(Castien.)

I had been resolved to kill Alister. Nothing was going to change that; he couldn't be trusted, but I would've felt some pain doing it if only for the girl's sake.

The merchant though? I would feel very little.

I knew little about him. I wouldn't be weighed down by any knowledge other than to know that he sold people.

I'd seen slavery in my time. In my old universe, when the rebel planets had fallen into disorder and anarchy, but only after cracking the navy's power structure, many dark things had taken place in the shadowy and unclaimed reaches of space.

The things I had seen had disgusted me then. They disgusted me now.

The carriage was locked. Easy enough problem to fix, even without my past strength.

I slammed the pommel of my newly claimed shortsword down hard against the metal latch. I was met with a strong reverberation once, then twice.

Finally, the latch cracked off under my last strike.

I positioned myself to the side of the door and, with my free hand, reached over my body to grab the hole where the handle had been.

Three... two... one.

I ripped the door open.

A whooshing of air flew past my face as a crossbow bolt flew through the space where I very much wasn't standing.

Idiot hadn't even looked to see who he'd be shooting. Then again, anyone friendly likely wouldn't have broken the latch off; they'd have just knocked. Still should've aimed.

Before the hidden crossbowman had a chance to reload, I spun myself into the gap and raised my sword to the throat of the first human looking figure within the carriage.

"You move, you die," I said.

The man was wearing a simple traveler's garb; simple in that it wasn't all that ornate, the quality still looked a lot nicer than anything any of the slave's or guards wore. His eyes were shaking.

He didn't hold himself like a warrior, my past life told me that. My class seemed to also instinctually confirm that he wasn't a combat focused build either, even if he hadn't raised a weapon against me yet.

"Where's Alister, boy?" the man asked me slowly; his shaken up eyes seemed to weigh me very carefully.

"Dead," I said without ceremony; I didn't feel a need to reassure filth. "Give me the key to the collars and I'll let you leave."

The merchant smiled then; he slowly and arrogantly sat his crossbow on the seat next to him. His eyes had fallen down to my own collar.

"I don't think I will," he said.

A word I didn't understand left the man's mouth, though it sounded deep and ringing.

The ring on his left hand was much more intricate than Alister's had been. The moment he spoke the command word it flared with a dreadful power.

[You have resisted the Slaver Collar's effects.]

Dozens of screams of agony broke out from behind me.

The merchant's smug smile left his face when he realized that I hadn't immediately fallen to the ground in pain.

I grunted in anger and, without mercy, swung my shortsword to remove the merchant's hand.

Luckily, Nazanin had come up with a perfect way to counteract the collars, or so I had thought.

The merchant's hand fell to the ground, but the screaming of the slaves all throughout the convoy didn't stop.

Unlike Alister's had, the merchant's ring continued to glow its eerie shade from where the blood pooled around the armless hand.

The merchant screamed in pain and fell against a nearby wall.

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My sword trailed up to keep the man at its point.

"Stop it," I ordered him. "Or I take your head next."

The seedy dealer of lives looked at me with sheer hatred as he clenched at his stump.

"I only have to say one word and it'll kill them all before you can even get a single collar off," he said and then swayed down to sit onto one of the carriage's satin benches. The man shakily reached into his robe to remove a small red potion. "You will let me drink this or I'll say that word."

The man didn't wait for my permission to bit the cork off the potion and to prepare to drink the fluid.

"The pain they're feeling now will kill them eventually too and killing me won't stop it," he threatened and put the glass to his lips.

"Stop," I said and brought my blade right up to his artery; a nick of blood spilled from his vein. "If I let you live whose to say you won't come back for us?"

"You slave's aren't worth my life; but you, boy, if I ever see you in my city I will have worse things than death done to you," he said. "Now let me drink my potion, or the next thing I say will not be to your liking. I saw it in your eyes when I threatened them: you want to save them."

"Go ahead," I said. "But after this you leave."

The merchant laughed with a pained tilt. "I will let you go, after you tell me how you resisted my collar, but the slaves come with me, or they die."

I hid my angry grimace through my next words. "Drink."

The man grunted and closed his eyes as he brought the potion up to his lips.

