“The women are used as sex slaves. Endlessly raped by the soldiers for their amusement. The ones that manage to survive long enough, they are shipped to the Forbidden City. There the Divine Empress and the Master Fleshcrafter alter the unborn children to serve her will.”

“The children are the harbringers of her will. They swept to the East first entering and killing off anyone they encountered. Then the soldiers. But I am skipping ahead.”

“The old and people who object are sent to the fighting pits. There they fight for their life, amusement of soldiers, and to keep the population low. The soldiers are recruited from exceptional soldiers, those with former military experience, or tribe members who present a lot of crystals for a bribe into a city.”

“Everyone is either a soldier, or a slave in some way. There are only two castes. There are workers, but they are just slaves and constantly replaced as they are worked to death or screw up in some minor way and then killed. It is often a sport of the soldiers to amuse themselves on the best ways to kill people and make them scream. They say it is the proper way to pray to the Divine Empress.”

“I was a soldier.” I didn’t know what to say to that at the moment, so I let him keep talking. “I worked hard and rose up the ranks. I soon became of the Lord of New Beijing’s favorite and one of his scribes. When the call went out to nominate people to take the Lordship of new cities, he named me as a favor.”

“I was given command of a contingent of troops and assigned to manage the city you took me from.”

“You mentioned you were a third ranked Lord?” I asked.

“Lords have three ranks based on their service and management. The third rank is for those who have just taken the position. The second rank are for those who have maintained a stable line of tribute to the Divine Empress for three years. The first rank is reserved for those who perform a service and they have the right to petition the Lord General directly.”

“How are the top levels of her Empire run?” I asked.

“The soldiers report to the Lord. If a Lord is killed, all the soldiers under his command will be killed as punishment. This is to prevent assassinations. Lords stand above all others as nobles. Above the Lords is the Lord General with ultimate command of the Divine Empress’s armies.”

“He answers to the Divine Empress. But she also has other people serving her. The Inquisitor searches and investigates Lords who think not to tribute to the Divine Empress. Many have fallen to her audits. Then there is the Chief Diviner, who watches and searches for rebels and watches beyond the boarders of the Divine Empress’s territory.”

“Then there is the Master Fleshcrafter. He builds her Forbidden City. I went there only once to kneel before the throne of Tortured Souls. The screams are endless. A city of horror and blood. Finally, there is the Envoy, her most trusted subordinate if anyone can be called that. Able to act in her name wherever he travels. But I do not know anything about him,” Bao Wang explained.

“That’s it?” I asked. I would have thought she would have had a larger internal government. But it appeared the Lord General was the Clarissa of the operation. The Master Fleshcrafter was the Doctor Katz. The Envoy was Naren. The Inquisitor, well there was no equivalent. Clarissa was really doing a lot, since I just had her, but the Divine Empress had more people. How did someone like this have more people?

“Yes. There are special combat units, but they report directly to the Lord General or one of the direct subordinates of the Divine Empress.”

“I heard there might be rebels?” I asked. It would be nice to link up with them and possibly coordinate operations to strike at her Empire.

“They have been shattered. Only remnants remain. I heard the Envoy was tasked to hunt the last of them down.” Well, I had tied with the number two of the Empire once already. The real problem was that there was a massive gap between number two and number one. The Divine Empress was clearly focusing all the crystals on herself.

That was another weak point. “This tribute, how does it work?” I asked.

“Zones are assigned to each city. Level 1 and level 2 zones. The city is allocated so much every day based on an optimum number for food and supplies. All the other crystals are delivered to the Divine Empress, or the Forbidden City where they await her return.”

“But can’t people use crystals to get more powerful and kill level 3 monsters?” I asked.

“After several people became rebels, there is a strict lockdown on who can get stats and crystals allowed for anything other than food and supplies. The people who are made into Lords, are made to understand there is no escaping the tribute. If you are short, kill people to make up the numbers. Only the smallest of incomes is provided.”

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“That seems, difficult,” I said.

“I was the favorite of my Lord for a good reason. I implemented many waste recycling policies which cut down on expenses by 3.3%. It was quite a sizable amount of savings he was able to invest into personal items for himself.” I looked at the plump figure of Bao Wang. He was clearly indulging a bit as well.

“How many cities does she have?” I asked.

“There are nine cities before the invasion to the East.” I pulled out a new notebook I had purchased and sketched out a rough map of where we were on the right side of a piece of paper. There was a large cluster of cities to the South. About five of them, with the Forbidden City in the center.

