Once the voices died down Travis strut his way towards their group, basking in the praises the people rained on him as he pa.s.sed by.But when he reached where his former leader had stood just moments ago, he was only treated to an empty s.p.a.ce and the sight of one of their cloaks disappearing into an alley.
His foot was on the verge of taking the step to pursuing them, just before his way forward closed with more of the adoring population.
He decided to stay and continue his cheery facade, but his benevolent and selfless smile now held a trace of something else entirely...
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Smash!
The men could only wait meekly outside the door as they heard their captain tear a room apart. It was a good thing that the kingdom pa.s.sed a rule that all government facilities to be built extra st.u.r.dy so that they"d be able to weather most attacks. Or else right now they would have to take on the brunt of his wrath in place of the furnitures and walls.
Inside, Travis was fuming. He was the son of a baron, and even amongst the n.o.ble scions he could be considered the cream of the crop in terms of physique and talent.
Everywhere he went people fawned over him, giving him special treatment. Even while he rejected their goodwill, it felt good to receive their praises.
And yet the one person who denied him that, time and time again, was a commoner who"s only merit was his ability to swing a sword.
As a n.o.ble, he needed to serve in the military to retain or increase his family"s standing. It was already a commendable thing to go in willingly, but not only did he go in willingly, he decided to go into the worst place possible. The charging bulls.
n.o.ble people didn"t even get in from extremely bad luck. A scion was only sent here if they somehow crossed the king, which in itself was extremely difficult to do.
First was because only 2 people in charge of the country ever met the king besides his wife and kids. These were the prime minister and the supreme general, each of whom were the top bra.s.s of their own fields in the internals and externals of the kingdom. Secondly, the king himself had always been known to be extremely patient.
So not only did they have to do something so inconsolably stupid that the top of the country heard about them and deem it a big enough issue to tell the king. Their actions also needed to be stupid enough to anger a guy who"d been known to almost never blow his top off.
Once a n.o.ble son was put here, the only thing people could say was that G.o.d had never planned a future for them beyond this point.
It wasn"t like it was a bad company in it"s own. In reality this group would always achieve the greatest merits in every war and would be lauded as heroes when they returned. Any who entered here were set for life and the lowest ranked soldiers of a squad of this company were paid higher with every deployment than even the lieutenants from other companies.
The reason for this was simple. They were always given the most impossible a.s.signments that no one sane would willingly accept. The mortality rate was 50%-100%, so for every person you accidentally locked eyes with in pa.s.sing, their first thought was that chances were were one or both of you wasn"t coming back after the next trip.
Like the mortality rate depicted, there were even instances where the whole company was wiped out from the lowest soldiers to their captain.
So far, only two people had survived a full service till retirement. One was lucky enough to have his final year happen to be a peaceful one. If his service extended even a year more, he"d be in the ground with the rest of the company. The other was Ode.
This was why the company never grew beyond 150 people. But it was also why their company captain had the same standing as whole battalion colonels of 1000 men strong.
Once you were a captain here, you had a straight shot at general without needing to pa.s.s the ranks in between. This was what Travis was aiming for.