I surveyed the shop, mainly looking at price tags. Surely the best slave would be the most expensive one! All the hard-hitters were here; goblins, orcs, wolf-like people, golems, and a few hybrids. Thankfully, my choice was simple, as they were sorted in order of ascending price.

The one I stopped at was a tall, green-skinned male with with dark eyes and long, pointed ears. I guessed he was about my age. It wasn't immediately obvious what he was supposed to be though, as he didn't match the catalogue that the shopkeeper had posted up on the wall.

"Hey, what are you supposed to be?" I asked, making no attempt to be polite.

"Oh, my dad was a goblin, and my mom was an elf." he responded concisely.

"Wow, freaky. So… what can you do?" He didn't look particularly well-built, so I wondered what warranted the high price.

"I'm pretty normal, relative to some of the other slaves. I've got a mean uppercut, though."

"Yeah, well I wouldn't call you normal, given your pedigree and all. You do seem strangely relaxed about all of this though. I think I'll be taking you with me, surely I can find a use for you. Considering the price tag on your name, that uppercut must be quite something." I figured that I could find a way to use sweepstaking to make him more useful if I had to.

"Oh, not really. The cost is from these clothes that I wear, actually; I nicked them off of the Supreme Emperor a while back. They got bound to my soul after I did that, so this dude trying to sell me couldn't take them for himself."

"You're ambitious, I think. I like that. Well I suppose I'll be unchaining you now then. Also who's this Supreme Emperor person? I'm kind of, for lack of better words, out of the loop."

"Oh he's the ruler of this nation. Well, he was, anyways..." The slave shifted around a bit.

"He, for lack of better words, was?"

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"I, um, kind of had to off him a while back... for the drip, of course."

"Maybe you're more useful than I thought." I took the key to his chains and released him. "What's your name, slave?"

"Saleo of the Hariseppu." Saleo shook his body a bit to loosen up; he must have been bound for a long time, judging by how stiff he was.

"I'll just call you Sally or something."

"Oh, sure. I guess that's alright."

As we left the shop, I made sure to give the shopkeeper the middle finger and spit on his shoe. We spent the night at the local tavern, which I just so happened to be the 50,000th customer of. Naturally, we won a free room for as long as we needed it. Not just any room though, it was the nicest one they had, with lots of sunlight. There were two beds that I assumed were king sized, and they looked well made for the time period that this world seemed to be set in; the walk-out balcony gave us a great view of the entire town as well. Truly, a room fitting for one such as myself.

Despite the ample room, I had to be a firm leader, so I made Sally sleep in the closet and put the two beds next to each other so I could have a double-king sized bed.

Just as I was about to turn off the light, a voice emerged from the shadows.

"Wise choice, my friend. I'm glad you saved room for me." A voice emerged from the shadows, sounding quite familiar.

"Tchadd. I suppose you have some sort of instructions for me now?" He climbed into my bed while I was talking, and lounged seductively.

"Due to the presence of the Devil King in this realm, all of the water has dried up. I need you to kill enough people so that the remainder can have enough to drink, in the form of blood."

"Uh… right. But wouldn't it make more sense to just kill the Devil King?"

"Nah, he's immortal. He's only doing this water thing once though."

"Oh, sure. Makes sense, I guess. Anyways, about how many people have to die?"

"Probably about, like, 90% of the population? It's gonna be a few months."

"Is this something that people in this company can actually do? Like how the fuck am I gonna kill what's probably like more than a hundred million people in that span of time?"

"There's a lot more than just a hundred million, you know. What you should be worrying about is how to know when you've killed enough. I'll leave that part up to you." He promptly fell asleep, and despite my efforts to wake him up, he did not budge. I'd have to get my answers tomorrow.

I crawled into bed with him, of course there was ample space between us, given the setup. Sally kept prying at the closet door throughout the night, without success.