A Monster for the Slave Merchant
After putting Adrian to sleep, I drew the dagger from his belt.
I would have preferred to slip outside quietly, but unfortunately I was terrible at concealing my presence. A powerful monster radiates an enormous aura whether it wants to or not. That was why I had been going around making the tedious effort of lightly rewriting everyone’s memories of me with memory manipulation whenever I met them.
The moment I broke free of my restraints and laid hands on a member of the mercenary band, combat was inevitable.
Looking back on it now, the whole situation was a little ridiculous. All I had done was take over a room, and the next thing I knew I had been kidnapped by complete strangers. These must have been the “bad people from the back alleys” Rena had mentioned. If so, I would feel a little less guilty even if I accidentally killed a few of them.
I was bad at hiding my presence, and even worse at holding back my strength. If I ended up fighting anyone, I could not guarantee they would walk away alive.
Still.
Just get out of here first.
I had no desire to stay any longer in this damp, unpleasant place. Even if it meant killing a few people, I wanted to get outside.
So I walked down the corridor with the knife in my hand.
“P-please… save me…”
“Hm?”
I turned my head toward the voice. It came from the direction where the slaves were bound. There, a woman with orange hair and cat ears was tied up. A beastkin slave brought in from another village, I supposed.
She was in a terrible state. Her whole body was covered in blood as if she had been whipped, and most of her clothes were torn to shreds. Both of her hands were bound above her head, and her arms, forced to support her entire weight, looked to be in excruciating pain.
So this was what humans did to their own kind. When our eyes met, I briefly read her memories. They had beaten and abused her simply because she had ears and a tail. Truly low-class behavior. I might have been a monster, but I had never done anything like that.
“P-please… I don’t want to die like this.”
The nameless cat-eared girl begged me for help. Did she even know who I was? It was a contradictory situation. If I opened that iron cage and freed her, I might end up eating her. She was human, and I was a monster. Monsters attacked humans, and humans fled from those monsters—that was common sense.
Was it because I currently wore a human form that she failed to recognize me as a monster? No. She knew. From the moment I had torn through my restraints with my bare hands, I had made no effort to hide what I was. I was releasing the Magi I had kept suppressed while living at the academy. It made using my illusion abilities easier. Magi was not a power humans could wield, so she was fully aware I was a monster.
And yet she still pleaded with me. The question crossed my mind for a moment, but I did not dwell on it. The emotions humans felt were bound to be different from those of a monster like me.
Before opening the cage, I asked her first.
“I don’t mind helping you, but if I open this now, I might kill you. Are you still all right with that?”
“Th-that’s…”
I waited for her answer. The reason I could not give her a clear promise of life or death was that I did not fully understand myself. I might decide to spare her and then change my mind at any moment. The urge to chase down a fleeing human was as natural to a monster as breathing. I was not a monster who lied, so I did not casually tell her I would let her live. I simply waited in silence, giving her enough time to gather her thoughts.
“…”
No matter how long I waited, she gave no reply. Or rather, perhaps she simply could not. Either way, it did not matter. Breaking the iron bars of her cage and the restraints that held her was no difficult task. I only needed to swing the knife twice. The first stroke sliced through the bars; the second cut the chains binding her wrists.
“…Eh?”
Freed from her bonds, she made a dazed sound, her face blank with incomprehension. I had no intention of killing her. Apparently I was simply not in the mood for it today. Whether she ran or not was her business. I had no interest in a human who offered no reaction at all, so I turned away without a second thought.
Then it occurred to me that, since I had already caused a ruckus, I might as well make it spectacular. As I walked down the corridor, I severed the restraints of every slave I saw. Once again, there was no particular reason. If they did not like it, they should not have kidnapped anyone in the first place.
In the Central Empire, buying and selling human slaves was illegal. Of course, in the dark places where the knights’ surveillance did not reach, it still happened with fair frequency.
A shadowy black market in a secluded back alley. This was the scene of one such slave transaction. Having received his payment, Beorn counted the gold coins in his pouch and frowned. The amount clearly did not sit well with him.
“Hey. I just handed over ten women to you. Forty gold coins? How many mouths do I have to feed, and you expect me to stick forty coins up whose nose?”
“I set the price according to the average market rate, but if even that is insufficient, I must say I find it rather disappointing. Four coins per head. That is more generous than elsewhere.”
Oddly enough, the slave merchant’s words were true. Beorn himself had seen slaves traded for about three gold coins apiece in the neighboring village. But that did not mean the merchant was conducting honest business. Slave markets mostly operated by auction. Depending on a woman’s looks, the price could jump several times—or even dozens of times—higher. Rare goods naturally commanded higher value, and competition only drove the numbers further up. In some cases, a single slave could be worth more than the other nine combined.
This was exactly such a case.
“You saw that silver-haired girl? Pretty face, and a body that was no joke. You’re telling me you’ll take her for the same four coins as the rest? Do I look like a sucker to you?”
Beorn snapped at the merchant, incredulous. A deal like this would leave almost all the profit in the merchant’s hands. The extra coin he had offered over the going rate had been nothing but bait.
The slave merchant sighed as if it were a pity. If only the other party had been a little denser.
“Hm, very well. Let’s negotiate. How about sixty coins?”
“I’d rather take just the silver-haired one and sell her at the auction house myself than hand her over for that.”
“Then seventy? I am a businessman, after all.”
“Ah, forget it. Deal’s off. I’m not selling.”
The merchant clicked his tongue. Beorn of the mercenary band—he had heard the rumors, but he had not expected the man to be this greedy. A truly difficult customer. Still, the merchandise was far too fine to walk away from. If he simply brought her to the auction, two hundred and fifty coins would be easy. It was not something he could give up lightly. Even if this deal left him at a temporary loss, the profit waiting for him afterward would be substantial.
