Shield of the Rose

Along the grand highway, a long military convoy crawled forward at a measured pace. In an era consumed by the flames of total war, such a spectacle was utterly commonplace. Yet what set this convoy apart from ordinary military columns was a remarkably elongated vehicle positioned squarely in its center.

This peculiar conveyance was constructed by coupling six heavy equipment haulers end-to-end, joined together by reinforced steel hinges and seamless sheets of thick leather.

Equipment haulers were inherently devoid of glass windows, featuring only narrow ventilation slits; on this bespoke transport, even those narrow slits had been completely sealed shut.

Richie resided inside this vehicle; it had been fabricated specifically for his needs.

Originally, he might have lingered in Stein for several more weeks, but following the brazen infiltration and assault, the Coalition High Command concluded that Stein was far too volatile and chaotic, firmly insisting that both he and Old Master Manu'em evacuate immediately.

Old Master Manu'em had invited Richie to accompany him to the Free City of Capecci—a sanctuary and paradise for scholars and armor designers, where Master Espol, Madame Shar, and Uncle were currently residing, and where the headquarters of the Battle Armor Craftsmen's Guild was situated.

Richie had been genuinely tempted by the invitation, yet he was obligated to proceed first to the City of Heaven, Nakar-Amosdock, where his mother was still waiting!

Furthermore, following the formal merger of Squad 105 and Velia's legion, the combined formation was slated to be garrisoned in Nakar-Amosdock; he could hardly abandon his companions.

Consequently, he had politely declined the old master's offer.

Previously, Manu'em had requisitioned a custom laboratory hauler on his behalf, but Richie had gifted that vehicle to Emily. And because the Stein manufacturing facility still required lingering operational oversight, Emily could not depart just yet, leaving that vehicle behind in Stein. This current elongated transport had been hastily modified upon his departure.

Yet the scientific facade was purely a cover. Without Emily and her technical team around, even if inspiration struck him, he possessed no means to realize his concepts.

He was a grandmaster, yet an entirely unconventional one who couldn't even operate standard laboratory testing apparatuses.

Inside this mammoth vehicle, there stood only a row of elongated tables. Upon these tables rested no precision instruments or measuring devices—only people: naked women, one after another.

These women lay with their slender legs raised high and their hips arched, their exquisite feminine folds parted in eager anticipation, waiting to be violently impaled.

Richie stood beside the table, his phallus buried deeply within a female knight's cunt, while his testicles were swallowed entirely into her tight, puckered anus. The female knight's anal sphincter pulsed and rippled rhythmically, while a slender metallic thread trailed outward from within.

Richie relished the powerful, rhythmic clenching and the undulating waves traveling through her velvety walls.

These female knights had all evolved into consummate masters of sexual arts; while not quite matching the peerless finesse of Lina or Nora, they were by no means inferior to the other members of Squad 105.

Commensurate with their ever-improving bedroom technique, their physical stamina and endurance for intercourse had multiplied significantly; conquering them was no longer the effortless affair it had been in the beginning.

From the more than two thousand female knights under Velia's command, he had handpicked these twenty-seven women.

They were his private concubines, and his willing sexual slaves.

In choosing them, his primary criterion had been beauty. While female knights were generally attractive, beauty had distinct tiers; these twenty-seven were all one-in-a-hundred beauties, matching Lina's tier at the very least, with several possessing ethereal grace comparable to Nora, Aisha, or Christina.

Yet sheer facial beauty had not been the sole qualifying factor. Aside from the most gorgeous among them, each of the others possessed unique physical endowments: exotic vaginal structures, voluptuous silhouettes, or skin as smooth as unblemished satin...

Ever since taking to the road, he had indulged in this uninhibited, hedonistic existence; even sovereign emperors would likely envy his scandalous fortune.

Each day, he would first complete dual cultivation with two hundred female knights. This was his solemn pledge to Velia, as well as his official duty—undeniably the most joyful profession in the known world. Afterward, the remainder of his time was entirely his own to command. When his spirits ran high, he would continue with additional pairings, but for the majority of the day, he simply dallied with his chosen sex slaves, exploring endless permutations of erotic indulgence.

