A Reason to Live
When I returned to the time training room, Rene was still tied to the chair exactly as I had left her, and two servings of food waited on the dining table. It must have been the maid service. There was no other reason for anyone to enter my private training room and leave a meal behind. Bound to her seat, Rene screamed with pure venom in her voice.
“If you’re going to humiliate me like this, just kill me already!”
I looked at her and smiled thinly. “Kill you, hmm… Unfortunately I have a commission to complete, so I’m afraid I can’t grant that request.”
“You filthy bastard! Pervert! Scum! Kill me! Kill me right now!”
Watching the slave curse her master, I sneered back at her. “If by some chance you actually died, Miss Rene, I’d have no choice but to compensate my employer out of my own pocket. So I’m afraid I still can’t grant that request.”
With those words I loosened the slime rope that bound her. “Shall we have dinner first?”
I scanned the dishes arranged on the table. Steak, soup, bread, and butter. After a full day of nothing but sandwiches I was ravenous, and she was probably just as hungry.
“Ahem… Let’s eat before anything else.”
Rene didn’t move a muscle. I studied her face. The lovely silver-grey bob, the ruby eyes tinged with rose, all wrapped in a black robe. What stood out was the look of utter despair—the kind of eyes you only saw on people who had lost everything. I didn’t like it. If she broke this quickly, the fun would drain away. She had been unbroken only moments ago. Had her last spark of hope finally collapsed?
Thinking that, I asked her directly, “Do you truly want to die that badly?”
Perhaps the question gave her a sliver of hope; her unfocused gaze sharpened slightly. “Just kill me… I don’t want to keep living while suffering this kind of humiliation.”
She really did want to die. But I couldn’t allow it. If Rene died I would have to pay her full market value. A noble-born mage and a virgin besides—she would be outrageously expensive. Still, I couldn’t simply leave a suicidal slave to her own devices.
What would make her want to live? Was it the inhumanity of her current existence? Or the honor of her noble blood? I recalled her earlier words.
If you’re going to humiliate me like this, just kill me already.
Honor, then. In that case, this should work.
To create a situation in which Rene would desperately want to live, I gave her my brightest smile and spoke. “Miss Rene, you are an imperial princess, correct?”
She remained completely still, as though she believed I was merely mocking her.
“If Miss Rene were to die, what do you suppose I would do? Do you think I would simply file a report and be done with it?”
I could feel her ruby eyes boring into me as I continued. “First I would cast a permanent preservation spell on your corpse so it would never decay. Then I would advertise: ‘Come see the naked body of the Empire’s Princess, Rene Ryan-Augustus!’ and put you on public display. That’s how I’d recoup my losses.”
She clearly hadn’t expected me to say anything like that. The mixture of terror and revulsion on her face was delicious. She had never imagined I would desecrate her body even in death.
“Of course I’d hand the corpse over if the price was right. Though since you’re a virgin, the opening bid would be astronomical.”
If she truly were the imperial princess, the Empire would hunt me to the ends of the earth. What I had already done to her would probably earn me a death sentence as an act of mercy; they would likely add layers of horrific torture on top. Assuming, of course, that she really was a ‘princess.’
She wasn’t. There was simply no way a genuine imperial princess could have fallen into my hands. The slaves traded in Bairen were mostly foreigners—natives of the New Continent or citizens of the Kingdom of Soissons. Even among imperials, owning one as a slave was illegal; the idea of an imperial princess ending up on the auction block was absurd.
Even if I granted the impossible and accepted that a princess had somehow been sold into slavery, the odds of her reaching me were near zero. The Trainer Association verified every slave. The registration number assigned at capture existed precisely to prevent imperials from being enslaved. If someone tried to commission the training of an illegally obtained slave, the Association would check the number, reject the request, or report it to the authorities. This was the premier trainer association on the continent, diligent in its tax payments and operations. Accepting a request to train a former imperial princess would be unthinkable unless the entire organization had gone mad.
In short, her claim was impossible. For a princess to be sold as a slave, the Empire itself would have to be on the brink of collapse. Yet the Empire stood as the strongest nation in the known world; its neighbors bowed before it. Even the mighty United Kingdom—which had swallowed an entire New Continent of comparable size—was recently being pushed back by imperial power.
