Chapter 98 The Enemy Capital

A dark silhouette streaked above the sea of clouds, the sonic tremor stirred by its passage carving a faint, lingering furrow across the rolling expanse of white.

In this era, Richie was the solitary soul capable of soaring at such an altitude.

The upgraded flight glider cut through the air with vastly greater speed, yet its fully enclosed fuselage felt dreadfully stifling.

Cramped and oppressive, it hemmed him in and drastically narrowed his field of vision.

He was not carrying out this clandestine operation entirely alone, but the operatives assigned to rendezvous with him would be waiting in Casmolina, the imperial capital of the Varedin Empire, leaving him to traverse the transit unaccompanied.

A deep uncertainty gnawed at Richie's gut; in his memory, ever since the day he awakened his bloodline, every sortie he had ever mounted had been flanked by companions, and venturing forth entirely on his own like this felt utterly foreign.

Regrettably, not a single comrade could yet match his aerial prowess—even the two most talented female knights within the "Angel Corps" could only manage an altitude of a thousand feet, their maximum range stretching barely a hundred kilometers.

Early on, the Alliance High Command had contemplated dispatching a support detachment to Casmolina, with some even proposing that the veteran members of Squad 105 undertake the infiltration; Squad 105, after all, possessed proven experience executing long-range raids deep behind enemy lines, and every single member was trustworthy beyond shadow of a doubt.

Yet the proposal had ultimately been shelved. Journeying to Casmolina was a far cry from infiltrating Glasslovar back then; the distance was leagues greater, and the vast majority of the route crossed hostile territory, where no one could guarantee against an unforeseen mishap that might blow the entire clandestine venture wide open.

The final verdict had thus left him no choice: he would have to make the crossing completely alone.

Glancing at the flight distance gauge, Richie toggled off the recording apparatus and depressed a small blue stud beside him; with a soft mechanical whine, a pair of rotor blades slid from the tail of the glider and rapidly spun up to speed—a clever contrivance he had retrofitted with his own two hands, untouched by anyone else.

No one had raised the slightest objection to this private modification, for Loralis had cautioned him that on a peril-fraught mission of this scale, it was always wise to hold a trump card in reserve; when he requested an enclosed workshop to tinker in solitude, everyone had merely assumed he was fashioning a few specialized tools for the operation.

As the whirring rotor blades took over from the "Wind-Control Art" to propel the glider forward, Richie felt their speed dip slightly, yet compared to that minor deceleration, the drain on his Combat Aura dropped drastically; when driving the glider purely through the Wind-Control Art, even his formidable reserves of Aura could sustain flight for two hours at most, covering roughly five to six hundred kilometers.

Switched to mechanical drive, however, he could cruise through the skies for an entire day without breaking a sweat.

The powerplant driving the rotors had been salvaged from a military equipment hauler; such drive systems consumed negligible Aura, allowing any common knight to operate a transport non-stop for days and nights on end, which meant in theory, he too could remain airborne for days without exhaustion.

Under the original operational itinerary, the overland flight would have devoured three to four days, calculated upon five-hundred-kilometer legs requiring him to touch down after each hop to rest for two hours to fully recharge his Aura, supplemented by six hours of sleep.

With this auxiliary drive, such tedious halts were rendered unnecessary; by the break of dawn tomorrow at the absolute latest, he would reach Casmolina.

The new mechanism made sustained flight remarkably effortless, yet the persistent drone of the spinning blades proved thoroughly grating; previously, while riding the Wind-Control Art, there had only been the whisper of slicing air—a sound so subtle it vanished completely into the buffeting gales.

The racket annoyed him, but far more troubling was the risk of broadcasting his position.

Commoners could never discern the high-altitude hum, but a seasoned scout knight possessed the acute senses to pick it up.

When he had departed, the sky had been gray with dawn; several hours later, as broad daylight flooded the firmament, Richie braked the spinning rotors and toggled back to the silent propulsion of the Wind-Control Art.

