Strangely enough Leo didn’t have to die. He did have to wear something though.
After he deeply inhaled her sweet fragrance, fully expecting it to be the last breath in his life, he was brought back to reality by a smack on the back of his head. The goddess was pointing at the riverside and telling him something, while the others hysterically laughed.
‘Alright! I’m in Heavens!’ Leo happily thought, but after taking the first step the forgotten pain between his legs suddenly returned, proving it was not the case.
Only now he remembered he was as naked as the goddess he just abused and in order to not get more embarrassed he quickly limped out of the water and wore the few dregs he had left from the previously elegant Sacred Order’s inner disciple’s attire.
“Looks like you’ll have to make your male-slave some decent armor.” Ruta grinned at Anna who was already dressed in her usual leather suit and currently tried to tie up her hair.
“Ok!” Anna sweetly smiled back, “Right after he makes ‘me’ dinner!”
“Sigh, I walked right into it, didn’t I?” Ruta shook her head with a sigh.
In their group she had the best leatherworking skills and the fine work was always entrusted her. She didn’t mind it though since she wasn’t as strong as Lana, nimble as Anna or good with the bow as Una or Tia. In a direct combat even Vida and Nina were slightly stronger, but she had her own strength – the craftsmanship. It was thanks to her craft the girls rarely got wounded, but at the same time could perform to the best of their abilities.
“Alright! I’m getting to it.” Ruta said, “But the dinner better be worth it!”
“Of course!” Anna confidently replied as if she was the one doing the cooking. Then she walked over to Leo who looked extremely uncomfortable at the seven women still staring at him and said, “You! Make us dinner!”
Even though her voice sounded sweet and mesmerizing, Leo couldn’t understand a word, therefore he said, “Hi, I’m sorry for the earlier. I won’t do it again … if you didn’t like it.”
“I don’t recognize that dialect.” Lana said shaking her head, “Until you teach him to speak properly you’ll have to think of something.”
“Sigh, let me guess – because I’m his owner, right?” Anna complained and repeated Ruta’s earlier phrase, “... the dinner better be worth it!”
Then she grabbed Leo by the arm pulled him to the large stag her sister just brought back, pointed at it, then the campfire and then her mouth.
“Cook it!” She said.
One didn’t have to be the master of alchemy to understand what she meant and Leo nodded suppressing a sad grin, ‘So this is why I’m alive, huh? Interesting … is it for one meal or am I hired for a longer period? Be as it may, I’d better make this one count!’
“Do you have any spices?” He asked out loud even though he knew the girl didn’t understand him.
Seeing they won’t get anywhere like this, he made a flickering motion with his fingers over the stag’s corpse.
“He’s asking for salt!” Una almost guessed correctly.
Anna immediately fished out a small sack from one of the bags and passed over to Leo, but Vida didn’t like it one bit.
“That little sack is probably worth more than the kid …” She grumbled.
She was the one responsible for the finances of the group, but obviously she wanted to eat just like the rest so her objections were not too loud.
“Ok, salt. So far so good.” Leo nodded.
Then he walked over to his own things that were clearly searched by someone and tried to look for leftover herbs, but as he guessed there was nothing left from the roast he cooked in the morning.
“Alright. You probably won’t let me go alone, so come with me!” Leo said, pointed at the forest and then beckoned Anna, but before anyone reacted, Lana quickly stood up, deeply inhaled, but didn’t sense anything suspicious.
“Stay here. I’ll check what the little bastard is up to.” She said and put the claymore on her back.
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Leo involuntarily gulped seeing how casually she handled the weapon that was probably double his weight. Immediately reminding himself of the rules number five and six, he nodded towards the large woman and slowly strolled into the forest carefully observing the ground.
They returned with the dusk and to the great surprise of the six ladies who stayed in the camp didn’t bring back any game. The only thing that they carried was a small bundle of herbs in Leo’s hand and the look of annoyance on Lana’s face.
“This is beyond embarrassing.” She said heavily sitting down by the fire as if she had spent the last bits of strength during the walk, “Males are useless creatures – not only they are weak, they walk around forests and instead of hunting they gather flowers! My mother would’ve killed him ten times over! Her male-slave could at least lift an axe … but this one is trying to make himself look pretty or something ...”
“He didn’t pick anything poisonous, did he?” Tia asked.
Lana shook her head and said, “I also had this suspicion, but no, he didn’t. He only picked some woodruff and chamomile flowers, and small batches of red bilberries, nettles, shots of pine trees and some other useless stuff … I’m so pissed …”
But then she was interrupted by the sight of Leo carefully, but nimbly skinning and cutting the stag. After his arrival to Dreadlands he had enough time to practice and now within few heartbeats the stag’s flesh was separated from the bones and lied on the rocks at the riverside. Afterwards he meticulously washed every piece and rubbed with the paste he quickly made from the plants he gathered earlier by grinding them with a smaller rock. Then he cut off few branches of the nearby trees and a moment later the seven women and Leo held a long skewer in each of their hands.
