Dragon's Tale 49 (Patreon)

When I left the gladiator school, Pico was accompanying me, along with eight bodyguards who looked far too tense for it to be just a routine escort. If I were to guess, they had other gladiators who had suffered ambushes under similar conditions, which, admittedly, was a smart decision. Not only did they hurt another gladiator, but also they damaged the relationship between the school and the patrician houses. 

A smart decision all around. 

However, with a full squad of bodyguards around me, nothing happened. Not that it was surprising. There were many senators that walked around with a smaller team of bodyguards. 

It took almost half an hour for us to arrive at the villa of House Servilia —while Pico continued to explain acceptable behavior code again and again— because, like many Patrician houses and other rich people, their main residence was a distance away from the actual city, allowing them to establish villas with a lavishness that would have been impossible in the actual borders of the city. As we finally arrived at the villa, however, I noticed the other reason for establishing their residences outside of Rome.

The wards of Pomerium were strong, stronger than anything else I had ever felt. However, they had one huge flaw from the perspective of a patrician family. They were designed for public access, meaning they restricted everyone equally. However, the wards of private residence were under their total control. 

I closed my eyes, examining the wards while Pico talked with the guards, explaining the situation before they returned to the school. As my consciousness seeped deeper into the outer layer of the wards, only to meet with many structures I didn’t even recognize let alone decipher. With that, I got even happier about my infiltration strategy. The wards established by the richest and the strongest of the Republic for more than a thousand years seemed to be a hard target to crack. 

Luckily, as I walked through the official entrance, the outer wards parted, allowing me to effortlessly bypass the strongest part of the defenses. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a lot of time to waste, because as I walked through the entrance, an upbeat melody reached to my ears, marking a celebration. 

The servants led me toward the inner courtyard. I tightened my back, raised my head, and walked forward with a stony expression, doing my best to radiate the aura of a noble barbarian. I even cheated a bit, tapping into the wilder side of my magic, radiating a domineering aura. It was a subtle trick I had developed after studying my encounter with the disaster class wolf that almost killed me back in the mountain. It was using a similar aura to dominate the other wolves. 

It wasn’t completely undetectable. Another sorcerer or a mage specialized in detection could identify the aura, but only if they were consciously looking for it. 

And I doubted anyone would check a random gladiator for sorcerer-level magical talent. 

When I finally stepped into the inner courtyard, the crowd fell silent as they examined me, giving me a chance to examine them in turn. Technically, it wasn’t a big crowd if one discounted the presence of the servants and the bodyguards. Among the constantly moving crowd of servants, there were about a dozen noblemen and noblewomen lounging on reclined chairs, enjoying wine and peeled fruits. 

Most of them were unfamiliar, some I recognized from the arena. However, a pair of them were more memorable. One of them was the man that was glaring at me angrily as I left the arena —well, a man if I’m being charitable, but calling him a boy was more appropriate. Not because of his biological age, as he was probably a couple of years older than me, but it wasn’t the age that elevated boys to men, but stature. 

And the frustrated anger as he glared at me disqualified him from being called a man. He was clearly unhappy about my presence here, but he was unable to say anything, owing to the expression on the other familiar face, the redhead that had been sitting next to him during the game, watching me like I was a particularly tasty piece of meat. 

And the seating arrangement suggested that she was the lady of the house, and the boy was her guest. It explained why I had been invited despite his apparent distaste. 

However, one interesting detail caught my eye. Both the food and the number of servants suggested a lot of money, even in the standards of Rome, but the furniture, despite its quality, looked old enough to start frying on the edges. It was well maintained, but still suggested some not-so-recent financial difficulties. The contrast with the current lavish spending was rather interesting. 

I focused on the moment. I stood straight, letting my aura radiate stronger for a moment, amusing myself with their reaction. The men —and the boys— stiffened in fear, their instincts screaming that they were in the same room with a bigger predator. Meanwhile, the reaction of the women was more nuanced, with widened irises and quickened breathing. 

“And the hero of the day is finally here,” called the redheaded girl as she slowly stood up, reacting faster than the rest of the group. As she stood up, her green dress slipped enough to excite any man around as she moved, but without actually causing a revealing accident. It was no doubt carefully tailored by expert tailors to give that exact effect, enhancing her femininity as much as possible without causing a crisis. 

