Chapter 28: The Second Main Slave
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 28: The Second Main Slave
Victor, former master of the Assassin’s Guild.
He was known by another name: the Shadow Peacock.
He conjured daggers from shadow and unleashed a massacre. The name came from the way he moved, like a peacock spreading its tail feathers in a deadly dance.
The feather-like daggers began their performance, illuminated by the flickering torchlight.
“Gaaah!”
“It’s a night raid! Grab your weapons and fight back!”
The mercenaries tried to retaliate, but it was too late; they were already roaring drunk. Unable to react to the daggers that crisscrossed the encampment, they were cut down indiscriminately.
Thwip, thwip, thwip.
The bodies of the mercenaries impaled by the shadow daggers twitched as if dancing, and droplets of blood scattered like flower petals.
The sight was so strangely beautiful it looked less like a battlefield and more like a stage.
At the center of this chaotic performance, Karami moved at a leisurely pace, as if he were in another dimension entirely. He approached the elf, who had collapsed in agony and lost consciousness.
[Alfia, the Eternally Suffering Elf]
She was the second main slave.
“Hah, I didn’t think it was possible, but she’s a real elf.”
Victor, having finished his work in an instant, stood beside Karami.
As if to add credence to his motto, “If there are no witnesses, it’s an assassination,” all the mercenaries were overlapping with their own shadows by the time his daggers vanished.
“Could you break the cell door? The shackles, too.”
“Are you sure? If she wakes up and uses her power, I’ll have trouble subduing her on my own.”
“It’s fine. That won’t happen.”
Victor had no idea how Karami could be so certain, but if Karami said so, it must be true. That line of thinking had already begun to take root in a corner of his mind as he swung his dagger.
Slice.
With a clean cutting sound, the iron bars and shackles were sliced apart like radishes.
“Heave-ho.”
Karami hoisted the collapsed Alfia onto his back.
“What are you going to do with the elf?”
“You’re asking a slave trader what he’s going to do with a defenseless elf. That has to be the most pointless question in the world.”
“Hmph.”
“Don’t tell me you’re feeling some sort of moral objection now?”
“Of course not. I have no right to feel that way.”
Karami and Victor exchanged idle chatter as they walked away from the gruesome scene of the massacre.
On the way back to the city, Victor glanced to his side.
This was an elf, a being said to live on nothing but dew.
Alfia was clearly slender, yet Karami was sweating profusely as he carried her.
“You look like you’re struggling. Wouldn’t it be better if I carried her?”
“Hah, haha… It’s fine. I take care of my own slaves.”
Victor felt a complex mix of emotions, unsure whether to call it responsibility or just plain foolishness.
*
“Is that a real elf?”
“What do you mean, ‘that’? You should say ‘this person’!”
What is this…
Alfia pondered in the darkness.
The unrestrained, high-pitched voices were the kind you could hear from children anywhere. Her head was already spinning, and the chaotic noise pounding against her eardrums only made it worse.
But why was she hearing children’s voices?
Alfia retraced her memories.
She’d woken up after a night of drinking to find she’d been kidnapped by humans and locked in an iron cage. When the pain became unbearable, she’d begged for alcohol but was coldly refused.
After that, she had slowly lost consciousness. Something seemed to have happened right before she passed out, but…
‘I can’t remember.’
No useful memories surfaced.
In the end, Alfia decided to feign unconsciousness to better assess the situation.
“H-Her… ear just twitched…”
“Wow. Her ears are so long. Are they real? Can I touch them?”
You shouldn’t do that.
Elves have sensitive ears. It’s a great discourtesy to touch them without permission, little human children.
“No. Karami said we shouldn’t touch her carelessly.”
Karami.
I don’t know who you are, but thank you anyway.
Alfia tried to keep pretending to be asleep, but there was only so much she could learn by listening. She couldn’t stay like this forever.
She cautiously cracked open her eyes.
Four children were leaning in, staring intently at her.
“She opened her eyes!”
“She’s awake!”
Because they were so close, they had noticed her peeking. Alfia squeezed her eyes shut and sighed inwardly before forcing a gentle, smiling expression.
“Ahaha… Hello?”
“Hello!”
“My, what polite children. But you seem a little too close. Could you back up a bit?”
The children pulled their faces back.
Well-behaved children were cute regardless of their race. Alfia slowly sat up and looked around.
She was lying on a pristine white bed. An identical bed was right next to it, and there was a piece of furniture that looked like a cabinet.
To a human, it was the most ordinary of interiors, but to Alfia, an elf, it was all unfamiliar.
“Where… am I?”
“This is our house!”
“Your house? Not a prison?”
“A prison? U-Unni, were you a criminal?”
“That’s not it, but…”
What in the world was going on?
She noticed that the shackles that had bound her entire body were gone. But Alfia felt no sense of relief.
“Huh?”
Because shackles had been placed not on her body, but on her very soul.
Alfia was utterly stunned.
‘Why? Of all things, why this?’
A soul contract.
For an elf, it held a profoundly different meaning.
Elves love only one person their entire lives. As proof of this, they carve a thousand-year vow into their souls with their lover beneath the World Tree.
If the promise is broken, the vow turns into a curse that takes root in the soul, forcing them to spend the rest of their lives in excruciating pain.
But now, shackles were bound to Alfia’s soul. It was already tainted. This couldn’t be washed away like dirt from one’s hands. It meant she could never share her love with anyone.
