Chapter 317: Slave Experience (10)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 317: Slave Experience (10)
“Mother, what is this? What do you mean Rami has been imprisoned?!” Claude shouted the moment he found the Duchess.
It was only yesterday that he’d had a date with Rami.
He had planned to sneak out and see her again today, but now he was being told she’d been thrown in jail overnight.
“That lowly girl tried to kill my youngest son.”
“Rami would never do such a thing. There must be some misunderstanding!”
“What misunderstanding?! Do you have any idea what happened to your brother? That boy, who was raised so delicately, is covered in wounds!” the Duchess spat, her voice filled with rage. She was already treating Rami like a potential murderer.
Her eyes glinted with a murderous animosity, as if she were staring down a sworn enemy.
“I never liked her from the start. That common thing is clearly a witch sent to destroy our family. Just thinking of her face makes me shudder with rage!”
“Mother, no matter what, that’s…”
“Just look at this. My sweet, kind son is defending another woman in front of his own mother. If that’s not the work of a witch, what is? She should be torn limb from limb!”
Claude had never seen his mother so furious in his entire life. He didn’t dare try to mediate and simply shut his mouth.
He sought help from his other siblings, but their reactions were much the same.
“Instead of spouting such nonsense, you should go visit your brother and see if he’s alright. And people from the Church will be arriving soon, so you’d best concern yourself with that. Now, get out of my sight!”
Having gained nothing, Claude left the room, practically pushed out by the Duchess’s fury.
The four siblings, excluding Evan, gathered together.
Claude spoke with a grave expression.
“What should we do? With Mother this angry, I don’t think it’ll be easy to save Rami…”
“What do you mean, ‘what should we do’? She harmed a direct heir of the family, so she’ll be executed. Shouldn’t we make her death as painful as possible?” Isabel replied matter-of-factly, as if he’d asked the most obvious question in the world.
“How can you say something like that so casually?”
“Casually? This is what you always do…”
“I don’t like it, but he’s right this time, Isabel. There’s no way Rami would do something like that. It’s obvious that gloomy kid caused some kind of accident.”
“…Has everyone lost their minds? Since when did you all trust a slave so much? Shouldn’t we just watch her struggle and beg for her life like we always do? Right, big brother?”
“Hmph.”
“I guess I’m the strange one, then.”
When even Alberic showed a similar reaction, Isabel concluded that she must be the one who was odd.
“No matter how I think about it, there has to be a misunderstanding. There’s no way Rami would have maliciously tried to harm Evan.”
Claude’s head and heart were already filled with Rami. He firmly believed that she would never hurt anyone.
In the end, the siblings trooped off to find Evan to hear his side of the story.
Claude kicked the door open and yelled, “Evan! What did you do to Rami?”
“C-Claude?”
“Tell me the truth. You were messing with some strange magic again and caused an accident, weren’t you?”
“N-No! She lunged at me first, and I was just trying to defend myself when… Go see for yourself! I’m this injured, but she doesn’t have a single scratch! That bitch, she has to be a witch!”
Indeed, Evan was seriously injured, his body wrapped in bandages from head to toe.
He had looked like a black mage before, but now that he was all white, he actually looked better. Claude knew he shouldn’t think such things, but as family, he was still worried about the injuries.
Because of this, Claude couldn’t press Evan any further.
Their final destination was the underground prison.
The security was tight.
An iron-barred cell.
And inside was Rami.
Her wrists were bound in iron cuffs connected to chains hanging from the ceiling, leaving her suspended with her arms raised.
“Rami, are you okay?”
“Young Master Claude? Oh, the others are here as well. What brings you all here?”
“What do you mean? We were worried about you. Are you hurt anywhere?”
“Fortunately, I’m not hurt. But… it’s a little embarrassing to be stared at so intently.”
Rami fidgeted, unable to stay still.
Though she wasn’t injured, her clothes had been badly torn in the explosion, revealing stretches of her pale skin.
Claude couldn’t take his eyes off her; in fact, he stared with his eyes wide open, as if trying to burn the image onto his retinas.
A sudden surge of heat rushed through Violetta, and she jabbed him in the eyes.
“Agh! What was that for, Violetta?!”
“I told you to call me sister, you moron. Don’t you dare look at my slave with those filthy eyes.”
“How can you be so unreasonable?”
“What do you mean? She’s my slave.”
“She’s not your slave right now, she’s our older brother’s slave, isn’t she?”
“Once a slave, always my slave. Got it? I hope you’ll keep that in mind as well, brother.”
