Dizzy and lightheaded, Rex felt as though his head were filled with fog. He had no idea where he was, and had even forgotten what he was supposed to do. He remained awake for a little while-no more than a minute-before falling asleep again.
Time slowly passed, until Rex woke once more.
He found himself somewhere extremely familiar: a bedroom in the Royal Palace.
He lay on the soft bed with no intention of getting up. A deep lethargy had settled over his entire body.
All his discomfort had vanished. The rejection from temporal power had been unbearably painful, like drowning, when every breath was a struggle. Rex had endured those conditions for some time before he was finally forced out.
Over the past half month, Rex had used the archmage's portals to send all the humans in the Deadmines back to the Arathi Tribe.
Rex had shown these humans some compassion instead of abandoning them in the Deadmines.
While Rex was still in the Deadmines, his support had left the troll slaves with no strength to resist, and the humans had been their masters. But once Rex was driven out, the humans would lose his support, their military strength, and their food supply. They were far fewer in number than the trolls, so a troll uprising was inevitable. Rex had no doubt about that.
That was why he had sent the humans back rather than leave them to die pointlessly in the Deadmines.
Without the human overseers, Rex had promoted a group of trolls to take their place. Some problems had arisen, but the paladins' overwhelming strength had kept them in check, so none had been particularly serious.
Over that half month, the number of trolls Rex had captured had more than tripled.
Nearly ten thousand of them were