After pouring out his heart to Selesthin, Al felt a little better. It was like unloading half of a heavy burden.
Al really did crave motherly love and familial affection. If he had been born in a human or elven city with a normal family…
His heart had already been seized by the Four Gods. His fate was bound to the End Times. In this life he might never again have the real love and family he longed for…
"Want something to eat?"
The centaur girl strode forward on her four powerful legs and asked casually:
"After that… we can go wash in the spring again."
"Hell yeah!"
Will flipped off the horse. In his haste his steps were a little unsteady as he rushed toward the stream.
He knelt on the wet bank, not caring that his knees were getting soaked, bent down, and buried his face in the flowing creek.
He held his breath for a long time before suddenly lifting his head, letting water droplets slide from his temples and chin into his collar.
Two servants following closely behind him reined in their horses, dismounted, left one to watch the mounts, and the other rushed to the bank.
"Lord Will!"
He lunged to the man's side, trying to help him up. Will shoved him away hard. The servant fell backward onto the wet sand, face full of fear.
Will tremblingly parted the messy bangs hanging over his forehead, steadied himself, and looked at the water surface.
The noble youth whose sharp gaze and heroic appearance once made court ladies throw flirtatious glances at him had lost all his former elegance.
His left cheek was swollen high, beard and hair disheveled like a savage, face covered in dirt and grease.
Will frantically started undoing his cloak and clothes. After the servant's failed attempts to stop him, he reluctantly helped Will remove them. Several red, bleeding whip marks on his back were exposed to the air. Will turned away and gently touched them, sucking in a sharp breath from the pain, then simply jumped straight into the stream.
"My lord!"
The servant was shocked and terrified, afraid something would happen to Will, so he took off his own cloak and waded in after him.
Fortunately the stream wasn't deep—only about a meter at its deepest—and not far on the opposite bank was a dense forest.
Will sat on the bottom, enjoying the refreshing coolness of the creek water washing over his body.
But while the physical pain was soothed, the wound in his heart festered like an ulcer. The more he thought about it, the angrier he became. Suddenly he stood up from the water, waded toward the bank, and drew the short sword at his waist.
The decorative ceremonial blade actually had a cold, sharp gleam. It gave Will Julius a false sense of courage. He headed toward where the horses were tied, as if going somewhere.
"Lord Will!"
This time the servant didn't dare hesitate. He scrambled forward, hugged Will's sword arm, tried to wrest the blade away, and begged bitterly: "Please calm down, my lord! Lord Hart has already reprimanded the general!"
"What the hell is he!"
Will's pent-up rage finally found an outlet. He kicked the servant away with one swing, though the short sword was taken in the process.
He didn't stop. He charged forward, grabbed the servant by the collar, and roared: "No matter what happens that old bastard only ever tells me to endure, to be rational, to lick the boots of that branch-family mongrel! And he's even willing to help him hide it from the imperial court, taking the army into the forest to look for a woman who's been missing for over half a year!"
Time rewound to last night.
After the military council, Will was full of resentment and had also lost track of the beautiful big-breasted village girl. Like a spellcasting process interrupted multiple times, he was holding a bellyful of fire. He decided to lower his standards and make do with one of the camp whores, but he couldn't stand the tent that had probably been visited by countless soldiers and farmers in a single day, so he quietly brought the prostitute back to his own tent.
However, at the height of passion, while he was holding the whore in a reverse piledriver position launching the final wave of thrusts, Rhine and Old Hart along with the staff officers pushed open the door during their night patrol of the camp.
Very embarrassingly, right in front of almost all the senior officers and generals, Will finished his shot.
Rhine walked over expressionlessly, waved for the pale-faced prostitute to leave, then gently pushed aside the naked, awkward Will who still had his short gun hanging, and leaned over the sand table that was now a complete mess from their fierce battle.
Passionate lust had made both man and woman completely careless. The whore's thick thighs had first flattened the highlands, then raided the plains, leaving everything in chaos. Several small streams had even been created out of nowhere on the battlefield, making the already strange terrain even more complicated.
And Will's essence had landed right on the edge of the sand table, perfectly soaking the little flag that symbolized the commander.
"What a chaotic battlefield."
Rhine clicked his tongue. The officers burst into laughter.
Will stood behind him, face burning with shame and fury, utterly humiliated. He saw Old Hart's pitying and disappointed gaze. Before he could even open his mouth—
"Slap!"
Rhine backhanded him across the face. Before Will could angrily challenge him to a duel, he ordered the guards to tie him up and gave him twenty lashes.
Will Julius was bound to a wooden post, watching the surrounding officers and colleagues avert their eyes with varying degrees of mockery, schadenfreude, and glee.
His heart turned to dead ash.
In the end Will passed out from the pain. It was Old Hart who assigned two Julius family servants to look after him.
The twenty lashes were according to military law, but he would never forget the slap from Rhine Julius—this slightly older cousin from the branch family whose blood was much further from the founder "Karl Legion Julius" himself.
A whole night had passed, yet the humiliation of that slap had not faded at all. Instead, with the swelling of his left cheek, it had burned deeper and deeper into Will's heart.
This hatred and anger burned like a fierce fire, yet it could not hide the weakness beneath the bluster. Will roared and cursed at the servant until the man's face turned bright red, then finally let out a breath and released him.
"He was just born a few years earlier than me!"
He sat on the bank, staring at the water and muttering to himself.
"What else does he have?"
The young servant was already starting to grow tired of this youth's willfulness and bad temper, but the Julius family's long-standing militaristic tradition had instilled in these servants from the main house a deep, ingrained sense of subordinates obeying superiors.
The young servant adjusted his emotions and tried his best to comfort the only other "Julius" in this expeditionary force. However, an arrow cut his words off in his throat.
With a thud, the servant fell backward.
A group of swift figures burst out of the forest and charged toward Will.
"Get on the horse, quick!"
The servant watching the horses frantically grabbed the reins and rushed toward Will, but the horses seemed to sense the danger—the scent from the forest, from the wilds, from natural predators.
"It's a wolf pack!"
Standing nearly two meters tall, they were already large for humans, not to mention their powerful, agile bodies and ferocious hunting instincts!
Their fangs were sharp, their claws deadly! Mortal flesh could not take them lightly!
Followers of the All-Things Shepherd had always claimed that these new breeds of beastmen called "wolf packs," which only appeared after the Great War, were the blessed children of the Shepherd God and the White Wolf God. The two deities had created these terrifying predators together.
In the Empire's Talabecland, the Elector Count kept a pack of werewolves in his service, while the priests of Taal publicly declared that these wolf packs were Taal's creations.