Dipping the nose of the glider downward, he plunged straight into the billowy sea of clouds, punching through to the other side a moment later.

Soaring beneath the cloud deck, Richie cast his gaze toward the earth below.

The first sight to greet his eyes was a residential district arranged in neat, orderly rows like freshly plowed furrows.

That was Stein, where the majority of the people he held dear resided.

Though not much time had elapsed since his departure, Stein had already transformed beyond easy recognition.

It was no longer the sleepy frontier settlement of old; from aloft, one could clearly see that the slopes girding the valley had been fully converted into residential quarters, while the adjacent rolling hills bristled with towering smokestacks marking a sprawling industrial zone.

Stein had taken on the embryonic contours of a bustling city, even if its runaway expansion was somewhat lopsided.

Cranking the magnification of his periscope viewer to maximum, he desperately hoped to catch a glimpse of those familiar figures; this mission was perilous in the extreme, and there was every chance he might never return, filling him with a burning longing to look upon those he loved just once more.

Regrettably, his wish was doomed to disappointment—the hour was far too early, and most residents remained fast asleep in their beds.

Richie managed to pinpoint only his own courtyard; viewed from the sky, his residence stood out conspicuously, for having been erected earliest of all, the flower seeds scattered back then had sprouted into a dense, luxuriant tapestry of verdant green that teemed with vibrant life, even if not yet in bloom.

Tinged with lingering wistfulness, Richie angled back into the cloud layer, yet just as the white vapor enveloped him, he remembered an unfinished chore.

He hastily calibrated his flight heading.

In long-distance aerial transit, one persistent challenge had never been entirely resolved: navigational orientation.

Overland travelers could follow highways, never straying so long as they took the correct forks, while rivercraft simply traced the winding bends of the waterways; the boundless sky was another matter entirely, lacking ready-made paths, leaving a flier dependent solely on surveying terrestrial landmarks to determine his position.

Cities were unquestionably the finest landmarks.

Pulling up the navigational chart, he meticulously plotted and corrected his coordinates on the grid.

This position had been calculated from flight speed, elapsed time, and directional shifts along the route; for now at least, the dead reckoning matched the terrain below quite well.

This apparatus truly spared him immense trouble; he no longer needed to juggle a map in one hand while scribbling with a straightedge in the other, much less ground himself simply to verify his route.

Ironically enough, the prototype for this navigational apparatus had been scavenged from that Cube armor he had shattered, its original architect none other than Master Poronov himself.

Breaching the cloud deck once more, Richie set his sights on the next waypoint: Peines, the former capital of the Republic.

Hours of flight bred both weariness and a creeping sense of isolation, and as the summer sun climbed higher into the sky, the sealed cabin grew sweltering under the scorching solar glare.

Worse still, alongside the rising heat, the skies turned increasingly clear; what had begun as an unbroken blanket of clouds gradually fractured into wisps, finally scattering into isolated tufts of white.

He dared not gamble with his life; if an enemy spotted him up here, disaster would surely ensue.

He had already caught wind that the Norman Alliance had formed specialized pursuit squads specifically to intercept him, each unit commanded by a knight of at least pseudo-Glorious rank and outfitted with weaponry engineered expressly to bring down flight armor.

He could not afford carelessness—having once suffered the agonizing pangs of a Mind Pierce, he knew all too well that the sky was far from an impenetrable sanctuary.

Conventional bows and crossbows could arc bolts up to three hundred feet, and muskets carried even higher; were the enemy to deploy specialized anti-air cannons, even cruising at three thousand feet offered no guarantee of safety.

Not to mention that if that hysterical Divine Craftsman was hell-bent on exacting vengeance, the artisan might well have concocted far more terrifying monstrosities.

The skies were no longer an unobstructed highway.

In truth, he had already begun to feel the stifling pressure throughout this journey.