The moment his eyelids closed I jumped forward and drove my blade through his throat. The sword went all the way through and shattered the carriage window behind the merchant.

The man's eyes shot open immediately. Carmine blood and cherry potion flowed out from around the weapon lodged into his flesh.

The merchant smashed and staggered back into the broken window frame. His remaining hand shot up to the sword to try and pull it free.

His head dangled backwards as the skin of his wound tried to seal itself back up, courtesy of the healing potion, but only served to lodge the weapon further into his body as flesh and sinew grew tightly around it.

Thanks to his potion and my timely strike, the merchant found himself completely incapable of withstanding the pain necessary to remove the blade from his own body. Despite tugging on the weapon unsuccessfully, I imagine it would've been like he was the one trying to run himself through with the sword in the first place; something even a dying brain would be hard pressed to let someone do to themselves.

I leaned over and grabbed for the severed hand that lay on the floor. I had to hold his head still to keep him from trying to pull away from me.

The merchant stumbled forward, somehow managing to stand to his feet, and fell forward out of the raised caravan. I stepped aside, holding his bleeding hand, as he fell.

Going off of how the girl's collar had worked before, I would've been entirely capable of stopping any one of the slaves from feeling pain if I grabbed the gem of their individual collar; however, I only had two hands and there were many more of them.

I glanced down to the merchant, who was now flailing against the sand. His HP was repeatedly lowering and then raising again as he twitched, face-flat on the ground.

It must've been an expensive healing potion that was keeping him alive. Though I guess he probably wasn't bleeding anymore due to the potion continuously healing his internal damage as it happened.

I would've felt pity, if I wasn't hearing the pained shrieking of women and children right now.

Regardless, I wouldn't need him alive for much longer if what I was about to do worked.

I removed the merchant's ring from his still-warm hand and fully enclosed it in my own. I then tossed his cooling appendage that had worn it into the sand.

[You have blocked Slavers' Ring's mana stream.]

To my relief, the screaming stopped, as the ring's magical signal was cut off by my flesh.

Interesting. It seemed my body truly was anathema to mana, even insofar as blocking its signal.

Still, it wasn't exactly a perfection solution. I couldn't keep the ring in my hand forever.

I grabbed the sword that stuck out of the merchant's throat and removed it.

I could hear him scream as the potion sealed his throat shut. Strangely, I could still see scar tissue as the bloody hole closed. Did healing potions have set limits in this world? That was good to know.

The merchant's chest heaved up and down and his remaining fingers dug hard into the sand. His stump had stopped bleeding.

I place the blood-covered weapon at the base of his skull.

"Tell me the command word to disable the ring," I said.

The man's head turned as much as my sword allowed him and he glared at me in pain and rage.

"So you can kill me?" he said; his voice was hoarse and distorted from the damage I'd done to his throat, even with it now being scarred over.

"I imagine you have more of those potions somewhere," I threatened; I wasn't feeling merciful, though I was mostly trying to scare him into compliance. I wasn't a butcher. "How about I force feed them to you and start taking other pieces off? I promise you that I value preventing these people's pain far more than your own."

The man clenched his teeth and uttered a single syllable of power.

I felt the ring's gem cool from a warm heat to a cold deadness.

I carefully turned my palm upwards and allowed my fingers to open. The screaming did not return.

"Thank you," I said. "Now."

"Do you plan to kill him?" Nazanin asked as she approached me.

Amarie was trailing, with a far away look in her eyes, behind the elf. I didn't know what the woman had said to the girl to get her away from Alister.

I had planned to kill the merchant, once he told me how to get the collars off everyone. Nazanin's question cut through my rage at the pain he'd caused these people, however.

We were in the middle of a desert. I didn't even know what continent we were on, or what continents there were in the first place.

"Do you know your way from here?" I asked her.

She studied me. "Perhaps if there are maps, but even then, the sands stretch far."

My fingers dug into the shortsword's handle once again.

"Watch him while I find some rope," I told her.

I glanced over to where Alister's body lay. "After that, we handle these bodies and free everyone."

I removed my blade's tip from the merchant's neck, as I addressed him next. "And you will tell me how to uncollar these people."