What did you do with the dice?

You are a healing profession. What's the point of working hard? It would be best if you were to take it easy. It would be perfect if you are not needed anywhere, okay?

Rusalka: (I've accepted the gifts, so I'm going to have to give you a serious history lesson now, right?)

Sunita: (You again...oh, it's history class. Sorry, I'm used to seeing you looking down, so it's a rare sight to see you looking up, which makes me a little uncomfortable.)

Rusalka: (I did want to talk about biology and Mendel's theory, but Rewi Alley is just too kind and innocent. When she's in front of me, if I think about something bad, I'll feel guilty, and my conscience won't let me do it.)

Sanitieta: (What's the point of you telling me all this? You should save these words for explaining to Phoenix. Don't you think that although Phoenix usually ignores Eli, Eli doesn't care at all? Instead, she likes to chat and have dinner with Phoenix? They are "dining buddies" now. Maybe she will bring this piano to dinner one day and naturally reveal that it was a gift from you. Do you think Phoenix will believe your explanation?)

Rusalka: (Oh my god, could she possibly have such natural tea? It seems possible! What's the most polite way to return a gift? Waiting online, urgent!)

With the advice of Sanita in exchange for her adoptive father, Rusalka sincerely invited Phoenix and a few knights who were close to her to go to the lounge to listen to Eli's stories.

In accordance with Sanita's operational philosophy of "openness and honesty is the ultimate weapon", Rusalka directly told Phoenix that she would use this harp as "tuition" and let Ai Li give everyone a popular science introduction to the development history of the Aiel Empire.

After I found Phoenix and told her about it, she wasn't angry at all. She just asked indifferently, "Why didn't you ask me?"

Rusalka looked at Phoenix and suddenly felt like he had entered an RPG game. After Phoenix asked this question, a symbol of (indigenous people from the El Empire) appeared above his head, leaving him speechless.

Indeed, why should I listen to Theresa and go find Ai Li when there is a cat next to me?

And was Phoenix hinting at why he didn't give her the harp? What should he do? Should he cast his spell now? But the day had only just begun, and it would be too much to waste like this!

At least let me finish listening to Rewi Alley's story! I've already given away my piano, so I can't do business at a loss.

Fortunately, Phoenix thought for a moment and then told Rusalka the rest of her words at the bottom of the stairs: "Indeed, I have lived in Esdi for a long time, and my understanding of the royal family of the El Empire is not comprehensive. The Grand Saint must know more than I do."

Seeing that Phoenix didn't seem to care about the harp, Rusalka, who was sweating profusely because of the speculative thoughts that just flashed through her mind, felt the feeling of surviving a disaster: "Then bring some snacks, we can eat while we listen."

Phoenix nodded.

----

Rusalka took Phoenix to get some snacks and drinks, and when they walked to the lounge, there were already many people sitting there who wanted to listen to the story, including but not limited to the knights. It should be that the people around them heard that Ai Li was going to tell a story, so they ran over from the training ground or slacking off to listen.

Now they were surrounding Ai Li and bringing her snacks, and jokingly saying that when they were injured on the battlefield and sent back to the rear for treatment, they would have to be touched by Ai Li personally before they could get better.

Ai Li, the well-deserved group darling.

Rusalka knocked on the door and rescued Ai Li, who was trapped and at a loss, with circles in her eyes. "Sorry, Phoenix and I had something to do, so we're a little late."

As soon as he spoke, everyone quickly dispersed and returned to their seats, leaving the front seat for Rusalka and Phoenix.

When Ai Li saw Rusalka and Phoenix coming, he complained quietly, "Lord Pearl Tear, so many people are here to listen? I thought you were the only one here. I'm a little nervous. Besides, I only heard this story from the Saint, so I'm afraid I might say it wrong..."

Sensing Phoenix's blood pressure rising and his ears and tail curling upward, Rusalka quickly interrupted Ai Li's unconscious tea-style speech: "It's okay, everyone is just here to listen to the fun. Just think of it as gossip. There's no right or wrong."