Thus the chance that the Empire’s princess at the height of its golden age had been sold into slavery was effectively zero.
Unfortunately, Rene could not accept that reality. She was, after all, mentally ill. Besides, necrophilia was strictly illegal. Advertising that customers could spend a night with a corpse would prompt both the Church and the city of Bairen to demand my immediate arrest and burning at the stake. No matter how freely goods flowed in this city, corpses were not among them.
But Rene would know none of these details. She was an ‘outsider,’ after all. An outsider would not be well-versed in imperial law.
I continued in a theatrical, almost cheerful tone. “Come see and fuck the cunt of Rene Ryan-Augustus, descendant of the Empire’s royal whore! Freely gaze upon and ravish the vulgar princess’s pussy that once tormented you all! If I advertised it that way, customers would flock in droves. High-ranking nobles might even arrive in groups just to see Miss Rene’s naked body.”
Her face had gone deathly pale, fingers trembling. I offered her a bright, friendly smile. “Did you think I would simply bury you after paying a fortune for your death? I’m not an idiot. So I suggest you abandon any pointless hopes.”
“You… How many lives do you have? Do you really think you could do something like that and survive?”
Watching her shake like a leaf in terror, I answered calmly. “To be able to see and fuck the imperial princess’s royal cunt. Since it belongs to the bloodline of the emperor who rules so arrogantly over them, I imagine quite a few proud nobles would line up.”
Playing along with a mentally ill woman’s delusions was exhausting. Her red eyes quivered. Rene was completely overwhelmed by my attitude. The realization that I might actually carry out such madness had drained every drop of color from her face.
I reached out, lightly seized her collar, and pulled her closer. “Didn’t you ask if I was confident I would survive? Yes, I am.”
She stared at me with pure terror in her eyes. I asked softly, “No matter how much I speak of defiling the imperial family, does that truly constitute an insult to them?”
Her gaze ignited with fury. “Shut your mouth! The mere fact that filth like you dares utter our imperial family’s name is an insult!”
I was willing to bet that imperial citizens badmouthed the emperor and his family constantly. It was only natural. Even in the United Kingdom where I had first arrived, tavern talk was full of curses aimed at the king.
“Come now, even the citizens living inside the Empire must complain about politics and curse the imperial family. You can’t seriously believe they don’t, can you?”
Rene shouted at the top of her lungs. “Silence! I can endure you insulting me! But if you dare insult the loyal imperial citizens who devote their lives to my homeland and our Empire, I will personally cut off your limbs and feed them to the wild dogs!”
Her spirit was so fierce that one could almost believe she truly was the emperor of the Empire. Arrogant eyes that declared she had been born to rule the world, arrogant words to match—yet in reality she was nothing but a slave in the palm of my hand.
Still, it was interesting. She genuinely, completely believed she was a princess and acted accordingly. It seemed more serious than I had thought. While it was entertaining for the moment, a thread of worry crept in. I hadn’t expected her to cling to the delusion so strongly.
If I kept mentioning princesses and the imperial family during her training, it might only worsen her condition. I should probably avoid those topics. Accidentally pressing the wrong button and aggravating her mental illness could create complications no amount of sexual training could fix. She might develop new disorders, or her pride might swell until she became completely uncooperative.
While I weighed these concerns, Rene’s anger had not abated. Her already red eyes burned even brighter, and her whole body shook with rage. A heavy silence settled between us. She stared holes through my face as though challenging me to a contest of wills.
I noticed the delicious food slowly growing cold. I could think about the rest later. First, we should eat.
“In any case, let’s have dinner.”
I took a bite. It was surprisingly good. The meat had no unpleasant aftertaste, and I ate with real satisfaction. Rene, however, continued to glare at me without touching her plate.
She needed to eat. As the one responsible for a slave’s health, I found her behavior unacceptable.
“I told you to eat.”
“Apologize first! Otherwise… I will never change my attitude.”
After all that, I had been willing to let her eat in peace. I sighed.
“Do you really… want to be punished that badly?”