astaroth wondered how strong the dick had become, and how he would fare against him in PVP. But it was not something Khalor would accept.
He was too busy with his planning and scheming to want to give the time of day to anyone. Which he and Phoenix were mostly fine with.
Having someone who wasn't a team player in a guild was a lot of trouble.
Keeping him at arm's length was better for everyone concerned.
With the room cleared, Astaroth and Phoenix rose from their thrones, the latter helping the former, since he could barely stand on his own two feet, and they went to the back room.
In there, Astaroth could rest away from the eyes of his subjects.
It wasn't long before he returned to normal and was ready for the next order of things for the day.
"Alright. We should call this Dilya over. And the Adventurers' Guild's master, Singing Grove. We still need to convince them both to let Dilya work directly under us."
Phoenix sighed at the task ahead.
She had dealt with Singing Grove before. It was no easy feat to get her to talk.
'I hope she is more loquacious with him than she was with me…' she sighed internally.
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