1443. 1440. Good News, Old Bai! Mother and Child Safe—Bonus Chapter 610
Shadowdeep City was a typical shadow elf city.
By "typical," I mean its urban structure and population makeup. Women made up sixty percent of the city's population and filled positions throughout its official institutions, while the remaining men were stuck in the lowest rungs of society, with little hope of ever getting ahead.
Their only hope was to join the military forces of the Dabria family and slowly rise to the rank of squad leader through a series of small-scale conflicts. One in ten thousand might break through that ceiling and enter the elite ranks, eventually fighting their way to become a well-off family warrior with a measure of social status.
That was basically the highest position a man could attain in shadow elf society.
As for commanders and warrior-captains, those posts were left for the men of shadow elf noble families to compete over. Embarrassing as it was to admit, even though shadow elf society was already rife with inequality between men and women, there was still a pitiful disparity in status and class even among men.
Though they were all scorned, ignored, and oppressed, men from great families still had more career options than commoners.
And if they also had a talent for psionics, they could join the spellcaster academies run by the various families.
Among this generally well-educated group, the fixation on gender differences was much weaker than elsewhere. Though spellcasting chiefs and academy heads were still women, men who became skilled psionics users could at least be said to have made something of themselves.
Over the several-hundred-year history of the Eternal Rift, there had never been a shortage of legends about men from humble beginnings who had risen through talent and hard work. In