Read Novel Full Chapter 1147 - Taming the Wall - Approval
Chapter 1147 - Taming the Wall - Approval
Ren filed the brilliant architectural blueprint away in his mind for later review and slow construction. Right now, he needed to finish anchoring this specific foundation while keeping his eyes open for any urgent distress signals.
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When Ren finally finished his new Gold rank work, trudged back up the stone stairs and stepped onto the Southwest parapet, he was immediately met with exactly the sad shift in dynamic he had been dreading.
The soldiers did not casually wander over to greet him back all happy.
There were no massive, spontaneous grins. There was no loud, crude cheering... The warm, gritty, blue-collar like camaraderie he had painstakingly cultivated for months had vanished into thin air.
Every single man on the Wall suddenly stood at rigid attention.
They saluted him with flawless, textbook military precision. And while there was undeniable relief and gratitude swimming in their eyes, beneath that joy lay something profoundly isolating: a thin, palpable layer of terror. It was the deeply uncomfortable, suffocating realization of men who had just discovered that the quiet kid they casually complained to, threw dice with, and mocked for being a rookie at any small and petty chance was, in reality, the absolute, unquestionable sovereign of the entire Southern territory.
He owned the dirt they stood on. He owned the Wall they guarded. He was their ultimate, supreme commander even if not yet by military tag.
Yet being the key point after this attack…
The most clueless grunts, the ones who hadn't suspected a single, lingering thing about his true identity, were taking it the hardest. They stared at him with wide, panicked eyes, looking exactly as if they had forgotten how to physically breathe or form words in his presence.
Ren let out a long, heavy sigh.
This was exactly, precisely the suffocating awkward nightmare he had been desperately trying to avoid all this time.
But there was absolutely no rolling back the tide now. He stepped forward, raising both of his hands in a frantic, universal gesture of surrender.
"Please, drop the formalities," Ren said, his voice laced with genuine, painful awkwardness. "Just act the exact same way you did yesterday. I used an alias, and I hid my beasts, specifically because I just wanted to be treated like a normal soldier like every one. Nothing has actually changed. I am still just Red..."
He looked around… The desperate plea was almost entirely in vain.
It was glaringly obvious that their brains simply could not downgrade him back to a mortal. The atmosphere remained incredibly dense and suffocatingly awkward. Not a single soldier dared to relax their rigid, vertically terrified posture. They were acutely aware they were standing in the shadow of a walking demigod.
Ren could ask for normalcy all he wanted, but there were some things in this world that, once witnessed, could never be unseen. And a towering, three-headed jade Hydra sweeping the battlefield with apocalyptic dragon-light while his tamer radiated its same aura and energy in a diamond scaly rainbow armor was permanently burned into the back of their retinas.
Until Garret finally stepped forward.
The scarred veteran was laughing. It was that deep, gravelly laugh of a man who firmly believed he had seen every horrific thing the world had to offer, right up until noon today.
"You absolute cheater," Garret barked, pointing a thick, calloused finger directly at Ren's chest. "I am going to play dice so much more seriously from now on. And don't you dare think for a single second I'm going to keep treating you like some lost, naive rookie... I'm going to treat you like the terrifying monster you actually are!"
Garret closed the distance in two long strides and threw his heavy, armored arm directly over Ren's shoulders.
"But even so," Garret continued, his booming voice suddenly dropping an octave, settling into something profoundly raw and honest. "I am going to take you at your word, kid. Even though this little stunt is definitely going to rocket you into the stratosphere of High Command, since they clearly don't need to hide you anymore. When that happens, and you're drowning in medals, it won't matter to me. I am going to keep treating you exactly the same. Like a friend..."
He squeezed Ren's shoulder, his grip tightening like a vice.
"Because all that time you spent actually listening to us? Fixing the men's problems before they even asked? That wasn't a lie, was it? You actually listened, and you actually gave a damn. I trust that. You earned that respect from nothing, kid. And you earned yourself an absolute, unconditional follower in the process, for whatever the hell that's worth from an old grunt like me!"
Garret paused, and for a fleeting, heavy moment, the humor vanished from his scarred face entirely.
"Thank you for being here today, kid. Because I didn't have the faintest, remote idea how we were going to kill that giant thing straight out of hell by ourselves."
A ripple of nervous, genuine laughter finally broke from the surrounding soldiers. It was the very first sound of the day that actually felt real.
"Now," Garret announced loudly, his booming, jovial tone immediately returning as he began to physically drag Ren toward the worn wooden crate in the center of the barracks. "We are going to play dice. And I want you to know right now, if you beat me this time, I am going to seriously, formally accuse you of using dragon magic to read the wooden blocks."
"It does not work that way," Ren laughed, the crushing weight in his chest finally beginning to dissolve.
"That," Garret countered smoothly, "is exactly what a cheating dragon would say..."
The soldiers erupted into roaring laughter. The suffocating, glass-like tension violently shattered. Slowly, tentatively, following Garret's boisterous lead, the veterans began to drop their rigid postures. They stepped closer, shedding the terror, slowly returning to exactly who they had been before they knew the apocalyptic truth behind "Red Pathfinder" true being.
Ren sat down on the wooden crate, grabbed the cup, and fully prepared himself to lose the very first game.
And for the first time since the wooden tower had crashed that morning, Ren finally felt like one of the guys again.