( Present day, Max and Patricia)
" If my brother solved the issue with the Thunder nation then why did he still die? What did he do to turn the queen against him? This makes no sense... " Max said as he sighed heavily listening to Patricia's tale.
According to Patricia's words the conflict between the thunder nation and the Won Knight's was sure to be resolved after his brother's heroics in the court.
Something about this story did not add up for Max.
Patricia gazed into the distance as she began mustering the strength needed to narrate the next part of this story. It was a truly tragic tale as to what happened next and it pained her heart greatly.
" The next three months were arguably the happiest months of your brother's life.
He visited Vanaheim and reunited with Ruby in what could be considered one of the most heartwarming reunion stories.
Rudra was like a teenager in love all over again as for the first time in a long time he spent time off from work doing nothing but taking long walks in the palace gardens of Vanaheim and making love to Ruby day and night.
Although Ruby was a little sad that it took Rudra a full year to come see her after Omega ended, Rudra won over her heart quickly and made her forget all the pain as the couple was extremely happy.
If there was one person he kept tabs on when he was in Vanaheim it was you as even there, he was constantly checking in on you with Ruby on her treasure orb as he would often comment on your training and fighting style improvements as he proudly watched you work hard
To be fair he did love you a lot Max, maybe even more than he loved his wives and children ". Patricia said as Max felt his throat being choked up and unable to take in air.
" On the other hand, just like Rudra had predicted, many dark faction loyalists tried to flee the country before the assessment began and were caught by the patrol forces on guard as Thor got a big reality check about the state of his nation that day.
When the truth orb was finally delivered and the tests were concluded, Thor found out a lot of disturbing facts about his kingdom that made him fly into rage.
Apparently Lucifer had orchestrated the infiltration of the Thunder nation and it was a project ongoing for 400 years.
It started slowly, with one light faction dwarven blacksmith who had sworn loyalty to Lucifer in-exchange for rare materials that he needed to win a forging contest for the spot of Thor's chief Blacksmith in the council.
The Blacksmith then slowly shielded and nurtured other dark faction loyalists and secretly groomed them to take administrative positions as the group slowly and carefully expanded their influence within the thunder nation which overtime grew to the levels that it reached before Rudra foiled their plans.
Thor was naturally furious learning all this as one after another their crimes were exposed before him.
Not only did the corrupt government under him worship Lucifer but they actually ran 3 secret teleportation centres built on 3 different planets which they used as a direct channel to let dark faction troops infiltrate the light faction territory.
Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of natural resources were smuggled to the dark faction alongside many native women, children and beast species that were to be used as slaves within the dark faction territory.
On the capital planet itself, right under Thor's nose they had built a secret Lucifer temple where they gathered and worshipped the dark lord every 7 days.
Apparently the corrupt officials were using the light faction citizens' income to supplement dark faction ambitionist projects back in Lucifer's territory and gathering intelligence on various light faction organisations by having them infiltrated by spies.
The overall damage that the dark faction had done to Thor's kingdom was incalculable and Thor was deeply ashamed of this oversight by him.
He mercilessly purged the traitors and did not spare their families either as he sent his army out to destroy any known dark faction based and secret infrastructure projects as he himself demolished the Lucifer temple.
The task of rebuilding his entire legislative, executive and judiciary wing of the government was tough for Thor as his territory threatened to spiral out of control with so many governmental positions now empty as Thor reached out to other monarchs for support in this tumultuous time.
The Won Knight family most graciously sent many experts to help him restabilize his region along with military and financial aid, as your brother even sent the entire True Elite guild along with its guildmaster Karna to help Thor out ". Patricia said as Max nodded, sending his guild out to help did sound exactly like something his brother would do as Max understood fully well that when it came to managing territories the Elites were no amateurs having controlled vast territories in Omega prior to this job.
However, everything in this story up to this point sounded like it was progressing in a positive direction, which made Max wonder where did it all go wrong?
