The Experienced Newcomer
Things wrapped up like bricks were stacked on a table to one side.
I picked one up and worried the wrapping open with a pocketknife.
Fuck. It was real.
White tablets spilled out through the tear. No point confirming they were actual drugs, was there? For a second I wondered whether I ought to crush a few and snort them the way they do in the movies, then I jerked my head back.
I'd heard that IS bastards cooked narcotics to raise war funds. Not just them, either. The Taliban over in Afghanistan did the same, and so did Bukanistan, up in the northern half of the Korean peninsula.
I opened my phone and searched the international drug prices.
Hm.
Ah. What those IS bastards were selling was called Captagon. Looked like it went out to Europe mostly through Italy.
Holy shit.
About fifty euros a gram. Goddamn.
I bounced one of the packets in my hand, judging the weight. A brick-sized envelope like this had to be roughly a kilogram. At fifty euros a gram, that was fifty thousand euros a brick.
I counted the bricks piled in front of me.
Whoa.
Seeing them stacked so neatly, there had to be a hundred. Five million euros, then. About seven billion won.
Damn.
I thought for a moment about what to do with it, then took the lot. Haul it along and I'd find a use for it somehow. And so I moved every bit of the stuff onto the truck.
There was a pickup in the corner, too. Mounted on the cargo bed in back—that was a machine gun. Yeah. Mention the Middle East and that's what you get. Slaves in the truck first; I'd have to move that as well. I packed the bastards into the back and went back through the dimensional gate.
Early the next morning I ate, then set about preparing the slave stall. I put the slaves to dressing the boards, and off to one side I was busy breaking in the new catches. I dragged the ones with iron collars locked around their necks around back and had Maximus put them through punishment drills. The ones who'd resisted at first turned docile on their own after being choked a few times. Lucky for me they were still only trainees, and their spirits were weak.
Even working Maximus and IS Units 1, 2, and 3, we were short of hands getting ready to sell. I had to see to every last detail myself, so of course we were.
"At this rate I'd better hire somebody, and fast. Aigoo."
That was when it came.
"Um. Baron Sahara."
"Hm?"
Sahara Merchant Group. An aristocrat's company usually took his own family name, so anyone who'd learned my face called me Baron Sahara.
"So you're that fellow from back then. Body all right?"
He was the Modric caravan clerk who'd lagged at the very rear during the orc raid and nearly died.
"Yes, Baron. You saved me last time, and I never properly thanked you."
"It's fine. Pay me back later. I'll wait until you're in a position to settle that debt. Do it then."
In this world there was no need for empty courtesy. Receive something and you gave; give something and you collected. That was simply how it worked.
"Yes. Forgive the shamelessness, but may I ask one more favor?"
"A favor? What kind?"
"Please take me on."
"What? You?"
The clerk went on with his story. After the orc attack he hadn't managed a proper flight and had nearly lost the slaves, and the caravan had held him responsible and fired him.
"Ah."
"I'm clumsy at driving a wagon. But I can do other work, truly I can. I figure as well as anyone, and I'm confident with ledgers. Entrust them to me and I'll see them sold at the highest price. Please, just give me a chance."
Looking at the clerk begging on his knees, I remembered. Even with orcs on his heels, he was the one who had never abandoned the wagon to the end. He might be clumsy at driving, but that meant he had a sense of responsibility to match.
Oh? Walked in on his own two feet? What a windfall. No need to let that show, though.
"Ahem. As you know, I wasn't planning on taking any extra staff."
That was when Aphago's telepathy came through the necklace.
"Quiet."
"I'm sorry? Are you saying no?"
"Ah. Ah. No. That wasn't meant for you. Talking to myself. Just talking to myself."
"If you give me a single chance, I'll prove it. You don't even have to pay me until then. So—"
Oho. Free labor. The terms had just improved.
No.
I was a slave trader, yes. I was not a vicious employer.
"Th-that won't do. What's your name?"
"Marco."
"Right. Marco. Very well, then. I'll hire you."
"Thank you. Thank you."
Marco bowed his head over and over.
"Then you'll handle getting ready to sell. You know the rough of it?"
"Yes. I do. Leave it to me."
"Good. If you've got work to assign, use this fellow here. His name is Maximus. Pass the orders through Maximus."
"Yes. Understood."