Though branded his sex slaves, these trysts were entirely consensual; Richie had never coerced a single soul. For these women to submit so enthusiastically to his wild desires was driven purely by visceral addiction; by now, let alone these twenty-seven, the other female knights in the legion were equally insatiable. Those who had failed to make the cut harbored profound, lingering disappointment.

Suddenly, a fierce, undulating spasm gripped his shaft from below. Richie knew this female knight was approaching her absolute limit. His hands swiftly curled behind her rounded buttocks, the ten fingertips of both hands pressing firmly into specific acupressure nodes.

With a subtle release of latent internal energy through his fingertips, the female knight's body snapped taut like a bowstring, her sharp fingernails digging violently into Richie's bare shoulders.

In the past, such fierce scratching would have carved bloody furrows into his flesh. But having tempered his physiology through the 'Vajra' art, his skin was tougher than cured rawhide; far from bleeding, not even a faint nail indentation remained.

Richie's fingers applied gentle, pulsing pressure, deliberately prolonging the peak of her climax. Any woman was hopelessly enraptured by the transcendent euphoria of an extended orgasm; this was one of his primary secrets to binding these proud female warriors into complete addiction.

His other purpose in doing so was that only through this absolute exhaustion could he coax the very last droplet of combat aura from her meridians.

This was a profound physiological phenomenon he had discovered only recently: when a female knight's native combat aura was thoroughly drained, her internal vessels entered a transient state of near-vacuum. Injecting foreign aura at this precise juncture yielded the absolute highest absorption efficiency.

It was essentially identical to the breakthrough he had observed with Ariana and her companions back then.

The female knight's climax raged for two full minutes. Following a final, breathless shudder, her entire frame went limp, collapsing flat upon the table.

Richie did not withdraw his phallus from her warm, pulsing depths. Instead, he channeled the concentrated clump of extracted combat aura, circulating it through his own meridians.

This was precisely why he had assembled these specific women. When recruiting them, a clear agreement had been struck: they were to yield unconditionally to his desires, satisfying his physical and energetic needs to one hundred percent, while he in turn guaranteed their elevation to the rank of Ace Knight.

This time, he had adopted a strategy of paying in advance before collecting the goods. Over the course of a single intensive week, he had successfully propelled the vast majority of these twenty-seven women across the threshold into the Ace tier. The handful who had yet to break through merely lacked a spark of spiritual enlightenment, for which Richie was powerless; enlightenment was something no external mentor could bestow.

The reason he had forged this arrangement was to determine whether elevating the quality of his partners' combat aura would reduce its rate of internal consumption.

The experimental results validated his hypothesis: once combat aura was refined and condensed into taut threads, its rate of dissipation was merely one-third that of its diffuse, unstructured state.

The combat aura harvested from this female knight gathered within Richie's core like a tangled skein of yarn.

He paid the entanglement little mind; after all, combat aura was not hemp rope and would not form permanent knots.

Casually teasing out a single luminous thread of aura, Richie guided it through his operational circuits.

Identical strands of refined aura were already woven throughout his anatomy, forming an immense, luminous web encasing his meridians—all harvested from other female knights. Several of the strands appeared somewhat dim and faded, the result of continuous metabolic expenditure.

The tangled ball of fresh aura was gradually unraveled, its luminous filaments seamlessly integrating into the grand web. Richie's palms squeezed firmly against the female knight's plump buttocks.

The woman, who had just spent her climax and lay soft as melted wax, began trembling uncontrollably once more. Sensations were stirring within her flesh, yet her exhausted body could barely endure another wave.

This was the very aspect they found most agonizing, yet simultaneously most intoxicating—a bottomless abyss from which none of them could tear themselves away.

Richie was not tormenting her; he was actively infusing foreign spiritual energy into her depleted channels.

Sensing that a faint, delicate spark of native combat aura had regenerated within her core, Richie finally withdrew his shaft.

The instant that thick, engorged phallus slipped free, an expression of profound, reluctant longing washed over the female knight's flushed face. Her swollen vaginal orifice pulsed open and shut repeatedly, resembling the famished beak of a fledgling bird begging for sustenance.

A thick, milky-white froth of mingled fluids poured from her passage, cascading down her inner thighs to the edge of the wooden table, dripping steadily onto the floor in long, viscous ribbons.