The cities serving as navigational waypoints were all cloaked beneath sensory scanning perimeters; unlike the shallow, pan-like zones of the past, modern scanning nets resembled gargantuan inverted cauldrons domed over the earth.

The apex of these detection domes soared nearly ten kilometers above ground level—an altitude he lacked the capability to attain.

From this day forward, ghosting down silently from the clouds to strike heavily fortified targets was out of the question; the aerial infiltration tactics that had never failed him in the past were now completely obsolete.

Richie had no choice but to scout a concealed haven and touch down, hunkering down to wait out the blistering daylight of midsummer.

Laying low like this was undeniably a waste of precious hours, but fortunately, when drafting the operational plan, the Alliance senior staff officers had built in ample leeway for delays.

With the midsummer dusk lingering late into the evening, it was not until around seven o'clock that Richie finally resumed his flight.

One had to concede that fortune possessed a double edge; those very scanning perimeters, for instance, shone like beacons to Richie as he traversed the nocturnal expanse.

Each scanning canopy spanned a radius of twenty kilometers, visible from great distances; steering by these glowing detection domes was incomparably easier than straining his eyes in the pitch-black to pinpoint his location by sparse, flickering lamplights below.

Ravaged by the protracted war, the Monstoke Republic had turned bleak and desolate; even Peines, its former capital, lay forlorn, the entire city sinking into a tomb-like silence once night fell, with many streets illuminated by merely a lonely lantern or two.

Richie no longer found himself weeping over Monstoke's ruin and sorrow; imperceptibly, his heart had hardened—or rather, it had grown forged and unyielding.

This war was a catastrophe for every living soul, yet behind the catastrophe, did there not lie seeds of rekindled hope?

Soaring steadily through the mantle of night, the architectural geography of Monstoke finally revealed its advantage: he had zero fear of straying off course, for within his field of view, at least two cities were always visible.

What Monstoke had in greatest abundance were small cities of tens to hundreds of thousands of souls, peppered densely across the land like grains of scattered salt.

Tracing the grand highways from the air, a city came into view nearly every few dozen kilometers.

Around five o'clock the following dawn, Richie glided down from the heavens.

Just ahead lay Casmolina.

He could hardly march into the imperial capital hauling a flight glider, so the craft had to be cached outside the walls.

During the week leading up to the operation, Loralis had given him specialized instruction on the art of concealing supplies.

This was no simple tradecraft, for no one could anticipate what might happen; a playful shepherd boy, a roving stray dog scavenging for scraps, or a panicked hare fleeing hunters could easily expose his cache. The cache had to be sufficiently concealed yet accessible without undue hassle; he had briefly entertained dismantling the glider and burying it underground, but realizing he would have to spend hours digging it up during an exfiltration, he abandoned the idea.

Thus, the gear had to be stashed in a place where detection was nearly impossible, yet extraction could be achieved in a flash.

Like the capitals of other nations, Casmolina was ringed by numerous satellite towns and hamlets, and he touched down near a relatively secluded settlement situated well away from the main thoroughfares, quiet and free of bustle.

At five in the morning, most folk were still sleeping, while the early risers remained indoors tending to household chores, leaving the streets outside wrapped in silence.

Richie dismantled the flight glider with practiced speed, bundling the components securely in heavy tarpaulin.

He had already chosen his hiding place: he would indeed deposit it beneath the earth, but the burial site was carefully selected.

Every town had a graveyard situated a respectful distance from the homes; this town's cemetery was encircled by a low stone wall to keep out hares and field voles, and its solitary wrought-iron gate, though pulled shut, was unlatched. A rural hamlet like this naturally employed no groundskeeper, allowing Richie to slip inside effortlessly as he searched among the weathered tombs, specifically seeking spacious double crypts meant for husband and wife.

Varedin burial vaults were semi-subterranean masonry crypts built of brick or stone blocks and lined with lime against moisture; coffins rested inside the chamber beneath a heavy stone capstone, with some tombs bearing headstones, though most simply had the deceased's name, dates, or an epitaph chiseled directly into the cover slab.

