Marshal Loren had no intention of staying in Fog City for long. After receiving the king's appointment and permission to wage war, he had to hurry to Dover.
That was where the Old Guard was stationed.
They were called the "Old Guard" to distinguish them from the Fog City Guard, formed after the Plantagenet Kingdom was founded. The Old Guard were veterans who had protected the king since the days of the Seland Kingdom. They were the most battle-ready, most honorable, and most loyal troops in the country.
They answered only to the king's will, making them the equivalent of King Louis's "personal army."
Marshal Loren had begun his military career there.
He was the pride of the Old Guard.
And King Louis's decision to deploy them meant he didn't want Parliament to constrain the war. It also meant that if the Tower of Rings failed to give the king an answer he found satisfactory, the psychics' political allies would have no chance of preventing the war from beginning.
This was King Louis's response to the rebellion!
Resolute, decisive, and ruthless to the point of cold-bloodedness, he had even skipped the step of sending an envoy to make inquiries. Either they bowed their heads and submitted, or they faced destruction!
One report clearly couldn't have produced such an obvious effect.
This was proof enough that for a long time, Louis IX had harbored some hidden resentment toward the Tower of Rings. Now he had simply seized the opportunity to vent the frustration that had been building up.
Marshal Loren didn't want to think about any of that.
He had no plans to become a politician skilled at reading people's expressions. But just as he was about to set out after a brief rest at his residence in the capital, he