She was not the only one; all the surrounding female knights were in identical states. None of them could comprehend how Richie managed it: no mortal man could possibly generate such an astronomical volume of semen, and privately they constantly debated what that miraculous essence truly was.

Yet one truth was undeniable: having that warm, potent vitality surge into their innermost depths was an ecstasy beyond mortal words.

The female knight shifted her hips slightly and let out a soft wince. Submerged in the euphoric haze of passion earlier, she had felt no discomfort, but now the ache made itself known.

Indeed, every woman present displayed heavily swollen mounds, their vaginal lips and anal rims flushed a deep, bruised violet.

Within the legion, as long as a knight enjoyed daily trysts with Richie, avoiding swollen intimacies was virtually impossible; over time, it had evolved into a coveted badge of supreme favor. The more favored the knight, the more pronounced the swelling.

Meanwhile, Richie had already moved to the side of the adjacent female knight.

The woman had been waiting impatiently; the moment he stepped within reach, her hand darted out, seizing his erection and guiding it hungrily into her wet folds.

"Impatient little slut, couldn't hold it in?"

Richie brought his palm down with a crisp slap against her bare hip, the sharp crack echoing through the cabin.

"Are you a sadist or something?" the female knight complained with a wanton moan.

"Did you only just realize that?"

Richie pinched her rump, his hand sliding smoothly downward until his fingertips brushed against her puckered anus.

With a firm upward thrust, he lodged a vibrating sphere deep inside. Just as with Squad 105, this toy had become their 'standard equipment'. Yet none of them could endure its maximum frequency; dialing it to merely one-third was enough to drive them into weeping hysterics.

The female knight curled her limbs inward, her eyes clamped shut as her torso shuddered violently in erratic tremors. Despite her brazen, wild temperament, her physical endurance for erotic stimuli was no greater than her peers.

Richie began thrusting with rhythmic power, relishing the intense friction. The woman he was currently riding possessed an authentic 'peerless passage', naturally endowed with concentric muscular rings that gripped his length like clenched fists.

Innate anatomical perfection combined with rigorously drilled sexual arts made bedding this woman an extraordinary delight.

He plunged his hips relentlessly.

A sharp rapping against the cabin door abruptly interrupted Richie's pleasure.

Standing outside was the golden-haired female knight. Only prior to their departure had Richie learned her name was Victoria.

Because their departure had been moved forward unexpectedly, countless administrative plans had been thrown into disarray—the formal merger had not even concluded. Consequently, the legion had been bifurcated: one detachment remained in Stein to finalize the amalgamation, while the other was tasked with 'escorting' Richie to the City of Heaven, Nakar-Amosdock. And this escort column was commanded personally by Victoria.

This woman perpetually wore a cold, severe countenance, and had not shared his bed for a considerable time. On several occasions, Richie had even glimpsed her wiping away silent tears in secluded corners.

Richie had never inquired about the cause; he had witnessed identical scenes countless times across the war—almost certainly a loved one or kinsman lost on the frontlines.

War forged men into iron, but it equally hardened their hearts. In his earlier days, encountering such grief would have moved him to mourn alongside them. Today, aside from a faint, fleeting melancholia in the recesses of his soul, he felt virtually nothing.

Dressing hastily, Richie spritzed a generous amount of cologne across his tunic. The cabin reeked overpoweringly of semen and female musk, as did his own skin; if outsiders caught scent of it, the humiliation would be unbearable.

Stepping down from the hauler, Richie realized the convoy had not yet arrived at its destination.

He looked around, puzzled.

"We will soon enter the territory of Nakar-Amosdock. Even if merely putting on a show, we must make it look convincing," the golden-haired knight explained coldly, raising a signaling hand.

Another equipment hauler rumbled forward from the rear. Once it came to a halt, a technical crew disembarked, swinging the cargo doors open to reveal an array of scientific apparatuses and measuring consoles.

"It's not as though I asked for all this in the first place," Richie muttered defensively, feeling somewhat aggrieved. While he certainly reveled in the hedonism, it was their faction that had approached him initially.

Nonetheless, he dared not voice such complaints before this blonde warrior. Ever since witnessing Victoria's ruthless ferocity that fateful night, he harbored a lingering dread of her.