These capstones were nominally sealed with mortar, but with the passage of decades, the mortar inevitably weathered and loosened.

After scouring seven or eight weathered crypts, Richie finally found one whose capstone had cracked completely loose, and he levered the stone slab aside with meticulous care.

Inside rested two decayed coffins whose rotted planks had caved inward, exposing the skeletal remains within.

A pungent stench of mold and decay assailed his nostrils; fighting back nausea, Richie slipped two large tarpaulin bags over the collapsed coffins.

That done, he knelt before the crypt in silent prayer; after all, his actions had disturbed the dead, and though he subscribed to no faith, doubted the existence of souls, and hardly believed desecrating bones would invite wrathful curses, the silent vigil offered comfort to his conscience.

Finishing his brief prayer, he hauled the two tarpaulin-wrapped coffins out of the vault and stowed the bundled flight glider neatly inside the stone chamber.

He felt fortunate that the Varedins practiced subterranean inhumation, leaving their burial vaults roomy—unlike Monstoke, where cremation was customary and tombs held only urns, making it impossible to cram in a flight glider, let alone a single tailfin.

Shifting the capstone back into place, Richie circled the ancient crypt, gathering mossy loam and wet earth to camouflage every suspicious seam.

With that completed, only the two tarpaulin bags remained to be disposed of.

Situated at the southern tip of the continent, Varedin was blanketed in dense tropical rainforest and laced with waterways; in midsummer, drenched by torrential rains, vast expanses were submerged beneath muddy bogs and quagmires.

Richie pressed the two tarpaulin bags flat, lashed heavy stones to them, and pitched them into an adjacent swamp.

Such places were safe: elders warned children away from these treacherous shallows, and save for frogs, lizards, and swarming insects, no wildlife ventured near, nor did fishermen cast nets here. The sole drawback was that come autumn, the waters would recede and expose the submerged tarps; by then, however, he would either have perished on foreign soil from a failed mission or returned victorious to the Alliance. His preparations complete, Richie set off toward Casmolina, avoiding the paved highways to weave through country trails under the cover of the morning mist.

Summer in Varedin was swelteringly humid, morning fog rising like steam from a giant cauldron; the roadside was slick and muddy, yet Richie stepped across it without leaving a single footprint.

This was the harvest of a week of relentless, grueling training.

The lineage of the Shadow King excelled in nothing more than its uncanny, phantom footwork.

The Shadow King was the progenitor of all scout knights, yet the man himself was no mere reconnaissance scout; he was an assassin—a lethal predator stalking the battleground.

Among the Four Guardians, the Thunder Emperor was hailed as the mightiest, yet the most terrifying and lethal remained the Shadow King. Legend told that in the founding era, there had been not five corps, but six; the vanished legion was remembered as the "Ghost Corps"—the weakest of armies, yet simultaneously the most terrifying, inspiring such dread even in the First Holy Emperor that he had ultimately disbanded it. Richie knew not whether the legend was truth, but he knew with chilling certainty that the descendants of the Shadow King were formidable beyond measure; having never sparred with Shemiel before and presuming the girl was no match for him, this past week had finally revealed her terrifying prowess.

In a head-on duel, the young girl was indeed no match for him, and he could secure victory with ease; yet in an unrestricted brawl where any underhanded trick or lethal tactic was permitted, the outcome was flipped on its head.

Across six bouts with the girl, he had suffered defeat four times, claiming victory only twice—and even those two had owed a debt to sheer luck.

Shemiel was merely fifteen years old and ranked only as an intermediate knight; he could barely fathom how monstrous she would become once she attained a rank equal to his own.

Her dreadfulness lay not in overwhelming martial strength, but in her ghostlike, unpredictable stealth. She could suppress her aura completely until she seemed non-existent, melting seamlessly into trees, earth, or the air itself, striking a fatal blow from the most unfathomable angle just when an adversary least suspected it.

