Battered But Not Beaten

The demise of the traitors marked the end of the Hill Giant force's plans, and they began to back away from the attacking force, disengaging from combat before those further down the line began to retreat out of artillery range.

That was good enough to call it a win for Karl, so he just waited for the Hill Giants to run away as he did his best to absorb the massive influx of life force that his blade was giving him. 

It merged smoothly with the power cores in the spaces, and they were quickly coming to a peak again, but there was more power coming in, so he was going to have to spread it through the spaces soon, and start reforming the cores once more to continue the process. 

They had to be getting close to peak Commander now, with Rae advancing her species traits to Royal Rank, but Karl couldn't feel the bottleneck that he knew was coming when he reached the peak and had to learn how to adjust his power to Royal Rank.