Chapter 25 --25
Elara finished the last page of budget reconciliation just as dawn light started filtering through the windows. The work itself hadn’t been difficult—just tedious, requiring focus and cross-referencing. But what she’d found while reviewing household regulations and imperial law had made her pause multiple times, not from emotion, but from sheer logical incredulity.
The laws governing beast knights were insane.
She spread three different legal texts across the desk and read through them again, confirming what she’d absorbed the first time.
Beast knights—soldiers bred specifically for combat, enhanced strength, and magical resistance—were treated as disposable equipment. They served in the palace guard, yes, and their combat capabilities exceeded human knights by significant margins. Yet every single beast knight was placed under the command of weaker human officers who could override their decisions, assign them to menial tasks, and discipline them without oversight.
The payment structure was worse. According to imperial financial code, beast knights received no salary. Zero compensation. They were provided basic food, basic housing, and basic equipment, all classified as "maintenance costs" rather than wages. In the budget documents, they appeared in the same category as furniture repair and lamp oil.
Elara flipped to the next section—personal service obligations. Her eyes scanned the clinical legal language that translated to: beast knights assigned to royalty were required to provide any service requested, including sexual service, without refusal. Declining such an order was classified as insubordination and carried corporal punishment or execution depending on the royal’s preference.
She set that document aside and picked up another—regulations on retirement and disability.
If a beast knight became injured or crippled in service, they were "retired" to the imperial mines. Not given a pension. Not offered alternative work. Just transported directly to mining facilities where they extracted power stones—the magical equivalent of electricity in this world—under conditions that made her old-world sweatshops look humane.
The document included casualty statistics. Elara read them twice.
Average lifespan of a mining-assigned beast knight: four years.
Cause of death: mine collapse, exhaustion, malnutrition, or "environmental exposure" (which she assumed meant they froze or overheated because the facilities provided no climate protection).
Survival rate to retirement age: zero percent.