I gave her a long silent look before sighing. “If you, the one with such vast experience, fell in his trap, that means anyone else wouldn’t have done any better.”

“But…”

“You can’t blame yourselves in such a way,” I stood up, looked at everyone, “I did that as I’m the lord of the kingdom, the biggest figure in it. You… You are my trusted aides, my valiant generals, the real pillars I depend upon to build my kingdom on your shoulders.“

“It’s more reason for us to…”

I raised my hand in the face of Hilary to stop her. “Your part isn’t to regret and blame yourselves, but to honestly analyse your shortcomings and learn your weaknesses. Knowing what caused all this and doing all your best to correct them is the best way to pay for this loss here.”

I turned to Lily before adding, “I gathered all of you here not to speak about the past. What happened happened. Only a kid would cry over what passed. I gathered you all here to speak and plan about our future.”

“Nice,” Lily was covered in stains of blood and mud. I still recalled how valliant and mighty she fought alongside her people..

“As I told you before leaving here before, I planned to make you all train and get stronger. However…”

“Boss… Didn’t you just say we need to reflect and work on our weak spots? We are weak, and we need to train. Please, don’t take away such opportunities from us!”

It was Sara, and she looked startled by what I just said.

“In fact, I have good news,” I knew my depressed look gave away another impression. But I really had good news for them.

I told them about the deal with Selvators in brief. I skipped what really happened for such a deal to happen and just focused on the training part.

I also said that I got a deal to get more humans, ones who belonged to other apocalypses.

“Are you… Going to buy all human slaves?!!!” but there was one here who recognised what I was speaking about, and it was Lily.

“You sure are well informed,” I nodded, “I’m going to do exactly like that.”

“But… You know that doing this will make others raise the price. This isn’t going to be a good thing for you, for all of us.”

“Wealth… Is the last thing I lack in this apocalypse,” I was bragging about this. In fact with my bones, and stable income from all the dead bodies around, there was no way I’d not secure such a deal for a long time.

Even if it cost me ten times what I paid right now, it was still worth it. All races were strong and mighty not only because they were organised or had lots of powerhouses.

It was because they were together! Just looking at the finely scaled Lily made me sure of this. Her race decided to invade my apocalyptic world just to answer my actions towards their people.

What I got wasn’t the cream crop of their race. I was sure whoever got into the net of the Bringold impact hunting teams were the weakest of the Hectors.

But even for the weakest, they’d prefer to wage a bigger war to secure their people. I wanted to be like them. I wanted my human race to be like these Hectors and many other mighty and scary races in this vast universe.

I want anyone thinking about harming my race anywhere in the universe to think thrice before doing it. My race, my humans, would turn into a red line that no one should trespass. And if they did, they should pay a very hefty price for that.

“I hope you know what you are doing,” she blinked twice, showing care and concern for me.

“Hey, scaled girl, he is taken!” Just at this moment, a tigress jumped and hung her arms around my neck. When I heard what Hilary said, I recalled our debate about Lily from before.

Damn! This chick was targeting Lily. I looked at Lily, hoping she would act wise and say something nice.

“Who said so? Each time I saw, I found his fingers ringing!” damn! I was mistaken! Lily wasn’t wise, wasn’t wise at all!

“Humph, one day this will happen, you’ll see,” Hillary harrumphed, before leaning her head over my chest, “at least I got to taste him. Not just looking from far away and dreaming.”

“Humph! We’ll see about this,” and Lily seemed to accept the challenge and issue another with her fierce eyes.

What brought me in between these two? What drifted the talk to this dark alley?

“Lily will lead the training of the elite forces,” I said to end this useless confrontation, “as for the normal forces, they will move to the Selvator places. We will use them to train them, and those who become outstanding from them will have a chance to learn from Lily and her people.”

“Why her?” Hilary got startled by my arrangement. But I’d accept any comment about anything else but this arrangement.

“As for the humans coming here, I need a team to be formed for welcoming and registering them,” I turned to my team, who seemingly got themselves distanced from the fight between the two tigresses.

“You will seek for special talents and arrange them in teams,” I started to organise things here, “we need construction teams, teams to help our scientists, teams to build up defences, and others to arrange the overall rebuilding process of the entire kingdom.”

“So we are focusing on rebuilding?” Sara asked, “what about fighting? What about fighters?”

“We will seek for them as well,” I nodded but I had to stress over this point, “but our top priority here is to build our kingdom, rebuild our destroyed cities and towns, prepare places for our people to live in and breed.”

“Bre… Boss, what do you have in your mind?” the spearhead jumped when he heard me say this.