" So where did it all go wrong? " Max asked in a raspy voice, he felt like the story had hit the highest point and the downturn was going to start now.
" It all went wrong a few months later when Rudra received the happiest and saddest news of his life in one day.
The happy news was that Ruby was pregnant with his child, a piece of news that made the entire planet Radiance hang lanterns outside their house to show their joy and celebration.
However, just as your brother was dancing in joy at the news of being a father of three, his joy was cut short with the news about the death of his sworn brother Karna ". Patricia said as Max's eyes widened in disbelief, Guildmaster Karna was dead?
" Thor had passed out a decree that all dark faction loyalists and their families were to be hunted down, and irrespective of the family's crimes or involvement into being a betrayer of the faction, if they were found associated by blood with a traitor they were to be executed.
While every other enforcer followed this decree, the kind hearted guildmaster from Earth often let the family members slip by as he looked the other way in matters regarding their punishments.
When the devil Lucifer got wind of this, he devised a nefarious plan as he brainwashed and controlled a small 5 year old human girl whose father was charged with the crime of human trafficking.
When the authorities beheaded the father, the little girl cried vehemently and begged Karna to spare her, as the kind-hearted man unable to watch the young girl's plight decided to spare her and provide her with temporary food and shelter.
Lucifer deliberately did this, and we suspect that he was the man who leaked the news about Karna shielding the family of the traitors to Thor, as the angry monarch upon hearing this piece of news came hammer blazing into Karna's home one day demanding explanation.
Thor's state of mind was fragile after the betrayal of so many of his close councilmen and he saw Karna's defiance as an act of dissent.
Thor demanded Karna to give up the young girl to face judgement and had there been a weak man facing Thor's wrath at that moment he would have probably done so in a breaths time, however, Karna refused.
Karna said ' If you want to punish the innocent, you can do it over my dead body'
A comment that I highly doubt he meant literally, but the volatile Thor took it literally as he said ' Very well ' and proceeded to unleash an attack that killed both Karna and the girl he was shielding.
Was it a fleeting moment of poor judgement?
Was it anger?
Was it Thor's fear of betrayal acting up?
Nobody knows the answers to those questions, what everyone did know however was that Thor killed Rudra's sworn brother ". Patricia said as she sighed heavily as Max covered his gaping mouth in disbelief.
Max did not need to listen to the rest of the story; he could imagine it already. His brother was not a man who was going to take Karna's death lying down, the intentions, the moment, the opponent nothing mattered to him.
Since Thor had killed Karna, Rudra was going to come after Thor.
" Yo-your brother's wrath was uncontainable.
Me, the patriarch, monarch Micheal, Sariel, Raphael, Emperor Cervantez, King Hades, everyone came to council Rudra out of the move he was going to make.
Both his wives begged him to not go, as Ruby even used her unborn child as an emotional ploy to calm Rudra's wrath but nothing worked.
At Karna's funeral, Rudra shook hands with the weeping Skyla and promised retribution for his brother's death.
In the end your brother decided to challenge Thor in a fight to death inside the immortal arena ". Patricia said as Max closed his eyes in defeat.
Max was not sure if his brother was right or wrong in this challenge, whether Thor was truly wrong to be ruthless in killing the family members of traitors or whether Karna was truly deserving of death.
All he knew was that Lucifer had knowingly pulled the strings from behind the scenes hoping for this exact outcome.
In the end, the devil was the only winner.
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/// A/N - This is the last chapter for 2022. I hope you all enjoyed it.
It has been a wild year, from the completion of Strongest Guild Master to The Rise Of the Vampire God book, but one thing that hasn't changed from 2021-2022 is you all's constant support for this series which is truly unbelievable and for which I'm very fortunate.
There is a lot I want to say, so I'll probably move it to the author notes, do check them out before you flip over if possible.
Otherwise, I'll see you on 1st January with 10 chapters!
5 of them will go into expanding existing privilege, while 5 more will be released normally ///