Marco handled the work better than I'd expected. With ability like that, he ought to have stood out inside the Modric caravan long before now. As it turned out, he'd been among the youngest there and stuck on odd jobs, never given a chance to show what he could actually do. Once he was running things under me, the skill started to shine.
He dressed the stall, checked the slaves' condition, and sorted them by age, health, and build. Since arriving in Drail he had already walked the markets and taken the temperature of the place, and he put a fair price on every slave.
"From here to here, you'll get seven gold at the very least."
"These are younger, so eight gold. These over here should manage ten without any trouble."
"Their wounds have closed, but the marks of treatment are still there, and their strength has dropped, so five gold would be doing well. Feeding them up and selling later is one approach. But male slave prices in Drail are up considerably right now, so I suspect it's better to move them while the price is high."
"The Drail slave market currently runs on male slaves, and the price of women has fallen a great deal. Better to hold them longer and sell across the sea. That's where we'll get what they're worth."
Ooh. Brisk answers like that raised my confidence in him. I conferred with Marco and set a sales strategy.
First, we'd sell off every trainee. All forty-three of them, and the seven slaves we'd treated—those would go too.
The environment of this world, and the people native to it, were exceptional not only at shaking off fatigue but at healing. Twice Earth, by my guess. The slaves who'd been broken and torn open and put under the knife were nearly closed, bone knit, two weeks after the antibiotics. The blonde who'd suffered from lung disease was living like a healthy woman now, and the red-haired catfolk whose back had been whipped until the hide was flayed and peeling was already scarring over.
The slaves who'd finished treatment, and the ones taken from IS, sold almost before they could be set on the counter. Just as Marco had predicted, the IS trainees—bodies hardened through military drill—went for quite decent prices. Usually seven to ten gold.
Ooh. Of course.
I cleared forty-three of them and counted what was left.
Three hundred and fifty gold.
Ha ha ha.
The treated male slaves couldn't match the IS stock, but I still moved every one of them at four or five gold. Eight sold, thirty-five gold in all. Buying them had cost me less than three gold, so I'd cleared nearly ten times that. Proof the line of business I'd picked wasn't a bad one.
What remained were the six IS instructors wounded when we hit the training ground. Apart from them, I didn't sell the blonde who waited on me, the catfolk whose wounds weren't finished healing, or Maximus. I also left IS Units 1 and 3 as they were; they still weren't fully recovered. Earth-born stock healed worse than Gaia's humans, as expected, and given the work I had ahead I needed slaves who were used to the goods of Earth.
Unit 2, though, I sold cheap, to make an example. He'd been the most passive of the lot. Once one of them had been sold off as a warning, the others seemed to move with a good deal more snap.
I put the books in order.
Employees: 1
Senior slave: 1 (Maximus)
Female slaves: 2 (human 1, catfolk 1)
Male slaves: 8
That was the roster.
Of the male slaves, the ones I could actually put to work were Units 1 and 2—Unit 3, now renumbered as Unit 2—and about half of the wounded IS instructors, the ones who could still move.
And cash: 385 gold.
I punched the calculator. One gold was fifty grams. At 110,000 won a gram, that came to 2.12 billion won.
Money really did come easy.
I took two of the gold coins I'd earned and set them down in front of Marco.
"What shall I buy with these?"
"No."
"Baron? Then…"
"An incentive. What you'll be receiving from now on. One percent of the profit on slave sales. That goes to you."
"What?! Y-you're serious?!"
Startled, Marco looked from my face to the gold in front of him, again and again. Two gold was close to what he would earn working nearly a full year. He dropped to his knees once more and pressed his head to the ground.
"Thank you! Thank you, Baron!"
"Good. Go on and show me what you can do. You'll get yours in proportion."
"Yes! I'll serve you with everything I have!"
I gathered the rest of the gold and put it in the magic pouch. I stood Marco up and told him the plan from here.
"I'll be staying here for a while."
"Ah. You're not crossing the sea with the Modric caravan? People are already saying war will break out on this side before long."
"That's right. That's exactly why I mean to stay."
"Baron?"
On Earth, war was a chance to make serious money. It would be the same here.
And I didn't voice the other reason I meant to stay. I wasn't about to miss the chance to watch a war in another world. I wanted to see it. At least once.