Ai Li began to retell the story that the Great Saint had told her about the rulers of the Ai'er Empire - the Council of Lionheart Brothers.

----

A long, long time ago, when the Aiel Empire was not yet an empire, the orcs still survived mainly in tribes and spheres of influence.

The former are some powerful races that live together in large groups for warmth, such as the large pure Filin tribe that Roland found with Phoenix and her sister Hydra.

The latter is a sphere of influence that has a superior race as the core ruler, and brings together many scattered and weak races to cooperate and survive.

The orc races are basically the same as animals on Earth, except that there is no such thing as breeds. For example, the Filin tribe is the Filin tribe. They are all cats, and at most they have different talents. There is no subdivision such as golden shaded/big orange/Garfield.

Although Rusalka often complains about why there are no invincible elephants, there are none anyway, so the Rhine tribe and the Tiger tribe, that is, lions and tigers, are the races with the strongest individual strength, and all powerful "spheres of influence" are ruled by these two races.

Wolf, the wolf cavalry encountered before, is not only powerful, but also gregarious and xenophobic, and can tame their close relatives, the Warcraft wolves. They are the main and strongest race in the tribe.

The orc race is generally not good at farming, and is a little different from the Earth's biosphere. Although they are of different races, the outside world and they themselves all call them orcs. No matter what, they will not eat "their own kind". Therefore, the main sources of survival supplies such as food are only four - hunting monsters, gathering in the wild, trading with merchants, and plundering other farming races in the surrounding area.

If Tiger's little brain axes (not a typo) still know how to cooperate to win and fight in groups of a dozen, the Rhine people are very extreme.

Since the birth rate of females in the Rhine tribe is much higher than that of males, and male individuals are often very powerful, everyone who has seen the animal world knows that there is only one male lion in a group, and he often has a large harem that humans envy.

But in this world, such a system manifests itself in the form of diffraction and alienation - if multiple male Rhine men are born in a community, except for the strongest one who becomes the ruler, in order to ensure the absoluteness of his ruling position, the remaining males will either be exiled or become slaves, and there is basically no possibility of turning things around.

The speaker of the parliament, Megaro, the "Lionheart Emperor" who founded the parliament and unified the El Empire, was actually a male slave of the Rhine tribe in a not-so-small circle of influence.

Chapter 138 Lionheart Council (Part 1)

The racial characteristics of the Rhine people seem very abnormal to "humans" like Rusalka and Sanitta, but in fact they also conform to the evolutionary law of natural selection and the survival of the fittest.

Those lions who were defeated in duels and became slaves, if they were very powerful, would at most be assigned a position similar to a minor manager of a vassal race.

Of course, this difference in status can be reversed through a duel. However, the lion who lost in the early duel will already have the stigma of a loser and cowardice engraved in his heart. This cowardice will only make him more self-doubting in the next duel. After failing several times, he will accept his status as a loser and there will be no possibility of reversal in his life.

And even if the lion's spirit will never be extinguished, under the system of unfair distribution of resources with extreme skewness, and as slaves, they are targeted everywhere, and sometimes even degraded to the point that even their subordinates can tell them what to do, their chances of turning the tables are slim.

In the Rhine group, like lions, females are responsible for capturing and subjugating other weaker races and tribes, hunting monsters in the wild, and are responsible for everything related to the survival resources of the tribe.

The king, the lion, usually only needs to accept tribute and become stronger. Apart from the responsibility of reproducing offspring, his only responsibility is to resist foreign enemies.

Due to the difference in the number of opposite sexes, the number of female Rhine people who can follow the "king" is also limited. They must be the best warriors. Therefore, in the brutal male competition environment, the female competition is equally brutal. The failed female Rhine people will be assigned to those male Rhine people who are also losers as mates.

Their responsibilities, apart from working day after day to produce, being enslaved by their fellow "superiors" and driven to become bait or consumables in the search for resources, are to give birth to children, raise them with the remaining resources, and bet that the next one will be a lion and that it can become the only king.

