"Boss Turner, you were so impressive today! You really crushed the arrogance of those Transians."
After the match ended, Turner, the mysterious Winter Wolf monk, pulled his hood back on and followed some Blood Rat Gang members to a secret hideout in the sewers.
Dorothy had specially prepared the place for him, the "favorite to win the championship."
Thanks to Turner's outstanding performance today, Maxim's people had decided he had passed the "selection" and could temporarily shed his status as a prisoner, free to choose how to start his new life in Transia.
This was a perfect real-life example of "when one man rises to power, even his chickens and dogs ascend to heaven." Thanks to Turner's performance alone, the little group of rebels and military hooligans around him had earned preferential treatment from the Blood Rat Gang, too.
Of course, Turner hadn't been the only reason his followers benefited.
As a former captain in the Winter Wolf Legion, Turner had been through things that changed his life and fate, but he was also particular about who he chose as his "followers."
He didn't accept just anyone. Any real scumbag who dared approach him would at the very least end up with broken bones.
Though the men welcoming him back from victory were nominally all "rebels," Turner knew that in reality they were merely "casualties" of factional infighting within the military.
They had never betrayed their country.
Their superiors had simply lost a power struggle, and they had been caught in the fallout, stripped of their military status, then sent to work sites in the Great Wilderness to build a railway that had already "swallowed" too many lives. The reforms the Wolf Lady was pushing through at home would threaten many people's interests and provoke an even stronger backlash. Amid