A few moments later, the female knights from within the elongated hauler disembarked one by one. Though fully dressed in military uniform, their flushed cheeks still bore unmistakable traces of recent passion, and several stumbled with unsteady, trembling legs.

"Your capabilities seem to be expanding with each passing day," Victoria remarked with a peculiar, complicated cadence as she watched the women alight.

Back then, over the span of an entire month, merely nine female knights had broken through their bottlenecks to attain the Ace rank. Yet now, in the span of a single week, twenty-one out of twenty-seven had successfully ascended—an efficiency that bordered on the miraculous.

Prior to this cohort, the last member of Squad 105 to breach her bottleneck had been Margaret, and that girl had dual-cultivated with Richie for well over a year.

Victoria couldn't help but wonder whether a day might come when this youth could turn any ordinary female knight into an Ace simply by bedding her once.

"I merely stumbled upon a few operational tricks, though the energetic cost is immense," Richie replied evasively, knowing there was no need to elaborate—Victoria herself had advanced through the very same method. The so-called trick lay in driving the climax as high as humanly possible, while artificially stretching its duration to the absolute limit.

He did not fully grasp the underlying metaphysical mechanics; the only plausible hypothesis was that during intense orgasm, spiritual energy surged to its absolute apex. It was likely for this reason that breakthroughs achieved through sexual dual-cultivation yielded foundations vastly superior to conventional breakthroughs.

While unable to scientifically prove the hypothesis, he was entirely certain that mental strength exerted a colossal influence upon a knight's combat prowess.

Within Squad 105, Lina was ostensibly the most formidable combatant, followed closely by Master Dana and Merlin. Yet Richie strongly suspected that if a duel to the death occurred, the elusive Nora—who never displayed her full depth—might well fight them to a standstill.

Nora also commanded a sensory 'field'—and her 'field' was noticeably more refined and expansive than Richie's own. While others remained oblivious to this fact, Richie was acutely aware of it.

Projecting this trajectory forward, once all of them attained the rank of Honor Knight, the tactical superiority conferred by immense mental strength would become overwhelmingly pronounced; by then, let alone Lina, perhaps even that genius girl Trislie would have to bow her head in defeat.

His primary motivation for declining Manu'em's invitation to Capecci was his burning desire to rigorously investigate the mysteries of the mind and spirit.

And mentioning spiritual energy instantly brought to mind psychics—which in turn inevitably evoked the City of Heaven and the Parkington imperial bloodline. The direct lineage of the Saint Emperor had perpetually produced the absolute mightiest psychics of every historical epoch, gifted with mental arts no other psychics could ever emulate.

"I require a favor from you," Victoria murmured softly. "I wish to cultivate 'Vajra'."

As she spoke, Victoria compressed her combat aura into a laser-thin acoustic beam, directing the words straight into Richie's ear. This was an advanced technique accessible only to Ace Knights; mastering it allowed one to whisper intimate confidences without seeking physical seclusion.

Richie's immediate instinct was to refuse. Cultivating 'Vajra' was not conceptually difficult, yet it demanded astronomical quantities of combat aura. He barely had enough to nourish his own cultivation; where could he spare surplus energy for others?

"Name your price. I am prepared to pay whatever you demand."

Victoria spoke without the faintest hesitation.

Richie had zero doubt regarding the authenticity of her pledge.

The dilemma was that he required virtually nothing. Fame, fortune, aristocratic rank—in his current standing, he lacked none of them. As for women, that went without saying; his domestic obligations were already overwhelming, and having too many women had become his most exasperating burden.

"My own reserves are running in deficit..." Richie sought to deflect.

"That does not matter; I can wait," Victoria replied with absolute resolve. Ever since she discovered that Richie was cultivating the legendary Vajra art, the ambition had taken root in her mind: "Furthermore, my pledge takes effect immediately. Whatever you wish me to do, I will obey."

"Whatever I wish?"

Richie tilted his head, studying the golden-haired beauty. In a deliberately provocative gesture, he thrust his hand directly between Victoria's thighs, kneading her crotch through her breeches with aggressive force.

