What a grappling story so far, and perhaps not too soapy, despite so many characters, their intertwining stories and surprise revelations. I love a good adventure and I'm glad I stumbled upon this story.
Since the world before Oblivion seems to be just like ours --like with the ruined nuclear reactor facility in this chapter-- I've been trying to place the story in the geographical Earth, Eurasia to be more specific, but there are too many inconsistencies for that to work, I guess. It's still tempting to think that something happened that turned this world into what appears as fantasy by adding 'unnatural' elements like magic and creatures, but really isn't fantasy per se. Similar feelings I got from lomax61's Scorched Kingdom series.
Completely unrelated to this chapter, it's so good that you've mentioned gyms a few times. In far too many stories, characters are just given, and lack the realism that they usually have worked on becoming what they appear, like the muscular Renn who's also a bully. Maybe the boys, Zdain and Josel will grow during the story and find increased mutual attraction through physical maturation. After all, Josel also seems to be very observant on the physical appearance of some guys, like the big sailor on Princess, and totally green with envy about Renn.
Despite some peculiarities in the language, especially at the very beginning of the saga, as a fellow Finn, I wouldn't be able to write something like this in English. And I wouldn't consider myself an ordinary guy if I could!