Chapter 63
Chapter 63
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 63
Chapter Title: Slave
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One day.
The time it took for Torsso to drag the Ponzi scammer before me.
"I'm sorry. You told me to bring him right away, but I was late."
"Is this the guy?"
"Yes."
The scammer, wrists bound, trembled as he kept his head bowed low.
He seemed terrified.
He must have realized that what he did warranted fear.
For such a pathetic wretch to dare use my tools to commit crimes.
Truly absurd.
I couldn't make sense of it, and a scoff escaped my lips.
As I stared piercingly at the crown of the scammer's bowed head,
Torsso yanked the scammer's head back, forcing him to lift it.
Only then could I properly see the scammer's face.
"Huh."
"......"
"I wondered what you looked like, but you're surprisingly decent-featured. Yeah. Being decent-looking made it easy to fool people. Plenty must have trusted you just from your face. Deceiving others must have felt effortless."
"......"
"You should have been born hideous instead. Face melted from burns, seven fingers, liver spots on your skin, so grotesque no one would dream of investing in you. Then at least you wouldn't have sinned and stood before me."
The scammer's eyes shook.
He clamped his mouth shut, desperately trying to avert his gaze—a sign he'd committed many crimes.
"Even if I made you confess your sins yourself, you'd never do it properly. I know scammers well. Even with all their crimes exposed to daylight, they just spin new excuses to lighten their sentence."
"......"
"No matter what you say, I won't believe it, so keeping quiet is the smart move."
Anyway, scammers never confess their own sins.
Instead of prying his mouth open,
I removed the glove from my right hand.
I—or rather, 'Karl Riddle'—possessed a powerful blessing that let me glimpse the past of objects.
This was the power to understand others.
And.
Not everyone wanted to be understood.
The less innocent, the more they feared it.
"I'm going to count your sins."
An honest person has no reason to fear standing before me.
But someone who lived by deceit should fear it.
Yes. Sinners should fear.
Punishment is inevitable,
And there are no perfectly secret crimes.
At least,
Before me, all of it is laid bare in broad daylight.
"......"
I placed my hand on the scammer's head.
Holding a slave's hand was a sign of respect.
If you didn't offer it,
It meant I wouldn't invade your past.
And.
In other words, placing my hand on this wretch's head to read his past
Meant I had no respect for it.
It meant I would ravage it, tear it apart, dig deep, exposing every single weakness.
Thus, the word this scammer feared most slipped from my lips.
"I thought the traitors were all purged by the Empire, but a survivor lingered."
"...Traitor? That's just..."
Traitor.
The instant that word left my mouth, the scammer's previously sealed lips parted.
But excuses were pointless from the moment I touched him.
I ignored his words,
And recited his past, one detail at a time.
"Vault keeper."
"......"
"You narrowly escaped the Empire's blade by sheer luck."
This scammer was a vault keeper.
His family had clashed with me, exposed using 'military secrets,' had all assets seized, and been hauled off for treason—this was one of their survivors.
Traitor. Rebel. Great criminal.
He should have been long dead.
Yet this ghost clung to the earth, scheming to prey on people.
"You were the family's bastard. Born when your father raped one of his slaves. Too shameful even to be listed on the family register, which kept you off the Empire's radar and saved your hide."
"......"
"Saved by your sheer worthlessness—why not just wriggle underground like a worm in silence?"
"...That wasn't treason."
I spoke of his survival,
But he fixated on defending the initial 'traitor' label.
"It was a legitimate deal. The Empire sold us minting rights, so we needed guards for the mints. The imperial family loaned us commanders versed in military secrets to train us."
"Yeah, it might feel unfair. A mere vault keeper couldn't just grab military secrets on their own."
If the palace had officially taught them,
It could indeed seem unjust.
They handed over the secrets, then devoured the family on that pretext.
Yes. Unfair.
"Fine. But then you shouldn't have sicced those thugs trained in secrets on a petty gang brawl. Doesn't that mean you hijacked secrets meant to safeguard imperial authority for your turf wars?"
"That was... unavoidable! Our elite troops were tied up protecting the mints. We had no choice but to deploy those guys."
"Then you shouldn't have deployed them."
"I know! Damn it! We warned them not to use the secrets! But those cowards panicked and activated them anyway! They should've bitten their tongues and died!"
The scammer—the vault keeper—shouted desperately, dignity forgotten, as if truly wronged.
Yes, the mess could feel profoundly unfair.
A trivial incident ballooning into 'treason'—no wonder.
"Seven people."
"...What?"
—But you can't whine about unfairness before me.
At least not here in House Riddle's mansion,
Where a mere vault keeper had no right to plead.
"That day, seven slaves died."
"What does that...?"
"Because you barbarically bungled things, my slaves died."
"Just seven slaves—what's the big deal? We lost our entire family fortune! Boot us out of business, and you profited far more than a handful of slaves could fetch! And yet..."
Yes. To vermin like you, slaves are just 'property.'
Not just vault keepers.
In this world, slaves are mere property to everyone.
A slave's death gets logged as a loss,
The damage tallied by market value.
But.
Not for me.
"Shut your mouth."
I am right.
You are wrong.
I am right.
This world is wrong.
At least in the contradictory institution of 'slavery,'
The entire world is wrong,
And I—from beyond this world—am right.
Morality shifts with eras and cultures,
So judging by modern standards is reckless, some might say.
Yes, perhaps.
Cultural relativism, pluralism—debates aplenty.
But this isn't philosophy. It's survival.
Adapt and live; fail and die. Survival of the fittest.
I want to live.
If morality bends to eras,
I'll reshape the era.
To cultures, reshape culture. Environments, reshape them. Worlds, reshape the world.
If the world deems me wrong,
I'll conquer the world.
That's the resolve behind my survival.
"From the start, they didn't need to die. They shouldn't have lost their lives so senselessly."
"......"
"What exactly are you so aggrieved about? Was a single thing you did ever done right? You always chose crooked paths, landing you here. Pushed out of business, you swung violence to crush ours. Failed, you hid behind your lowly birth, dodging imperial eyes. Even the massive newspaper ads and rumor-mongering fees to us—siphoned from vault gold in your vault keeper days."
"......"
"Wrong methods, screwing everyone, barely scraping by, unsatisfied with survival, yanking others down to crawl out of the pit, fattening your gut on their ruin. What's aggrieved about that?"
The aggrieved aren't scammers like you.
Nor foolish transmigrators battling the world for survival.
The slaves swept up and slain.
They were the truly wronged.
"You will be sold as a slave."
"......"
Judgment rendered.
"Don't fear. I'm not keeping you as a slave."
If you see slaves as mere objects,
You become one.
"You will be sold to the northern stone quarries."
A touch harsher than death.