Even though Leo missed swimming in the warm water of the southern seas, living in the imperial palace was not half bad. The best thing about it was – he never needed to run around pine forests with a bunch of crazed women looking for strangers, called ‘enemies’, to kill.
Under Dalina’s strict supervision and fueled by endless meat supply from the imperial kitchen, Leo continued to constantly improve his physical abilities. In less than a month he could steadily lift the Cleaver by himself and at the end of the second month he already could loop the training grounds with it on his back. One couldn’t really call it ‘jogging’, but it was slightly faster than walking although looked rather forced.
It did baffle the boy though when after the respectable feat his trainer didn’t receive the worn out and perspired all over student with a praise, but something that more resembled a sigh of relief.
“Thank God!” She said, “Now go eat and rest. We’ll leave in two days.”
Leo didn’t know the spring session of the Assembly of warlords ended last night and the whole Council of Devotees itched for the expedition to begin. Of course, everyone understood there were physical limitations to a human body and no one rushed Dalina with the training progress, but even though she herself wanted to depart as soon as possible everything depended on the young male-slave.
Fortunately his strength and endurance finally could be deemed as ‘passable’ although it was unlikely there were many male-slaves who could replicate what he just did. Of course, the main peculiarity that allowed the expedition to happen at all was the Leo’s ability to fully replenish his strength after a good meal and sleep, but it still didn’t guarantee a reasonable travel speed.
For now though it was unclear how far and how fast could they go with Leo being this unreliable, but nevertheless two days later Dalina strapped the Cleaver on his back and along with her regular four elite guards departed through the eastern gate.
Unsurprisingly it took over two days for the small group to leave the capital Vadantia. Obviously the slow speed was solely Leo’s fault, but the boy knew it well and did his best to persist even despite fainting from exhaustion in the middle of a street on the first day.
Apparently after the male-slave’s limits were properly tested, Dalina calculated the distance he was capable of walking without rest and from then on expertly called for timely breaks. At first Leo didn’t understand what this circus was about, but when they left the city and another four people with faces hidden under dark cloaks and escorted by around twenty elite guards joined them, he began to have a notion.
The four newcomers and Dalina kept whispering something about Gods and meeting them, divine artifacts and chosen from what Leo gathered that these were the nutcases he met a couple months back and who thought of cultivators as gods and items crafted by runemasters from the Golden Hand society as divine artifacts.
Of course, since the faces of the four people were hidden behind the hooded cloaks, the boy could not verify all four were members of the Council of Devotees and one of them was the empress herself. He did find her bearing somewhat familiar, but in all honesty he was quite drunk during the only occasion they met and didn’t remember her clearly. In addition, carrying Cleaver was extremely tiring and it was hard to focus on overhearing their conversations, but it didn’t matter. If it was as Leo suspected and they were traveling towards the mountain range in the east, it was likely at some point he might have a chance to escape and finally leave this damned place.
Unfortunately it wasn’t as easy. In all honesty, even Leo understood he barely was pulling his legs and during the first half month the group managed to cover at best thirty miles a day. Leo’s physical abilities were slowly evolving, but it was barely noticeable.
Fortunately he didn’t have to hunt to supply himself with food and it was done by the escorting elites, but he was expected to cook for himself. Needless to say he was too tired to bother with the taste or quality of the prepared meals and mostly gobbled down the meat half roasted and then passed out.
To the onlookers who kept observing him in secret it was a major disappointment especially after studying Dalina’s notes on recipes and techniques according to which Leo cooked in the capital. They kind of expected for the male-slave to start showing something special and unseen in the wild where he could gather all the imaginable herbs to use as spices, but for some reason no one realized the poor boy was so tired he couldn’t be bothered with anything or anyone.
Only after forty-ish day when the group slowly began to grow restless and annoyed at the slow pace and lack of results, Leo discovered he had somewhat grown accustomed to the Cleaver’s weight and, surprising everyone including himself, suddenly squatted down to pick up a couple of wild garlic stems. The feat invigorated him so much he finally began to cook for real from that day on.
The hooded people never joined him and ate by themselves, probably because of safety concerns. But after Leo’s experiment to roast few hares covered in paste made out of garlic and thyme and filled with lingonberries, wild carrots and onions, the imperial family couldn’t take it anymore and authorized Dalina to start sampling the male-slaves dishes.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Leo was not surprised by that and honestly long expected someone to finally try his food. He was also not surprised that after sampling one of the rabbits Dalina ordered him to cook for her for the duration of the expedition.
Obviously it was impossible for the boy to cook something unique and exotic for every meal. The expedition still moved rather slowly and mostly through the never ending pine forests. The climate in these parts was temperate and because of the lack of new spices Leo was forced to mostly recreate the same recipes. He, of course, didn’t care much for that since the game was delivered by the elite guards in abundance and his belly was always full, but for some reason Dalina was rather disappointed every time she couldn’t write down new discoveries.
