I Became Victor the Slave Trader
A sensation like someone was gouging out my brain while it was still alive. I clutched my throbbing skull and snapped my eyes open. My vision swam red and hazy. The damp, moldy stench that stabbed my nostrils. The metallic reek of blood that came rushing in from somewhere. And then a crude shout that sliced straight into my eardrums.
“Next item, everyone!”
On the auction house dais, an auctioneer in a gaudy tailcoat was screaming with veins bulging on his neck.
“A catkin beastwoman, perfectly trained for both combat and bedroom service!”
He pointed into the iron cage with a sleazy grin. Inside the darkness, a beastgirl crouched, shivering like a frightened animal.
“Just look at that flexible waist and those generous curves!”
The wet sound of men swallowing their saliva echoed from every corner of the hall.
“By day she’ll be an escort, by night the perfect little cat warming her master’s bed!”
The auctioneer raised his gavel high.
“Starting bid is five gold coins!”
Auction house? Beastmen? While my mind spun in confusion, the last day of my previous life overlapped like a hallucination. My little sister’s voice, ranting excitedly at the dinner table.
I let out a small snort after skimming the comments with a detached expression. I had never read a single page of my sister’s novel. Yet I knew the plot by heart, word for word, because the justice-obsessed girl had hammered it into my ears every single meal.
I never imagined that conversation would be the last one I ever had with her in my previous life.
The next day, the massive corporate merger and acquisition I had led went through. One of the employees who lost his job overnight harbored a grudge so deep it turned into a cold blade. The problem was he didn’t just carry a grudge; he carried an actual knife. In the end, I was stabbed and died. All that exercise for nothing.
“Sixty-five gold!”
The auctioneer, scanning the room, raised his voice. The hall’s heat was rising fast.
“Sixty-five! Do I hear seventy?”
Greedy hands shot up everywhere.
“Seventy!”
“Seventy! Seventy-five… wait, eighty!”
The auctioneer smiled with satisfaction and lifted his gavel.
“A catkin slave skilled in both combat and night duties, sold for eighty gold coins!”
Bang! Bang!
The sharp crack of the gavel snapped me back to reality.
“Ha.”
A dry laugh slipped out. This was ridiculous.
Perfectly synchronizing with the entity ‘Victor’’s memories.
A hologram flickered in front of my eyes for a moment, then every memory belonging to this body’s owner slammed into my head. I raised a hand and brushed my rough cheek. I didn’t need a mirror to know. The thick, snake-like scar slashing across it. The trash mid-boss “Victor” from the hit novel my sister had been serializing was now me.
If I was doomed to die anyway, maybe biting my tongue and killing myself here would be smarter? I soon chuckled and shook my head. The barbaric yet strangely romantic world my sister had rambled about held quite an appeal. There had been times I thought it might be fun to live inside it.
This could be a dream flashing through my mind in the final moments before death. Or maybe I was simply trapped inside the pleasant fantasy I used to share with my sister. Either way, the important thing was that right now, I was alive. Nothing else mattered more than that.
On the dais, the true main event was being prepared.
“Next item!”
With a metallic screech, the rusted iron cage opened, the sound scraping against bone.
“Her mana heart has been completely destroyed, yet—!”
The auctioneer pointed behind him, spit flying.
“Behold the eldest daughter of the noble House Valois, the family whose name once dyed the empire’s battlefields red with blood.”
A single spotlight poured down on her alone.
“House Valois has fallen. But her beauty has not!”
The thin silk dress, savagely torn. The heavy restraints mercilessly biting into her slender neck, wrists, and ankles. The chilling clank of chains sliced through the hall’s silence. Her combat ability was already no different from an ordinary woman’s, yet the auction house had bound her body to the limit, unwilling to risk even the slightest variable.
The sound of someone swallowing dryly rang out clearly. A sticky heat crept into the auctioneer’s voice.
“Though her mana heart is shattered, look at that perfect, violent figure and those raven-black locks!”
Thick desire coiled through the hall like a serpent.
“Behold the dazzling beauty sculpted like a marble statue! The proud noble lady once called the Reaper of the Battlefield, the woman who brought countless men to their knees!”
Someone let out a ragged breath.
“This is your golden chance to trample and train her to your heart’s content beneath your waist tonight!”
The auctioneer raised his gavel high.
“Starting bid is a mere ten gold coins! Bidding begins at ten!”
Even with her combat power gone, Elina de Valois was a premium item worth well over two hundred gold—the price of an entire respectable mansion in the capital. Her history and beauty shone brightly enough to justify that value.
Her unfocused eyes swept across the crowd, then immediately locked onto me. She glared as if she wanted to tear me limb from limb right then and there.
Ah. I think I understand the reason for that murderous intent.
The synchronized memories of Victor, along with the scar on this cheek, kindly explained it all. The glorious facial scar I had earned while cleaning up the Valois ducal house’s dirty secrets. Those arrogant nobles who dumped all their filth onto a sewer rat like Victor, then cut off their own tails the moment it looked like any of the shit might splash back on them, worsening the situation instead.
Thanks to that oh-so-noble Valois family, the original Victor had needed bone-carving time and effort just to stand on his feet again. When the bloodline of the Duke of Valois—the object of his revenge and resentment—fell to his feet, the body’s original owner had grabbed the girl by her hair inside the slave waiting room and spat this venom.
