Arnold grit his teeth as he finally understood that he had no choice. There was nothing he could do to escape from the test that he was given.

He closed his eyes and thought about it before deciding to give up on the test.

He hoped that his siblings would forgive him. He decided to be a bit greedy and choose the option to live with this new family in front of him.

He did not want to live that scheming life. He knew that as long as he returned, he would have to live the rest of his life scheming every second, unable to live peacefully.

He knew the type of person the king was. He was a very good judge of character. He realized that the king of his was extremely power hungry, and would do anything, absolutely anything to gain power.

This realization of his occured when the king wanted them to become powerful suddenly, just after the arrival of the knights, led by the valiant hero, Robinson.

There was not a single person of Andestein that had not heard of his deeds. He was an extremely righteous person who regulated the law in Andestein and punished evil doers, saving many lives.

When he arrived, Arnold felt like his end was near. After all, he himself would appear 'evil' in the eyes of many because of the deeds that he performed.

After all killing people was not considered something good without a proper reason. His reason would make anyone rage.

But just when he felt that things were starting to get hopeless, as the king may get them killed to gain a good impression from the knights, the king did something that was unexpected.

He thought that the king would get them killed after branding them as 'evil doers' and 'monsters', thus establishing a good image of himself in front of the knights and further solidifying his image as the messenger of the ancestors in the hearts of Lyrians, but he did not do that.

On the contrary, he offered them the chance to become more powerful. And at the cost of becoming cannibals who had to eat atleast a single human every year. It was not a big deal to them as they were already cannibals, but to normal people, it would be something revolting and disgusting.

This further made him believe in the fact that his king was no messenger of the ancestors and in reality was evil incarnate itself.

He thought about the reason that the king wanted them to become so powerful all of a sudden.

Was it just a coincidence that he wanted them to become strong just after the knights arrived? Maybe. But he did not feel that that was the case.

It meant that the king wanted protection against the knights that had arrived. That was what he had concluded at first, but that did not make sense after he thought about it.

True, the king may be evil, and would do anything to achieve his goals, but he had still not done anything 'evil' yet, had he?

Then why was he afraid of the knights? All he had to do was adjust his conduct a bit and he would not be harmed by them in the near future.

Unless.. he wanted to gain control over them.

They followed the words of Robinson religiously. Their loyalty to the king was inferior to the loyalty they had towards Robinson.

Arnold pretty much understood what was happening.

When he was given the opportunity to gain power with the 'injectable', he had already decided that he would use it.

He did not even listen to what the king was explaining about the thing called injectable, its side effects and all.

He was thinking about the reason that the king wanted them to become strong the whole time.

After about fifteen minutes of intensive thinking, he concluded that the king wanted to get rid of Robinson to prevent any future troubles that he could cause and gain a stronger control over the knights.

But thinking about the fact that the king had gotten ready to kill Robinson scared him. After all, Robinson had left all the power, money and fame he could gain in Andestein, all to join this king of his and help him.

But Harry had decided to kill him without any remorse.

This made him fear the king much more as he knew that he had no regard for his followers and their loyalty.

He realized that the king would dispose of him without a second thought should it come to it.

Thus, he realized that as long as he worked for the king, he would have to scheme every second of the day and put up a facade of utmost loyalty for the king if he wanted to survive.

But he did not want to do that. He did not want to put up a facade all day and not have any kind of peace whatsoever.

Thus, now that he was given the opportunity to leave all that and live peacefully, he was extremely tempted to take it.

Maybe he was just over thinking and making a big deal out of nothing, and that it was just a coincidence that the king wanted them to become powerful just after the knights had arrived, but this was what he concluded, and he trusted his mind immensely.

He was not going to risk it.

So, he decided to give up on the test and live peacefully.

But, that was the worst decision that he could have taken, as he realizes later.

Authors note:

This chapter has been rewritten. All comments for it are for the previous version of this chapter. Please wait patiently as I rewrite the next chapters too.

For live updates of chapter rewrite status, please join my discord server. I give pings in the server as I publish the rewritten chaps. Also, I give a few spoilers in discord now and then.