Chapter 1521 (1/2)

“Is that… really it?” The words echoed out through the training arena. At the moment, no one knew how to answer that question.

Superintendent Xeruth suppressed his impulse to flinch as the Ghosthound spoke beside him with such raw disappointment. The man’s presence and his ominous control over his son were already intimidating enough, but Xeruth had steeled himself against the expected arrogance and endured the casual affront of having to put up with the Ghosthound’s expansive good, but not great, image. In essence, he had made quite a few mental preparations for what he might need to deal with from the Ghosthound.

Yet the bewildered disgust managed to surprise Xeruth.

Below, the Ghosthound’s two hundred recruits looked just as bedraggled as they had as they arrived for the skirmish. It was clear that they were bruised from earlier fights and near exhausted from the hellish training they had been enduring. Superintendent Xeruth had been in contact with his son earlier in the week, so he had heard some of the details of the Ghosthound’s methods. And seeing their hollow eyes and shaking shoulders, his son might have underplayed how hellish the experience was. It made Superintendent Xeruth have an ominous feeling about why he hadn’t heard much from his son in the past few days.

Still, those bedraggled figures stood over the thousand crumpled forms of their opponents, their matching armor smashed and battered. They seemed just as bewildered as their Head Drill Sergeant sounded as they looked at their defeated foes.

“Is there a stronger group we could face?” Head Drill Sergeant Ghosthound asked very loudly. Again, his voice echoed clearly out to the surrounding Drill Sergeants. Before the fight, that sort of question would likely have goaded one of the surrounding Drill Sergeants to aggressively speak out against him. But now they remained silent; the Ghosthound had sent a strong message with the overwhelming victory of his recruits.

With this example made public, no one could deny that there was a reason that Randidly Ghosthound headed up the elite, two-hundred man squad. And as more and more details came out about how serious the issue was in the Fifth Cohort, Superintendent Xeruth could understand why Commandant Wick thought it was necessary to bring in a brutalizer like the Ghosthound to train the elites. In a way, it was proof that Military High Command was taking this threat seriously.

It was also proof that they had to take the previous threat seriously. With the Nexus Aether Distribution Summit in Alymiyan, which occurred once every ten years, coming up in five months, the High Command knew they needed to show results as quickly as possible to placate the populace.

Then Superintendent Xeruth blinked because Head Drill Sergeant Ghosthound was looking at him with his emerald eyes that were filling with increasing scorn. Remembering the Ghosthound’s question, Xeruth cleared his throat. “Unfortunately… all the other groups were matched up against each other. It… it wouldn’t be fair…”

“Hm.” Xeruth could feel the vibrations from the noise in his bones. The Ghosthound frowned deeply but didn’t say anything. Below, Xeruth could hear one of the Ghosthound’s assistants announcing to his troops that break time was over and they needed to head back to training. Without a word of complaint, the troops below turned and walked out of the arena.

As they did so, Superintendent Xeruth panicked and frantically searched amongst the bodies for his son. It was only when he found Kallum, looking similarly tired but otherwise extremely healthy, that he could finally relax a little. Then his mind slowly turned to the issue of what he had seen in the fight.

At the beginning of the confrontation, the Ghosthound’s recruits had really been outmatched. Not only were they outnumbered, but it immediately became clear that they hadn’t much training in regards to teamwork. With their tight formations and cohesive images, the numerically superior opposing recruits had surrounded the elite squad and began to safely bombard them from afar.

Yet the bombardment didn’t have the desired effect on the elite squad. Rather than being disheartened and shocked by the attacks, the elite squad seemed to have a realization that was something like ‘oh, this isn’t so bad’. Then, under the leadership of a few overwhelmingly powerful recruits, the elite squad exploded outward and smashed apart the carefully constructed group images with brute force.

Honestly, their current fighting methods were closer to Nether than Aether. But their image strength was the real deal.

While Xeruth had been reflecting on what he had seen, the Ghosthound had been considering. The humanoid with dark hair cleared his throat. Every noise he made seemed unnecessarily loud, especially while surrounded by so many completely silent Drill Sergeants. “Well, this won’t work. Arrange for… well, at this rate, five opponents for my recruits during the next skirmish. In the meantime, I’ll think about how I want the battle structured. Is this understood?”

The man’s eyes were emerald, yet there was something impossibly sharp about the determination in his gaze. Despite the fact that the Superintendent didn’t find anything overwhelming about the man’s image, there was an imperceptible heaviness to their interactions. It wasn’t something that Superintendent had felt often in his life, but he wouldn’t forget the source.

Head Drill Sergeant Ghosthound felt just as wild and unpredictable as a Nether Gatekeeper. With the same gleeful capacity for violence.

So Xeruth could only force down his disappointment and acquiesce with a nod. Stay safe, Kellum. As long as we endure until the day you are deployed...

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