Chapter 6
Chapter 6
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 6
Chapter Title: Masochistic Human
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When Karl first bought slaves at exorbitant prices,
Torsso inwardly sighed.
The slaves looked so gaunt and hunched that they seemed barely capable of even simple labor.
Even to Torsso, who lacked any real business acumen,
they didn't seem worth the high price.
'...Does he have no eye for a product's value?'
The real Karl was a thoroughbred merchant.
Buy low, sell high.
He had the insight to build a merchant's fortune simply by sticking to that principle.
By the time one became the head of a great merchant house,
just having the talent to sell goods for a profit wasn't enough to earn high praise,
but Karl wasn't lacking in other talents either.
That's why Karl was the head of House Riddle.
If he didn't have the talent to sniff out money,
there would be no reason to serve him as head of House Riddle.
'...Hold on. Buying even more slaves?'
But,
once the number of slaves Karl bought exceeded ten,
something in the atmosphere shifted.
'Why aren't the other merchants bidding anymore?'
A few merchants who had been competitively driving up slave prices stopped bidding.
They couldn't have run out of money after losing to Karl in the previous auctions.
The merchants trembled as if they were out of funds, lowering their paddles (auction number boards) and watching from the sidelines.
'...Hah.'
And when the number of slaves Karl bought surpassed twenty,
no merchant was holding a paddle anymore.
'...So that's what this was.'
Overwhelming financial power.
The credit given to the man called the Golden Ear,
that he could pay 'infinite' sums of money.
A vague fear of competing against such a person.
This evil spirit had never intended to 'buy cheap goods cheaply' from the start.
Instead, he had violently driven down the prices in a far more brutal way.
It was a crude method that only a merchant without shame would pull off,
but House Riddle was a merchant house.
Money was House Riddle's face, and turning a profit was their honor.
No other great merchant house could have done it.
Only the head of House Riddle, who valued money above honor, could.
'Of course, slaves are expensive to maintain, so buying a lot cheaply isn't always the best strategy.'
Slaves aren't the kind of goods that sell immediately just by putting them on the market.
As living beings, they require high maintenance costs,
they're always at risk of sudden death and losses,
and training and education cost money too.
Selling one expensive slave often yields more profit than buying a bunch of low-quality ones.
But.
Somehow, it didn't seem like this evil spirit would take a loss.
'He must be that confident he can turn them into sellable goods.'
At that moment, what flashed through Torsso's mind was the management method called 'Talant'.
The ingenious yet demonic idea of having slaves voluntarily spend their leisure time,
devoting themselves to human goals,
and raising their own value.
If you released those high-quality slaves onto the market at relatively low prices?
'Then, you could monopolize the slave retail market...!'
Chaos and management difficulties from scaling up?
The possibility of slave rebellions?
Hygiene and product management issues?
Once 'Talant' was introduced, these were mere trivialities.
Torsso had seen it with his own eyes.
This evil spirit taming slaves by dangling hope right in front of them.
Burrowing deep into the slaves' hearts,
forcibly drawing out their human qualities,
and then tempting them with gold.
The devil's method, perfectly suited to the epithet 'Golden Ear'.
'Tangible hope is sweeter than vague freedom.'
Who would be stupid enough to shatter their own hope?
Even if a slave plotting rebellion appeared,
the others, on the verge of achieving their goals through Talant, wouldn't join in.
Why risk an uncertain rebellion when one more Talant note would grant their wish?
Doing so would turn the Talants in their hands to worthless scraps.
No one but a fool would choose that.
'People become blind once money is in their hands. That's why he deliberately created this visible currency called 'Talant'.'
As a member of House Riddle, Torsso knew how blindly people changed when loyal to money.
This would work.
If too many Talants flooded the system and caused issues,
he could just raise the price of 'hope'.
Demonic.
Truly a demonic idea.
The devilish nature of preying on the last remaining 'humanity' of lazy beasts,
and packaging it as benevolence.
As a spirit possessing a human body, he knew better than anyone.
The weak points of people.
Exploiting the merchants' vague fear toward great merchant houses,
instead of directly handing out bread,
creating a currency they could 'choose' to spend themselves to tap into human desires—
all of it.
Methods only a shameless, inhuman monster would use.
'The Parkinson family, owners of the exchange, might complain about this... but they can't penalize him just for buying 'all' the slaves.'
If Karl had directly threatened other merchants, the Parkinson family would have to step in.
Beyond just the losses,
it would strike at the exchange's trust directly.
But in this auction, Karl hadn't broken any rules.
He'd fairly bid high and bought the slaves.
Punishing that was impossible.
The other merchants had just given up on their own assumptions.
'If they penalized House Riddle for this, it would damage the exchange's trust instead. It would set a precedent that even the highest bidder could face disadvantages. Slaves are just one part of the exchange's goods—they wouldn't risk the entire exchange's reputation over this.'