Even his sensory Field, which had served him unfailingly in the past, had failed him this time—not because he could sense nothing at all, but because the instant he perceived her, the strike was already upon him.

Sensing hostile gaze was still more hopeless; even when Shemiel's eyes drilled into him, he felt not the slightest prickle of warning, though fortunately, he had now mastered that very art of gaze concealment himself.

It was precisely because he had absorbed an entire arsenal of exotic, specialized disciplines from Loralis that he mustered a shred of confidence for this infiltration.

After trekking roughly seven or eight kilometers, Richie spotted a major highway; slipping behind a broad tree trunk, he waited for military transports to pass.

He did not have to wait long. It was the height of logistical mobilization; the Eastern Front had already entered the opening phase of offensive and defensive battles, sending convoys rumbling past in steady succession.

Being deep in the imperial rear, security was relatively relaxed, and most transports rolled along without armed escorts.

Most wagons heading into Casmolina were empty, while those departing were laden with military supplies.

He dared not board an empty bed that offered no cover; after letting six convoys pass, he finally spotted a transport stacked with wooden crates.

Richie leaped aboard in a fluid blur, landing without producing a whisper of sound.

The crates were loosely secured, straw poking through the wooden slats to serve as shock absorption, suggesting the cargo was either glassware or porcelain.

The wagon passed several checkpoints on the approach to the city, though the inspections were perfunctory, merely halting the vehicle to scrutinize the transit pass.

Casmolina was a sprawling metropolis of over three million inhabitants, radiating an opulent prosperity markedly distinct from Peines.

Situated in the humid south, the architecture was breezy and open, featuring expansive, cross-ventilated windows designed to foster circulation, while frequent downpours had led every household to project wide awnings beneath their eaves.

Crouched in a shadowed corner of the wagon bed, Richie surveyed his surroundings through a flexible periscope optic.

Over the preceding week, he had poured over intelligence dossiers detailing this city day in and day out; Loralis had even drilled him until he memorized every avenue and back alley.

Rolling past a busy intersection, he caught sight of a street sign, and a complete street layout of Casmolina materialized instantly in his mind.

He recalled that a short distance ahead, the thoroughfare narrowed into a bustling district renowned as one of the capital's premier commercial avenues.

Richie carefully nudged the wooden crates aside, carving out sufficient space to maneuver; the wagon rolled on, and after two or three minutes, a massive shop signboard swung into view overhead, whereupon Richie leaped upward in an effortless bound, landing atop the wooden beam.

It was around nine in the morning and the streets were crowded with pedestrians, yet spotting his presence was nearly impossible.

His form blended seamlessly into the contours and colors of the painted sign.

The garment he wore was christened Mirage—part suit of clothing, part specialized magitech armor.

This was likely the flimsiest armor in existence in terms of defensive plating, offering negligible enhancement to raw strength; the handful of synthetic sinews woven along the thighs and hips were engineered not for combat, but for swift evasion.

In outright battle the suit was virtually useless, yet it was equipped with an exhaustive suite of reconnaissance tools.

The compact periscope optic boasted only a fourfold magnification, yet its flexible housing could be bent into any contour and extended over a foot, making it perfect for snaking through hairline cracks; moreover, it could couple to the eyepiece of a spyglass, rendering range moot. Alongside the optic was an acoustic listener: folded like an origami hood to conserve space, it could be tucked into the collar when idle. The suit fabric itself shifted pigments like a chameleon to match its background, while a bandolier of smoke pellets encircled his waist. Slipping from the sign onto an adjacent terrace balcony, Richie tugged at a small ridge on his back—a flush pack housing a single change of clothes, which he threw on with practiced speed.

It was an officer's dress uniform bearing a strong resemblance to the livery of the Franca Empire, distinguished only by subtle variations along the belt, collar, and cuffs.