They were standing on an open highway without the slightest screen, with dozens of female knights looking on. Victoria was a woman who prized her pride above all else; in the past, she would have flared with murderous outrage, yet now she endured the public molestation with clenched teeth.

Richie was secretly startled; he realized this woman was deadly serious.

"Give me a reason," Richie said, pulling his hand away.

"I must avenge someone. And the person I must kill possesses terrifying strength."

Speaking of vengeance, Victoria's tone was remarkably serene, devoid of visceral hatred; to her, vengeance was merely a debt of honor—an obligation owed to her late husband in name.

"I would rather help you kill him myself; that might actually be simpler," Richie remarked offhandedly. "Who is the target?"

"That works as well. However, I must caution you: the difficulty is rather steep."

Victoria offered a cold, mirthless smirk as she locked eyes with Richie. "His name is Anderson—the newly ascended Quasi-Glorious Knight of the Varedin Empire."

The instant that name fell upon his ears, Richie's expression froze solid. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined that Victoria's mortal enemy was that very man!

A rueful grimace spread across his face. Fate truly bound him to this Quasi-Glorious warrior: the very first supreme master he had encountered upon awakening his powers had been Anderson, and that encounter remained vividly etched into his memory. Later, Squad 105 had clashed with Anderson's unit, suffering their most crushing, humiliating defeat. During the mission to rescue Lina, their paths had crossed yet again.

In Richie's perception, Anderson was one of the exceedingly rare Varedin commanders for whom he harbored a degree of respect.

Nor had Richie forgotten the agonizing mental spike he had absorbed—reflecting on the incident, the assassin who had nearly claimed his life back then had almost certainly been Anderson.

A massive headache throbbed against his temples. Richie felt thoroughly trapped on the tiger's back.

Confident though he was in his martial abilities, challenging a Quasi-Glorious Knight was something he dared not even contemplate.

Having experienced the excruciating agony of a mental spike, he understood better than anyone that the Quasi-Glorious tier was an impassable chasm; above and below that line existed two fundamentally divergent planes of existence, separated by an insurmountable disparity in power.

"You may have to wait a very long time," Richie replied, adopting a non-committal compromise without specifying whether he intended to slay Anderson personally or help her master Vajra.

"Then it is settled."

Victoria leaned her body against his frame, rolling her hips subtly to brush her pelvis against Richie's thigh, thoroughly indifferent to the gaze of her onlookers: "I never renege on a promise. From this moment forth, you may do with me as you please; my entire being belongs to you."

This strikingly fierce beauty placed immense psychological pressure upon Richie. Her declaring this was effectively holding his honor hostage to his word.

Richie felt he had taken a colossal loss. The balance of trade was utterly skewed: he had already enjoyed this woman's body inside and out; taking things further offered only bizarre, perverse games. While he enjoyed intense bedroom antics on occasion, overindulgence grew tedious, whereas the price he was required to pay was unimaginably steep. Unfortunately, the words had already left his lips, and taking them back was impossible. Richie was gripped by deep regret, secretly warning himself to exercise supreme caution whenever speaking in the future.

The elongated hauler was thoroughly washed down inside and out, and the scientific instrumentation was reloaded onto its mounts, finally restoring a semblance of an authentic mobile laboratory.

With preparations complete, the convoy resumed its journey.

After passing two major highway junctions, traffic surged significantly. The vehicles passing to and fro were likewise military transports, each bearing the emblem of a spiked Briar Crown—the sacred royal insignia of the Parkington Holy Kingdom.

Legend held that when the first Saint Emperor adopted this emblem as the imperial crest, it was intended as a solemn warning to his descendants: despite its gleaming magnificence, anyone who sought to wear this crown had to be prepared to endure agonizing torment; and wearing it required eternal vigilance, lest one's brow be torn to bloody ribbons.

It was an ancient legend, yet observing how Parkington had endured through millennia, with every successive sovereign governing with meticulous prudence and diligence, the legend was almost certainly rooted in historical truth.

Throughout the drive, Richie closely observed the passing convoys and their passengers.

Those riding inside were not exclusively soldiers; vast numbers were ordinary civilians, traveling with families and worldly possessions in the manner of displaced refugees.

While he couldn't discern their exact purpose, he surmised that the Parkington authorities had calculated reasons for this population transfer.

