**Chapter 226 — The Golden Road’s DawnA few days after the tomb campaign’s chaos finally settled into something resembling calm, Neo Orcus began to return to its usual rhythm, though the air still felt charged with the lingering echoes of battle and death, as if the ground itself had not yet forgiven what had occurred. The quiet that followed was not peace, it was simply the world catching its breath before the next storm. Grieve, now revealed as a 9-star undead General from the Ancient Era, wasted no time in demonstrating why his title carried weight, because he had retained the full scope of his Physical Arts and was using that knowledge like a whip to drive the Rebornians and the Dragonborns into a new level of strength. His training was not merely intense, it was merciless, and the Dragonborns found themselves thrown into routines that felt designed to break them so they could be rebuilt stronger. The sight of Grieve, skeletal and unyielding, barking orders as dawn bar

C228 — Angora’s Quiet HungerElias let Sheina and Yuna handle the internal affairs of the Lyta company while he, of course, took the liberty of wandering Angora City alone, because apparently the only way to prove he was not lazy was to pretend he was conducting research. He made it clear to them that his excursion was purely scientific, a legitimate reconnaissance mission to observe the culture, architecture, and general way of life in this unfamiliar urban landscape, even though everyone knew he was simply taking a break from being everyone’s savior. The fact that Bubbles tagged along only reinforced the idea that he was “playing” instead of working, because nothing screams relaxation like bringing a living puddle of slime into a medieval city, and everyone in the Lyta company chat acted like that was normal.He was met with endless speculation that he was simply slacking off, that he was treating this new city like a playground, and the fact that Bubbles was wit

Chapter 230 — Purchased SanctuaryThe demi humans flinched as the royal’s price was revealed, and the sheer magnitude of it hit them like a physical blow, because the amount was so astronomical that it shattered every hope they had of staying where they were, leaving their dreams to crumble into dust.Their minds immediately raced to the worst possible futures, where the only options left would be to return to living in the wilderness like animals, camping in the woods just to survive, or even worse, being forced out into the Ashed Lands where the air itself seemed to reject life.“This is what it means to live in the capital,” the inn owner said with a strained voice, trying to sound calm, yet the tremor in his tone betrayed his desperation, because he knew their lives were being crushed by the weight of the city’s demands.“We will have to move the land somewhere else, somewhere the struggling have a chance, somewhere the laws don’t bite so hard

Chapter 232 — Red Mankeys’ EchoElias felt the familiar tug of his Superior Golden Nose, a sensation like a tiny alarm bell ringing inside his skull, warning him that a rare talent was nearby, and because they were standing within the territory of the Order, the most obvious conclusion was that the talented individuals were likely Knights, or at least people who had already been recognized as part of the Order’s structure.But Elias also understood the logic behind the signal, because once someone had been awakened and officially became a Knight, their hidden abilities would no longer fall into ordinary categories; instead, they would manifest as something different, something more complex, and perhaps something even more dangerous.He wanted to investigate, of course he did, because curiosity was the only thing that made him feel alive in a world full of knights and monsters and political puppetry, but the problem was that the Knights were fighting in bro

C234: Kruger’s InquiryKruger did not stand out among the other orcs in any dramatic way, not even a little, and that was precisely the point. He looked like the kind of orc that could be mistaken for a random musclebound background character in a war movie, the sort who would get a name only if someone needed to explain why a bridge collapsed. His stature was enormous, his shoulders broad enough to carry a mountain if he had the patience, and his two lower tusks protruded from his mouth like small, curved monuments to his species’ primal nature. Compared to the more exotic variants, such as the Orcanine and Orcupine tribes who had evolved into distinct offshoots of orc lineage, Kruger seemed almost disappointingly ordinary. In fact, he looked even more ordinary precisely because those other orcs were the ones who had been altered by mutation or adaptation, whereas Kruger remained pure, unadorned, and stubbornly unchanged.The strangest part was that Kruger was not