From that day on, Horace began living the life of a true corporate slave.
Every day, he opened his eyes to documents and closed them to reports. Even in his dreams, he was reviewing petitions.
The affairs of the Golden Dynasty, Caria, and Limgrave weighed on his shoulders like three mountains, so heavily that he sometimes wondered whether he had already been flattened into a paper cutout.
Why else would he miss the two-dimensional world?
And what about the ones responsible?
Godfrey had taken most of the army to the Land of Shadow, saying he wanted to "personally oversee the fighting." Marika had gone along, saying she wanted to "inspect the front lines."
Worst of all, before leaving, Godfrey had even borrowed the knightly order from Stormveil Castle.
"You don't have any battles left to fight over there anyway. Let me borrow them," Godfrey had said.
What could he say?
Possibly, probably, perhaps the Hornsent were so formidable that their people alone could fight the entire Lands Between?
Though Horace strongly suspected that Godfrey simply wanted to gather more powerful fighters so he could enjoy himself in battle.
And so, the military forces of the entire Lands Between were stripped bare.
Only the old and weak remained in the Golden Dynasty's city garrisons. From Crucible Knights down to the tougher gladiators, Godfrey had taken them all.
Almost all the Caria Knights had marched off with the army. If Horace had not reacted quickly and stopped it in time, even Loretta would nearly have been tricked into leaving. She was Caria's last remaining knight!
Rellana: ? Did you forget that I'm a Caria Knight too?
Limgrave was left with barely a handful of people.
Now, the only force with sufficient manpower was the Order of the Great Rune Knights, which Horace