Estimated reading time: 6–7 minutes
Chapter 4
I grow up healthy and become 10 years old.
When you turn 10 in the Schmerzen family, you are finally allowed to have your own slave.
I go on my first slave purchasing trip.
The slave market is incredibly busy.
Though they call it a market, it’s really a place where slave merchants come to buy slaves.
Slaves of all races from all over the world are being sold here.
The inside of the market is a huge dome, almost like a luxurious lounge in a fancy hotel.
It feels a little out of place for a kid like me to be in a place like this.
In addition to their own routes, the Schmerzens also buy slaves here in the market—well, it’s basically like kidnapping. But we often buy from the slave market too.
Slaves go from the market to slave merchants, and then get passed on to customers like nobles.
In the slave market, slaves just get sold off in bulk carelessly.
Our job as slave merchants is to pick out promising slaves from among them, train them properly, and make sure they’ll be alright when they get passed on to the nobles.
Slaves we just bought haven’t been trained at all yet.
Even if they have a slave crest, they can still rebel and cause trouble.
For selling slaves at a high price to nobles, a slave’s etiquette and manners are also important.
「Now, you can buy any slave you like. Though it’s within the limits of your allowance, of course.」
My father says, letting me move around freely in the market.
Hans, my father’s slave, follows me to make sure I don’t get lost.
Hans is my father’s personal slave—the one I helped when I found him getting beaten the other day.
The slave I’ve come to buy today isn’t for selling.
It’s a personal slave to help with my daily needs.
In the Schmerzen family, in addition to the slaves for selling, we also keep slaves for household tasks and various other purposes.
I’ve had slaves attending me before, but those were my father’s property.
Now that I’ve turned 10 and been recognized as an adult, I’m finally allowed to have my own slave.
「Young master, what have you been looking for this whole time? Could it be a cute young girl or something?」
Hans jokes with me. All the times I treated his wounds after my father beat him, we’ve gotten pretty close. When it counts, I’m sure Hans will help me out.
「No…that’s not it. Well, looks aren’t unimportant but… What I’m looking for is a defective slave.」
「A defective slave… Aren’t those pretty rare? And young master, you sure have some unusual tastes.」
「Are you getting the wrong idea about something here?」
The slaves lined up on the busy main street all look good—so-called hot-sellers.
Defective slaves are probably more towards the underground area.
I decide to go from the market’s main street to the underground sales floor.
It’s not a place people come often.
The sanitary conditions are incomparably worse than above, with a nose-wrinkling stench.
The salespeople are shabby—you can’t even tell who the slaves are.
But this is where I find what I’m looking for.
I speak to an eccentric looking old man specializing in defective slaves.
「Hey, I want a female slave. A young one.」
「Heheheh, young master’s still young but already so lustful. I have some young ones, but they’re all on the verge of dying, ya hear? Nothing but girls with faces so damaged they’re peeling off.」
「I don’t care. Show me.」
The old man leads me behind a curtain.
There, slaves are lined up chained in a row.
「Now these here are all virgins I’ve got chained up. They look bad so no one’s laid a hand on ’em, see.」
「I don’t care about that… But I’ll keep it in mind.」
「Wouldn’t recommend ’em as sex slaves… They got no strength left…」
「Shut it. Be quiet for a second.」
I look for a promising slave. She’ll be a partner attending me, so I want to choose carefully.
My eyes meet those of a terribly emaciated elf girl.
「Is this one an elf?」
「Yep, rare huh? I reckon she’s smart, given her face is like that.」
The elf has missing limbs, and her face is badly burnt and peeling.
But for some reason, I feel strongly drawn to her.
It’s not that I pity her.
I just feel like with me, I can heal this girl.
I wanted to test my own power—that’s all.
「I’ll take this one. Sell me this girl.」
「Righto. That’ll be 50G.」
「That cheap…!? Isn’t that too low, no matter how you look at it?」
「Well, we deal in nothing but junk slaves like these. As you can see, they’re unusable, about to be disposed of. So that’s about right for the likes of them.」
「I see. Well, cheap is good. Okay, let’s form a slave pact.」
To be able to make slaves serve you, you have to form a contract with them using slave crests.
The slaves for sale are under contract with the shop owner at the sales stage.
When you pay money, you redraw the contract between yourself as the new owner and the slave.
By the way, the slave contract isn’t an absolute binding agreement that must be followed no matter what.
All the slave crest allows the master to do is punish the slave.
And it makes it so the slave cannot harm the master.
The slave still has freedom to do other things.
So the trusting relationship with the slave is quite important.
If you use harsh punishments to control them like my father, that’s another story…
The slave master can send pain signals through the crest any time.
By modulating it, you can drive the slave mad with pain, or even kill them depending on your magical power.
My father’s method is keeping them bound by constant low-level pain, and only removing the pain while they are working.
When I think about how they might retaliate if driven to ruin like that… it terrifies me.
So I’ve decided.
When I buy a slave, I’ll try my utmost to curry favor.
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