As the largest and most ancient empire on the continent, Parkington had weathered countless cataclysms across the long corridors of time.

Aside from the Little Princess, Richie had never interacted with native Parkington citizens, having merely heard from travelers that Parkington folk were conservative and rigid—perhaps influenced by their ancestral Saint Emperors, their society was renowned for extreme caution. Yet observing them firsthand, his impression was entirely different: his foremost impression was how flamboyant they appeared—their clothing was remarkably colorful!

In Monstoke, men's attire was invariably muted in tone—charcoal grey, slate blue, or deep umber.

These Parkington citizens, by contrast, donned clothing of striking, almost garish hues: light-colored tunics in sky-blue, meadow-green, lemon-yellow, and even pale carnation pink. While their lower garments were dark, they were consistently trimmed with starkly contrasting stripes or ornate embroidery.

Seeing such vibrant, passionately colorful garments made it difficult to believe their wearers were a somber, rigid people.

After driving forward for over an hour, architecture began emerging along both sides of the highway.

In Monstoke, whether in Penece or Glaslova, buildings lining the highway were invariably industrial factories, supply warehouses, or retail storefronts. Here, by contrast, the roadside was lined entirely with private residences. Each house was charmingly picturesque, yet no two were identical; generous buffers separated the residences from the road—spanning several meters to over a dozen meters—landscaped into blooming flower gardens or lush manicured lawns. Most were low, single-story pavilions, and even two-story dwellings maintained a remarkably modest, sprawling profile.

Suddenly, the female knight driving the hauler sighed with open envy: "I had heard long ago that every household in Parkington lived in an estate villa; it truly is so."

"A villa?"

Richie wasn't sure how to categorize them.

Perhaps due to regional sensibilities, such low-profile houses were ubiquitous outside Glaslova; finding unclaimed land beyond the city perimeter was trivial, and building a house upon it invited interference from no one.

In Glaslova, affluent citizens preferred residing in high-rise apartments, with the fifth and sixth floors being the most coveted—elevated, tranquil, offering sweeping vistas from private balconies that imparted a sense of looking down upon mortal existence.

As for the truly wealthy, they also inhabited villas, yet those estates were vertical towers rising at least four stories high; greater height was the universal symbol of prestige and power.

"Parkington possesses vast territory with a relatively modest population density. Furthermore, supported by so many vassal states, they rarely cultivate grain domestically, requiring minimal agricultural acreage. Surplus land is naturally dedicated to residential construction," the female knight explained from the driver's couch.

"In that case, the cities here must be enormous?" Richie asked.

"Indeed they are. Any city of modest size is encircled by a cluster of satellite municipalities. The City of Heaven, Nakar-Amosdock, is the largest of them all, flanked by seventy-two satellite cities. The largest among those satellites rival Penece in geographic footprint—though I refer strictly to surface area."

The female knight was evidently familiar with the region.

"You have visited before?" Richie inquired.

"I have, though I never entered the true City of Heaven," the knight replied with a tinge of resignation. "Parkington society delineates social caste with extreme rigor, imposing strict tier restrictions across various domains. Take those seventy-two satellite cities: they are stratified into six distinct grades, with different classes residing in segregated zones. I have only ever gained access to a second-tier satellite. As for the true City of Heaven, let alone foreigners like us, it remains restricted even to their own common citizenry, opening to the public exclusively during grand imperial festivals."

Richie shook his head in distaste. "Utterly suffocating. Our Republic is far better."

The female knight curled her lip, remarking cynically, "It is much the same. Does the Republic not have countless sanctuaries barred to the public? They simply mask them beneath the label of 'private property'."

A year ago, Richie would never have grasped the underlying meaning, but today he understood completely.

In the Republic, numerous enclaves operated under the guise of private clubs and exclusive salons—ostensibly modest signboards erected merely to facilitate monopolization by the ruling elite.

Blatant, rigid social caste versus an invisible web of disenfranchisement masked beneath a veneer of egalitarianism—which was truly more suffocating? Richie found it difficult to judge.

