When I woke up after spending time with Lydia, I realized that I was alone. My tail beat unhappily against the bed. Wait! I had a tail again? At some point, while we were sleeping, our souls must have snapped back together again! I thought this would be a difficult thing that could only be done in a rare circumstance, but I had merged again. Well, we did just have sex, but it wasn’t even normal sex, so was that okay? It seemed we could merge from the front and the back.

Well, it was fine. It wasn’t like Lydia was gone. She was inside me. I could feel the signature of her soul wrapped around my own. Our combining had seemingly healed all of the damage to my soul and also repaired my lost arm. With just this much rest, I felt like I was back to my full ability, and if another King Roth appeared, I’d be able to fight him too. That was good because we still had the army to deal with.

Before I had any longer to dwell on it, I heard a knock at the door. “Yes?”

The door opened a crack and Faeyna poked her head inside. “Master, I’ve been told to instruct you that the Dioshin army is on the move.”

“I understand.”

I had shut down my Slave Communication while spending time with Lydia, so this was the easiest way to contact me. Elaya and some of the others knew ways to bypass that and connect through other communication skills that acted exactly like Slave Communication, but they were respectful of my privacy. I got up and dressed quickly. There wasn’t a place for the tail, so I made due the best I could and ripped a hole in it. I could always use repair later to fix it.

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I headed to the entrance to the mansion, where everyone else was already waiting for me. If things went bad today, then rather than an end to the battle, we could be in a fight for our lives. I didn’t feel as worried as I once had though. I knew that there was still reason to worry, but I felt at peace. All of my girls were back at my side, and the enemy had lost their strongest person.

The group of us left the mansion and then met with the army. We had managed to recall most of the army pretty quickly with portals last night. The idea was to show our strongest presence. If we met them with just a handful of us, they wouldn’t respect us. That’s what Elaya had said. This was a formal show of force and negotiation. It was similar to what Aberis and the Ost Republic had been doing when I had returned from the Illusory Sword Dungeon. The idea had been to discuss peace, and only if peace failed would the battle begin. In this case, peace was dependent on Eliana’s marriage, but even then, Lord Aberis had always intended to backstab them. Hopefully, things went a bit smoother this time.

It wasn’t long before our entire force was lined up just outside of Chalm. Meanwhile, their forces began to emerge from the forested area. If the Osterians hadn’t been clearing out the wilderness and pushing it back the last few months, we wouldn’t have even had room to line up both armies. They would have been on our doorsteps.

At that point, the girls and I began to ride out into the center spot between the two armies. They began to come out too, riding on those strange cat creatures. When I saw the man in the front, I couldn’t help but let out a noise of surprise.

“Lord Duran?”