Slave Merchant: Derick Walker — 5
You have acquired the title 'Et tu, Brute?'
Reward: 10 Bonus Points and 1,000 Credits
Hunting the Vice Vine, the protagonist Jean, and the rest of that rabble had earned me a new title. The name of the thing was deeply offensive. I hadn't betrayed anyone. I'd never considered those bastards comrades to begin with. I'd simply killed what needed killing.
It was a thoroughly unsavory name, but what did a name matter? The important thing wasn't the shell — it was what was inside. I checked the title's effects, praying that something so wickedly named would at least come with a decent payoff.
↳ You gain greater favorability and trust from neutral parties. However, you incur greater suspicion and hostility from enemies.
A title perfectly suited to stabbing people in the back. It matched the name remarkably well. Whether it counted as a good title in an RPG world was a more delicate question.
Gaining favorability and trust from neutral parties was clearly a positive effect, but the trade-off was no joke. It was an effect that drew a hard line between ally and enemy.
Of course, without knowing the actual magnitude of the effect, judging the title's performance was impossible for now. Weighing the goodwill of strangers against the hostility of enemies on any kind of precise scale was no easy feat.
Still, I'd call it a net positive for the time being. I had no intention whatsoever of playing some high-level diplomatic game and taking enemies into my fold. Anyone who pointed a blade at me, I would crush thoroughly. Allies who proved useful didn't need to die. Coming from a man who'd just stabbed this world's protagonist in the back, that was a rather shameless thing to say — but there it was.
"Whew. That said, this is a living hell if I've ever seen one. I wonder if these poor bastards will even be able to rest in peace."
I clicked my tongue as I surveyed the massacre I'd created. Corpses torn apart by the Vice Vine and corpses run through by my own blade lay scattered without rhyme or reason. Judging by the way the thick stench of blood was spreading in every direction, the local monsters would think a buffet had just opened for business.
Staying here any longer was extremely dangerous. No matter how powerful my skills were, fighting alone was a gamble. The only reason I'd been able to take down the Vice Vine properly was because Jean, that excellent tank, had held its aggro.
Even in a hurry, there were things I needed to collect. The most important, of course, were Jean's belongings. One of the reasons I'd killed him was to rob him of his things.
Even in death, Jean hadn't closed his eyes. Stubborn bastard.
I rummaged through the rag-like pockets of his trousers. I'd been worried the protagonist might have an inventory ability like mine, but fortunately, the item I wanted came out of Jean's pocket.
It was a round medal made of metal. At a glance, it looked like a magistrate's token. Engraved in relief at the center of the circular disc was a perfect circle, surrounded on all sides by a pattern of triangles — a motif of the sun.
This was the most important item in the game, the item that made the protagonist the protagonist: the Solar Medal. I put it in my inventory.
"This alone feels a little lacking, though."
I'd gotten my hands on the Solar Medal, the protagonist's symbol, but my greed didn't stop there. The truth was, the Solar Medal wasn't something I could put to use right now.
I had my doubts whether I, who wasn't the protagonist, could even properly wield the power sleeping within it. I'd taken it because it was symbolically important, if nothing else. And I could always use it to impersonate a hero in front of the handful of people who knew of the medal's existence.
I searched the surrounding corpses further. Nothing came off the slaves' bodies. I hadn't expected anything, so I wasn't disappointed. Useless pieces of shit. Even in death, they were losers who'd left nothing behind. I didn't even know their names.
A bitter taste filled my mouth. I was about to leave empty-handed when my eyes fell on Derick Walker's corpse. His fat body was hard to miss.
"Ah, right. That bastard. He said he was filthy rich, didn't he? Then he should be carrying a fair amount of cash."
In the original, Jean never looted corpses like this. That's why he spent the early game in tear-inducing poverty. Not handing out much starting gold was natural for game balance and difficulty — but that logic didn't apply to me. I immediately started searching Derick Walker's body.