The next part was the hardest.
These women had spent years in the wild and the times they had roasted meat were more than Leo could imagine. But when it came to roasting ‘properly’, at least according to Jamie and now – Leo, it was a hard task to teach them, especially since the main chef didn’t know the local dialect.
As the result few pieces of meat got burned, but in the end most managed to cook their dinner more or less properly. In fact, Anna was the only one whose skewers in the end were charred all over, but she quickly thought of a solution. When she thought everyone was focusing on their own dinner, with a swift motion she switched her own skewers with the ones Leo was cooking for himself and with a content smirk began devouring the meat as if she hadn’t eaten for a month.
Leo already guessed that things might turn out this way. Without any change in expression he went to the side and lit up another campfire. Then he went to the river, fished out few large pieces of stag meat he hid there earlier, rubbed with the remaining paste and began to roast his own dinner completely ignoring everyone else.
At first they were shocked by the disrespectful behavior of the male-slave who rudely sat with his back towards the group of women, but then Lana’s laugh reverberated through the forest.
“Hahaha! This is so hilarious!” She said while slapping the ground in delight, “Not only he saw through you, Anna, he also knows we’re not going to kill him! Even though he’s weak as a worm, this slave has some guts! I wonder who his previous master was.”
Afterwards everyone relaxed and chatted while Leo could eat in peace. He knew he was playing with fire, but he had to check if he had at least some freedom around here. Fortunately it was not all bad.
The goddess came over and sat next to him almost making the poor boy faint after he breathed in her fragrance again. This time she didn’t take away his food, but carefully observed the manner he ate. Her sister was probably right – this male-slave most likely was trained by a master from a noble family.
He bit off small pieces of meat, slowly chewed them and from time to time washed everything down with a couple gulps of water from the bottle he kept with him at all times. Indeed, compared to him she ate like a little beast and the fact that a slave could behave more elegantly than her made the girl slightly upset.
When Leo was done, he went to the water and quickly washed his hands and face, but afterwards came back to sat in front of the beauty whose presence continued to make him lightheaded. After the experience in the Voodoo sect few years ago, he knew what was about to come.
Before going to sleep Leo had learned the names of the seven women and few other basic words like fire, water and food. Of course he followed the same protocol he practiced the first time he was taught a foreign language and pretended to be somewhat slow. It was pivotal for his own safety to understand what the women were talking about while maintaining the oblivious appearance and only after he gathered enough information he could decide what to do next.
Falling asleep turned out to be another challenge. After he became the sole survivor of the group four, Leo began to sleep up on trees again. Now though the earthshaking beauty made sure he was sleeping not further than a couple of yards away as if afraid he would escape under the watchful eyes of her sister. Fortunately they didn’t tie him up, but it still took some time for Leo to pass out.
When he woke up before the sunrise, there were only three people left in the camp, including him. The goddess called Anna was leisurely cleaning two long daggers that probably in some realms might be considered short swords while Ruta, a woman around the age of thirty five, maybe forty, was busy working on few pieces of leather.
After washing his face, under the curious Anna’s eyes Leo did few stretching exercises and then put Cleaver on his back. Then he walked over to the tree line, chose a taller tree and began to scale it only to almost fall down from shock half way.
Since the arrival to Dreadlands he had done this hundreds of times and was quite confident in his skills, especially because he thought that the background of living with the apes gave him a considerable advantage compared to anyone else. But when he suddenly saw Anna’s slender body leisurely hanging from a branch well above him even though just a moment ago she sat near the campfire when he was already scaling the tree, for a moment he lost the will to live.
It was fine for a woman to be stronger than him. There were countless stronger people in the world and it didn’t bother Leo one bit. Similarly it was also fine for people to be faster or smarter – it was practically impossible for him to be the best in the world in any aspect.
But for someone without any cultivation to move soundlessly as a ghost was not fine. It went against everything Leo knew about about the world and cultivation, and it simply didn’t make any sense. The most reasonable explanations were that he was seeing things or still asleep and dreaming. In either case what he saw was not real.
With this thought he relaxed a bit, jumped over to a nearby tree and climbed down. Unfortunately Anna was already waiting for him on the ground, but he stubbornly ignored her and repeated the exercise again. This time though with a corner of his eye Leo noticed a blurry shadow that dashed up another tree only to transform to Anna as she jumped over to receive Leo on the treetop as if she was there all the time.
‘Ok, fine!’ Leo said to himself, ‘This girl is a monster! Good for her … no … wait ... Good for me! Maybe I can finally learn something useful!”