A very plump and balding man entered the room and plopped himself on the chair. He was wearing a silky dark green suit and had some gaudy looking rings on his hands. He was followed in the room by a maid carrying a tea set on a tray, a butler, and three guards. The guards and butler stood behind the plump man who was looking over the maid making us tea, very seductively. I internally screamed. This was disgusting to watch.

Once the tea was poured, the maid bowed and left the room, leaving us in a somewhat awkward silence before the plump man spoke up. “The name’s Allendroux. I heard an interesting story about you killing one of my guards. I hope you don’t mind if I ask a few questions before we conduct our business.”

“As long as your business doesn’t involve him pointing a blade at me again,” I smiled wryly.

Allendroux chuckled and took a sip of his tea, then set it down. “That answers my question. They’re supposed to be used to ward off people trying to use force to take back their family members that were confiscated for the lack of taxes being paid. I hope you don’t mind them assuming you were of that type.”

“If you don’t want me to hold a grudge, then offer a satisfying price for your goods. I’m sure you’ll find that I’m quite a fair person as long as you don’t try to play dirty, like them.”

Allendroux was caught off guard. What? Thought I wouldn’t catch on? If they told you about me killing one of your men, then they obviously told you that I had a lot of money on me. I’m not stupid.

“Well, I guess that’s a fair request. So, what kind of slaves are you interested in? I’ll try to match your tastes as well as I can.”

I grinned and looked Allendroux in the eye. “Well, what I purchase will be based on whether or not you have what can fit my current needs. Otherwise, I’ll just go somewhere else. I’m not against using demi humans after all.”

Gotcha. I thought as Allendroux took a handkerchief from his chest pocket and dabbed it on his now sweating brow. Just keep emphasising that you have a need for slaves to perform properly. I don’t need to like this conversation, I just need it to progress where I need it to go. Don’t give him room to force things on me that I don’t need. I waited for a minute, completely still and just watching him. Eventually he nodded for me to continue.

“My current needs involve individuals with knowledge of construction and farming. I’ll also like to see the ones that are young enough to learn trades and skills, since I do plan to keep moving forward. In the near future I assume I will be needing a butler or maid, so I guess I can look at a few who have good etiquette. And like before, if I am purchasing one that has the skills, I would like to purchase a few younger ones that can learn the skills. Although the etiquette isn’t the type of slaves I would like to purchase right now. I just want to see if its worth coming back here in the near future. We’ll stick to the purchase of construction, specifically, today.”

Allendroux looked extremely surprised at my request and sat in thought for a moment, before grinning at me. He then stood up and began walking out the door with the guards and butler in tow, leaving just one sentence for me: “I’ll have everything you requested shortly.”

I closed my eyes and leaned back into the couch. “Keep an eye on our surroundings. I doubt he’ll do something stupid, but I want to be careful.”

“Aye. But will one carriage be enough?”

“Well, it won’t be comfortable, but they’ll fit in the carriage. Me and Devo can ride the amus we brought. Worst case scenario, we’ll have another person riding in the coach with you, and both me and Devo will have a riding partner.” I shrugged. I wasn’t planning on making a big purchase here, and any money I spent today, I knew I would get back in the near future anyways.

After fifteen minutes of waiting in silence there was a knock on the door and then a maid stepped in, letting us know that we would be viewing the merchandise in a different room. Seriously, though. Why is the thought of slavery bothering me so much? Is it because of Eliquis? Wait, now that I think about it, demi humans are treated as people in the Class System and Corruption thing. But people here don’t seem to think of them as people. I’m going to need to invest some time in figuring this out. I made a mental note to keep my emotions hidden and off my face as we made our way into another room following the maid.

We were let into a massive room that wasn’t especially impressive. Along the wall to my right were a bunch of slaves lined up in fairly decent looking clothing. To my left was Allendoux, the three guards from earlier, plus an additional five, the butler and two maids. What’s with this reception? I thought to myself as I waited for an invitation to check the slaves.

“These on this side are what you requested for purchase today,” Allendoux pointed to the closest slaves, then motioned to the other side of the room. “Those are what I thought would be sufficient for your purchase at a later date. Feel free to inspect them.”

“I’ll do just that,” I see. He brought additional guards to see if I would try to catch any hints of me knowing these slaves. Even if I did know them, I have other means of communication.

