The Butcher Becomes a Sex Slave
I closed my eyes and opened them again. Countless gazes from the crowd. Each one intense. Was it resentment? Or greed? One thing was certain: most of them had come to see me. After all, I was a veteran with ten years of battlefield experience and one of the few S-rank mercenaries in the world.
Enemies, allies, and those who were neither were all mixed together. I wondered if the admiring eyes that once watched me leading from the front in shining armor had changed, or if they had simply been hiding those desires all along.
"Tsk, this is fucked."
It was hazy now what I'd hoped for when I suddenly dropped into this world ten years ago, but I certainly never imagined I'd end up as a slave. Thanks to the status window, I'd grown abnormally fast, so I'd probably dreamed of a high position. Of course, my Mana Incompatibility Body had turned that dream into a living hell.
I ran my fingers over the chains binding my wrists, making them clink, then clicked my tongue and let go. With my raw strength, I could snap chains of this thickness easily. But the magic circle tattooed on the back of my neck meant that the moment I went wild, I'd be paralyzed and collapse.
'Tsk. Those damn meticulous slave traders. Normally they don't engrave the trader's name into a slave-binding magic circle. Since there are plenty of nobles with a fetish for being the first to carve their name, skipping it would let them charge 1.2 times more.'
Given my name value, it was a natural precaution, but it only made my mood worse. If I had even a single sword, I could massacre every guard in this slave trader's building within three minutes. Instead, I had to sit here sucking my thumb. If only I had some magic resistance, things wouldn't have come to this.
"Our next item is Ian Klein! The Butcher Ian Klein, who once stood at the pinnacle of all mercenaries!!"
"Two thousand gold!"
"Starting bid's no joke. Three thousand five hundred gold!"
No matter how I thought about it, even if I ended up being sold, not much would change from my previous life. I'd simply go from a free mercenary to a combat slave. In the end, the only place for me was the battlefield.
"It's bittersweet. I hope I get an owner who at least lets me smoke."
The gold that used to fill my pockets would now go into my owner's. The honor that lords would rush over to praise me for would become theirs. Even the finest accommodations would be theirs. I'd probably end up barely sleeping in a stable.
Hmm. The more I thought about it, the stronger my urge to escape grew. With my pathetic mana control, I couldn't resist even a single slave-binding spell, but it wasn't like I had zero ways out.
Every time ownership of a slave-binding spell transferred, the new owner's name had to be engraved over the old one. The instant the old name was erased and the new one carved, the binding magic's effect would vanish for a brief moment. It was only a comma's worth of time—less than 0.3 seconds—but that was enough for me to kill up to two people who came within my reach.
Since the name would change from the slave trader to the new owner, the trader couldn't activate the binding circle. And with the owner who engraved it dead and no new person to activate it, the magic circle would become useless. Normally I'd be immediately captured, have my name engraved again, or have my hands chopped off and be thrown to the pigs as feed. But I was once a man whose name came up when people talked about the continent's strongest.
The murmuring crowd gradually quieted, and the slave trader's voice, which had been hyping up the bids, grew louder. Had my price already been decided?
"Final bid is seventeen thousand five hundred gold! Seventeen thousand five hundred gold!"
That was quite a sum. No, a massive one. The annual income of an average territory—including crop taxes, income taxes, tolls, lake usage fees, forest usage fees, and all the other minor stuff—came to about five thousand gold. Since I'd barely earned ten thousand gold in a year and a half of nonstop warfare, it was an amount no ordinary noble could even dream of offering.
Just who the hell was spending this much? I hoped it was a wealthy noble with a peaceful territory. I had no interest in fighting endless skirmishes for free just because their lands were riddled with holes and constantly under attack.
Well, since I was planning to escape anyway, it didn't really matter who bought me. Even if they brought two or three knight escorts, I could kill them with a single strike.
The person who pushed through the crowd with confident strides was a beautiful girl. Silver hair and red eyes. Her pure white skin naturally brought a certain family to mind. The Grade County, masters of alchemy, which had been wiped out in a territorial war last year.
Tsk. This was going to be a headache. Alchemists were known for planting poisons or curses inside the body. One wrong move and I'd be poisoned. A powerful toxin that would interfere with my escape.
At least it probably wasn't for revenge... so they wouldn't have gone that far in their preparations. After all, the family had been participating in a major monster subjugation at the time of their destruction.
Then was she buying a combat slave to restore her house's glory?
Before I knew it, she had walked right up to me. I looked down at her. Her silver eyelashes, the same color as her hair, were quite long. Those red eyes stared at me without a flicker. Her skin was so white that faint blood vessels were visible, yet instead of disgust, I only felt she was beautiful. And that confident smile.
She was dangerously close to my ideal type, which made this all the more uncomfortable.
I pushed the stray thoughts aside, tensed my fingertips, and tightened my body. If she placed her hand on my head and three seconds passed, the engraving would be complete. During the comma-level time it took to reset, my body would move freely. I had no weapon, but killing a person with one strike wasn't particularly difficult for me.
With my head bowed, I raised my eyes and fixed them on the area near her heart—the spot where my new owner would stand. The target was the gap below the ribs. There wasn't enough time to break bones, so I'd drive my fingertips into the solar plexus and burst her heart.
The woman drew closer. After exchanging formal questions with the slave trader, she'd probably overwrite the engraving. I listened carefully to their conversation, waiting for the exact moment their words ended.
"Seventeen thousand five hundred gold received. We'll proceed with engraving the name right away."
It seemed she'd already handed over the gold and finished speaking. I glared at the two people now even closer to me and gathered strength in my shoulders. My body trembled slightly from the power filling my muscles.
"This is the procedure to solidify the contract. Please state your name and the slave's name, then engrave it."
Hearing the slave trader's words, the woman gently placed her hand on my head and opened her mouth.
"I, Terina Grade, swear to cherish Ian Klein before me as my sex slave for the rest of my life."
What the fuck did she just say?