“…”
Alfia felt an indescribable emotion. It was a fate she might have foreseen the moment she was captured as a slave, but the reality of her soul being defiled came as a massive shock.
“Unni, are you okay? You don’t look well.”
The children leaned in, their faces full of worry. Alfia forced herself to fix her expression.
“Y-Yeah. By the way, are you slaves, too?”
“Yes!”
“Y-Yes…”
“I’m not.”
“Me neither.”
Not only had they kidnapped her while she was living her life peacefully, but they had also enslaved these young children. Alfia gritted her teeth.
“Where is this ‘master’ of yours?”
“Karami? He’s waiting upstairs.”
Mr. Karami. I thought you were a good person, but I guess not.
Just what kind of human had defiled her soul? Determined to see his damn handsome face for herself, Alfia got out of bed.
“Ugh.”
A wave of dizziness made her stumble. As she regained her senses, a sharp pain washed over her, and a cold sweat broke out on her skin.
“Unni, are you okay? You don’t look well.”
“I’m fine.”
After somehow reassuring the worried children, Alfia left the room and went upstairs to the ground floor.
In the tavern, two men were chatting.
One was an old man with salt-and-pepper hair and a beard.
The other was his opposite, a handsome man with black hair.
Thanks to the soul shackles, Alfia knew instinctively. This was the man who had bound her, the master the children called Karami.
And… though she didn’t want to admit it, in elven culture, he was now her life partner.
‘…He is handsome, I’ll give him that.’
He wouldn’t look out of place next to an elven male. Of course, that wasn’t nearly enough to make her feel any sort of affection for him.
When Alfia appeared, Karami greeted her with a smile.
“You’re finally awake. I was worried you might never wake up.”
Alfia delayed her answer, staring intently at Karami.
What kind of person is he?
What’s his personality like?
‘On the outside, he doesn’t seem like a bad person…’
But if he were a good person, he wouldn’t have enslaved those cute children. And he wouldn’t have hired mercenaries to kidnap her.
After a moment of calm analysis, Alfia reached her conclusion.
“Let me go.”
“Pardon?”
“I said, let me go.”
No questions, no compromises. A direct confrontation.
That was Alfia’s choice.
“It wasn’t enough to kidnap me and make me a slave, you had to go and scar my soul without my permission… and you’re working these little children as slaves, too. Do you have no conscience?”
“Haha, of course I do. In fact, I always take great pride in my actions.”
“You call… this something to be proud of?”
“Of course.”
Seeing Karami’s smirking face, completely disregarding the feelings of the one whose soul he had defiled, made her blood boil.
“Ugh.”
A short groan escaped Alfia’s lips.
The troublemakers within her, feeding on her intense emotions, ran wild with glee. Alfia clutched at her chest in frustration.
“What’s wrong? Are you unwell?”
“It’s n-nothing…”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
Karami took a sip of his drink.
“Don’t just stand there awkwardly. Why don’t you come have a drink?”
“What?”
The word struck Alfia’s long ears like a bolt of lightning.
‘Alcohol?’
Alfia’s eyes widened.
The thought, ‘Do masters normally share a drink with their slaves?’ crossed her mind, but that wasn’t important right now.
With alcohol, she could suppress this thorny, scratching pain. It definitely wasn’t because she had any selfish desire to drink human liquor.
“Ahem, there’s nothing quite like alcohol to help a conversation along with a stranger.”
Having finished her rationalization with a cough, Alfia sat down next to Karami. He filled a glass with alcohol and slid it toward her.
It was a clear, pale blue liquid.
Alfia had never seen such a drink before.
“What is this?”
“Lunabloom. It’s a liquor made from the petals of the moonflower. It should suit your palate.”
Alfia hesitated to drink it, but her wariness lessened when she saw Karami drink his own glass without a second thought. Sniffing it, she took a small sip.
The first taste was smooth and delicate. The scent of moonflower lingered on the tip of her tongue. As the liquor went down her throat, she felt the coolness of a moonlit night.
The serene atmosphere of a quiet, moonlit night was transmitted to her.
“Wow…”
“How is it?”
“It’s… incredibly delicious. I never knew you could make alcohol like this.”
With just one drink, the tension in her body melted away.
The potent alcohol spreading through her system made the troublemakers within her dizzy. Unable to handle the intoxication, they quieted down, and the pain subsided.
“Good liquor knows no race.”
“Exactly! You really know your stuff, don’t you?”
Alfia shot to her feet, agreeing enthusiastically.
In that instant, silence dominated the space.
When she came to her senses, she saw everyone staring at her with wide eyes—Victor, and the four children who had come upstairs and were peeking out with their small heads.
Only Karami was smiling, like a fisherman who had just set his bait.
“It’s said that with every drink, a veil is lifted.”
Blushing, Alfia awkwardly sat back down and took another gulp of her drink.
“You asked me to let you go?”
“Yes. Why, are you going to?”
“Hmm, I’d like to, but letting you go just like this would be a huge loss for me… Ah.”
As if he had any intention of doing so. Karami, who had been pretending to think it over, let out a short gasp as if he’d just had an idea.
“Then let’s do this. Let’s make a bet.”
“A bet?”
“Whose alcohol tolerance is higher. If you win, I’ll let you go, just as you wish. What do you say? Doesn’t that make me a kind master?”