Chapter 115: The Dwarf Girl, Perka (1)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 115: The Dwarf Girl, Perka (1)
Clang! Clang!
“The world’s been going in a strange direction lately.”
In a mine somewhere on the continent.
Amidst the chaotic din of sharp, metallic sounds, a bearded man, the mine’s supervisor, let out a grumble.
It was the kind of ordinary complaint anyone might make about the state of the world, but the scrawny man across from him nodded in agreement.
“Everyone thinks so.”
It had started about a year ago.
Inexplicable phenomena began to occur all across the continent.
The daughter of a count, recently freed from slavery, went missing.
A reaper appeared and massacred innocent people.
A Magic Tower Master appeared after the position had been vacant for hundreds of years.
A meteor fell and wiped out an entire merchant group.
Elves left the forest and started doing business.
If these things happened once in a while, it would be understandable. But with so many continent-shaking incidents occurring in clusters over the past year, you couldn't help but be concerned.
“And that’s not all. Didn’t a horde of demonic beasts invade the beastkin nation of Vestia recently?”
“And after that, a pitch-black veil covered the entire city. It was so big we could see it from here, so that says it all.”
The neighboring kingdoms were in an uproar.
They thought a terrorist attack had hit Vestia.
Fortunately, there was no damage.
“That’s what’s even weirder. The people inside don’t remember a thing about what happened, right? You think a Great Witch cast some kind of spell?”
The scrawny man shook his head.
“Rumor has it, it was the work of a gumiho.”
“A gumiho?”
“One of the demonic beasts from the East, called yokai.”
In the distant past, when magic was the exclusive domain of a handful of witches, the gumiho, revered as the king and god of the yokai in the East, had recently reappeared.
They say that in the gumiho’s wake, nothing but dust remains, a trail of disaster.
The bearded man let out a deep sigh and waved his hands dismissively.
“Good grief. It’s the end of the world, I tell you. It must be a sign that the world is about to end.”
“The story isn’t over yet.”
“There’s more?”
“Someone analyzed it, and they say all the mysterious phenomena happening lately have one thing in common.”
The scrawny man’s tone grew heavy.
His expression was so grim that the bearded man swallowed dryly.
“Wh-what is it?”
“The Slave Reaper. They say that man is connected to every single incident.”
“The Slave Reaper?”
He’d heard the name.
A man who was a slave trader but didn’t sell slaves.
He only ever bought them.
Any slave who passed through the Slave Reaper’s hands would disappear without a trace shortly after. If asked where they went, he would only look up at the sky and repeat that he’d “sent them to a better place.”
“What was it he always said…?”
“Liberation?”
“Right, liberation.”
Liberation.
The word itself had a good meaning.
But coming from a slave trader, there was no word more incongruous.
Liberation? From the kind of people who bought and sold humans for profit?
It didn’t take long for people to realize it was a euphemism—that he bought slaves for his own amusement and then murdered them in horrific ways.
And only women, at that.
The most depraved of hobbies.
He was the worst of the worst, even among slave traders.
“Then shouldn’t they hunt him down and make him pay? Why are they letting him roam free?”
The Slave Reaper was always present at these strange phenomena.
He was the one causing them.
In truth, it was an unrealistic assumption.
He might have a grand title like “Slave Reaper,” but at the end of the day, he was just an ordinary human with a twisted fetish. It was likely all a coincidence; no one truly believed he was the one behind the incidents.
But the details didn’t matter.
There was only circumstantial evidence, but that was enough.
After all, those in power couldn’t stand to let an eyesore remain.
“You don’t get it. He’s a bad guy to us, sure. But most nobles like the Slave Reaper. Birds of a feather flock together, I guess. Maybe they have something in common, what with their eccentric personalities.”
“It really is the end of the world.”
The bearded man heaved a sigh so deep it felt like the ground might swallow him up.
Then, he suddenly noticed something was off and whipped his head around.
A dwarf slave had stopped swinging her pickaxe.
No wonder the sounds had changed at some point.
“Hey, you! Are you slacking off?”
“N-No, sir!”
The startled dwarf girl hurriedly began to swing her pickaxe again.
Clang! Clang!
The sharp metallic sound hammered at her eardrums.
Fat beads of sweat flew from her brow.
The dwarf girl’s name was Perka.
It had been about half a year since she’d been brought to the mine.
Perka wanted to go home.
*
The dwarf girl, Perka.
Mines were familiar places to her.
Most of the continent’s dwarves made their homes in the underground city of Doomheim, and Perka’s hometown was Doomheim as well.
Just as fish and water were inseparable, so too were dwarves and mines. Minerals were their bones, and veins of ore were their blood.
This underground mine had an environment similar to her home, but it was decidedly not home.
Even dwarves didn’t stay cooped up underground all day; they occasionally went to the surface to bask in the sun. And even if they loved mining, they wouldn’t do it without eating.
No dwarf was like that.
…
‘Wait, are there…?’
She thought there might have been.
Quite a few, actually.
But that wasn’t the point. The point was that this place wasn’t a comfortable underground city for Perka, but a horrifying Tartarus.
Perka had been surrounded by minerals since she was a child and had enjoyed mining as a hobby, but when a hobby becomes forced labor, one’s interest in it tends to plummet.
It was the same now.
Shackles on her wrists and ankles.
A cheap pickaxe in her hands.
Clothes that reeked because she couldn’t wash them.
Meals consisted of rock-hard grain bread and a pale, watery soup that was barely different from water.
It was the life of a typical slave, but it wasn’t supposed to be Perka’s. As the daughter of one of only seven Meisters in Doomheim, Perka was something of a young lady.