And she had a lot of femininity to enhance, I noted in appreciation as she walked forward. I didn’t bother to hide the hungry arousal in my gaze as she sauntered toward me. On the contrary, I deliberately enhanced the display as I let my gaze caress her lithe body that was nonetheless crowned by a pair of delicious tits, just large enough to fill my palms to perfection. 

She noticed that gaze, but that only made her prouder. I had no illusions about the source of it though, I was just a showpiece, a circus act valuable only because of my unique celebrity status. 

“Finally, the hero of the hour, heroic Dacian, the slayer of Chimera, is here,” she said with a soft voice with perfect cadence. Then she turned to her angry friend and continued. “So, Marcellus, what do you think about our guest,” she said with a wide smirk. “Do you still think you can take him down?” 

“Of course I can, Olivia,” Marcellus answered, but only after a pause. Meanwhile, I was more interested in the obvious tension between them. When Olivia looked at him dismissively, he continued hurriedly. “What can a barbarian with a spear do against my magic.” 

From the way Olivia smirked, her attitude was clear. Just by mentioning magic, our angry boy had lost the argument. There was clearly a story behind their antagonistic closeness, but not one I really cared about. I only cared about the impact. 

“If you say so,” Olivia murmured mockingly before shifting her gaze toward me, her eyes brightening as she did so. “Take a seat,” she said flirtatiously in a rather exaggerated manner. I took a seat, sitting straight, letting just a touch of carefully calculated anger slip into the surface to remind them that I was a barely tamed barbarian. After all, I was selling a story for these spoiled noble children. 

One of the girls scooted closer, who, based on the quality of her dress and the seating position of her group, clearly belonged to the lower echelon of the group. She likely belonged to an Equites family, and using the event as a social-climbing opportunity.

“So, Peirous,” she quipped. “Do you have any interesting stories to tell us?” 

I sent her a sharp glare, staying in intimidating range before turning into a smothering look, one that made her shiver in arousal. Still, she was too unimportant for me to actually try to intimidate or seduce, so I decided to fulfill her request. I took a hard bite from a large piece of meat rather than using a knife to cut a smaller piece to support my barbarian aura, before I started telling a modified version of my battle against the Dragon Serpent, but replacing it with a weaker creature while erasing all the signs of using magic. 

I could have acted like a moronic warrior and told the story in a boring way, but that wouldn’t have helped me too much. After all, more than being known as a gladiator, I wanted to be a regular as entertainer. So, I used my oratory abilities to the limit. It wasn’t actually something too suspicious, because nomadic tribes, regardless of the location, had a strong oral tradition. Being a skilled storyteller wouldn’t actually hurt my chances. 

I still kept my word selection as simple as possible of course, occasionally stopping to remember the correct word —which ‘coincidentally’ overlapped with the natural tension points of the story, making it even more excited as they waited for my words. The girl who asked me the question put her hand on my forearm carefully while doing her best to look like it was an accidental touch, flirting rather aggressively. 

It was a bit unseemly, but not too much. After all, unlike the surrounding cities, Rome was surprisingly open when it came to female decision-making when it came to sex. 

As I told the story, the center of the group slowly shifted as everyone started to listen to me carefully. I wasn’t the best storyteller in the world, but unlike most storytellers, I wasn’t just repeating the stuff I had learned from others, but telling my own experiences, adding a layer of reality they could never match. I even showed them some wounds from my earlier fights —one that I had to recreate before I entered the gladiator school because of my body’s annoying tendency to cure those wounds. 

While the story continued, the girl scuttled even closer. I put my hand on her thigh impudently, smirking smugly when one of the boys looked angrily. My smugness was not faked, though most came from amusement. After all, it wasn’t the first time I was a part of the noble group. I had been forced to spend time with many of my ‘noble peers’ back when I was in Britannia. 

Amusingly, the crowd that surrounded me belonged to a higher class, so much that even the girl I was currently caressing, who was at the bottom of the hierarchy, would have been the guest of honor if she ever decided to visit my old school, making the headmaster stand next to her like an overeager servant. On the contrary, I was not a bastard noble with questionable birth, but a slave. 

Ironically, I could act much more impudently than I ever did despite the huge gulf. Or maybe, it was the hugeness of the gulf that allowed me to act in such a forward manner. After all, from their perspective, despite all my strength, I was just an amusing piece of decor but nothing more. 

Too bad for them that this piece of decor had a piece of explosive hidden inside.