The Moon Goddess' Chosen

505 Frustrating Hindrances

Hunger was a funny thing, wasn’t it? As well as the time with which it chose to torture its victims.

A reaction the body fabricated to inform the person to eat something or else it would start deteriorating… feeding on itself in an effort to acquire energy to survive, right?

Well… after spending nearly two years stuck in a beautiful garden of bright blue lotuses, this concept was starting to lose meaning.

Thane, the Rogue King’s beta alpha, had done exactly that. He’d gone nearly two years without food or water… and oddly enough, he hadn’t felt a tinge of hunger. He often chuckled at the sheer impossibility that was him being alive with no signs of malnourishment whatsoever.

Under the guidance of his master, the king of all rogues in the world, he had spent an impossibly long time without going hungry or even showing signs of dying.

When the goddess had trapped them here, he’d thought, ‘WE ARE GOING TO DIE WITH NO FOOD OR WATER TO SUSTAIN OURSELVES!!! WE ARE GOING TO STARVE TO DEATH!!!’

But the king showed no similar form of panic.

Yes, he was frustrated beyond compare but he wasn’t frustrated over the same trivial matters such as food or water.

To the beta alpha, this had been the first concern. His survival instincts had kicked in and warned him of the most immediate and fundamental danger they faced:

.....

Death by Starvation… or even worse… Death by Thirst.

Which would get to them first? He didn’t want to find out. He wanted to survive.

Back then, he’d really thought they were dead. The moon goddess had tricked them and they were going to die in a prison of her own design—he thought. They were going to die without the royals lifting a finger against them… but King Rana didn’t even think of that for a second.

Rana had simply flopped on his back in the grass and rested for a while, thinking…

For fear of questioning his alpha, Thane had remained quiet, awaiting the moment when his stomach would growl loudly enough, announcing their disaster instead of himself. A day went by… then a week… weeks turned to months… and they were still alive.

The feeling of stabbing hunger never came… and the king didn’t look surprised one bit that they never got hungry. In fact, he looked like he could stay there for a century before asking for a plate of warm food the sate his century-old hunger.

King Rana’s frustrations sounded much more… ‘childish’ when the beta alpha first heard them.

Rana wanted… to ‘bite’ people.

Well, who wouldn’t?

The man had just got regained his power and could transfer the werewolf curse onto many more humans, replenishing the dwindling numbers that were left of his army of rogues.

He could continue to expand the power of the rogues and achieve his dreams like he’d always wanted…

With them trapped like this, however, Thane wasn’t sure that would be happening any time soon.

Or so he’d thought for while…

Who knew how long they would stay caged like this? Trapped in a cage of plants.

At some point, Thane had tried clawing at the trees with all his might, mustering a large pool of endurance and might as he claws his way deeper and deeper into the bark of one of the surrounding trees.

After what felt like thirty minutes of endless toiling in an effort to break out of the plant prison, the king had raised a brow at him and gone… “W-What are you doing?”

“Trying to get us out of here…”

“Take a look at your claw marks!”

Thane curiously turned back to the tree he’d been clawing at and there it was… right before my eyes.

The parts of the wood that I had just clawed began to knit together until there wasn’t a sign of his pathetic attempt at escape.

After that incident, King Rana promised to find a way to escape their prison. All Thane had to do was leave it all to him.

It wasn’t like there was much the beta alpha could do anyway.

All Thane could really do was watch… patiently…

He watched the king meditate for several days, attempting to achieve a feat never heard of. When he got too bored, Thane trained his body as he continued to watch the king meditate.

In this prison, even protecting the king’s body felt like a waste of time. Nothing could pose a threat anyway.

After several days of no success, Thane witnessed his master’s body go limp the first time his spirit travelled out of it. He watched the swirling blue mist that seemed to rotate around the Rogue King’s body as he performed these long meditation sessions.

This process was repeated countless times as the king explored the scope of this opportunity… learning…

So much time passed that Thane lost track.

...…

It was just another evening… like all other evenings when Thane was doing a couple of push-ups, challenging himself to see how many he could do before his body screamed for sweet relief.

‘1,858… 1,859… 1860… One thousand… *grr’

“Damn it!!!” the Rogue King slammed his fist into the ground abruptly, startling the struggling beta alpha. Thane quickly launched himself into the air, his exhaustion forgotten as a new hidden pool of strength flowed into his body, ready for action.

The beta alpha facepalmed. He couldn’t even tell if anything he’d done was real anymore.

“What is it, my lord? Was it her again?” Thane asked, hiding his disappointment.

The Rogue King rubbed his temples in frustration. It wasn’t the first time he’d returned to his body with this much anger brewing within him. Apparently, he was facing far more resistance out there than he’d expected.

The first few times he’d returned like this, he’d brought reports of several gnats that attacked him when he least expected it. Humans that shouldn’t have had as much strength as they exhibited.

And for some reason, he seemed to be running into them far too frequently to be a coincidence. Nonetheless, this frustration was akin to that of a person being bothered by small insignificant rodents.

With how much combat experience the Rogue King had from his long years, the hunters were nothing but an irritating bother.

This rage, though, was much more pronounced. It was the kind of rage he bore when he’d come across something that shouldn’t have existed. Something that would make his mission significantly harder.

The first time he’d returned with searing rage like this, he mentioned something about a divine wolf that was capable of killing him even if he was at the height of his power.

The sudden transformation of Drake Sirius was just the first of many hindrances. The next time he’d returned cursing was after facing off against a jaguar in the woods bordering the Great Sirius mountains.

The Jaguar, which was in the wrong habitat, seemed to be protecting an alpha for some reason. The moment Rana had started fighting the wolf, the jaguar intervened and let the wolf escape and not him…

Sometimes, the rogue king shared the memories with Thane and the beta alpha was able to witness very odd occurrences that transpired during his king’s spiritual quests.

The king wasn’t stopped by a jaguar alone.

Every time Rana left his body to grow his forces, he only had a short amount of time before some creature or animal interfered with his plans. With time, these creatures would even be found in an unusual collaboration with hunters.