Pananga, the capital of Livania kingdom, turned out to be not smaller than the holy city Avila. To even get to the outskirts the group traveled for half a day through seemingly endless farmlands where thousands upon thousands of male-slaves spent their miserable lives taking care of crops while getting whipped by their female guards.
At this point Leo already knew that the weaker gender of this world for some reason was being born in much larger quantities, but it didn’t prevent females from mercilessly enslaving them and exploiting as if they were a livestock which strangely enough was a foreign concept. Contrary to men, beasts of this realm were simply not tamable and, probably, to compensate for that their meat was much more nutritious compared to what Leo had eaten up until now, except for the meal in the King’s kitchen, of course.
Despite the cultural peculiarities Leo found the capital incredibly beautiful. While suburbs mostly consisted of shacks or small wooden houses, the mansions the aristocratic families owned in the downtown looked like small palaces. Of course, the actual palace built in marble looked simply breathtaking, but it was only logical for the Southern queen to live in such, albeit all queens had always lived there alone and there has never been a ‘king’ before.
After spending months with the female squad Leo had grown used to them being overlords of the realm and almost didn’t notice the poor souls pulling wagons and carriages, and carrying wares and palanquins on the streets. At some point it simply became ‘normal’ in his eyes.
He did wonder though how and why the families enslaved their own children to what Anna explained that with four out of five newborns being male most were sold off while the healthiest ones were kept for breeding purposes. From an outsider’s perspective it obviously was cruel, but the society here had lived like this for thousands of years and for Leo’s group members it seemed strange to think it could be any other way.
In the capital there was another category of male-slaves that were groomed – the so called ‘combatants’. To organize competitions pitting them one against another was one of the most popular forms of entertainment around here and any family strove to have at least a couple combatants they could show off since it was one of the marks of wealth and status.
Throughout the city there were built multiple arenas where the male-slaves competed for the honor of their masters with the largest, the Royal arena, that belonged to the queen and was used to organize annual competitions or to settle the bets between the aristocratic families.
To Anna’s great regret the largest competition of the year ended over a month ago and now her only options were either to go around the city looking for someone to provoke to a male-slave fight or settle in an arena and put up a challenger notice for everyone to see.
Since the queen was absent and there was at least month and a half until the squad could turn in their report and receive new orders, the girl was bored out of her mind. She pulled Leo around the city’s arenas and defeated the male-slaves of several arrogant aristocrats, but in the end decided it was all too easy and left to hunt and enjoy Leo’s cooking until the queen’s return.
For Leo, on the other hand, it was not as easy. First of all he hated to wear the linen dregs once again since it lowered him to a social standing he though he escaped and the attitude from the other women was also humiliating. The seven ladies from his squad had more or less softened up to him, but in the arena his role became that of a cock in a cockfight.
The shouts from the audience consisting of no more than a hundred people ‘kill that kid!’, ‘slap him to death!’ or ‘break his bones!’ were so insulting, Leo mercilessly crippled every single opponent or at least put them to bed rest for at least a month.
The large and well built male-slaves he had to fight actually looked scary. But the moment Leo learned no one was allowed to use weapons, his wins were set in stone. He went with the same dirty tactics he used when fighting the imperial forces and as the result kicking knees and groins while poking eyes and punching necks quickly led to no one willing to go against him. With his speed he only got caught once and even then he instantly inserted his thumbs deep in the eye sockets of the opponent thus immediately ending the fight.
Leo’s fights were short and boring, in addition the owners were not found of their male-slaves getting crippled, thus Anna was told to take her little beast and come back the next year to compete in the official competition where basically Leo’s every move was against the rules. The slaves would still be competing without weapons though – apparently holding one might give them the wrong idea and at some point one could attack their master creating a bad precedent.
But neither Anna nor Leo were found of a combat style where one male-slave had to tackle the other to the ground and roll around until the strongest one was found. Especially Leo – the only ‘tackling’ he would go for was the one with Anna, but obviously such thought had to remain a dream since he would instantly die otherwise.
It took over three months for the queen to return and the event was happily celebrated throughout the capital. Even Anna and Leo who spent their time leisurely hunting in the jungle heard of her arrival and were forced to come back.
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Obviously after being absent for such a long time the queen had a ton of work piled up and could receive Lana’s squad only few days later, but when she did, the discussion on the training grounds lasted until noon. Queen Amanda was a total nutcase regarding her own training and that of her closest associates and the palace’s training grounds served her similarly to how the regular royalties used their libraries or studies. As usual during Lana’s report under the eyes of the other squad members and queen’s bodyguards they were sparring dressed in leather armor, barefooted and with no weapons.
“… so basically that would be all, my queen.” Lana finished her report evading the queen’s roundhouse kick and following it up with series of her own punches and kicks, “The north and north-western cities are unlikely to support us and because Justina turned out to be a double agent the empire is well aware of our activities.”