What if the other merchants had kept pace, harassing Karl's bids?
And if Karl had retaliated against them?
Then the Parkinson family would have had cause to intervene.
But Karl hadn't stooped to such outdated tactics.
He'd simply shown an overwhelming 'difference in class' from the start, relentlessly raising prices and sweeping everything up.
Perfect.
He'd secured justification and profit alike.
'This man is House Riddle's new head...!'
At that moment, Torsso pledged his loyalty to Karl in his heart.
.
.
.
.
I'd bought all the slaves without a second thought.
Impulse buying was a bad habit carried over from my previous life.
'Did I buy too many...?'
Looking at the slaves loaded into the cargo hold like luggage, I felt a slight sense of dread.
Yeah,
I'd bought way too many.
'No. But how could I hold back?'
Originally, I planned to buy only the named slaves from the 'original story'.
But,
the moment I saw the slaves displayed like merchandise on the auction stage,
I found myself raising my paddle without realizing it.
I could easily imagine the treatment they'd receive.
The look in that slave's eyes back at the inn,
the emptiness of a soul lost,
refused to leave my mind.
So, this was just the cheap sympathy of a modern man from 21st-century Korea.
The hypocrisy of buying slaves to save them.
'...Sigh. This won't abolish slavery, and I need to focus on my own survival.'
I had no intention of playing the idealist.
Even if I bought every slave in this exchange
and treated them all well,
slavery wouldn't vanish from the world.
Without reforming the system itself,
I couldn't save all slaves.
Buying slaves to save slaves was just an excuse.
I just couldn't hold back.
I was simply afraid of becoming a bad person.
'...Yeah. Let's call it rational spending.'
Cheap slaves cost maybe a few dozen silver coins at most,
high-end ones barely a hundred gold,
too cheap for the price of a human life.
So.
They were cheap,
so I bought them.
Bought them dirt cheap.
.
.
.
.
Mophin was a slave.
Of House Riddle's estates,
a farm slave working the fields.
But that didn't mean he only worked the farm.
With harvest season over and winter approaching, farm work had lightened,
so he had to labor elsewhere.
House Riddle never wasted labor.
'It's getting cold... will the master lend gloves...? Ah, he'll say to rent them with Talant. Better save up in advance.'
Growing double-crop 'winter wheat' on some lands,
hauling materials for building projects,
preparing hay for livestock,
plowing fields and clearing stones,
sometimes even mobilized for wild monster hunts.
Winter was a brutal season.
Even in summer, slaves died from heatstroke and exhaustion,
but winter injuries often made death preferable.
Slaves losing toes and fingers to frostbite,
arms to monsters,
ribs crushed under construction debris—
these 'defective' goods were made and discarded in winter.
"Hoo... Ha. Can't wait..."
But now,
Mophin thought of tomorrow not with dread of harsh winter,
but with strange anticipation and excitement.
A few days ago, he'd saved enough Talant to send a letter to his family.
'Everyone... must be doing well.'
Truth be told, he was a bit scared.
If this was all a cruel joke by a trash noble,
if his letter ended up tossed in the trash without even a stamp,
if the nobles read it, giggled mockingly,
had their fun, then burned it in the hearth—
he'd look pretty pathetic.
But somehow, it didn't feel like a lie.
He just wanted to believe—
or maybe not, he had his own reasons and conviction that it wasn't false hope.
["I am the Golden Ear, Karl Riddle."]
Karl was a money ghost who saw slaves strictly as money-making tools.
So, what profit was there in making mere tools miserable?
A slave's life was inherently miserable,
a slave's tragedy not even worth a clown's jest.
This world had plenty of trash who got satisfaction from crushing others,
but slaves weren't 'people'.
That he himself wasn't human,
that no master saw a mere slave as human.
That was the one truth a slave like him could be certain of.
'...So first, I need to save up as much Talant as possible.'
If the money ghost Karl wanted to despair him,
it would be by raising the cost of sending letters to save on stamps and paper.
Probably.
To send letters in the future, he'd need more Talant,
and having tasted hope once, he'd scrimp on food to spend on letters.
So.
He had to save as much Talant as possible first.
"Today, dozens of new slaves are arriving. After work, is there a slave to handle their education? It requires writing education logs, so only slaves who know letters."
'After work? When we're half-dead from exhaustion? Who's gonna do that?'
"By the way, the education overseer will receive extra Talant—"
"I'll do it—!"
"...Fine. Whatever. You seem to be writing letters lately anyway. And next time, wait until I'm done speaking."
For interrupting the instructor, Mophin took a whip lash to the back,
yet suddenly,
he thought work was truly rewarding and fulfilling.
"Heh. Hehehe."
"...Is he mad?"