The dragon's harem

Chapter 2303: Arad’s Hibernation XV

Capsella looked back at the fifty Blood Sisters following them, and then down at the large temple. ”Do you think we can sneak inside without being detected?”

Ginger thought about it for a while and then nodded. ”Probably, if we stick to the shadows and don’t get caught.” She pointed down. ”Do you see those large buildings? We should be able to get into the temple through them, if they didn’t bury the entrance already.”

As Capsella looked closer, she could see the native people walking around the small huts spread around the massive temple, and they looked quite strange.

Slightly darker skin, far taller than most people, as all of them stood above two meters tall, their eyes were bright red, their hair ranging from black to brown, and what was even more surprising was that all of them were built like brick walls.

Some wore clothes, but many didn’t and walked around naked with just a few Decorations on their bodies, like bones or sticks. ”The men are huge, built like Lord Arad, and the women are just as dense and thick as Nina... just what are they?”

Ginger frowned. ”The result of Father’s selective breeding and teachings. The main goal in breeding them was to have a near-infinite food source; that’s why he needed them to be huge and healthy, to produce as much blood as possible.”

”Won’t they have just... perished after a while?” Even if the people of this world didn’t understand how genetics works, they could at least notice patterns and avoid them.

”They were taught to kidnap humans from nearby settlements to breed with every now and then to maintain their population. Alcott managed to enter before thanks to that.” She looked back at the Blood Sisters. ”You can hide them, right?”

Capsella nodded and looked back at the Blood Sisters. ”Would you all mind hiding in my blood? It’s fine if you don’t want to.”

One of the paladins looked at her and lifted an eyebrow. ”What we want or don’t want doesn’t matter here. If we all stroll down, they’ll see us, so we’ll hide in your blood.” She then disappeared as her body turned to blood and flew into Capsella’s bloodstream, and so did the rest of them a second later, leaving only Ginger and Capsella.

The two of them then melted into the shadows and appeared back between the thick trees right outside the temple’s walls. The two looked around, seeing a long trail coming out of the other side of the temple, past them, and into the native’s huts.

”Out of ten, with ten being a dragon and one being a baby, how sharp are their senses?” Capsella asked and Ginger stared at her.

”You really don’t know how sharp a baby’s senses are.”

Capsella frowned. ”Doesn’t matter how, god are their senses?”

”Ten is a dragon, one is a rock; I’d say they are six to seven.” Ginger pointed into the huts. ”See the geese there? Those are one of our biggest problems. They are smart, trained, and absolutely fucking loud. If they spot us, they’ll alarm the whole village in seconds.”

Capsella could already count twelve geese there, and there should be tens more spread through the whole village. ”I guess we can’t just take them down. We have to sneak past them.”

Ginger nodded and pointed up. ”There are more than eight watch towers spread across the village with guards on them, and those guards work on strict rotations, that means surveillance never drops for a second.”

Capsella nodded. ”We can take those down. A simple flick will stop blood from going to their brains, and they’ll be snoozing.”

Ginger then pointed at one of the larger huts, ”That’s where they raise hens, and not just any hens. Lightning Chook.” At that moment, one of the hens ran past them faster then a horse, leaving a massive trail of dust behind it.

Capsella was horrified as she watched the black chicken drift across the dirt road into the bushes and then burst out running even faster than before. ”That... was twice as fast as a horse!?”

”Yeah, those hens are absolute monsters, but they aren’t our problem; the cocks are the real menace.” She pointed to the large hut where the Lightning Chook from before came from, and Capsella could see a large, pig-sized Lightning Chook with black and dark-green feathers, a red, fleshy Mohawk, and golden feet that ended in large, knife-sized claws.

”That thing is a monster? I never seen such a thing before in my life.” Capsella growled and Ginger patted her shoulder. ”Don’t worry, this isn’t the worst of them all. It’s true that those cocks are smart, fast as hell, and quite perceptive, but that’s all.”

Capsella looked at the cock, and then back at Ginger. ”Geese guards, fast chickens, guard towers, and now... those big and black things? How could it get worse?”

Ginger pointed at the temple. ”Well, the danger noodles inside are our biggest problem.” The entire temple was infested with deadly snakes and large vipers that could swallow a whole cow, and those weren’t regular monsters at all, but specifically bred species that Vlad raised to protect the temple.

”The snakes inside recognize the native people by smell, so they don’t harm them. In fact, in emergencies, the native people’s kids and elderly who can’t fight escape to hide among the writhing snakes.” She pointed at the temple. ”In swarms, they are A-ranked monsters, and the large vipers can easily reach S-rank.”

Ginger stood and turned into mist, flying into the temple undetected, and Capsella followed her. When the two of them landed inside, they found themselves hiding on the roof, looking down at a disgusting and horrifying scene.

Beneath them were tens of regular people stripped naked and locked in cages, with the natives measuring themselves and testing their strength in combat to decide who gets to breed and who doesn’t.

In fact, many were already busy breeding with their captured slaves and each other. If any of the slaves resisted a lot or became a problem, they would just kick them into the viper pits, where they threw the unwanted newborn babies.

”Can’t we just burn them all?” Capsella growled, and Ginger shook her head. ”No, we need them alive to sneak into the lower chambers, and as much as they cause problems, they also keep the local monster population in check, so if we get rid of them, the nearby kingdoms would suffer a lot.”

”Is that why no kingdom had put a bounty on them, with how many people they kidnapped?” Capsella asked, and Ginger smiled. ”They did put a bounty on them, and it was Alcott who took it in the past. That’s when they captured him. Later, Alcott suggested that instead of wiping them out and then having to deal with endless waves of monsters coming out of the jungle, he suggested letting them live and just barring the entire forest, so only the fools who break that law and venture inside would get captured by them.”