City of Sin

Book 6, 9

Situation

At first, Richard maintained his superior position. Flowsand was gasping for every breath as he continued to thrust into her without end, looking like she would almost faint from the sensation. However, as the minutes turned into hours, she never once fully gave up again.

Eventually his ferocity wore out, and he had to slow down to catch his own breath. When he was left with no choice but to take a break, she just wrapped her hands around his neck and flipped him over onto the couch.

Richard had never won this battle in the past, and despite his best efforts he didn’t do so now. Eventually, he just grunted in resignation and fell to the ground, dragging Flowsand with him.

She was the first to sit back up.

The only consolation Richard had was the sight of Flowsand’s perfect body as she stretched, sweat beading out from every part of her beautiful figure. She let out a long yawn, her eyes as bright as the stars in the night, while he just lay gasping on the floor to recover.

A few minutes later, Flowsand reached over and slapped his rear, giggling disdainfully, “An ursa warlord wants to compete with the Eternal Dragon? Haha, Hahahaha!”

......

Richard only climbed out of bed when the sun was hanging high in the sky. His entire body felt sore, and he didn’t even feel like he had the strength to summon some ice water to refresh himself with. In fact, it was all he could do to stumble his way to the bathroom and dunk his head in a bucket of normal water.

As he started to stretch the pain away, he heard Flowsand’s hoarse voice sounding outside the building. He walked over to the window and looked out, watching as she spread the faith of the Eternal Dragon to a dozen or so young children.

Beside her was a handsome young man whose body was radiating divine power, the sight of which caused a small twinkle in Richard’s eyes. This was Caesar, Baron Fontaine’s son. His late friend’s child had grown up to be a level 14 priest in the blink of an eye, possessing outstanding accomplishments in life.

Time was amazing.

The children in the courtyard also had small traces of divine energy within them as well. Flowsand was just like the most beautiful lotus in a garden, the centre of everything that could bring forth the sun and rain upon her will.

By now, all of Richard’s followers were rushing back to Bluewater City. Some had received the message through their soul link, while the others had been informed by the broodmother’s drones. Still, Kellac was the only other one who had managed to get here in time, meaning he, Gangdor, Waterflower, Flowsand, and Rosie were the only members of his core team present in the oasis city. Richard decided to get what he could done before the rest arrived, asking Gangdor for a report on the status of Bluewater and the Crimson Dukedom.

As the meeting progressed, he realised that the Dukedom was doing much better than he could ever have expected. It was now a major power in Faelor, and despite its nominal attachment to the Sequoia Kingdom, many privately called it the Crimson Kingdom. It seemed like a simple change, but this was the demarcation between any noble’s land and a territory that was truly to be feared for its might.

And feared it was. The Crimson Dukedom was no weaker than a proper empire, with a population of more than five million, an enormous number of slaves, and a standing army of 100,000 soldiers backed by a slave force of 50,000. The slave army was special in that three years of service there with a certain level of military achievements qualified these slaves to become regular citizens of the country; this made them fight tooth and nail in every battle.

On top of this powerful army was an additional reserve army of 150,000 trained soldiers, maintained thanks to the huge wealth generated by planar trade as well as being the trade centre between the east and west. This income would slowly stabilise in the future, dropping to an acceptable level, but until then it supported the country’s rapid development.

Right now, the average equipment of the Crimson Army could match the equipment of the most powerful regiments of the Iron Triangle Empire. Even the slaves’ equipment could match those of the Iron Triangle soldiers. In only a few years, the Crimson Dukedom had surpassed a centuries-old empire’s accumulations.

Of course, the core of the army didn’t come from recruited soldiers at all. Tens of thousands of the broodmother’s knights were spread out everywhere, many of them centaur knights. These centaur knights weren’t particularly special, but they did away with the layer of cooperation between rider and horse so they consumed less of her focus to create. She could spawn twelve every day.

There was a race of centaurs indigenous to Faelor, but their civilisation was crude and they focused more on brute strength in battle than any real skill. The ones produced by the broodmother were armed to the teeth, quite literally. The half-orc-like fangs couldn’t be discounted in a critical moment, a weapon that the native centaurs did not possess at all.

Perhaps the broodmother took up Richard’s own preferences in battle, but she had also made a thousand bats and more than a dozen cloned brains that were spread out all across the borders to keep an eye on the nearby countries. Any dispatched troops would be discovered immediately.

At the same time, the broodmother had also formed an air force consisting of level 13 lightning drakes, an entire three hundred of them capable of shooting grade 6 lightning spells on command. They could only use the lightning thrice before they needed to rest, but that was more than enough force to deal with saints and grand mages. Even a sub-legendary expert wouldn’t dare to take such a concentrated attack head-on.

Finally, she had also redesigned the level 14 elite shadowspear knights. The unit had 200 drones and had never participated in battle before, sitting in the Land of Turmoil all this while, but she mentioned that this was because even Raymond couldn’t fully use their powers in combat.

Although she was still stuck at level 9, the broodmother had finished all preparations to hit level 10. The only thing she lacked was divinity; she had 600 units stored within her already, but 500 units of that would be taken up to create the avatar. The avatar also needed about 10 million gold’s worth of other materials, weighing almost 20,000 tonnes in total. Even the astral chrysalis had to spend quite a few trips to ferry everything back and forth.

Richard’s followers hadn’t stopped advancing as he did either. Gangdor was already a saint, while Kellac and Zendrall had hit level 16. Tiramisu had advanced once more only a year ago, and was now a terrifying level 19. Only Phaser and Olar were left, both stuck at level 17, but the difference was that Olar was limited by talent and his choice of being both an archer and bard while Phaser was actually using the broodmother’s help to suppress her growth. The broodmother could implant a number of abilities directly into her body to boost the saint ability she would get, but that needed level 10.

The three goddesses were thriving as well, their rate of expansion surprising even when considering all history. Only the greater gods could have such momentum. The Goddesses of the Forest and the Hunt were on the verge of becoming intermediate gods, while the Goddess of Spring Water had already made it to that level. They had more than 100,000 strong believers combined, with many times that number in casual worshippers.

A number of wanderers flocked to the Crimson Dukedom every day in the search for a better life, strengthening all of the country’s internal workings. Urban construction, national laws, and standard of living were all amongst the best in all of Faelor. Richard still hadn’t let up on attracting more settlers, and these settlers quickly bolstered his army and the faith. The best situation was with the casual worshippers, who were now completely in his hands. Those people cared far more about the bread on their table than any deities.

In the words of Gangdor, Richard currently had the goddesses by their tits. The three only grew more and more entangled with him, cementing their betrayal of their own plane. He didn’t know whether they had already identified that he was an invader, but he didn’t particularly care either. It was far too late for them to back off now, and the sheer loss in faith from breaking ties with him would likely be enough to cause them to fall immediately. They were all far too invested within the Crimson Dukedom to survive its destruction.