The man's plump frame wasn't simply a matter of fat. It was the enormous number of pouches stuffed inside. I stripped him completely and cleaned him out of every last possession.
His clothes were essentially one giant bundle. Several pouches of platinum coins came out, along with mercenary contracts and a Status Plaque.
He'd claimed to be enormously wealthy, and it hadn't been an idle boast. Platinum coins were the highest denomination of currency in this game, called Platinum. The units ran Copper, Silver, Gold, Platinum, with one hundred coins of the previous tier making one of the next.
Even fairly expensive consumables were priced in gold; at the platinum level, you could buy a prime plot of land in a major city. It was a denomination you absolutely couldn't touch in the early game. Carrying this much money, I could understand why he'd considered himself a different breed from those slave bastards. Of course, once you were dead, you were all the same pile of meat.
Farming a large sum of money was a windfall, but even better was acquiring the Status Plaque. A Status Plaque was exactly what it sounded like — an item that identified who you were. Small enough to fit in one hand, but its value was as heavy as an equivalent weight in gold.
In the original, without a Status Plaque, you couldn't travel freely through towns. Commerce was difficult, and if you were unlucky, you'd end up enslaved. That's why the protagonist Jean spent the early game bouncing from mercenary job to mercenary job just to obtain one.
Moreover, the Status Plaque I now held was one that proved the identity of a slave merchant. Slave Merchant was a class that had never been unlocked in Solari World. But going by what was mentioned in the game, and what appeared in the setting materials, it was clearly a high-ranking profession that wielded enormous influence. Being able to start with a class like that meant I could play this game on easy mode.
The Status Plaque had a name, occupation, and face engraved in simple relief. The face was there to prevent the fraudulent use of stolen plaques — the same reason photo ID exists in my country, though the engraving wasn't a particularly detailed portrait.
The plaque had no special magic on it, so impersonation was possible. In the original game, you could kill other NPCs and steal their Status Plaques. Of course, that was a notoriety-farming playstyle that even the strategy guides generally didn't recommend.
I had a plump, ugly face just like Derick Walker. They say that once people put on enough weight, they all converge on the same kind of ugliness — and right now, I was very grateful for that fact. At this level of resemblance, I could walk around impersonating Derick Walker with this plaque and nobody would know the difference.
Of course, it would be a different story for anyone who already knew him. But that was a problem for later.
"Time to actually get moving. If I linger any longer, I'll be monster food."
I slowly set my fat body in motion. The horses had all been eaten by the Vice Vine, and even if there'd been any left, I didn't know how to ride, so walking it was. The one silver lining was that a proper road led to my next destination, Tellibai. Follow the road and I'd reach the town. My pockets were so heavy that my footsteps felt light as feathers.
Traveling alone was extremely dangerous. Fortunately, Tellibai was only about a day's walk away — otherwise I'd have become monster food on the roadside and gotten a game over. Of course, in the original game Jean had covered that same distance, so surviving to reach Tellibai was something of a predetermined fate.
Tellibai was a considerably large city. The reason Derick Walker had been leading a large number of slaves toward it was that this city had the economic power to consume that many slaves. Naturally, slaves weren't cheap goods. In a city of anything less than considerable scale, you couldn't even trade in them.
The city was surrounded by a wooden stockade. It might seem strange that a wall of mere timber protected a city this vast, but given the scale of the place, they apparently hadn't been able to raise a proper stone rampart. The spears of the sentries guarding the stockade were sharply honed. Discipline was reasonably tight.
Tellibai was divided into exactly two districts. The dividing line was the enormous castle at the city's center. Unlike the wooden stockade that guarded the outskirts, the castle within the city was enclosed by a proper stone wall.
Inside the stockade but outside the stone wall was the district where commoners lived. Because it didn't receive the protection of those walls, people of noble birth didn't live there. And what every commoner outside those walls wanted was to get inside them.