The current Lionheart Emperor Megaro grew up slowly in his early years due to physical reasons. He was the first one to be eliminated in the competition for the throne and naturally became a slave.

Originally, this historical cycle would have been repeated. Although in modern thinking, this inexplicable system is full of bugs, but following the rules is just like that. Your father, your father's father, and your father's father's father have all been like this and educated you this way. In a worldview without the scientific outlook on development, it is natural for you to do so.

The lions who have not been enslaved will think about rebelling against this system. If they still have the desire to rebel, the only thing they will think about is how to make themselves stronger and win the next duel.

Even those female Rhine women who failed in the competition, like discarded defective products, would not resist being betrothed by the king to become the spouse of a slave. Instead, they would try every possible means to climb back up, either to become the "king's spouse" or to give birth to offspring who were "qualified to be the king" or "qualified to be the king's spouse."

Megaro's fate changed after he was assigned two spouses. When he became a slave, he worked hard and was willing to accept slavery because it was a doctrine ingrained in him that the weak must be enslaved.

The only difference was that he was different from the other male and female slaves who were trained just for the sake of having offspring. He loved his two spouses very much and would give them all the remaining resources allocated to him, or the food and magic crystals he secretly saved while going out to help with hunting.

This was an act that went against his instinct, but Megalo did it. The two spouses would bandage him when he was injured, cook for him and light a fire for him, and meet all his requests. They were very obedient to his requests without any complaints, just like his mother, his mother's mother, and his mother's mother's mother did.

Even such an ordinary thing made Megaro feel very warm. The whole world thought he was a loser, and everyone ridiculed him as "the shame of the Rhine people" and "a loser who couldn't even beat Wolf". Only his two wives treated him well.

But fate will not show mercy to the weak who crawl down, but will only step on his back again. One of his wives performed very well in hunting and was valued by the "king", who ordered her to join his harem.

This kind of popular plot is not uncommon among the Rhine tribe, but it is not surprising that it happens occasionally. It is a happy thing to be selected. For Megalo, he can also get certain resource compensation to make himself stronger. Almost all slave lions will approve of this happening.

But Megaro was unwilling to do so. However, when his "wife" chose to betray him without hesitation and threw herself into the king's arms, and said to him with disbelief on her face, "A slave will always be a slave. How could any female like a waste like you?", he suddenly felt something in his head snap.

When he returned home, he asked his other wife, "If you are the one chosen by the king, will you leave me?"

The wife didn't answer, but the jealous look she gave the other female Rhine at that moment betrayed her inner thoughts. She simply replied to Megalo, "Go to bed early. Maybe our child will be as lucky as her when he is born."

From that day on, Megalo never shared his resources with his only remaining wife again.

A year later, he killed his wife with his own hands, then came before the king and killed a messenger from a vassal race with a knife.

He didn't come for a duel, he just came for revenge.

However, the arrogant king disdained to fight with the weakest slave, and simply let the lioness around him attack him to humiliate him.

In order to stimulate and mock him, he also asked the lioness whom Megalo once loved deeply to kill him with her own hands, and told Megalo that she was pregnant. Megalo had not given birth to any offspring for so many years, and it was destined that he should be eliminated because of his weak genes. The Rhine people did not need the offspring of weak people.

Megalo didn't say anything. He was weak, but that didn't mean those females could kill him easily. Even though he was wounded and dying at the end, he found a flaw and used a desperate fighting style to withstand several penetrating wounds. In the end, he used his teeth to bite the throat of his former wife.

The king on the throne remained indifferent as he watched the body fall to the ground. He looked at the woman he had chosen, who had abandoned Megalo and devoted herself to him with such meticulous care, as if she were an insignificant person. After signaling his "harem" to clean up the body and the bloodstains, he looked at Megalo and laughed, "You tried your best, but you could only kill one female. What a ridiculous fellow."

