Chapter 4
Chapter 4
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 4
Chapter Title: A Pleasant Nightmare
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The deepest part of the slave dormitory, an isolated space secured with shackles and iron bars meant for restraining slaves.
Lemon was stored there like so much luggage.
There were several other slaves in that cramped secret room besides her.
Some slaves were anxious.
Some slaves were terrified.
Some slaves had given up.
Some slaves clung to a faint sense of expectation and hope.
'......'
Among them, Lemon was closest to resignation.
She had no intention of trembling in anxiety and dirtying the floor with sweat and filth.
She harbored no hopes of being sold to a good master and living with decent treatment.
The world was a cesspool,
and she was at the very bottom of it.
Now, as a slave, she would undergo mental training through whips and brainwashing.
"I am Eric, your overseer and instructor. Depending on your behavior, this instructor can be an angel or a devil to you."
In fact, the slave training she endured over the next few days was much as expected.
Rebellion earned the whip.
Laziness meant no sleep.
Chatter earned a gag.
Without damaging their commodity value,
the instructors thoroughly abused and brainwashed the slaves.
"Your mistakes make your comrades suffer alongside you."
Moreover, through collective responsibility, some slaves earned the resentment of others.
Divide and conquer.
Gaslighting.
Ideological indoctrination.
They meticulously stripped away autonomy,
training them to obey unquestioningly as slaves.
Just one week.
In just one week's time, many slaves broke.
The only hope left to them now was meeting a good master.
They no longer harbored the illusion of being 'autonomous humans.'
A few slaves still harbored rebellion or laziness,
but that led to group punishments,
so those slaves were isolated by the others.
They were treated as idiots who couldn't understand even after training.
Becoming a proper slave was the wise choice,
while clinging to humanity was foolish.
'......'
And Lemon was a wise slave.
To get bread and sleep faster than anyone, she acted the most like a 'slave.'
She obeyed the instructor
and persuaded the other slaves to accept their lot.
Around that time, word came of a new system being implemented for the slaves.
'......Talant?'
Talant. Instead of directly distributing bread,
they would give slaves 'currency' to buy bread and various rights.
Show good results in training,
obey the instructor,
raise your own value as a slave,
and you could receive more Talant.
Lemon instantly understood the purpose of this system.
'They're dangling a carrot in front of us to make the slaves submit willingly.'
A man so obsessed with making money he was called the Golden Ear.
Already nicknamed a 'fiend' by the nobles, he was no ordinary miser.
This, too, was a ploy to raise the slaves' value.
Lemon could easily imagine what would happen once this 'Talant' currency took hold.
The slaves would compete to be the best slaves, acting more slavishly than anyone to earn more Talant.
It was the devil's temptation.
Lemon was certain.
The moment she fell for this Talant, she could never escape being a slave.
'So what? With or without Talant, escaping slavery is impossible anyway.'
And Lemon was a wise slave.
If she had no choice but to live as a slave,
she had to be the most diligent one.
'First, I'll save up. And...... become a high-grade slave.'
They said there were plenty of things to buy with Talant.
Rest rights exempting you from punishment and training,
black bread to fill your belly,
even soft white bread with milk in it.
Talant was all you needed.
'If I do well, I won't starve.'
From now on, it was every slave for themselves.
And.
She was confident in her venom.
'......Fuck my life.'
How many more days passed like that?
One day, as she was adapting to the new Talant system.
"So you're the new slaves."
Her master──
"I am Karl Riddle."
The money fiend visited the slave dormitory.
.
.
.
This was the first time Lemon had seen her master in person.
And.
Her first impression upon seeing him was this.
'He looks...... more human than I expected.'
She had imagined a devil, a black mage, a fat ugly pig,
something like that.
But in reality, he just looked like a normal person.
Ordinary.
His slightly curly hair was aristocratic,
and his bloodless face showed no hint of cruelty.
His obsidian-black eyes
seemed lost in melancholy, as if gazing at another world.
But there was no doubt this man was the demon who trafficked in people.
'......This is why you can't judge by appearances.'
Her master said little else.
He gave just one command.
"Extend your hands."
Hands.
He removed his gloves and grasped each slave's hand one by one.
