Free Web NovelChapter 709: Silver Wolf Guard
CH709 Silver Wolf Guard
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At that very moment, the silver-haired youth remained completely unaware of their conversation as he busied himself discussing the future restructuring of Fortuna with Kavakan, Mogal, Mordor, and Sergeant Lopota.
In order to reduce the strain the drugs would place upon the patients, Eleanore deliberately designed the therapy to act relatively slowly.
Rather than attempting to eradicate the berserk properties instantaneously, she engineered the treatment to release at the fastest rate the patients’ bodies could safely endure—while still preventing the corruption from mounting any meaningful resistance.
Ideally, she would have preferred a treatment timeline spanning an entire month. However, due to the corruption’s rapid responsiveness and adaptability, she had been forced to shorten the process to a single week instead.
In truth, even the one-week timeline leaned towards the slower side compared to the berserk property’s reaction speed. Yet it was also the absolute fastest pace she could safely manage given the fragile state of the patients’ bodies during the cleansing process.
It was a difficult compromise... but ultimately the best balance she could achieve.
Knowing all of this—as well as the fact that Alex had fully expected the treatment to conclude within a single day—Zora convinced Eleanore to withhold the information from him.
Partly as a prank.
But more importantly, it was an excuse to drag the silver-haired expedition leader out of his laboratory.
Alex had become increasingly obsessed with deriving the final coordinates to Pangea. Ironically, the more fixated he became, the less progress he seemed to make.
Unfortunately, he rarely listened whenever his wives tried convincing him to step back and clear his mind. As such, they seized upon the opportunity provided by Eleanore’s project to force him away from his research for a while.
Even after leaving the laboratory, Alex still found himself buried beneath work—case in point, the restructuring of Fortuna itself.
However, these responsibilities were far less mentally consuming than obsessively hammering away at an unsolved coordinate derivation for days on end.
As part of the restructuring, Alex withdrew the Fury Knights from the Fortuna 300 infantry force.
Following the joint subjugation contract alongside the BattleBanes, the BattleBane members integrated into the Fortuna 300 had more or less fully adapted to Alex’s ungentlemanly tactical doctrine.
As such, there was no longer any need for the Fury Knights to continue acting as battlefield leaders for the various infantry units.
Instead, Alex allowed the almost two-hundred-strong BattleBane infantry force operating under Fortuna to choose their own leadership from amongst themselves—much to the concern of his retainers.
According to him,
"Trust is a two-way street. We have to give it in order to receive it. Besides, merely placing seven people above a force of about two hundred and expecting them to keep everyone in line is unrealistic. If those two hundred truly wished to mutiny, the seven of them would not be able to stop it.
"What can stop them... is power."
With those words, Alex silenced all opposition to his proposed restructuring before unveiling a brand-new unit—the elite rune soldier corps that would be known as...
the Silver Wolf Guard.
The name alone made the purpose of the unit abundantly clear.
Although currently operating under Fortuna, it was obvious that Alex held far greater ambitions for this force in the future.
Unlike Fortuna, which functioned primarily as an expeditionary army, the Silver Wolf Guard would exist as a direct extension of Alex himself.
They would become an elite force that answered to him and him alone—his shield and spearhead upon the battlefield, and eventually the most elite military unit under his banner, equipped exclusively with his finest rune tattoos and rune-tech creations.
The Silver Wolf Guard would never become an organisation with an identity of its own. Rather, its very identity would begin and end with Alex’s name, authority, and honour.
They were, ceremonially and practically alike, destined to become both his personal guard and his most fearsome military force.
Fortuna might one day evolve into a fully organised army partially independent from Alex himself, but the Silver Wolf Guard would always belong solely to him.
Joining the banner of the Silver Wolf Guard also meant receiving their rune tattoos, and Alex wasted no time fulfilling that promise.
Sergeant Lopota and the other six Fury Knights each underwent the binding process for the Guardian of Happenstance rune tattoo set.
After enduring the agonising pain of the procedure—a trial that would eventually come to resemble a rite of passage—the seven soldiers emerged as the first generation of true rune soldiers... the first elite Silver Wolves.
At the same time, they quietly became the individuals bearing the highest number of rune tattoos currently known.
The effects of the binding process became apparent almost immediately.
The five runes within the set resonated and synergised with one another, elevating the presence and combat aura of each Silver Wolf by an entire rank.
More terrifying still, when the seven gathered together as a unit, their combined presence was enough to send chills through even Alex’s retainers—Kavakan, Mogal, and Havel—simply from standing before them.
They could instinctively sense an overwhelming threat emanating from the group.
Alex smiled faintly as the results confirmed the vision he had for the rune set. The greater the number of Guardian of Happenstance bearers gathered together in a single location, the more overwhelming the combined presence they would exude.
With enough soldiers—even if each individual member only stood at the Intermediate Rank—they might one day possess the power to threaten even a Saint.
However, the birth of the Silver Wolf Guard was not the most significant event occupying the party during this period.
That honour belonged to Eleanore’s berserk human treatment.
Over the course of the past week, the mutations afflicting the various berserk human variants had visibly receded with each passing day.
Unfortunately, the agility-variant patient did not survive the process.
However, the vitality and strength variants successfully endured the treatment. And by the end of the week... they were human once more.
Initially, Eleanore had been deeply concerned about their mental condition. If they retained memories of their time as berserk humans... frёewebηovel.cѳm
Fortunately, it appeared that their minds had suppressed those memories entirely.
The latest recollection either patient possessed was the unbearable agony they experienced as they transformed into those monstrous creatures. Everything beyond that point was simply blank.
From their testimonies, the two survivors had originally been commoners occupying the absolute bottom rung of Hollowcrest Wildland’s social hierarchy.
Their circumstances had been so desperate that they were forced to survive by feeding upon discarded berserk beast carcasses—a choice that eventually triggered their berserk transformation.
Eleanore theorised that either the pain of the transformation itself had been so overwhelming that their brains lost the ability to properly record memories during the process... or that their minds had instinctively suppressed the memories afterwards because the experience had been too traumatic to bear.
Naturally, she hoped it was the former explanation.
If it was the latter, then there remained the unsettling possibility that those memories could eventually resurface in the future—a prospect that deeply worried her.
Even so, the members of the Fortuna party present warmly welcomed and congratulated the two patients, both of whom collapsed into tears after finally comprehending what had happened to them.
To the pair, Eleanore may as well have been a deity... or at the very least, a saint.
It took quite some time before the two patients finally calmed themselves enough to undergo a full series of examinations and tests.
And during those tests, Eleanore discovered something that shocked her to her very core.
The two recovered patients were emitting mana.
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