Megalo whispered in a voice that only he could hear: I got my things back.

"Get lost, this fellow who only dares to kill females. Killing him would only dirty my hands. He doesn't deserve the glory of dying in battle. Exile him and throw him into the wild to feed the monsters."

If the story ended here, the El Empire would not have been born.

Megalo did not explode because of this, or pick up the ring. He was just lucky because he did not suffer a fatal injury. In addition, as a male Rhine, he was born with strong physical fitness, and had a bit of luck as a chosen son. For example, there had been a large-scale hunt nearby recently, so there were very few ferocious monsters. He survived the first month by relying on wild fruits, grass, tree bark and some animal carcasses, and barely survived.

After overcoming the difficulty of survival, Megalo faced his second survival problem: where to go?

The second reason why most male lions are willing to be slaves is that once they are exiled, the special status of the Rhine lions means that they have only two choices - either find their own vassals, establish a power of their own, and develop into a sphere of influence after plundering female lions.

Or, they will be surrounded by enemies and killed by those who fear they may threaten their power.

A male lion with a group of female lions, slaves and vassals is feared, but no one is afraid of a lion who is isolated and helpless, who is not even qualified to be a king, and who is exiled simply because he is weak.

Now that he is exiled, Megaro has nowhere to go. Everywhere he goes will be hostile to him because of his race and identity. He can only live a life of hiding, and then one day he will be killed by monsters, or die at the hands of the orc hunters who can be everywhere, or the human slave-hunting team.

However, the God of War seemed not to have completely abandoned him. In the third month, he encountered a male Rhine tribe member who was similar to him and was already dying. Judging from his appearance and the marks on his body, he must be a slave.

However, the slave in front of him was physically much larger than him. If he waited for him to recover, the first thing he would do would probably be to kill him if he had invaded his territory or witnessed his injuries.

The best time for me to take action is now. After killing him, I can absorb his power crystal core and help myself become stronger.

According to the memory inherited from my bones, I told myself that everything in the world is meaningless. As long as I become stronger, any problem can be solved.

But Megaro did something that no other lion had ever done. He stayed, fed the dying big guy, moved him to his own cave, shared the magic crystals and animal meat he got from hunting, and spent several months taking care of him.

Seeing the guy in front of him recovering rapidly day by day, Megalo didn't know why he did this.

He felt that he might have really lost the desire to live, but seeing that the other party was very strong, he must have been exiled because he threatened the status of the "old king". He was fundamentally different from himself and had the hope of making a comeback. So he hoped that the other party would one day recover to the point where he could kill him, and continue the Rhine tribe's law of the jungle and survival of the fittest, so that he, a weakling who really deserved to be eliminated, could survive.

But things were not what he thought. Even after the other party's body had obviously recovered, he still maintained this state. Not only did he not attack him, he even told him his name and helped him hunt.

"I, the powerful, cut off my tail!"

In fact, it took Megaro some time to realize that "Broken Tail" was his name, and not the tail behind him that was believed to be broken due to injury.

Moreover, the other party seemed to have an intellectual problem. Apart from eating and hunting with Megalo, he liked to sit quietly and stare at him in a daze.

This may also be the reason why he did not kill himself. Perhaps he did not have thoughts like territorial consciousness and competition in his head.

And even when hunting, this guy only has strength but cannot use his full potential.

Fortunately, he still obeyed Megaro's command. After the two of them became proficient in cooperation, hunting became easier over time.

Later, a war broke out nearby. After Megalo and Broken Tail had managed to survive by hiding from place to place, they found three male Rhine tribe members who had been abandoned and exiled because there were not enough females.

At first, the three Rhine tribesmen, like Megalo had suspected when Broken Tail, did not understand why Megalo did not take the opportunity to kill them.

However, biological instinct is more important than memory inheritance. Naturally, no one wants to die as long as they can live, so they just accept the care as it comes.

Later, when they saw Broken Tail, they thought Megalo also wanted to enslave them, so after their injuries healed, they took the initiative to challenge Megalo, who seemed to have enslaved Broken Tail.