Then he slowly closed his eyes,
thought deeply about something, and spoke.
It was a strange sight.
Lemon harbored rational suspicion.
'Does he have some perverse sexual fetish for slaves' hands......?'
She had heard rumors that nobles all had suspicious perversions.
Some nobles shared deep affection with walls,
others had midnight trysts with sheep from their ranches.
Some even with monsters...... let's stop there.
By comparison, satisfying his lust with slaves' hands seemed almost normal.
'Ugh. Please don't let my hands be to his taste......'
Of course, only 'relatively' so.
She couldn't sympathize with such tastes.
She had no desire to become a plaything to sate the young house head's lust.
She prayed her hands weren't to this master's taste.
"......Your hands are rough."
Did he prefer rough hands? Or soft ones?
She waited for his next words.
"Sturdy hands. You have talent."
'Fuck.'
It was a bust.
The worst response she had imagined.
"But you'll need more training to get used to properly gripping. And stamina, too."
"......"
Was she being summoned to this noble's bedroom now?
To serve diligently all night with her rough hands...... urk.
Just imagining it made her want to vomit.
But her master's next words differed from her expectations.
"I'll let you hold a wooden sword. After labor ends, you can train in swordsmanship anytime."
"Pardon?"
Swordsmanship?
......What did he know?
"Pay 10 Talant, and you can borrow a corner of the training grounds."
"......"
No. It didn't matter if he knew or not.
What mattered was that, in this moment,
this man had drawn out a longing she hadn't even dared to dream of.
"Th-thank you?"
"Don't thank me; you're paying for it. And aren't these hands too good for a mere pickpocket anyway."
"......"
"You'll make a fine knight."
As her master left the dormitory,
Lemon stared blankly at her own hands, clenching and unclenching her fists,
and suddenly had a thought.
'Maybe he wants me to build grip strength for some intense night service......?'
Apparently, her master was no ordinary pervert.
.
.
.
'So she's the companion from the original story.'
Karl Riddle met a third-rate villain's end,
but at his core, Karl was a formidable antagonist who persistently hindered the protagonist with his abilities and talents.
He held significant weight as a 'villain' in the story.
And it was a fairly common cliché for a villain's subordinate to be swayed by the protagonist and become a companion.
Especially if that subordinate was a 'slave.'
Lemon was one of the two slaves who became the protagonist's companions later on.
'Just need to find one more.'
Separate from being a good master, he intended to secure the original story's key slaves properly.
Human rights for slaves in this world were predictably abysmal,
and if the protagonist's allies were sold to other masters and died from harsh labor, the world's fate would become uncertain.
He could 'liberate' them at the right time to join the protagonist.
As a bonus, it would leave a good impression on him, so when they became the protagonist's companions, they'd advocate for Karl.
'......Feels bittersweet acknowledging the weight of lives like this.'
He planned to claim and manage all the protagonist-level slaves from the original,
but he couldn't save every slave.
Most slaves wouldn't even get a chance to join the protagonist's story,
dying namelessly.
'Well. Can't save every slave in this world.'
To do that, he'd need to buy them all out──or reform the slave system from its roots.
Not something a mere merchant could do.
Even as head of House Riddle, a great merchant house, he was fundamentally a moneyed noble.
His political influence in the capital was minimal,
and no amount of lobbying with money could overturn the empire's class system.
That was his limit.
'......For now, just focus on surviving.'
He tried to console himself that way,
but with modern sensibilities, it wasn't easy to simply ignore this world's tragedies.
People shouldn't be property.
Those lips that had forgotten how to speak,
those trembling bodies unable to even suffer without their master's permission,
those souls crippled beyond repair,
those lifeless, corpse-like eyes──
I could not forget them.
"......"
That night, I had a nightmare.
The novel's protagonist came to me,
put a sword in a slave's hand,
and that slave hesitated before stabbing my heart.
A horrific nightmare.
Yet why was it?
In the dream, as I bled out dying,
I seemed to be smiling.
"......Your Excellency. Are you all right? Your complexion is poor."
"......I had a good dream."
"A good dream......? Then why your complexion......"
"They say dreams are the opposite, right?"
This dream would never become reality.
Absolutely not.