Fastening the uniform and rolling his cowl and camouflage mask into his collar, Richie transformed into an entirely different persona; inside his right pocket lay his forged identity credentials.

He was now Second Lieutenant Billy, a fourteen-year-old aide-de-camp from the Duchy of Bolensia; he remained registered as a knight—an apprentice knight, an impressive station for someone of such a tender age.

Even if someone pointed directly at his nose and proclaimed his true identity, no one would believe it, for Richie had already been fifteen when he first awakened his bloodline.

The Norman Alliance was no stranger to Richie's face, for General Herschel had long since forwarded complete dossiers to the Alliance high command, including portraits captured over the past two years.

Yet the youth standing here shared not a single resemblance with those likenesses: he appeared youthful, delicate, and refined, his complexion pale and smooth as clotted cream, his irises a chilled slate-blue, and his lustrous black hair neatly combed flat against his scalp.

Such a dramatic metamorphosis owed partial credit to facial sculptors from the Parkington Holy Kingdom, but the greater share belonged to his Vajra body tempering; the discipline had reshaped not merely skin and muscle, but had subtly reformed his skeletal structure, and even the slightest shift in bone contours altered a man's appearance entirely.

His dark hair and tinted irises were dyed; Bolensian bloodlines were closely kindred to the Francans, both descending from ancient Tuscrio stock, with jet-black hair and slate-blue eyes standing as quintessential Bolensian hallmarks. Straightening his uniform and verifying that no flaw betrayed him, Richie slipped down from the alleyway. Casmolina was a serene and elegant city whose most striking feature was its luxuriant canopy of foliage—little wonder travelers described it as a metropolis built in the heart of a virgin forest.

Richie could scarcely fathom why a blossom-like haven such as this was inhabited by folk so savage and bloodthirsty.

In wartime, men easily cast aside civilized pretenses to bare their foulest depravities, yet what the Varedins displayed went far beyond common malice; many of their deeds bordered on outright perversion.

And the destination he was headed toward was the very epicenter of that depravity within this capital.

Two rows of verdant bamboo flanked a flagstone path pieced together from rough-hewn pavers of irregular sizes; the path wound in meandering turns that imparted a sense of secluded tranquility, yet just a few paces onward a fresh vista unfolded: weeping willows and gnarled pines stood in layered harmony, a babbling brook wound beneath arched stone bridges, and clusters of scarlet and alabaster water lilies drifted in the ponds below.

Such serene beauty radiated an exquisite, unspoken elegance.

Pausing atop the stone bridge, Richie was momentarily transfixed.

He could never have conceived that the den he sought would look like this.

While he stood dazed, a woman glided over from an adjacent garden pavilion.

She was breathtakingly alluring—a delicate oval face, vivacious large eyes, and wavy blonde locks tied into a cascade down her back; while her expression bore an air of demure innocence, her voluptuous figure was incendiary, her swelling bosom and generous, rounded breasts paired with a supple waist and curved hips that could ignite a raging fire in any man's veins.

Richie felt his hardness stirring in his breeches, and heat flared into his cheeks in an embarrassed flush.

His crimson face sprang from shame over his involuntary physical response, yet in the woman's eyes, it was interpreted as boyish bashfulness.

Considering Richie's current appearance as a tender lad of thirteen or fourteen, such innocence seemed only natural. "Little brother, this is hardly a place for someone of your tender years," she purred with a soft giggle. "This is an exclusive private salon."

She spoke with a silken, honeyed cadence.

Her lilting tone sounded strikingly familiar, reminiscent of Aisha's voice.

It was not that their natural timbres were identical, but their flirtatious drawl struck the same coquettish chord; hearing such seductive cooing left a man's limbs limp and stirred an unbearable itch in his groin.

Fortunately, Richie was thoroughly immune to such charms; he had bedded far too many women, so many that even peerless beauties could barely shake his steadfast resolve.

