Chapter 342: Rules Of Rituals

He had boldly refused to go back to Oresfall with the massive group of defectors. But it wasn’t because he actually wanted to stay here and fight in the war. It was because of a completely different reason entirely.

The guy was none other than Brandon.

There were a few other defectors who had actively chosen to stay back at the camp too, mostly driven by the adrenaline and excitement of finally being able to serve a Lord who was actually fair to them.

But Brandon didn’t even pay any of those guys any attention.

He just slowly scanned through the ranks of Adrian’s heavily armored elite army, desperately trying to see if he could find the silver-haired girl who had just saved his life.

He just couldn’t help but think about her. Her cold face and her insane strength just kept vividly resurfacing in his mind. He couldn’t help but grin like an idiot.

He giggled quietly to himself.

"Hehehe... Her name is Octavia huh?" Brandon muttered to himself. "Such a beautiful name... Just like her."

He was all smiles as he limped around the edge of the camp, ignoring the bandages wrapped tightly around his legs, actively trying to look for this girl.

He had completely forgotten about his sisters’ marriages and his dowry responsibilities.

As he limped past a group of tents, he finally saw her.

She was sitting around a small, unlit campfire with a group of four other people who were wearing the exact same sleek, elite armor as her.

But she was sitting right beside someone else.

Brandon just stared at them from a distance.

Octavia had her arm casually wrapped around the shoulder of a young, incredibly good-looking guy with fiery red hair. She was leaning in and casually talking to another girl who was sitting on the other side of the fire.

Brandon just stood there and he couldn’t help but slowly compare himself to the fiery-haired guy she was sitting with. The guy looked like a literal war god. He looked strong, confident, and extremely powerful with that long glaive like weapon beside him.

Brandon looked down at his own brownish tunic, his thin arms, and his bandaged legs.

After a few seconds of self-reflection, Brandon just let out a heavy, depressing sigh. He turned around and slowly limped back to join the other peasant defectors who had stayed behind.

He didn’t feel like staying here anymore.

A week had passed since Roderick started the ritual. He originally intended to go back to the palace and push his brother intopressuring Adrian to fight, but he had forgotten that his presence was required for the ritual to be complete. That meant he couldn’t exactly leave the cave until the time limit was up.

And he had also made the big mistake of setting the time to only a week.

He expected that most of the big fights would happen in the first few days and all of the casualties would pile up in that first week. But unfortunately for him, the news from his spies had only gotten worse and worse. It went from bad to something that was just unacceptable since there were barely a hundred to two hundred casualties in total.

That was it.

After that, his spies reported that Adrian had managed to banish multiple nobles away from the camp while keeping most of their armies. And those armies had not marched out from the camp at all, which only meant one thing.

It meant Adrian was rebelling. He was either rebelling against the emperor or he had something else in mind entirely. But it didn’t change the fact that this act of not going to war and not letting soldiers die was affecting Roderick in a really bad way.

He gritted his teeth and looked up at the statue in front of him. The statue which was a massive Naga with a woman’s body and a snake head. He took a deep breath and turned to look at the guy standing by the door. The man was acting as his personal attendant who was only there to bring Roderick food and water so he could survive the week.

"Go tell your people to grab a few villagers and however many slaves they can find," Roderick said. "Bring them all here. Since we can’t get Adrian to give away his army, we’ll have to do something ourselves. Otherwise I’ll have to give away my life for nothing and the penalties are bad."

The attendant nodded and walked out.

Roderick turned back to look at the statue. He took out a dagger and stabbed it straight into his own palm. He gritted his teeth and pulled the blade out before letting the blood drip into the pool below the statue. But instead of just letting it drip down, he stood up and started to run his bleeding hand all over the statue’s body to cover it with his blood.

Once he was done, he sat back down and used a little bit of healing magic to close the wound. It took around twenty minutes for the skin, flesh and even bone to repair themselves, but it was finally done.

He took a deep breath and looked up at the statue.

"This should give me two more days of time, but it is not looking good for me," he muttered. "Hopefully I won’t have to lose my life."

He lowered his voice to a whisper.

"Adrian Sterling. When I first saw you while you were young and I did not expect you would become such a big thorn in my side. I really did not predict this right, which is a mistake on my part. I shouldn’t really be blaming you."

All of his anger was directed toward his own brother instead of Adrian. Roderick knew how people’s emotions worked and he had seen how Adrian ran his territory. That was a man who liked his citizens and gave them things that none of the other lords did. And his dumb brother had told such a man to just toss his soldiers away for a war that wasn’t even his to fight.