Chapter 20 The Royal Flag Will Never Fall
On a clear autumn morning.
A lightly armed troop, unnoticed by anyone, departed from the gates of Argos. No one knew where they were going or what they were going to do.
All that is known is that a few days later, they brought back a woman.
A pregnant woman.
The citizens, seeing this, couldn't help but feel curious, and the patrons in the tavern were also discussing it animatedly.
"That must be the king's mistress..."
"If that's the case, then His Majesty the King is truly vigorous for his age!"
The topic of the pregnant woman quickly became a hot one in the tavern.
Even the bards, weaving one fantastical love story after another, would strum their instruments and swindle the last coin left of their guests after they had been exploited by prostitutes and drunkards...
The clever prostitutes, too, abandoned the contraceptive pills made from cedar oil and wild carrot juice, getting pregnant by a client's child during one of their services. They then styled themselves as "the King's Pregnant Woman," seducing the perverse desires of their patrons in exchange for even higher prices...
In the slave market, which was even dirtier and more chaotic than the lower city of Argos, slave traders hurriedly put up a batch of clean, white-skinned, and beautiful pregnant slaves.
They were naked like commodities, their desolate, lifeless eyes devoid of any hope, left to be picked and chosen by those powerful figures.
At this point, the slave traders, with their perverse sense of humor, would typically lock the pregnant men in cages not far behind, forcing them to witness their wives and children being bought at exorbitant prices...
During this period, the price of that pregnant woman increased by almost ten gold coins!
Thus, the merchants, blinded by money, often disguised themselves as bandits or robbers, attacking remote villages in the dead of night, or raiding city-states that had been defeated by the king's expeditionary force.
They fought over women like hyenas, using unknown drugs and estrus animals to turn them into exquisite commodities that would forever be pregnant but could never give birth or have an abortion!
Meanwhile, the high-ranking Argos nobles were quite interested in collecting these exquisite items...
Paying an exorbitant fee...
...
"Uncle, I'm a little hungry..."
Perseus, like a little dog wagging its tail and begging for mercy, looked pitifully at the man before him.
"There's no food left! All you think about is eating!"
The man gulped down a glass of wine, drunkenly berating little Perseus in front of him...
He's been having bad luck gambling lately and has lost a lot of money!
But you can't blame him... At the beginning, he was winning big. With the 3 gold coins and 16 silver coins that Dick gave him, he won almost all the money from the gamblers present, a whole dozens of gold coins!
He even called Perseus the Little Lucky Star, for bringing him not only his initial investment but also good fortune.
So I bought him lots of delicious food...
However, the casino owner told him a few days later—
One win could completely turn your life around and make you a top dog...
Ask him if he wants to play.
He felt he was destined for greatness and knew he had to seize the opportunity that fate had given him, so he replied on the spot—
"Play? Of course we'll play!"
So he joined the gambling game with the dozens of gold coins he had won a few days earlier.
He discovered that the gamblers around him were indeed not ordinary people; the least wealthy among them were from upper-middle-class families in Argos. He even saw a nobleman's servant participating in the gambling...
This is definitely a big event!
At first, he gambled a few times and had good luck, winning several gold coins in a row...
He sighed inwardly, thinking how different this place was; it easily cost him a month's worth of his own money!
Seeing that his luck was good, he increased his bet and raised it to ten gold coins!
However, at this moment, a clue appeared...
He lost.
Ten gold coins! Enough money for him to eat and drink well for half a year, and just like that, it's gone...
He was breathing rapidly, his head was spinning...
With a determined effort, he placed another ten gold coins...
We lost again!
His face was deathly pale, his head was spinning, and reason told him he had to stop... he absolutely had to stop.
Otherwise, not only would he lose all the money he had won in the past few days, but he would also lose all the capital that Dick had given him!
However, when he saw the nobleman's entourage go all in the next round and win nearly several hundred gold coins...
Jealousy and greed suddenly welled up in his heart!
Why can he win? Why can't I?
That thought controlled his mind like a demon—
"All in!"
"All in!"
If he wins this round...
He will take all the chips!
He will receive nearly five hundred gold coins!
He promised himself that if he won this round, he would retire from the game!
He dreamed of using the money to buy a property in the Upper East Side... and start his own business.
Marry a wife, buy a slave, and live a peaceful life...
And when he tremblingly opened the betting table—
All illusions shattered...
His whole body was ice-cold, and his limbs were numb...
The gambler's shouts in my ears became muffled...
Until he was thrown out of the tavern and onto the road covered in human and animal excrement—
He then realized... he had lost everything...
He even incurred a massive debt that he could never repay in his lifetime...
If the debt cannot be repaid within a week...
He will be branded a slave and plunged into that bottomless abyss where the sun never shines—
He used the last of his hidden money to buy a bottle of cheap liquor.
And trying to numb himself...
Did he know he had absolutely no way out...?
He suddenly cast his drunken gaze toward the pitiful little boy beside him...
The slave market seems to be very active lately... Perhaps I can get a good price for it?
"no..."
"Dick will kill me..."
"but..."
"Dicktis...is he really coming back?"
He knew what Dick had gone to do. It seemed he was going to kill some Nemean lion?
He locked Perseus the young in the shanty.
After that, he inquired everywhere about the story of the 'Nemean Lion'...
The more he inquired, the greater his joy became...
And greed and desire increasingly overwhelm what little morality remains...
"A monster that even King Argos's army could not defeat..."
"Just Dickis and the other four people?"
"How is that even possible?!"
"Dicktis is definitely not coming back!"
He forced himself to believe this answer...
Back home.
He spoke to the little boy huddled in the corner, hungry:
"Your father is not coming back..."
"He's dead..."
When little Perseus heard this, he was stunned, his dirty little face full of shock.
But soon, he shook his head.
The childish voice retorted:
"No, he will come back..."
"He definitely will, he'll kill you!"
Upon hearing this, the man laughed and dragged little Perseus away from the shanty.
He contacted the human traffickers.
The man stripped Perseus naked, leaving him completely naked.
Then tie it up with strong, rough hemp rope.
They showed everything about young Perseus to the traffickers, like displaying a product...
"10 gold coins".
The human traffickers gave an offer.
"I can't have any more. This child's origins are unknown. I need to deal with him first."
"This is my friend's son, but he's dead...he's dying!"
"She came from a clean background! And she's pretty too."
The man's eyes were bloodshot, and his voice was hoarse and trembling...
"100 gold coins!"
When the man said the boy was his friend's son, the trafficker gave him a strange look.
However, the human traffickers did make some concessions—
"20 gold coins".
"90 gold coins. Once it's cleaned up, this child is very cute..."
"Perhaps it will be liked by some adults."
The trafficker looked at the man, then at the bound, struggling, and immobile little Perseus. He seemed to be carefully considering something before finally speaking:
"40 gold coins, that's the highest price I can offer."
"Go ask any of your competitors, no one will offer a more reasonable price than mine."
The man agreed and took the money bag from the trafficker.
Then they pushed the crying and struggling little Perseus to the traffickers.
immediately.
Clutching his money bag, he headed straight for the casino without looking back...
I stepped on fallen leaves of early autumn along the way, not caring at all...
The wind blew the fallen leaves into the sky.
Sunset.
Like a dream, it was sprinkled over the magnificent city of Argos...
The Argos royal banner fluttering in the wind...
Never to fall.
...