‘Your Highness the Duchess. I’ll peel off that refined hide of yours and throw you into the breeding pen of the lowest goblins. I’ll make you crawl like a bitch in heat.’
Elina had no idea who the man spitting those insults was. To her—a slave whose mana heart was broken and whose family had been destroyed—Victor’s words were a threat that could become brutal reality at any moment.
Suddenly, a translucent holographic window floated into my vision.
Target: Elina de Valois
Current Rank: F (Mana Heart Destroyed)
Potential Rank: SSS (Catastrophe Level)
Current Favorability: -100 (Extreme Murderous Intent)
Hidden Desire: Locked (Conditions not met)
※ Hidden Desire will be unsealed when the target’s mana heart is fully restored.
The alien text floating in the air. One of the settings my sister had excitedly rattled off at the dinner table flashed through my mind.
‘Oppa! That mid-boss bastard has one hidden cheat ability, you know? It’s an appraisal eye that sees through ranks and hidden talents!’
‘So? What does he do with it?’
‘He picks out only the hidden honey pots, buys them dirt cheap, and works them like a demon!’
The incredible ability she had described didn’t seem all that different from the due-diligence documents on failing companies I used to pore over. Yet the hologram I was seeing now was completely different from the ability I had quickly traced through Victor’s memories.
I’d think about that later.
I lifted my head and looked at Elina. She stood alone, receiving every lustful gaze and filthy desire the men in the room could produce.
“Twenty! Thirty!”
The nobles, forgetting all dignity, shouted bids with spit flying.
“Fifty in one jump!”
The auctioneer’s voice rose with excitement.
“The heat is incredible! From now on bids will rise in increments of fifty! Do I hear one hundred?”
The hall began to burn with madness.
“One hundred!”
“One hundred fifty!”
The nobles’ bids, swollen with greed, shot up like a carriage with broken brakes.
“Two hundred fifty!”
After a fierce competition—
“Three hundred!”
Three hundred gold coins. At this point, everyone clearly hesitated to bid higher. No matter how much extra value her beauty and tragic story carried, the psychological limit had been crossed.
I quickly ran the numbers in my head. If Elina fell into another noble’s hands and miraculously regained her strength, the result might differ from the original story where I bought her. Yet the causal laws of the novel’s setting could still come for my life. Rather than worrying about when she might recover and kill me, the safest way to lower the risk was to place that blade firmly beneath my own feet and tame it completely.
“Three hundred fifty.”
I raised my hand and spoke in a flat tone. It was a staggering sum equal to a remote barony’s entire annual tax revenue. And it was every last coin Victor currently possessed.
In an instant, ice water seemed to pour over the boiling auction hall. The entire venue fell deathly silent. Countless eyes still crawled greedily over Elina’s body, but no one dared open their mouth.
“Th-three hundred fifty gold! Any more?”
The auctioneer shouted, visibly flustered. Victor—the infamous mad dog of the empire’s back alleys. Everyone here knew to the marrow of their bones what happened when you tried to compete with prey Victor had set his eyes on. The price was also too high to push further.
“Three hundred fifty! Three hundred fifty going once—!”
Bang. Bang. Bang!
“Sold!”
The underground delivery room where damp, metallic air mercilessly stung the nasal passages.
“Here it is, Lord Victor. Three hundred fifty confirmed. And these are Elina’s slave documents.”
I tossed the bag of gold coins to the clerk and received the parchment. It bore a red mana seal—the absolute proof of bondage. The clerk chanted a short spell, and blood-colored mana stretched out from the parchment, wrapping around Elina inside the cage like a snake.
“Ugh…!”
Below her slender collarbone, the Brand of Subjugation that forced absolute obedience to her master sizzled as it burned in. Even while letting out a groan from the pain of searing flesh, Elina kept her head proudly raised. Raven hair wet with sweat and clinging to her forehead. Sapphire eyes dripping with murderous intent. Even as a ruined slave, she still radiated the overwhelming aura of a predator.
I rolled up the parchment and approached the cage. Beyond the cold iron bars, I could clearly feel her ragged breathing.
“From now on, you will learn that living without being able to die is far more painful than death itself.”
She glared at me with eyes full of venom.
“…Remove your filthy hand.”
Her voice was as cold as ice.
“If I must live as a lowly beast’s plaything, I would rather bite my tongue and end it.”
An arrogant insult befitting a duke’s daughter. The moment the words left her mouth, heat rose from the brand on her collarbone.
“Kgh…!”
The Brand of Subjugation never failed to deliver. I lightly patted her cheek and continued.
“Know your place, Elina de Valois.”
The brows of the venomous woman twitched.
“Three hundred fifty gold coins.”
I grabbed her slender throat roughly.
“That is the price I have placed on your life. Without my permission, you are not even allowed to breathe.”
“Kh…!”
“Do you hate me?”
“…”
“Just because I insulted you?”
I could feel her pulse racing beneath my fingers.
“Listen well, Elina de Valois.”
I released her throat. She gasped violently.
“From this moment on, the name de Valois is erased.”
Her pupils shook.
“From now on, you live as simply Elina. If you don’t want to live, then die like the proud daughter of House Valois by paying back your purchase price.”
The woman once called the empire’s fortune, the goddess of the battlefield, and the treasure of House Valois was dead. To achieve perfect control and flawless obedience, I would have to make full use of Victor’s training expertise. The woman standing before me was the female protagonist of that romance fantasy novel. If I failed to tame her, I would die.