"Perhaps the grass is always greener on the other side. Every time I visit Parkington, I feel the people here enjoy greater authentic freedom; at the very least, within their assigned social tier, they suffer zero arbitrary oppression," the female knight murmured, glancing at Richie. Realizing her critique might sound harsh, she felt a momentary twinge of regret, but remembering her passenger was a rebel who hadn't hesitated to execute a former president, her anxiety dissolved.

"And do higher castes refrain from oppressing lower castes?" Richie chuckled sardonically, placing zero faith in the existence of absolute justice.

"You are unfamiliar with this land; in time, you will understand. In Parkington, high-caste nobility rarely deign to visit lower-tier enclaves. If an aristocrat causes trouble in such places, he is universally ridiculed by his peers for bringing humiliation upon himself," the knight explained with a grin.

This was also a subtle warning to Richie: wandering recklessly through Parkington could easily invite public mockery. In the past, Richie's embarrassment would have affected only himself, but today, he was the living standard of their legion; if he lost face, the entire formation was humiliated alongside him.

The hauler slowed its pace as residential compounds multiplied along the boulevard. Though maintaining that sprawling, single-story profile, their sheer volume transformed the landscape.

Suddenly, Richie's eyes brightened as he spotted a sprawling commercial plaza.

Calling it a plaza was somewhat generous; in Richie's estimation, it was merely an expansive clearing crammed with a labyrinth of retail shops.

In stark contrast to the diverse, whimsical architecture of the residential estates, every single shop in this commercial district appeared cast from an identical mold: uniform, cube-like three-story structures housing storefronts on both ground and upper levels, interlinked by elevated aerial bridges, forming a singular, continuous architectural hive.

It was an unapologetically utilitarian design, engineering the maximum possible retail density into the minimum footprint. Yet Richie found it puzzling: if land was so abundant, why construct commercial centers in this compressed manner? Was it a lack of capital? Or because this was a lower-tier satellite city where grand commercial architecture was deemed unwarranted?

Questions swirled through Richie's mind. Arriving in unfamiliar lands always bred a sense of disorientation; back when he relocated from Glaslova to Penece, it had taken him over a month to acclimatize. Now he stood in an alien empire whose customs and cultural codes were entirely foreign.

Suddenly, another predicament struck him: he couldn't speak a single word of the Parkington tongue! Would he need an interpreter shadowing his every step?

Richie had never contemplated learning Parkington; his linguistic aptitude was virtually non-existent. During his academy days, foreign language study had been mandatory, and he had enrolled in Varedin—a course he had consistently failed. To this day, he could barely stammer a few basic pleasantries.

Previously, he had never felt inconvenienced, as all foreign grandmasters and dignitaries he met were fluent in Monstoke; at most, when legendary artificers engaged in heated debates, they would babble in arcane tongues he couldn't comprehend.

"Do you speak the local dialect?" Richie turned to ask the driver.

The female knight smiled. "Of course. During our initial years at the knight academy, the curriculum focused almost entirely on foreign languages; martial training was secondary. As a knight, one must attain fluency in at least ten languages: Parkington, Rosotto, Omore, Fransa, Sisro, Bikna, Varedin, Balmer, Doksa, and Mistol. The first six represent the six supreme empires of the world, while the latter four are our immediate neighbors."

Richie clamped his mouth shut, feeling the yawning gulf between them.

He had always assumed knights were warriors whose muscle vastly outstripped their intellect, with only a select few possessing genuine brains. Never had he imagined that every single knight was a polyglot scholar.

Yet alongside the inadequacy, a suspicion arose: if every knight was fluent in ten languages, was linguistic talent truly so universal among them?

Why had his own awakening failed to grant him this gift?

The convoy traversed one residential sector after another, each demarcated by distinct greenbelt buffer zones.

Guided by the earlier explanation, Richie now recognized these as satellite municipalities.

Just as the knight had described, even gazing from the hauler's cabin, the qualitative disparities between satellite tiers were striking. The deeper they advanced, the more opulent the estates appeared: while retaining low profiles, the masonry was incomparably finer, enclosed by towering wrought-iron railings and featuring private swimming pools.

Possessing a private pool was the universal hallmark of extreme wealth and status across all civilizations.

After an indeterminate span of time, Richie felt the hauler decelerate once more. Looking around, he noticed the grand thoroughfare was remarkably devoid of civilian traffic. Right at that moment, the distant silhouette of a colossal metropolis materialized through the haze.

