Chapter 239: If the Master Hadn't Been There (2)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 239: If the Master Hadn't Been There (2)
Her consciousness felt heavy, as if sinking into the depths of the ocean.
She could hear nothing.
She could see nothing.
All she felt was a vague, stifling emptiness.
She tried to grasp her situation, but with not even the slightest bit of information, it was impossible.
All she could do was wait.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this year's Slave Carnival is already drawing to a close. But the excitement is several times hotter than when we began!”
A precious piece of information had arrived.
The man's voice boomed as if amplified by magic, and in response, a murmur rippled through the crowd like a round song.
Slave Carnival.
She knew that term.
The largest slave auction, held once a year in the kingdom. It was where she had met her master.
Had she come here with her master to acquire a new slave? She had no such memory.
“Now then, before we meet today's main dish, allow me to introduce the appetizer.”
Clank!
A bright light flared to life.
In the pitch-black darkness, the light was so intense it was hard to keep her eyes open.
She reflexively tried to shield her eyes, but her body wouldn't move as she willed.
Clink.
She saw the metal shackles fastened around her slender, malnourished wrists.
It was a magic tool that suppressed mana to prevent the use of special abilities.
Why was she wearing it?
Why were all those people staring at her?
As if they were looking at an auction item.
It was a sight not for someone who had come to buy a slave, but for one who was being sold as one.
Looking around, she saw she was on a stage, with a spotlight shining only on her.
A situation completely unrelated to her, who had an absolute master named Karami, was unfolding.
But this scene.
She felt like she’d seen it somewhere before.
“Her soft, night-sky-blue hair contrasts with her youthful, snow-white skin. We are looking for someone to save this poor girl, abandoned by her own father. Ah, and of course, she is a virgin.”
She had heard this line before, too.
Besides, wasn't the description similar to her own appearance?
….
Ah, she remembered.
The place where she first met Karami two years ago.
The turning point that had changed her life.
Only then did Mirabelle understand the situation she was facing.
But her understanding was full of holes.
She knew where she was and why she was here, but at the same time, she didn't know why she was here.
She had been abandoned by her father and sold as a slave, but she was saved by Karami.
She couldn't understand why she, who had served by Karami's side as the Hand of the Death God, was now an ordinary slave.
Was this a dream?
It was too vivid for that.
A hallucinatory spell? She couldn't feel any flow of mana.
‘Huh?’
She couldn't feel any power in her body.
The magic she had learned as the Magic Tower Master.
The Book of Omniscience.
The Reaper who always watched over her like a father.
It was as if she was back to how she was before she learned magic.
The soul shackles were gone, and the collar on her neck was gone too.
Her memories were far too clear for everything she had experienced to be a simple delusion.
To put it another way, it was like she had returned to the past with only her memories intact.
Regression? Or was she perhaps dreaming of her precious first meeting with her master?
“Then, the starting bid is 50 gold coins.”
The auctioneer announced the start of the bidding.
A fat man with a vulgar gaze and a woman with a pitying look joined the auction.
She didn't remember this part well. Back then, she had been in a state of despair, thinking her mother was dead and her father had abandoned her.
With the eyes of a dead person, she hadn't even cared who bought her.
“I'll bid 200 gold.”
A nobleman, investing a large sum in a seemingly unremarkable girl.
A feeling of disgust rose at his gaze that seemed to lick every inch of her body, but she didn't pay it much mind. She knew what would happen next.
The happiest moment of Mirabelle's life, the moment Karami extended his hand to save her.
Mirabelle's eyes darted around, searching for her master in the crowd.
No matter how crowded it was, finding her master was never a problem. But she couldn't see Karami anywhere.
‘I guess my training is still lacking.’
When I wake up from this dream, I need to train. Create a thousand Karami clones and find the real one among them.
“400.”
At the man's bid, the woman finally gave up.
This was it.
This was the moment Karami was supposed to appear.
‘Please make your cool entrance now, Master.’
Mirabelle waited with a smile.
The countdown dwindled.
Soon, the number hit zero.
“400 gold. Sold!”
Karami never appeared.
*
It was time for the contract between the slave and the slave's buyer.
The person standing before Mirabelle was not Karami, but a man who, despite being a noble, had not a shred of dignity.
Francis Belmont.
His hobby was to take young girls as slaves and abuse them.
Going by rumors alone, he sounded no different from Karami, but Mirabelle vehemently denied it. This man couldn't even be compared to her master.
“Thank you for the good deal, Baron Belmont.”
“Khehehe, the pleasure is all mine.”
Mirabelle didn't care what they were saying.
‘Why didn't Master appear?’
She had already ruled out the possibility that her bond with Karami was an illusion. The feeling she had when he saved her couldn't be fabricated by something so flimsy.
Then was this another branching point?
“Baron. Here is the shackle.”
Francis tried to fasten a red shackle around Mirabelle's neck. Mirabelle sharply slapped his hand away.
She glared at the baron with displeased eyes.
“Don't put something so filthy on me. I am my master's slave, and his alone.”
The baron and the staff member were stunned by her audacity. After blinking a few times, the baron belatedly came to his senses.
SMACK!
“Kyaaah!”
The baron struck Mirabelle across the cheek.
Struck by a slap swung with the full force of a grown man, Mirabelle's small body collapsed to the floor.