Leo soon found out why.
At the end of the third month after they left Vidantia, there was a third person who started joining their meals. One of the hooded ladies, the one who carried an oversized iron crown on her head on top of the hood that covered her face, began to frequent Leo’s bonfire. She never said anything and ‘the orders’ were placed by Dalina, but Leo guessed she was the one and only imperial majesty. Both her bearing and the crown looked silly in the middle of the forest, but Leo had long decided all of the women on this expedition were some kind of religious nuts, therefore did not bother with it.
What he was more interested in was the answer to the question everyone from the Sacred Order arrived to Dreadlands with. What was up with the bugs they were looking for and where one could find them? He would’ve long forgotten about their existence if not for Silvio reminding about them in Pananga and the four hooded people and Dalina carrying the amulets depicting them.
It was when the empress spoke to Leo for the first time since the start of the expedition he chose to use the opportunity and ask about the dark-crimson horned beetles. They had just made a camp for the night and Leo was preparing the dinner as usual.
“How did the God teach you about cooking? It can’t be that you learned all the divine recipes or characteristics of thousands and thousands of plants from a book.” She said.
After being startled for a moment, Leo smiled in return and said, “Actually it’s rather simple. The main thing Jamie tried to teach was to use the common sense while following few basic rules of cooking. And experimenting. One of the main points in the book was that every person has to find their own way. Of course, occasionally I did mess up at the beginning and got diarrhea or slight food poisoning, but as long as I’m not careless the food is usually good.”
“Jamie? Is that the name of the God?” Empress asked in a soft voice.
“Mhm.” Leo nodded and took a big bite from the skewer he was just roasting.
Seeing his nonchalant attitude, Dalina once again had an urge to slap him, but the empress only sighed while staring emptily in the distance. ‘Why him?’ was the question that popped in her mind over and over. Like the rest she obviously was jealous, but at the same time baffled.
In the end she voiced it out, actually not expecting an answer.
“Why did the God choose you?” She directly asked.
Leo knew that sooner or later this would come up and had long prepared the ‘passable’ answer. From his experience he knew he shouldn’t make up a complete lie since these women could sniff it out like dogs, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t alter few things. Of course, this was the opportunity he waited for to get few answers of his own.
“I’ll tell you.” He said back with full mouth, “But could you tell me what’s with those amulets of yours? Why do those bugs …”
Leo didn’t manage to finish the sentence when Dalina smacked him so hard he almost passed out.
“How dare you!” She hissed, but the empress pacified her with a wave of her hand.
“It’s fine.” She said fishing out her golden amulet and closely looking at it, “You are quite daring for a male-slave, but even I might get cocky if I met a God … you see … Holy scarabs are the only species in Dreadlands that actually carry the Divine power within. They can be found only in two places in the world and only one of them in the wild. Actually the name, ‘Dreadlands’, was given to the world by the God because we lack the Divine power … sigh … what a curse ...”
The empress fell silent as if deciding if it’s necessary to tell more, but to Leo it was clear she was speaking about Qi. And the dark-crimson horned beetles having some kind of Qi properties was no surprising at all – there had to be a reason why lady Evelyn sent a bunch of disciples to die here.
After a brief pause the empress said, “The God taught us how to use them to guard our ancestors and the Holy scarab became the symbol of the Vidas family. There is nothing more to it. Your turn.”
“Okay.” Leo nodded, “God said something about my crippled physical condition reminding them about their own descendant. It was probably just a whim, but it saved my life. The God even taught me a way how to cure my condition or at least prolong my lifespan – otherwise I would’ve be dead by now.”
“The God had a daughter?” Dalina gasped loosing her usual demeanor and Leo almost choked on the piece of meat he just bit off the skewer.
Obsession of women of this realm with their own gender was bemusing.
“From what I understand, in hundreds of thousands of years Gods had quite a few descendants.” He explained, trying to keep a straight face, “But this one died prematurely.”
“It can’t be!” The empress said, “The God is omnipotent – I don’t believe she couldn’t have saved her own daughter!”
“I also think so!” Leo immediately agreed – because of own safety reasons, of course, “But the Gods have some kind of principles to not manipulate the laws of life and death. That is why I have to cure myself on my own by training hard. The Divine Intervention is not granted lightly …”
Seeing him sadly sigh, both women nodded in understanding. Even though this male-slave was not the smartest, had had remembered few important things the God taught him. Leo, on the other hand, stuffed his mouth full of meat in order to not start laughing out loud. With how strong and smart these people were their intelligence immediately went out in smoke the moment anyone mentioned a ‘god’.