Yet this clumsy fluster suited a youth of thirteen or fourteen to perfection, for a lad at that threshold between boy and man occupied a muddled twilight when comprehension of carnal desire and romance was still raw and bewildered.

"Someone... referred me... here," Richie stammered, putting on a nervous act.

Fumbling awkwardly, he pulled an ornate necklace from his tunic pocket.

This necklace was the very trophy he, Calli, and Nora had stripped from the bloated officer they slew during the raid on that encampment teeming with hound-girls to rescue Lina.

Beside the necklace, the fat man had carried a ledger documenting every sordid transaction.

When Loralis had cautioned him to keep a hidden trick in reserve, he had remembered this trinket.

Fortunately, he had kept the necklace tucked on his person all this time, though the ledger had long since been discarded.

Taking the necklace with a flash of surprise, the woman studied it before breaking into a radiant smile and dropping into a graceful curtsy. "Please follow me, Young Master. It requires only a brief formality to register your credentials, and you shall become a honored patron of our establishment; I am confident we can satisfy your every desire."

With that, she turned to lead the way along the corridor.

Richie felt his pulse spike once more; viewed from the front, her gown appeared modest and proper, but from behind, it was another matter entirely.

Her back was completely bare down to the small of her waist, and the skirt featured a daring slit running up to the crest of her buttocks, parting with each sway of her hips to offer tantalizing glimpses of plump, ivory flesh.

Rounding an ornate decorative screen, they came upon a covered boardwalk suspended over clear water; its bamboo and timber roof was exquisitely crafted, while beneath the walkway, iridescent ornamental fish darted through the shallows.

What made Richie's eyes widen, however, was the sight of over a dozen figures—five men surrounded by twice as many women—brazenly coupling in broad daylight.

More shocking still, two men lounged in the shallow pool, casually scooping wriggling fish from the water, dragging naked women across their laps, and prying their thighs apart to force the slippery fish directly into the women's wet clefts.

Such torment was agonizing; the women writhed desperately, gasping in guttural moans of distress while several sobbed and begged for mercy.

Richie had considered himself worldly in matters of pleasure, yet he had never imagined such depraved indulgences even existed.

Wanton gasps, groans, and shrill squeals resonated through every corner of the idyllic pavilion, loud and piercing; the courtesans displayed not a shred of shame, seemingly competing to see whose cries could prove more intoxicating.

He found it difficult to take another step.

Right at that moment, the hostess leaned close, pressing her voluptuous hip against his flank with a teasing brush as a wave of sweet fragrance enveloped his senses.

"You will have countless opportunities soon enough," she murmured playfully. "Once registered, you may select whichever woman strikes your fancy."

Cooing softly, she took Richie by the sleeve and guided him onward.

The walkways wound through courtyards and layered pavilions; the setting was undeniably refined, and that serene elegance formed a startling juxtaposition with the unbridled debauchery, only stoking carnal desire to an unbearable fever pitch.

Richie could not tell how vast the grounds spanned, but he felt as though they had already traversed the breadth of two entire city blocks.

Eventually he was ushered before a five-story pavilion whose sweeping eaves were carved with delicate finesse; like other edifices in Casmolina, it was built of wood and bamboo, yet it had no conventional windows—only rows of sliding doors framed in lightweight timber and paneled in translucent paper.

Guided into one of the chambers, the hostess opened a side drawer and retrieved a registration parchment.

"I... brought my... papers," Richie stammered timidly.

He fumbled through his pockets for his credentials, playing the role of a green novice visiting such a den for the very first time to perfection.

The woman gave a practiced, seductive giggle, her movements swift and deft as she accepted his identity papers and pushed the form and an ink pen across the table.

Fortunately, he had undergone prior coaching; otherwise, Richie would have had no clue how to fill in the entries.

The required information was brief: aside from his name, rank, and date of birth, only the sponsor's identity was needed, for which Richie inked in an aristocratic name gleaned from the fat officer's ledger.