Further to the West near a lot of void were two more cities. Then North of the five cluster was the city of Wuhan, and really far North was the city of First Seoul. Further questioning revealed that most of the cities were pulling from China and the remainder from the rest of Asia or the Pacifica region.

“The city of Freedom to the far Southwest has been a constant source of rebellion. The people there come from both Japan and Australia. The raids have been quite persistent and they have been quite good at hiding.”

“There are roads between all cities?” I asked.

“Yes and they all lead to the Forbidden City at the center of the network. New Beijing is a bit unique since it has the only road to the Northern cities.” From what I could gather her area of control was about 13 zones by 17 zones with the upper left corner in question.

Purgatory was more in line with the Northern part of the core cluster of cities that represented the Empire. With Truth being closer in line with Wuhan, the city North of New Bejing. Nine cities. That was a lot, but it was also offered a lot of places to hide.

“What is East?” I asked.

“There is a line of void zones. It is often referred to as the Rift, since it is over nine zones long. It is considered the western edge of the world.” Then why was the city in the East called the East Bastion? I really wanted the Astrologer around to ask him questions.

But the world really was missing a half to a third of the possible cities if there weren’t any repeats. India and Russia were two big countries that came to mind that should have a couple of cities each. The biggest thing was that there were only level 3 zones between us and the Empire.

“How did you get here?” I asked.

“Airship, moving back and forth over the couple of zones. I was told a road would soon be built to allow tribute to flow in from the newly conquered cities,” Bao Wang explained. I had a better idea of how the Dragon Empire was run.

Basically, it was run on terror with the occasional purge. The Divine Empress’s subordinates were afraid of her. Then the Lords who reported to them were afraid of them and her as well. Everyone else beneath the Lords was trapped. Even if a bunch of soldiers rebelled at the same time, no one would save them, and they would not be able to fight back.

They would be killed, and people would replace them. It had happened countless times. Over time there were less and less rebellions as people were worn down, lost hope, and became used to the human misery the Divine Empress inflicted on everyone.

The tribute kept rolling in despite the disruptions on a daily schedule. The Lords weren’t allowed to keep crystals stored up at all. Well, they could try and save up a personal stash. Bao Wang indicated that many of them had one or two cart shipments in reserve, just in case one was lost to rebels.

The tribes outside the cities knew better than to go on the roads. They had limited weapons and depended on the cities for food. Cities had starved the tribes to death with the permission of the Divine Empress to put down a large-scale rebellion that occurred. It was rarely done, but it had been which was enough to subdue all the hunting tribes around the cities.

They would also willingly turn in rebels for extra crystals. Acting as informants for the Lords of the various cities. Bao Wang explained that there had been talk about trying to form and support rebels in other city’s territory, but the tribute required did not make it feasible.

He did suspect that some cities had secret teams of level 3 people grinding crystals. But those were just rumors and accusations thrown between the Lords as they jockeyed for position and power. Some of the city zones overlapped, losing zones to another city was seen as rebuke of a Lord’s rule.

The cities to the North were far from other cities, but they also had more frequent inspections by the Inquisitor. “I thought how I would destroy the Dragon Empire,” Bao Wang continued to talk. Like he wanted to get it all off his chest.

“If the Divine Empress dies, it would all fracture. But since she will never die, then the only way would be to constantly attack the tribute and force the Lords to scramble and get desperate.” I just nodded at this.

That was the completely wrong way to think about the situation. But it wasn’t his fault, since he didn’t have the personal power and the stats I did. The thing to do would be to strike at the Forbidden City itself and try to kill her direct subordinates.

Without the people managing the day to day, it would become a nightmare. Just had to kill the upper echelons of leadership and decapitate the entire operation. People would make mistakes and scramble for power.

I frowned at this. The problem came back to the Divine Empress herself. Even by targeting those under her, they would be replaced. While the instability would persist and might get worse for a time, it would not escalate into removing her from power.

That was the problem when the person in charge had tremendous amounts of personal power. It was the same issue Clarissa and I had discussed at length. “If she died, would you know?” I asked.

“Maybe? But I have only seen her once personally,” Bao Wang said. So, if she was dead, her subordinates could sit someone else on the throne and rule by proxy. That was what I would do and then take all those crystals for myself and eventually replace her as the new leader.

Well, I would need to sleep and think on this for a bit. “Hope, you are in charge of Bao Wang. He doesn’t get untied, no matter what.” I went over and put the gag back in his mouth. I wasn’t taking any chances, no matter how helpful and informative he was being.