Aiparak (2)
The three of them were two middle-aged men from the mountain tribes with blue paint smeared across their bodies and one woman who looked like an ordinary civilian. All three were painfully thin, probably from malnutrition and the stubborn cold that had left them with nasty coughs.
I started by casting Active Buff and Healing Buff on all three at once. Their coughing slowly eased, then stopped completely.
“Winter may be ending, but it’s still cold enough to catch a chill. How exactly do these people sleep? Don’t you give them blankets?”
I asked on purpose. After traveling with them for several days, I had noticed the merchant never provided any bedding.
“Hehe, Magician-nim. The slaves huddle together inside the wagons, so they share body heat and don’t freeze to death. As for blankets… if we gave them cloth, they’d tear it into ropes. We can’t allow that.”
“Ropes? Ah…”
Of course. The slave traders refused to hand out anything that could be turned into a noose.
“That may be true, but please give them blankets anyway, even if you have to post extra guards. Relying only on huddling together will just create more patients.”
“But if they commit suicide…”
“That’s your choice to make. I only need to treat the sick and get paid. One gold per person.”
The official rate for group healing magic was three gold, so offering one gold per head was a proper discount.
“Hmm. Here you are, then.”
“One moment. I believe you promised to explain why you’re taking the slaves to Aiparak.”
“Ah, I nearly forgot. Hehe. Well, you see, Aiparak grew up around its dungeon. It’s practically a full-sized city now.”
The slave merchant Chielrn sat down properly, ready to explain.
“The city of Aiparak runs on byproducts from the dungeon. Naturally, they need people to gather those materials.”
In short, they needed lots of slaves to throw into the dungeon. But something felt off.
“That doesn’t add up. From what I’ve overheard these past few days, human slaves go for about fifteen gold, mountain tribes for ten, and Mor tribes for twenty-five. If you toss them straight into the dungeon, wouldn’t you lose money the moment they die?”
“Hahaha. You’ve hit the nail on the head. We don’t simply throw them in. We train them first.”
“Train them?”
“Yes. The merchants of Aiparak realized the dungeon’s resources were valuable, so they started sending slaves inside. But too many died on the first day. That’s why they built a dungeon training center. They train the slaves before sending them in. Apparently it’s enough to earn back their purchase price.”
According to Chielrn, when slaves appeared at the Aiparak auction, merchants and nobles would buy them, send them to the training center, and if the slaves earned five times their own value, they would be granted freedom.
Looked at a certain way, it was a strangely reasonable system. It reminded me of the gladiators of ancient Rome. Survive and become popular, earn your freedom. The slaves would fight desperately to become free, and the byproducts they harvested would line the merchants’ pockets.
“Then we should tell the people locked in those wagons. If they have hope, they won’t make ropes to hang themselves.”
“But some of them will still be sold to brothels. Hehehe.”
It seemed the split was half for the dungeon, half for the brothels.
“That may be, but giving them the hope of earning five times their value and becoming free will stop them from killing themselves. Just knowing there’s a chance is enough.”
“Hmm. That would probably reduce the number of sick as well.”
In the end, the slave merchant handed out rough cloth blankets that night and told the slaves they could become free by earning five times their purchase price in the dungeon. The hope took root. Even though they could have made ropes, none of them chose suicide. Their eyes gained a new determination to endure.
“This is water boiled with bellflower root. Anyone with a sore throat should drink it. You need to stay healthy.”
Even after receiving blankets, the cold nights still caused plenty of coughing. While we traveled I warmed the bellflower water and had the slaves drink it.
That was when I noticed the Mor tribe members who carried dwarf blood. Something felt different about them. I understood that being locked in wagons would make anyone withdrawn and cause their speech or movements to grow sluggish from stress. But there was something more. It felt like looking at people with borderline intellectual disabilities.
“That’s a characteristic of the Mor tribe,” Sezanne explained.
“A racial trait?”
When I told her the Mor people seemed strange, she confirmed it was simply how they were.
“The Mor tribe originated long ago during the Divine-Demon War. People fleeing the fighting took shelter inside dwarf dungeons and eventually formed their own race. After the war, the human-dwarf hybrids came back out. That was where the problems started.”
“The hybrids were the problem?”
“Not just any hybrids. The dwarf blood was the issue. They were short like humans but possessed the incredible craftsmanship of dwarves. Even after the Divine-Demon War ended, battles against monsters continued, so there was always a shortage of blacksmiths.”
“Why was becoming blacksmiths a problem?”
“Because they were taken by force. Kings and lords captured the Mor people, locked them up, and made them work. As human blood grew stronger across generations, the crafting talent faded, so they forced close-relative marriages to preserve the bloodline and increase their numbers. The result is today’s Mor tribe.”
A chill ran down my spine as I listened. They had been deliberately bred into a race that was intellectually stunted but possessed excellent manual dexterity. It felt no different from the forced breeding done to create purebred dogs with specific traits. The thought disgusted me.