Alberic simply ignored them and looked at Rami.
“What happened?”
“Are you aware that the young master admires the Slave Reaper?”
“He mentioned the name once. He was certainly excited about it. I didn’t know he admired him, though. But why do you bring this up?”
“He said he was going to liberate me just like the Slave Reaper… by trying to kill me. Then the explosion happened. That’s all.”
Alberic clicked his tongue in annoyance.
He knew Evan had become obsessed with something strange and was learning odd magic, and now he had finally caused an accident.
Evan claimed it was an accident that happened while he was defending himself, but Alberic knew what kind of woman Rami was.
A woman who would pass out from organizing a warehouse without a second thought and couldn't even resist a man was not someone who would attack another person.
Even though Evan was his brother, Rami’s story was far more credible.
But the truth didn’t matter. Rami was a slave, and Evan was a noble—the youngest son of a ducal house, at that. It was a relationship where she had to die if ordered to, even if she was innocent. Now that she had been framed, there was no way she would get out of this unscathed.
“What do we do, brother? Shouldn’t we sneak her out? At this rate, Rami could die.”
“Break a prisoner out? You wouldn’t be safe either, you know.”
“There are times when a man must risk his life for the woman he loves.”
“You’ve really lost your mind.”
Isabel shook her head.
Claude seemed ready to do anything to get Rami out, but he couldn’t just break down the door and escape with her.
If he did, Duke Laurentius’s magic would likely turn Rami to dust before she could even escape. At this point, Claude would have been grateful to even have her corpse.
In the end, despite moving as a group, they accomplished nothing and had to return empty-handed.
Not long after, a rumor began to shake the world.
It was a rumor that the missing Slave Reaper was being sought.
*
“They say the Slave Reaper from the Merchants of Death has disappeared.”
It was a Laurentius family meeting.
Duke Laurentius brought up the topic that had recently set the entire continent abuzz: the disappearance of the Slave Reaper.
From the Merchants of Death to the Great Forest, the Holy Kingdom to Vestia, it seemed every corner of the world was in an uproar, searching for him.
There was talk of a massive reward for anyone who helped find him.
Violetta let out a derisive laugh.
“How absurd. He’s not royalty, yet there’s all this fuss over a single missing commoner. The world has truly gone mad.”
Claude agreed.
“We should just kill him if we find him. Anyone who spouts nonsense about slave liberation and dares to challenge the authority of the nobility deserves to be torn to shreds.”
Isabel tilted her head.
“But I heard the Slave Reaper is handsome.”
“Is that what’s important to you right now? He’s just a commoner. Your dignity would plummet just by making eye contact with someone so lowly.”
“Are you really the one saying that…?”
“Rami is a former noble. Her birth is different from his.”
Isabel shook her head. Then, she tried hard to recall something.
“So, what did they say, Mother? Is there a description of the Slave Reaper?”
“It seems he has black hair and black eyes.”
“What an unusual combination.”
“Indeed.”
The family members wondered if they had ever seen someone like that.
…
““Huh?””
Violetta and Claude lifted their heads at the same time, letting out a sound of confusion. Though he didn’t show it outwardly, Alberic had a similar reaction.
Black hair and black eyes.
It was an unusual, yet very familiar, set of features to the members of the Laurentius family.
One person came to all their minds.
“Nah, it can’t be. As far as I know, the Slave Reaper is a man.”
“Right? It must be a coincidence.”
“Of course, it’s a coincidence. Why would someone who went around killing slaves become a slave? That’s not even funny.”
Everyone nodded in agreement.
A brief silence fell.
“But didn’t Rami say she was a merchant before?”
“Wasn’t that a lie? I thought she made it up to hide the fact that she was a noble.”
“What if being a ‘merchant’ meant she ran a merchant group? What if she was trying to hide something other than being a noble?”
“…”
Thump.
They shot up from their seats as one.
In a great rush, they stormed toward the dungeon where Rami was being held.
“Rami!”
“Oh, you’re here again. And this time, the Duke and Duchess are with you.”
“Rami, are you… the Slave Reaper? You’re not, right?”
“Eh.”
What?
How did they know?
But Rami couldn’t admit the truth, not for the life of me. She kept her mouth shut.
Normally, she would have denied it with her characteristic playful poker face, but her new female body was rich with emotion.
She could no longer hide her feelings as she once had.
Far from a smile, her pupils trembled faintly. Her expression hardened.
The moment they saw her face, everyone knew.
Our slave is the Slave Reaper.