Chapter 157: Re: A+A

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Chapter 157: Re: A+A

【Host has completed one Main Mission and one Additional Mission, with Heroic Value reaching over 50%. You may obtain two Return Keys. Please draw them at random.】

Shang Ke quickly drew two cards. One bore the name Rhine Lancelot (A+A), while the other bore Qin Yuan (I Am Not a Merman).

……

…

Rhine was the Empire’s youngest Lieutenant General and an outstanding Alpha, possessing exceptional warrior genes and an intense desire to conquer. Thus, when he met Filmore, he released his pheromones toward him without hesitation and regarded him as his prey—even though Filmore was also an Alpha.

As he came to know Filmore more deeply, Rhine gradually realized that love and desire did not come entirely from pheromones. In fact, an Omega’s pheromones could arouse his physical desire far more easily, yet the person he had fallen for was an Alpha—the least likely partner he could have chosen.

They fought side by side and shared both hardship and triumph. What began with rejection gradually became an intimacy without barriers. At the time, Rhine had thought that even if they were both Alphas, they could still become the most perfectly matched lovers.

He loved Filmore’s courage in the face of life and death, his strength in adversity, his tenacity when confronting impossible difficulties, and the optimism that never allowed him to blame fate or others.

During their final mission, Filmore carried the gravely wounded Rhine for miles on foot. Enduring his own injuries, he fought alone for days on end until he was utterly exhausted and lost consciousness. Even then, sustained by sheer conviction, his body continued fighting on instinct.

That image became the deepest brand carved into Rhine’s memory.

Filmore protected him with his life, but in doing so disappeared from Rhine’s life forever. At the same time, Rhine also lost his ability to respond to pheromones of sexual desire. His world seemed to lose every trace of color, leaving everything in monotonous shades of gray.

After Rhine rejected the advances of a seventh Omega, people privately began speculating that he was either frigid or impotent. Although those rumors were eventually harshly suppressed, it was also true that Rhine remained single year after year.

An Alpha possessed extraordinarily powerful physical capabilities and an equally strong sex drive. An adult Alpha who remained completely abstinent was practically unheard of. Under the stimulation of pheromones, even the most disciplined Alpha found desire difficult to resist. More importantly, forcibly suppressing that desire placed a tremendous burden on an Alpha’s body.

Yet Rhine, now promoted to General, had no interest in any Omega. Concerned for his physical health, his family secretly selected a young and beautiful Omega and sent the man into his bed while Rhine was drunk. Rhine nearly killed him. The Omega survived, but the trauma left him mentally unstable, and it took two full years for him to recover. Rhine’s family expended considerable effort suppressing the incident and never again dared send anyone to his bed.

Rhine’s methods grew increasingly ruthless, and his temper increasingly violent. In only three years, he uprooted several powerful military and political factions within the Empire. They had been the ones who secretly arranged the mission that cost him Filmore. Their true objective had been to eliminate Rhine, yet the person who ultimately sacrificed his life was Rhine’s Filmore.

By then, Rhine’s only reason for living was revenge. He gradually withdrew from the front lines he had once regarded as the true home of a soldier’s soul and forced his way into the center of power. He seized control of the military by any means necessary and ruthlessly crushed those who opposed him, using methods brutal enough to make others tremble.

The dignity and fiery passion Rhine had once possessed as a warrior gradually gave way to coldness and inscrutability. The hero once revered by the people became a powerful man holding immense authority in his hands.

For the next thirty years, Rhine remained at the pinnacle of power. His authority eventually surpassed even that of the Emperor, earning him the private nickname “King of Kings.”

When a subject’s achievements and power eclipse those of the sovereign, suspicion is inevitable. Unless Rhine overthrew the existing regime and crowned himself ruler, the Empire’s supreme authority could never willingly remain beneath him. Yet after taking his revenge, Rhine had nothing left to anchor his heart. Manipulating power became his only remaining amusement. He acted without restraint, establishing unshakable authority throughout the military and government through iron-blooded methods while making countless powerful enemies.

In truth, Rhine had long been prepared to be overthrown or assassinated. Yet decades passed without anyone succeeding. The conspiracies aimed at him seemed no more threatening than clowns capering for his amusement, and eventually even that became tedious.

As his position became ever more secure and calls for him to seize the throne grew louder, Rhine made a decision that stunned everyone—he retired.

Others withdrew at the height of their success to preserve themselves, but Rhine’s retirement seemed utterly incomprehensible. Supreme power had practically been placed in his hands. All he had to do was take the throne and a new dynasty would begin, yet at that moment, he abandoned everything.

After Rhine’s departure, the Empire’s political factions were completely reshuffled, beginning a power struggle that would continue for decades.

Rhine gradually vanished from public view, and from then on, no further news of him emerged.

But the people Rhine had offended had never forgotten him. Once he relinquished everything, they finally found an opportunity to erase their humiliation and take revenge.

One day two years later, Rhine collapsed drunk before Filmore’s grave and was easily beheaded. Rhine Lancelot—the once-renowned General whose overwhelming power had nearly rewritten the Empire’s history—died anonymously at the hands of a few assassins. His corpse was not even left intact. With no one to claim or collect his remains, he was ultimately cremated as an unidentified body and reduced to ashes.

【What about you, Rhine? Are you willing to change for me? To respect me, trust me, and cherish me?】

【Yes. I am.】

【Then shall we stay together forever?】

【Yes.】

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