Of course, being a tomboy with a peculiar way of speaking, she was told she was like a boy so often she was sick of hearing it.
In any case, it meant that even if she wasn't treated like royalty, she could at least live her life doing what she wanted.
‘I miss Dad…’
He must be worried sick by now.
If only she had listened to him, this wouldn’t have happened.
The fear that she would never see her father again, that she would be trapped here for the rest of her life, washed over her. Tears welled up in Perka’s eyes.
“Sniffle…”
Perka sniffled.
It was around then that a commotion started in the mine.
“Seriously, of all the slaves, why a dwarf? You know as well as I do that there’s no slave more efficient at mining than a dwarf, sir.”
“What can I do? I’m just following orders. If they tell me to bring her, I bring her.”
“Sigh… It’ll be hard to meet the quota without her.”
The scrawny mine supervisor, who had been talking with his superior, sighed and scratched his head, then started walking toward Perka.
In his hand was a gruesome red whip.
Whenever she was lazy or stopped mining, the whip would crack against her back.
Rumor had it the whip was originally brown but had been stained and discolored by the blood of slaves.
Seeing him walk straight toward her with that whip in hand, Perka’s shoulders flinched. Without even a moment to wipe away her welling tears, she frantically swung her pickaxe.
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
But the supervisor didn’t stop. He walked on until he stood right behind her. Perka squeezed her eyes shut.
“Hey, you. The dwarf.”
“Y-Yes, sir!”
“Is your name Perka?”
“Th-That’s right, sir!”
“Put down the pickaxe and follow me.”
The scrawny man turned and walked away.
Unsure of what was happening, Perka stood there awkwardly for a moment before putting down her pickaxe and scrambling to follow him.
‘Wh-What’s going on?’
There were usually two reasons a mine supervisor would summon a slave.
One was to lock a disobedient slave in solitary confinement. The cells were so cramped you could barely sit, and they didn’t even give you food. Slaves who were locked in there came back half-broken.
The other reason was when a slave became too weak to mine anymore and was sold off elsewhere. Women were sold to brothels, and men were sold as meat shields for battlefields or fighting demonic beasts.
“Tsk. Poor thing. Of all the places to be sold to…” the scrawny supervisor muttered to himself as he walked ahead.
This was a man who took out his frustrations on the slaves, whipping them at every opportunity. For him to call a slave “poor thing”…
‘A place even worse than a brothel?!’
Perka’s world went black.
Trembling, she followed him until they stopped at the staff office located within the mine. It was a building used when guests came or when the supervisors were on break.
The man opened the door.
“Get in.”
Perka was terrified.
This man was personally opening the door for her?
What’s more, the look in his eyes was just like that of a mother cow watching her calf being led to the slaughterhouse.
“Hurry up and get in. An important guest is waiting.”
She didn’t want to go in.
Hesitantly, Perka shuffled inside, moving barely a centimeter with each step.
Inside, a high-ranking female employee who occasionally visited the mine for inspections was waiting, along with a handsome man she had never seen before.
He had black hair and black eyes, a rare sight.
His attire was impeccable, completely out of place in the filthy mine.
The sight of him sipping coffee leisurely with his legs crossed was something you’d never see among the dwarves.
“Please confirm before the purchase. Is this the dwarf girl, the Perka you mentioned, sir?”
“Let’s see… Oh, yes. She matches my memory. Here is the payment we discussed.”
The man placed a pouch on the table.
From the clinking sound, it seemed to be filled with coins.
The female employee glanced at the man before picking up the pouch. After checking its contents, she nodded.
“The amount is correct. Then I will transfer ownership of the slave to you.”
The woman transferred ownership to the man.
For a moment, Perka felt a suffocating sensation.
Her body?
Her chest?
She didn’t know how to describe it, but if she had to, it would be the feeling of her soul being stifled. The constricting sensation was far from pleasant.
Clack.
The man set down his coffee cup and stood up.
“It seems we’re finished here, so I’ll be on my way. Let’s go, Miss Perka.”
By the time Perka came to her senses, she was already outside.
She shielded her eyes with her hand and looked up at the sky. The sunlight, which she hadn’t seen in half a year, beat down intensely. She thought it had been warm when she went in, but the wind was chilly, a sign that winter was approaching.
‘Is this… real?’
She got out this easily?
She had only ever dreamed of leaving. She thought she’d have to become a fossil before she could ever get out of that mine.
It still didn’t feel real.
It was all thanks to the mysterious man who had bought her.
He was looking at a map.
Who in the world was he?
Who was this person who had rescued her from the dark mine?
Unable to suppress her burgeoning curiosity, Perka carefully opened her mouth.
“U-Um, sir…”
“Is something the matter?”
“You’re my savior, but I don’t even know your name yet, sir. May I ask who you are?”
“Oh, my. I was so preoccupied I forgot to introduce myself. My apologies.”
The man smiled sweetly as he apologized.
No way.
A person who spoke to a slave with such courtesy and even apologized for something so trivial!
‘Is he a living saint?’
He was no ordinary kind person.
A cloud of hope blossomed within Perka.
Maybe, just maybe, this person would take her back home.
That girlish hope melted away like molten iron in a furnace with the man’s next words.
“My name is Karami. I’m a slave trader. It’s a bit embarrassing, but some people call me the Slave Reaper.”
“Eh?”
What did he just say?
Slave… Reaper?
Karami continued with a charming smile.
“Our time together won’t be very long, but let’s get along until then. I’ll be sending you to a place deep underground very soon.”