It was a city of staggering proportions, appearing far vaster than Penece.

Yet Richie couldn't say for certain, for when Penece first loomed on the horizon, it too had projected an overwhelming majesty, stretching endlessly to the left and right beyond the visual horizon.

The city before him possessed that exact monumental grandeur.

To make an authentic comparison, one would have to ascend high into the sky and gaze downward from the heavens.

As the metropolis drew nearer, Richie's astonishment deepened exponentially.

He couldn't help but marvel: when he had first laid eyes on Penece, his primary impression had been that its outer suburbs resembled the bustling downtown core of Glaslova—that Penece was essentially Glaslova's central commercial district magnified a hundredfold.

Now, beholding this imperial capital, an identical epiphany seized him.

The true marrow of Penece was concentrated within District 1, District 3, and District 7: District 1 housed Victory Plaza and its five flanking squares, forming the absolute epicenter of the state; District 3 was the commercial heart, eight dense blocks adjoining District 1 hosting Penece's four most illustrious trading boulevards where every inch of earth was worth its weight in gold; while District 7 served as the diplomatic quarter, densely packed with luxury hotels and elite dining halls—the very embodiment of supreme luxury.

And the city sprawling before his eyes was nothing less than the synthesis of those three elite districts combined into a singular, colossal entity!

Yet what truly stunned Richie went far beyond geographic scale.

Penece boasted numerous imposing palaces concentrated within District 1, though in Richie's view, their symbolic grandeur vastly outstripped their utilitarian purpose. And indeed, their actual usage was minimal: the Red Palace stood as the supreme symbol of republican authority, yet high government officials never worked within its chambers, utilizing it solely for grand assemblies or receiving foreign ambassadors, conducting daily administration within a five-story office block a hundred meters away.

Here, by contrast, no matter which direction he turned his gaze, palaces lined the avenues!

Palaces stretched endlessly—in numerous sectors, palace complexes were interlinked directly with adjacent palaces.

Gazing upon such relentless opulence bred an almost surreal visual exhaustion.

Richie exhaled a long, whistling breath: "Whew... this country is terrifyingly wealthy."

"Naturally," the female knight murmured, her attention similarly wandering as she drank in the surrounding splendor. Though she had visited Parkington, she had never penetrated this sacred core.

Her sole advantage over Richie was that she had heard descriptions from senior knights and was somewhat prepared psychologically.

"Who on earth resides in all these palaces?"

The image of the Little Princess surfaced in Richie's mind, followed swiftly by the majestic silhouette of Empress Annielia—the only two Parkington nationals he personally knew.

Suddenly, Richie felt a familiar surge of heat stiffening his loins.

It was profoundly disrespectful, yet biologically impossible to restrain. Richie felt a twinge of exasperation; it seemed he too would need to commission specialized padded undergarments.

Yet he understood all too well what had triggered the reaction.

Thinking of Her Majesty and the Princess had involuntarily evoked their shared bloodline kin—Lina.

Lina was inherently wanton; she openly admitted that such was her true nature. Her descent into debauchery had not stemmed solely from worldly trauma; that crisis had merely delivered the shove propelling her over the precipice. Even without those trials, she doubted she would ever have remained a modest, well-behaved lady.

When discussing the matter in the past, Lina had attributed it entirely to her imperial pedigree.

The bloodline of the Saint Emperor had indeed produced a glittering pantheon of legendary, scandalous sovereigns, both male and female. The most renowned among them was Empress Mary II, celebrated as the Rose Empress. Her Majesty had married six times throughout her life, maintaining three thousand male concubines in her retinue. Her most legendary exploit was transforming her imperial bedchamber into a state council hall, managing national governance directly from her sheets, with the entirety of her cabinet ministers serving as her intimate bedmates.

Yet though decadent, the Rose Empress was by no means foolish: when selecting ministers, she evaluated the magnitude of their endowments alongside their administrative genius. Under the Rose Dynasty, the Parkington Holy Kingdom had enjoyed an era of unprecedented, dazzling glory.

With such an illustrious matriarch gracing the Saint Emperor's bloodline, one could hardly blame Richie for letting his carnal imagination run wild.