“Haa… Fine. How about a hundred coins?”
“You should have said that from the start.”
In the end the merchant opened his purse, and Beorn accepted the money pouch with a satisfied smile. At this rate he could hand out a gold coin to each of his men and still have a handsome sum left for himself. With this money in hand, Beorn would leave the central city. The schedule had been moved up a little, but that was fine. Fortune had come rolling to his feet of its own accord. The celebration feast could wait for another day.
“Boss, we’re in trouble!”
Someone came running toward Beorn as he stood there grinning with the pouch in his hand. One of his subordinates.
“In the prison—huff—a m-monster—huff!”
He was so frantic that he kept trying to get the words out even as he gasped for breath. His pronunciation crumbled under the strain; the words refused to form properly in his mouth.
“What’s going on? Calm down and talk slowly.”
Beorn soothed him for the moment. Whatever it was, he figured he ought to hear it out. The low-ranking mercenary stood there catching his breath for a long while before he finally managed to speak.
“One of the slaves we brought in was a monster! It broke its restraints and escaped! We tried to stop it, but it was more than we could handle!”
“A monster?”
“Yes! Even Bradan, a 2nd-Class Mercenary, went down!”
“Hmm…”
No one in the mercenary band was an easy mark. These were men who earned their living by pure force of arms; facing them alone was no simple feat. And to have overpowered even Bradan, a 2nd-Class Mercenary, by sheer strength? It was hard to believe. Was there anyone in the empire, short of a knight, capable of that? And for such a person to have been mixed in among the slaves they had kidnapped?
Beorn’s head felt a little muddled. Why would someone strong enough to crush a 2nd-Class Mercenary and a pack of lesser ones so easily have allowed himself to be captured as a slave in the first place?
Has to be a joke.
It made no sense on any level, so he dismissed it. He did not distrust his subordinate, but the man had clearly had too much to drink.
“If you’re drunk, stop spouting nonsense and go sleep it off. We’re moving out early tomorrow.”
“I’m sober! I’m telling you a real monster is coming!”
The subordinate shouted as if the injustice of it all were too much to bear.
And then—
—Rumble!
The walls inside the building shook. The vibration seemed to come from somewhere below where Beorn was standing. Below… that would be the underground prison where the slaves were kept.
“See, Boss?! We have to get out of here!”
So it was not complete nonsense after all. Beorn still did not fully believe the man, but the sound from below was anything but ordinary.
“Tch. Just my luck.”
Beorn scratched his head as if the whole thing were a nuisance.
“Round up the boys. We’re pulling out as we are.”
There was no reason to pick a fight with someone stronger than a 2nd-Class Mercenary. Whatever the outcome, he had already handed over the slaves and taken the money. Once the gold was in his pocket, it was no longer his problem.
“W-wait a moment! Then what about the other slaves inside?! What happened to them?!”
There was one person present who could not simply let those words pass: the slave merchant. He had paid a fortune of a hundred gold coins for those slaves, and now it looked as though he was about to lose the lot. No—if it ended there, he would be lucky. What if the escaped slave ran wild and freed the others as well? The situation would spiral completely out of control.
“I-I don’t really know. Most of them have probably been freed by now…”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake! What exactly did you people sell me?! Those were special-alloy manacles! You’re saying something cut through them and escaped?! And you sold me a monster like that for a hundred gold coins?! Are you bastards playing games with me?!”
Unable to contain his fury any longer, the slave merchant raised his voice. Every loss from this disaster would fall on him. Faced with unprecedented damage, he lost all reason and seized Beorn by the collar. He seemed to believe none of this would have happened if Beorn had not brought the monster in the first place.
“Listen, merchant. You think I knew it was a monster? Who was it that took one look at the goods, said they were fine, and wanted to close the deal on the spot? How is that my fault?”
“Kh…!”
As the merchant’s voice rose, Beorn’s expression darkened as well. From his perspective, once the money was in hand he had nothing left to regret. Besides, he was a 1st-Class Mercenary. If it came to it, he could simply overpower the man by force and walk out.
“If you don’t want to get hurt, step aside. I’ve got my money, so I’m leaving.”
“W-wait, wait! Where do you think you’re going?! You have to catch the monster before you leave!”
The merchant clung to Beorn as he tried to walk away without a second glance. Of course, there were guards stationed below to keep the slaves from escaping. But they had only been hired to stop ordinary slaves, so they could not be counted on as real fighting strength. It was not that they were weak, but if asked whether they were stronger than a 2nd-Class Mercenary, the answer would be difficult. To put down the situation now, they needed power of at least 1st-Class level.
Beorn of the mercenary band. His personality was strange and he was greedy for money, but his skill was the real thing. He could not be allowed to leave this place.
“Why should I?”
Beorn asked with an irritated look. He had no desire to get tangled up in troublesome affairs. More than anything, he wanted to get out of the Central Empire as soon as possible. Of course, if the merchant showed a little sincerity, he was not entirely unwilling to listen.
“I’ll pay you! I’ll make it worth your while, so please just help me this once! H-honestly, don’t you bear some responsibility for this as well?!”
“How much?”
“An extra thirty gold coins—how about that?”
“Hiring a 1st-Class Mercenary doesn’t come cheap. You think that’s enough?”
Beorn wore a thin, crooked smile. There was nothing in this world money could not solve. If money failed, it simply meant the sum had been too small. The merchant, clutching at straws, entered into the bargaining.
And then—
“When I get back, just give me a hundred gold coins. Monster or whatever, I’ll take its head.”
The 1st-Class Mercenary Beorn drew his sword.
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This has been Swaying Iria.
Thank you.