Inside the Saintly Hall.
Great Emperor Lancelot was restless, though beneath that restlessness lay a trace of anticipation.
That Big Rat had been a little slow, but it had finally begun to cause trouble.
Its ambitions had finally become impossible to contain as its strength swelled.
But he was getting old too. He was already fifty-two this year.
Emperors handled countless affairs every day, and no one could truly restrain what they ate, drank, or did. Few lived very long.
Even under the finest medical conditions, most Kings did not live past sixty.
Those who lived past sixty either possessed extraordinary self-control or were simply Queens. Women had innate advantages; physiological limitations allowed them to avoid many of the vices men could not control.
He had eight years left.
If the other side did not rebel soon, he would have to make the first move himself.
Fortunately, the other side had finally acted.
Clearing out bandits was good. It built up experience in warfare.
Before many nobles rebelled, they used bandits to practice military campaigns.
The first time he had gone to war with the army had been to slaughter a group of bandits.
Big Rat thought it knew everything, thought its rats could monitor every place.
Yet there was one thing it could not monitor.
That was the Saintly Order's status panels.
The Saintly Order could no longer level up.
He had secretly calculated it before. Unless everyone in the kingdom was killed, he would not gain even one level.
But the Saintly Order had endless combinations of skills! Two skills alone could be arranged in two ways: first and second, or second and first.
Three skills had six combinations.
And so on. When skill combinations were well arranged, the damage could be explosive.
For example, offensive skills: Rocket