The Price of a Life
“Huk… huuuk! Help! This snake, it’s…!”
The overwhelming pressure slowly crushing my throat felt exactly like death closing in.
I knew that terror, at least a little.
The sensation of death approaching whether I wanted it or not.
[Master, may I kill him?]
Rai was asking how far the freedom I’d granted him extended.
I had never once ordered him to kill a person.
Of course, the day would come eventually.
This world was that kind of place.
A world of kill or be killed. If you couldn’t kill, you died.
‘But does it have to be right now?’
The small room was already thick with the metallic stench of blood.
The only ones still conscious in this room were me, Rai, and that one slave trader.
The others had long since foamed at the mouth and collapsed from the unbearable agony Rai had gifted them. Iruse seemed to have passed out the moment she was thrown against the wall. Ash wasn’t moving either, apparently unconscious.
“Ash.”
I was worried about both of them, but Ash—who had taken far more hits—concerned me more.
When Rai attacked the men, Ash had been hurled to the floor. As I flipped over his small, limp body, I’d wondered for a second if he might already be dead. Thankfully, he was still breathing.
But my relief lasted only a moment. The face I brushed aside to check his breathing filled me with a rage so hot it burned.
The neat, innocent boy’s face I’d glimpsed earlier was gone.
What remained was grotesquely swollen and covered in blood—already resembling a corpse.
While I had clenched my teeth and stayed still to avoid getting hit, these people had suffered even more. That was how it felt.
An eerily cold sensation washed over me.
“S-Spare me… please!”
When the man looked at his horribly crumpled comrades and began begging me for his life, I found it absurd.
After doing this to Ash and Iruse, he still thought his own life was precious?
A man who sold other people—did he really believe his own life held any value?
Was a life even precious at all?
The answer was obvious, yet so many people refused to honor it.
Just as people sold other people, they chose the wrong answer and made it the norm.
“Rai.”
[Yes, Master.]
“Would it be better to kill him? Or to crush his nose?”
The worst injury on Ash’s face was his nose.
It looked like the bones had been shattered by repeated punches. He could barely breathe, wheezing painfully, so I reached out and pried his lips open. Only then did a thin thread of air manage to pass through his mouth.
[From this man’s perspective, the latter would be worse, wouldn’t it?]
“Then do that.”
[Understood!]
I felt almost nothing.
The same sensation I had felt once before returned. My mind grew icy cold, my heart freezing solid.
It was exactly the feeling I’d had when the Bee Swarm nearly killed me.
The simple, brutal realization that if you couldn’t kill, you would die.
“Wait! No! Don’t—Khaaaak!”
I barely even blinked as the sound of the man’s nasal bone shattering rang out.
Only his agonized groans filled the air.
My eyes stayed on Ash for a moment, then shifted to Iruse. Finally, I took in the miserable state of the other slave traders.
The way I felt looking at strangers and the way I felt looking at my friends were completely different.
Of course the pain of people I knew would feel far more real to me.
Death was the same.
What did I care about scum like them? It didn’t matter at all.
“Should I just kill him?”
[That sounds good too!]
“Even if I spare him, he’s still a slave trader.”
Eyes brimming with terror met mine.
The man, now realizing Rai moved only on my command, suddenly dropped to his knees. Clutching the bloody ruin where his nose had been, he begged.
He was practically sobbing, pleading desperately to a small girl like me.
“I’ll beg like this… so please!”
His voice sounded exactly like a victim’s.
Just minutes ago he had been trying to sell children into slavery, yet here he was, shameless as ever.
Rai seemed to think I was hesitating. His eyes asked, What now?
“Hmm. That won’t do. Slave traders are irredeemable trash, after all. Right, Rai?”
[Exactly!]
“I hope you aren’t born as humans next time.”
The decision wasn’t difficult.
Once the knights arrived, they would all be executed anyway.
Kidnapping nobles was already grounds for immediate execution.
The world wouldn’t suffer from losing one piece of filth like him. If anything, it would be better off.
Rai tensed, power surging through his body. The man’s eyes flooded with despair and pain.
“Stop.”
[Master?]
At my command, Rai froze in confusion.
[Huh.]
Then he saw the same thing I did and began to panic.
A woman had lifted Iruse—who had been slumped against the wall by the door—and was now pressing a dagger to her throat.
When had she entered?
I hadn’t sensed her presence at all.
Even if I hadn’t, Rai should have.
“Rai.”
When I called him with clear irritation, Rai—still wrapped around the man’s neck like a necktie—immediately began making excuses.
[No, you see, I was so focused on what was happening here…]
[Who asked for excuses?]
[I’m sorry, Master! But that woman really has almost no presence! She must be an assassin or a thief!]
Had she come because of the screams?
I gently set Ash’s head down from my lap and slowly rose to my feet.
The woman had a truly filthy look in her eyes.
“Little girl.”
Unsurprisingly, her voice was far from friendly.
The mysterious woman was deliberately emphasizing the dagger’s presence.
The finely honed blade gleamed coldly beneath Iruse’s throat, as if daring me to act.
“Let my brother go while I’m still asking nicely.”
“Hah. Where exactly is that ‘nicely’?”
She was already threatening me!
***
“I’ll warn you once. If you kill my brother, you’ll get to watch your friend’s neck bones snap.”
It was a threat after all.
The situation was bad no matter how I looked at it. Iruse had been taken hostage, and bitter gastric fluid kept rising up my throat.
It was a warning sign of internal injury from overusing mana.
This was exactly why you were supposed to always keep some mana in reserve.
“Ptui.”
I spat out the disgusting fluid that had pooled in my mouth, crossed my arms, and did my best to look composed.
Since Undine had come close, the amount of mana leaking out had decreased significantly. Even so, what little remained wouldn’t last me more than a few minutes.
My mana was already at its limit. If I kept forcing it like this, the odds of me coughing up blood were very high.
I wasn’t confident.
I wasn’t sure I could hold out until the knights arrived.
“And if I refuse?”
“Ha. You want to watch your friend die?”
“I’ll return those exact words. If you don’t want to watch your brother die, release my friend right now.”
The woman had red hair and orange eyes. Objectively, she was incredibly sexy and alluring, but to my eyes she looked like nothing more than a vulgar hyena.
“I’ll say it again. Little girl, if you cut here, a human dies. No matter how well-trained—”
“The same goes for your brother, doesn’t it? If his neck breaks, he dies.”
Crack.
“B-Big sis…”
A threat for a threat.
At my glance, Rai tightened his grip on the man’s neck and wagged his tail.
Like a happy dog.
“…I’ve seen plenty of snake handlers, but this is the first time I’ve seen a snake like that.”
“My snake is pretty impressive, isn’t he?”
Both of us were putting on a bold front, pretending to be relaxed.
The woman’s eyes lingered for a long time on the other slave traders whose hands and feet had been crushed. It didn’t take her long to realize what Rai was capable of.
She made an offer.
“I swear. If you release my brother, I’ll let all of you go safely.”
She gestured toward the other slave traders who had gathered at the doorway, as if telling me to see clearly who held the disadvantage.
Who did she think she was fooling?
“Who would believe that?”