Tellibai wasn't a frontier city where wars broke out frequently. The reason so many commoners still wanted to get inside the walls was that it represented a rise in social status. The commoner district outside the walls was also the base camp where Jean spent the early game getting thoroughly put through the wringer.
The district inside the walls was, quite literally, noble territory. Of course, for nobles to live, they inevitably needed slaves and servants, so not everyone who lived there was a noble. Among them were plenty of merchants from large trading companies who'd made their fortunes in business. In any case, inside the walls was the residential district of the social elite — where the people of real influence in Tellibai resided. And it was where I would be making my entrance.
I was lost in these idle thoughts when the long line in front of me suddenly vanished. I was now standing before the city's checkpoint. Tellibai's one real shortcoming was that this enormous city had only a single entrance.
It wasn't a point the game particularly emphasized, but the setting materials described no end of inconvenience because of it. And I was currently experiencing that inconvenience firsthand. It took well over an hour of waiting before my turn came.
"Next!"
The checkpoint soldier called out as he waved through the person ahead of me. This was precisely where the importance of a Status Plaque made itself felt.
If you didn't have a proper Status Plaque, they investigated you for criminal activity. If you weren't a criminal, they issued a temporary residence certificate good for one month — but if you were a criminal, it was straight to prison.
And once that month on the residence certificate expired, you automatically became an illegal resident. Before that happened, you had to establish a formal identity, whether as a mercenary or whatever else. Get caught as an illegal resident and you'd be sold into slavery.
"Here's my Status Plaque."
The checkpoint soldier's eyes twitched when he saw the plaque I handed him. Probably because of the impressive status engraved on it: slave merchant. In real-world terms, it was roughly the standing of a mid-sized company's CEO, so a commoner sentry had every reason to be startled.
Even a lowly checkpoint soldier would know whom he needed to bow to. He dropped the high-handed tone he'd been using and showed me due courtesy.
"Ahem! Master Derick Walker. What business brings you to Tellibai?"
"I'd originally come to deal in slaves, but as you can see, there was an incident."
I addressed him from on high as naturally as water flowing downhill. The soldier looked over my appearance, clicked his tongue briefly, and said:
"Good heavens. Were you perhaps attacked by bandits?"
"Monsters, I'm afraid. I'd heard they rarely appear in these parts, but we ran afoul of a vicious Vice Vine. I barely escaped with my life. Hiring cheap mercenaries was my undoing."
"A Vice Vine, of all things. They say a pregnant one prowls this area once every few years. You had rotten luck, sir."
"Hardly a serious blow, as far as I'm concerned. So long as I still have my life, that is."
He asked a few more perfunctory questions and let me through. As a bonus, he issued me a residence permit allowing permanent stay in Tellibai. Moreover, unlike a standard residence certificate, this one was a precious document that granted access inside the stone walls.
The protagonist went through unholy amounts of suffering and still never got his hands on one of these. I obtained it in a single stroke.
Passing through the checkpoint, a city bursting with life came into view. Unlike the miserable unpaved roads I'd been walking, proper brick-laid streets stretched out in every direction like a spider's web. In the world of Solari World, the existence of proper roads meant a city was prosperous.
The buildings were constructed in an orderly grid, and two- and three-story structures were a common enough sight among them. They were rather modest compared to the real world, but considering this was a medieval fantasy setting, it was quite impressive. I drew a deep breath.
In the game called Solari World, the entire journey to slay the Demon King began here. Of course, for me, this was merely a city I was passing through. Having obtained a broken war chest right from the start, there was no need to linger and scrape by in the beginner town.
I briefly organized what I needed to do next in my head. First on the list, of course, was changing out of these filthy clothes.
I headed toward a street lined with shops. I went into a clothing store and bought the most expensive outfit they had. Wearing it as I was didn't feel right, so I found a bathhouse and thoroughly washed myself clean.
Once I was clean and changed, I cut a reasonably presentable figure. I was still a plump pig, of course — but I'd been upgraded from a plain pig to a pig with a ribbon tied on it.