The intense pain, beyond what she could bear, actually numbed her senses.
Her stinging cheek swelled in an instant, and she could taste the metallic tang of blood in her mouth. Cradling her face, Mirabelle couldn't get up.
“F-Forgive me, Baron. She was on the verge of death right before the auction...”
“It's fine. This makes her more fun to tame. This is why I buy slaves.”
The baron gave a foul smile, as if he enjoyed Mirabelle's resistance. He tried once more to fasten the shackle on the fallen girl.
“Ugh! Don't! I told you, I'm my master's slave!”
“Right. And from now on, you are my slave, and I am your master. Her resistance is fierce. Hold her down.”
They grabbed Mirabelle's flailing arms and pinned them above her head.
They brought the red shackle to Mirabelle's completely exposed neck.
“No! No! Master! Master!”
“Yes, yes. What a lovely voice. From now on, you will cry for me.”
She struggled, trying to resist somehow, but she couldn't break free from the men's grip.
Click.
In the end, the bright red shackle was fastened around Mirabelle's neck.
*
A sweet scent that stung the tip of her nose.
It was an aphrodisiac fragrance, designed to dull the mind and heighten the body's sensitivity.
It was mainly used in brothels, or when dealing with sex slaves.
With the instinctual judgment that inhaling any more would be dangerous, Narsha forced her leaden consciousness awake.
“This place is...”
Narsha scanned her surroundings.
There was no need to deduce where she was. It was the brothel she'd been sold to as a prostitute after being captured on a trade route.
‘Why am I here?’
Like the other slaves, the first possibility that came to Narsha's mind was that this was a dream.
But the potent fragrance that turned people into fools was far too realistic to be a dream.
And her current attire. Seeing that she was dressed in a flimsy scrap of cloth, ready to entertain a customer at any moment, this had to be the moment she was to receive her first client as a prostitute.
That meant this was just before her encounter with Karami.
Was she having this dream because she missed the memory of that day? She couldn't tell.
Just then, the door opened.
According to Narsha's memory, the person who should have walked through that door was Karami.
“Ooh, just as I heard. It really is the young lady of House Bryan!”
It was a knight in outdoor clothes with a sword at his hip.
“Do you know me?”
“Of course I do. Who wouldn't know the young lady of House Bryan, the next leader of the famous Dawn Travel Company? I was half in doubt when I heard the new prostitute was you, but seeing you in person, I have no choice but to believe it.”
Nobles and commoners had different auras.
Narsha, who had lived her life cultivating her appearance as a nobleman's daughter, had a dignified air that couldn't be hidden even in a brothel, wearing vulgar clothes.
“From the looks of it, you haven't known a man yet, have you? I spent a whole year's salary to buy your purity. Everyone around me said it was crazy, but I knew I wasn't wrong.”
The knight approached Narsha, his deep gaze raking over her body.
“You don't have to be too afraid. I may not look it, but I'm a centurion of Ashton, trusted by the lord himself—?”
As the knight spoke, Narsha moved in a flash.
Leaping from the bed in an instant, Narsha slammed her fist into the knight's neck.
“Keuk!”
The knight, unable to react to the lightning-fast ambush, took the blow to a vital spot.
Snap. Thud.
In a flash, Narsha unbuckled the knight's sword belt and fastened the sword to her own hip.
The knight, crumpled on the floor, could barely move his body as he looked up at her.
“Wh-What...”
“What are you blabbering about? Shut up.”
“What?”
A tone far removed from that of a refined noble lady.
It was the side of her that Narsha never showed anyone else, a side that only Karami knew.
“I ought to just gouge your eyes out.”
Narsha looked down at the knight with contempt.
She had no personal grudge against him.
He must have paid a price. But so what?
She belonged to her master.
Just looking at this body with those lust-filled eyes was blasphemy.
And there was no way this was real. She didn't know who was pulling the strings, but it had to be an illusion.
So it didn't matter if she beat the knight up a bit, or even killed him. It was just an illusion, anyway.
“First, I need to get out of here.”
If she had realized anything from that attack, it was that her mana had decreased, and her trained body had reverted to that of a soft woman.
However, her instincts as a swordswoman hadn't vanished. She had no problem protecting herself.
The needlessly realistic scent was making her dizzy. She needed some fresh air.
Wrapping the knight's cloak around herself, Narsha opened the door and left the room.
.
.
.
“Ugh?”
Narsha's consciousness flickered for a moment.
She had definitely left the room, but when she came to her senses, she was back on the bed. The sword at her hip and the knight who had collapsed on the floor were gone.
A moment later, the knight who should have been unconscious walked in perfectly fine. Once again, he coveted Narsha's body, and once again, he was subdued by her.
Narsha left the room once more, and without fail, she returned to the bed.
Time was repeating.
An infinite loop.
Was there some kind of gimmick to escape this room?
Narsha searched the room and killed the knight. She even tried taking her own life, but she always ended up back where she started.
She tried every possible action she could in the small room, but it was meaningless.
No, there was one change. When she killed the knight, things reset even if she didn't leave the room.
From that, Narsha found a hint.
A room you couldn't leave unless you, so to speak, sold your body.
It was as if it was telling her that living a miserable life as a prostitute was her destiny.
“Fucking hell.”
It was a fucked-up situation.