Seeing that he had finished, the woman gathered the document and credentials.

Richie was left to wait alone in the quiet chamber.

To say he felt no anxiety would be a lie, yet he retained some measure of confidence; before his departure, Loralis had assured him that the cover identity fabricated for him could withstand any scrutiny, and the only potential flaw lay with the sponsor, which was a gamble he had to take. Roughly half an hour later, the woman glided back with a beaming smile, her expression dripping with even greater allure, for the vetting officer had just informed her that this noble youth was a patron of the highest caliber.

In this establishment, a "premium patron" meant not only bottomless wealth, but more critically, exalted noble rank; in Varedin, high station conferred supreme privilege, and the greatest privilege here was the authority to ransom a courtesan from servitude.

To be ransomed was her deepest yearning; though she appeared privileged as a reception hostess, who knew when offending an irascible patron might see her demoted to a collared hound-girl?

"I have completed your membership registration, Young Master. Henceforth, this place is your home," she purred sweetly.

She playfully hooked her finger into the rear slit of her gown, parting the silk to bare the plump, alabaster curve of her right thigh.

Richie swallowed hard, asking with feigned hesitation, "May I... see... the others?"

A flicker of disappointment crossed the woman's face, but she masked it instantly; though her seduction had failed, she could not afford to leave a sour impression.

Forcing a radiant smile, she casually slid open the adjoining wooden partition.

Richie froze in utter astonishment.

Beyond lay a massive hall where dozens of women sat in immaculate rows, every single one of them completely naked.

Looking closer, Richie realized each woman was wedged inside a wooden frame—slatted boxes sized precisely to lock their buttocks in place.

He was no stranger to the apparatus, as many female knights in the Independent Corps practiced with it in secret to pleasure him; known as "crock-sitting," fixing a woman in this posture yielded double the results when training intimate muscle control, honing her passage into an exquisite paradise.

Glancing downward, he saw that polished metal rods were inserted into both of their lower apertures, rhythmic contractions slowly swallowing and extruding the steel shafts.

"Did you... endure this as well?"

Richie asked the woman at his side.

A haunted shadow crossed the woman's face as if recalling past agony, but her professional smile swiftly returned. "Of course. It is the most fundamental conditioning. Hostesses rotate daily; tomorrow, I shall be sitting there as well... ah."

She let out a soft sigh that tugged at the heartstrings.

Right at that moment, a sharp metallic chime rang out—ding!

"Someone is in for misery," she murmured.

Her face twisted in remembered dread, recalling her own ordeal when she first arrived; if either metal rod slipped out, there would be hell to suffer tonight—a brutal flogging at best, or far more terrifying torments awaiting them, a thought that made her shudder uncontrollably.

Reading the terror in her eyes, Richie deduced what was about to happen. His heart was soft after all; moreover, he had several days of free time before his rendezvous, and rather than hunting for an inn in the city, he might as well treat this estate as his lodging. He required female companionship either way, so why not perform an act of mercy?

"Could I... have that woman... please?"

Richie asked.

It was by no means difficult to arrange, and before long, a remarkably stunning woman was brought before him; she was extraordinarily beautiful, her looks easily rivaling Nora's. Yet at present she presented a pitiable sight: her buttocks were swollen and bruised from repeated beatings, and her intimate flesh was severely inflamed as well, as if having endured even more sadistic torment.

"What happened to her?"

Richie whispered to the hostess who had escorted him in.

The hostess looked somewhat uneasy; glancing left and right to ensure no one was eavesdropping, she leaned close to whisper into Richie's ear, "Rivalries run rampant even here. Wretched as we all are, there are always those who scheme day and night to step on others to climb higher. She was simply favored too much by patrons, which bred bitter resentment in certain hearts; they plotted against her behind the scenes, sabotaging her until she was cast down into this wretched state."

Richie sighed quietly to himself. It seemed that petty internal strife was a universal poison, festering wherever people gathered, without exception.