“Let me guess …” The queen recovered with a roll after getting kicked in the chest and instantly swept at Lana’s ankles making her fall to the ground, “The amulets were a ruse and you didn’t get a single member of the imperial family. They were ready to sacrifice few hundreds of soldiers to capture my best warriors … alright, let’s have a short break. Your group is the first to report and I’ll still need some strength to show my superiority to the other squad leaders.”
“Of course, my queen.” Lana got up and politely bowed, ignoring the queen’s grin, “How did the negotiations go? Were you successful in persuading queen Irma to support us?”
“Sigh, I was, but it’s going to cost us.” The queen’s expression turned more serious, “Her ships will arrive fourteen months from now and we’ll lunch an offense from two sides with the three small kingdoms, Reiland, Eithum and Ledia, joining the attack from the east.”
“Those are great news, your majesty.” Lana said, “What’s our next task?”
“Hmmm.” Queen Amanda fell in though for a bit, “I doubt there is an intelligence gathering that is worth your efforts and time – our regular spies will take care of that. What would you say if I tasked your squad to go behind the enemy lines and cause as much ruckus as possible? Attack their sensitive objects, convoys and officials – something like that. Return before the next winter for the final preparations – in the spring we’ll finally go to war.”
Leo obviously couldn’t care less for queen Amanda’s ambitions and even if he did it would be the last thing on his mind, especially because while sitting at the gate and waiting for his squad at the entrance to the training grounds a passerby suddenly stopped and they began to gawk at each other in a similar fashion.
“You?” The short, but elegantly dressed male-slave passing by finally said.
“Silvio?” Leo blurted out at the same time.
It actually was Silvio Sconi, one of the four team leaders that led the expedition to Dreadlands. He was dressed in a golden robe and walked around as if he owned the place.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Leo asked.
“I should be asking you the same question.” Silvio’s stunned expression turned into a wide smile, “Are you alone? Where are the rest?”
“The guys died within the first month, but I joined a group that was doing some kind of a task for the queen.” Leo gave a superficial explanation, “And now I’m waiting for them.”
“Joined?” Silvio smirked, “You got enslaved! Don’t give me that look – it’s fine! Even I was. Our team went directly south and one sunny day a crowd of females surrounded what was left from us. A fight broke out and when I was the last one standing we went with the strongest one head to head … I tell you – she was a really tough cookie. If I hadn’t have left a bunch of Qi replenishment pills it would’ve been a completely one sided battle, but in the end she barely won. Imagine that! A peak Foundation establishment stage cultivator like I lost to a regular warrior … although nothing about the freakish women around here can be considered ‘regular’.”
Leo listened to him, but the only thing he imagined was how Silvio forced the other guys to surrender the Qi pills in order for him to survive while the rest died from the Qi deprivation. Most likely only after some time he realized that in order to grow in strength in this world all he needed to do was to eat and sleep a lot.
“So you also got enslaved in the end?” Leo snickered.
“Hmph! Not only I got enslaved, I became the boy toy of the strongest woman in the world!” Silvio proudly said, “Turns out the woman I lost to was the queen Amanda and she took me for her personal male-slave. And from that day on I’ve been doing her every day! Imagine! It’s like doing lady Evelyn except this one is completely wild!”
“So you were turned in one of those breeding male-slaves?” Leo asked.
“No way. She only uses me for pleasure.” Silvio sighed and Leo couldn’t understand if the guy was happy or sad about it, “The last several months were particularly hard. We were on this sea voyage to meet some queen from another continent, but on the sea there is nothing to do! Well – except me … she kept doing me day after day after day …”
“Do you have any idea how to escape the place?” Leo asked, “Or where the teleportation portal is?”
“Why would I escape? Ar you nuts?” Silvio laughed and dropped next to him, “This is the Heavens! If you want, I can ask the queen to free you from your squad and give to a pretty daughter from an aristocratic family. I’m sure you’d love to hump one as well.”
There was one Leo would’ve wanted to, but if he pulled out the erected little Leo around her it would be instantly cut off. On the other hand in comparison to Anna all the other females in the world seemed plain and even ugly.
“Thanks, I’m fine.” He said, “Have you found any clues about the dark-crimson horned beetles?”
“Come on, bro! I have never actually looked for any.” Silvio said, “From the very start this has been a penal expedition and only delinquents like I and Nathan were sent here … well … and you too. They can’t expect us to actually do any work, can they?”
He paused for a bit and then continued, “At first I thought they sent us to simply die here, but the teleportation costs are too steep and it would’ve been easier to simply get rid of us in the Aurora mortal realm thus the only thing that made sense was that lady Evelyn actually needed the bugs. And few months ago I stumbled across the clue where to find them.”