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Chapter 369  Wayward Thoughts

Karl gestured upwards. "Hawk is in a nest in the tree, pondering the mysteries of the universe. He\'s trying to understand something about the advancement to Royal Rank, and thought it was better to be outdoors."

"Alright, say goodnight to everyone for me."

Thor made a happy noise in his spot, knowing that she was talking about him, and then settled back into his pond to sleep.

Karl meditated in his hammock for most of the evening, taking in all the new knowledge about his companions, as well as the newfound understanding that half of the conflict between the Mackenzie brothers and Morgana was actually just embarrassment. It might have been sexual tension, but Karl was fairly certain that should have faded by now. It had been two years, after all.

First thing the next morning, they were all headed for the mess hall for breakfast, and Karl noticed that Morgana was sneaking looks at Doug, who had the laces at the neck of his robes a bit looser than usual to show off just a bit of chest.

If this was flirting, perhaps Karl was doing it all wrong. Or maybe they were somehow worse at it than he was.

The students in the mess hall all looked exhausted, though Karl didn\'t recall most of them having gone to the line yesterday.

"Long night?" He asked a boy at the next table as he sat down.

The boy nodded grimly. "Yeah, nobody slept well until the walls were all disenchanted and torn down. There was some talk of making our own, but the Hill Giants have better Earth Magic than we do, so there was a chance they would turn it against us if we used their specialty as our fortifications."

The boy beside him chuckled. "I guess your group didn\'t have that issue. You all looked half dead when you returned past the lines. Did you manage to get all your gear repaired?" Karl shook his head. "Most of it is fixed, and at least the group of us here managed to find spares among the loot we grabbed from the Giants, but our primary gear still needs some work."

From the next table over, an equally exhausted looking young man nodded. "We\'ve got about eight hours worth of work before we will have everyone\'s armour back to them after the battle yesterday. I\'m just hoping that we won\'t have another attack today because the repair teams can\'t take that again. There were only three dozen of you, and there was so much work, and at a priority rush, plus what they turned over was mostly Commander Rank gear, which is so much harder to repair than the Awakened stuff that most of the army has."

"I take it that the repair difficulty is based on how powerful the one doing the repair is?" Karl asked.

The tech nodded. "Yeah, repairing above your rank takes about three times as long for every rank. It\'s still possible, but you need to put a huge amount of work into it for the magical repairs to take, and there is a chance the ability will only be partially successful. If it\'s really bad, we send it to the forges first, and have them do most of the patches before we start with the abilities to blend it and fix the enchantments.

That\'s the downfall to getting good gear in advance. Even if you\'ve got it, you usually need someone to repair it for you, and if you\'re paying the shops, that gets expensive. At least here on the lines, it\'s free."

Everyone who filed in for breakfast after that looked similarly bedraggled, and it was obvious that his team were the only ones who didn\'t take the warning about the dangers of the attacking force all that seriously.

Now, part of that was Hawk\'s scouting telling him what was actually there, but Karl could see that in the eyes of the other Elites, there was a somewhat concerning level of confidence behind his actions, and Karl was reminded of Tank telling him that his thinking was being influenced.

[Don\'t worry about it too much. Look at all the ones who weren\'t brave enough to go, even when we won so easily. It\'s not a loss to forget to be stupid and cowardly.] Rae reminded him helpfully.

She made an excellent point. It was no loss to get rid of aspects of his personality that didn\'t serve any purpose.

Today was supposed to be Karl\'s team\'s off day anyhow, as they had the afternoon shift the day before, so they all ate slowly and chatted with the teams who were coming through to eat.

There were no signs of the Hill Giants coming back yet, but that wasn\'t too surprising given their recent patterns.

An hour after breakfast ended, they were still sitting around the camp, using an empty teaching tent as a meeting room. That was when the ten red robed Spellblades came in, clearly looking for them.

"Ah, good. We were hoping to see you all before we left. Thank you for the assistance in dealing with the traitor forces. I\'m sure you all know already, that this issue is confidential and shouldn\'t make it into your official reports. At the very least, not the nature of the Titan Clerics that were defeated. If the public thinks that they were Hill Giants, that is fine." The leader of the group informed them.

Karl nodded. "I suspected that might be the case. None of us have started our reports yet, so there won\'t be any issues when we do turn them in."

"Don\'t worry too much about the reports. Keep them simple and the Defence Department will take care of the rest." The leader of the Spellblades shrugged.

That made sense. All these reports were most likely going to vanish anyhow, in case someone let slip a detail that insinuated that someone from the Church had changed patrons and gone over to the Hill Giants to hunt their own people.

"We might as well write those now. Did you all still need to write? There is paper on the shelf." Morgana offered.

The Spellblade shrugged. "We might as well. We talked to the others about the situation already, and they\'ve all turned in their reports on the mission. They used Clerics of the Titan Gods as the code for the special team we encountered. That should be clear enough for everyone to understand."

Simple, safe and efficient. There were plenty of Titan God clerics among the Giants. Oddly, they didn\'t seem to specialize in healing, but in physical power enhancement and regeneration, as Karl understood it. But the Giants regenerated more like beasts than humans, so enhancing their natural abilities might be more effective.

There was far too much that he didn\'t actually understand about the Giants, even if he was getting pretty good at killing them.