Whether the game developers had planted this setting or the AI had created it on its own, I couldn’t feel good about it. And watching Sezanne speak of such things so casually, and Yanne who listened without noticing anything wrong, only deepened the sense of alienation. Of course people from different worlds would think differently, but this gap struck me harder than anything else.
“Is it possible to buy slaves and register them in a mercenary band?”
“It is. Anyone who was a mercenary before becoming a slave can be registered immediately.”
“I’ve already earned some money treating them for the merchant, and if I need warriors to stand at the front and block attacks, buying slaves doesn’t seem so bad.”
“Ah, so you’d buy them, send them through the training center, then add them to your band?”
“Yes. That seems workable.”
“In that case, wouldn’t it be better to recruit people from Aiparak who have already completed the dungeon training center and earned their freedom? Even though it’s a low-risk dungeon, anyone who survived there should have real skill.”
For the sake of the band, Sezanne’s suggestion made sense. Hiring former mercenaries who had already paid off five times their value would be more profitable.
“Let’s reach Aiparak first and see.”
**
“Whoa! It’s huge. Way bigger than I expected.”
I had assumed the city built on dungeon byproducts would be modest in scale, but just as Chielrn had said, it was large enough to be called a genuine city.
“Hehehe. I’m so glad none of the slaves died on the way. It’s all thanks to you, Magician-nim. Hehehe.”
After listening to the merchant’s grateful praise, we parted ways. He repeatedly begged that if we needed to buy or sell anything, we should come to his Chielrn Trading Company.
We headed to the Mercenary Guild first. It was just as noisy as the one in the capital.
“Oh! A magician from the capital? Please come this way. The guild master is inside the dungeon, so I’ll bring the vice guild master at once.”
When I showed my mercenary badge at the reception desk, they immediately guided me to a side room.
“Hahaha. Thank you for coming. Yesterday was graduation day for the dungeon training center, so we have a flood of new mercenaries registering. It’s been hectic.”
“The people coming out of the dungeon training center are slaves. Can slaves be registered as mercenaries?”
“Yes. It’s a special rule that only applies to the Aiparak branch. Since everything here revolves around entering the dungeon, we make an exception and register even slaves as mercenaries.”
It seemed they let slaves take requests as mercenaries so they could earn back their purchase price.
“Then you wish to participate as an observer, Magician Jinu?”
“Pardon? What do you mean by observer?”
The sudden mention of participating as an observer caught me off guard.
“Oh! You’re not here as a qualification examiner? We were told a B-Rank magician would be coming…”
The vice guild master was flustered to learn I wasn’t the expected observer. The receptionist who had ushered me in without checking was promptly showered with curses.
“Please explain what this observer role is. I was planning to stay here for a while anyway. If the timing works, I could take on the job.”
“Ah, in that case let me explain. You already know the Aiparak Dungeon has three floors, correct? The first floor is home to beast-type monsters, the second to goblins and kobolds, and the third to orcs.”
I had already picked that up while traveling with the merchant caravan.
“As you know, Magician-nim, the difference in difficulty between goblins and orcs is enormous.”
“Indeed.”
I had never actually seen an orc, but I nodded anyway.
“After mercenaries easily defeat goblins and kobolds on the second floor, they assume the third will be similar and head down, only to never return. More than half of them disappear that way.”
“So misjudging the difficulty is common.”
“Exactly. The slave mercenaries who fail to return cause massive losses for their merchant owners. Therefore, starting this year we’ve implemented an observer system. Veteran B-Rank or higher mercenaries accompany new parties as observers and decide whether they are ready for the third floor.”
In the end, because the merchants’ losses had grown too large, it was essentially a certification process where B-Rank mercenaries verified whether new teams had the skill to return from the third floor.
I would have liked to participate as an observer, but since I had no way to gauge my own combat ability yet, I couldn’t accept easily.
“Unfortunately I’ve only performed support roles until now, so I don’t have much actual combat experience. I don’t think I’m qualified to serve as an observer.”
“I see.”
The vice guild master looked disappointed, but after seeing that my badge only had two completed requests engraved on it, he gave up.
“Then how about I register as the observer and go with them?”
Sezanne, who had been standing beside me, took out her own mercenary badge. Come to think of it, she had experience with the Golden Dawn Mercenary Band as well as pioneering work from her family’s territory. Even at a glance, dozens of completed requests were engraved on her badge, including several war commissions. The vice guild master’s eyes changed immediately.
“M-more than enough! A veteran of this caliber could even take the little mercenary over there. Hahaha. Shall I arrange a match right away?”
“Yes, please do.”
Sezanne had seen the observer system as a chance to recruit skilled newcomers. She believed that true character and ability only revealed themselves in extreme situations inside a dungeon, not in ordinary conditions.
“Ah, is it not possible to match us with those who graduated from the dungeon training center yesterday?”
“Unfortunately, that won’t be possible.”