And then? They were stunned by the two-on-one combination punch.

It is true that Megalo is a weakling, but he is also a weakling among the male Rhine, equivalent to Liu Bei to Guan Yu and Zhang Fei. Moreover, although Duanweiba is not very smart, he is extremely powerful. When the two of them work together, the lion who challenges alone will only end up being pinned to the ground and rubbed.

But, isn't that unreasonable? According to the rules of the Rhine Tribe, the King's challenge must be a one-on-one duel. If you beat me two-on-one, who is the King?

And the broken tail is outrageous. Why should he accept letting a guy who can't even beat a slave step over his head and give orders to him?

At first, the slaves were definitely not convinced, but their instincts ingrained in their bones made them choose one by one, and then they were pinned to the ground and beaten one by one.

After many battles, Megaro took them hunting, commanding them to hunt together like a lioness.

At first, they refused to do it. This kind of menial hunting was for female Rhine tribe members. Male Rhine tribe members were responsible for fighting against powerful enemies. And as a male Rhine tribe member, how could he cooperate with others in battle? That was a sign of cowardice!

Even if they were willing to do this in such a humble manner, they would still have to obey the king's orders, and they did not recognize that the weakling Megaro was their king.

Disobedient? If you don't obey, you will be beaten in mixed doubles.

Are you convinced? You're not convinced, right? You just like to disobey orders and work on your own, right? Keep fighting!

They are not afraid that they will escape. Although these lions are unwilling to submit, they are not stupid like Broken Tail. They also know that if they run away alone, they will be caught and killed. Now there are five lions here. Although no one submits to anyone, in terms of strength, let alone hunters of other races, even human slave-hunting teams will have to think twice before dealing with this abnormal small group of theirs.

Facts proved that they were not convinced only because they were not beaten enough. After being gradually defeated, they did a lot of things they had never done in their lives. They had always thought that these were menial things that only female Rhine people needed to do. After throwing away their self-esteem and listening to Megalo's command, they slowly came to their senses.

Female Rhine can cooperate in hunting and become vassals of other races. But since male Rhine are naturally stronger than females, why can't males cooperate in hunting? Who made this rule?

They have never thought about this problem. From childhood to adulthood, cooperating with others has been synonymous with cowardice and shame. But after abandoning their sense of shame, they found that it didn't seem to be a big deal - what could be more shameful than being stripped naked, hung up and beaten?

After hanging out with Megalo for a while, there was no need to think anymore; the facts laid the answer before him.

When the five lions work together, they can easily hunt down those giant beasts that they would never dare to think about in normal times. One hunt is enough for them to eat for a month!

All you need to do is let go of your prejudices, your pride as a lion, and your competitive spirit of wanting to be king. When males cooperate, their hunting efficiency is terrifying.

In the days that followed, they gained confidence and, under the leadership of Megero, began to try to attack the small tribes nearby.

The first to suffer was a group of Wolfe people.

The tribe was not large, consisting of thirty Wolf warriors and half of the wargs.

The patriarch planned to take his son and several of his men to attract the attention of the local male Rhine King, and let his men fight against the female Rhine tribe.

This is how you should deal with the Rhine people who are just starting out and planning to become a vassal of a small force. Although the male Rhine people are very powerful, you only need to hold them back and not fight them head-on. Male Rhine will never bother to cooperate with females and only know how to fight king against king.

As for the female Rhine people, although they know how to cooperate well, their physical strength and power are far inferior to those of males. Without the advantage in numbers, once the battlefield is divided and they lose their coordination, two skilled Wolf warriors can fight against one.

He really knows how to deal with regular Rhine people.

This confidence lasted until he saw five male Rhines rushing into the camp, even cooperating skillfully and crushing the throats of several of his subordinates in an instant. The old patriarch was dumbfounded.

It just happened quite suddenly that my brain felt clear, and the wisdom left by our ancestors no longer worked.