The first slaves weren’t as dead looking as Luna’s friends, Alex and Josh, but they were going to get there sooner or later. However, they seemed fed enough to be ready for labor and good at it too. Out of the corner of my eye one of the boys brought caught my eye. Bingo. I ignored the child and continued looking at the adults, eventually settling on two. They weren’t as well built as the others, but they were more attentive and watching me carefully. I wouldn’t have to work as hard to revive them, so they were perfect.

“This one, and that one,” I said pointing at my two choices.

“I think that boy right there looks like a quick learner,” K said pointing at the boy that caught my eye.

“Any others?” I asked, walking down the line of kids looking at their current mental condition. If I take too long, they’ll be worse than dead.

“None I would suggest,” K said, putting Allendoux in a tough spot.

I turned around to look at him questioningly. “We-well most of our labor types are currently being rented out. I do apologize for that.”

I nodded as I watched the guards move the three I requested to the back of the room, and began ushering out the other labor-types. I moved quickly to the next group, keeping the pretence of ‘looking for future purchases’. Well, it looks like the girls are pretty well taken care of here. I guess he makes sure nobody sleeps with merchandise. Oh? That old guy...

I stopped in front of a man around the age of forty. He was a very well built man but what caught my eye was how composed he was. Unlike most of the slaves here, he had his legs at shoulder width apart and his arms were relaxed. I looked the man in the eye and after a few seconds, he glanced to his right, and then blinked twice. Oh? I like him.

I took two steps back, keeping my back to the guards who didn’t even see the hint that the old man gave me. I then looked to the man’s left and saw three women in a similar stance as him. I see. They’re far from broken and they haven’t given up on revenge. Unlike the other slaves here, these four were ready for a fight to break out now. Sorry guys, but I’m not quite ready to go to war today.

“Allendoux, how much would you say those three slaves we bought would go for?”

Allendoux dabbed a handkerchief on his brow again, clearly nervous at my threat earlier. “I-I would place these two men at thirty silver each, and the boy at two. And then the tax on each is five small silver.”

“I see. I guess that’s a fair price, since you need to make money from this purchase. How much are the ones in this group?”

“The women...I can give you forty silvers for each. That’s the best price I can offer for them. Any girl under fifteen I can’t let go for less than sixty silver each. And the men will be nine silver each, for you. The tax is the same.”

I see. So based on that, these three plus that guy would make it to a gold penny and twenty-nine silver. The tax is just twenty small silver. And the group I came here to purchase would be sixty-five, eighty. Eighty silver and fifteen small silver. Clearly, I have enough to purchase all of them and have money left over. But should I? I looked around at the other slaves here and saw some of the girls looking at me cautiously. If I were to purchase any others, would they be able to meet the standards for fighting? No, let’s not get too greedy. Four capable fighters should be enough. But I need to make Allendoux shake a bit more. Let’s try this.

“How long will it take to draft a receipt of purchase?” K asked.

“A-A-About ten minutes. I’ll have someone get on it right away.”

“Then how about you add a few more on there?” I turned around and faced Allendoux, making sure to remove my grin. “There’s four here that seem ready to work, however the rest of them are… Well, I hope the next time I come by you have a better selection.”

“Y-yes. Of course. You, bring the ones he picked out to the other room.”

“Oh, I have one more request though,” I said boldly. “I need to borrow some transportation to the farm in the village proper. Just to transport them.”

“To the farm?”

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“Yes. I purchased an additional carriage before coming here, but they needed time to prepare it. But with all the time we’ve spent here, I can assume it will be ready by the time we get back if we travel by carriage. So if you can add that into the receipt. Let’s see, the total should come to two gold pennies and nine silver. Plus tax is thirty-five small silver, so let’s round it up to two gold pennies and ten silvers. Sound fair?”

“Yes. That’s fair indeed. I’ll have someone prepare a carriage right away. Now, let’s head back to the room you were in before while all of this is set up.”

“Sure.”

The purchase of all seven of the slaves went without an issue. They were all collared through some sort of unique magic I couldn’t understand, but I was given a key for each of them, in case I wanted to sell them later on. Without the key, a slave couldn’t be collared to a new owner and therefore could choose to disobey orders of their new owner. Or something like that. I was only half paying attention to the conversation since I was planning on removing the collars later on.

The carriage stopped at the road before the farm, which was far enough anyways. I had planned to split up with K anyways, so this was perfect. I waved at the guards as they began to return to the mansion.

“Well, I’m glad that bullshit is over. K, use the money I gave you earlier to purchase more clothing and some food. I’ll meet you at the entrance we came in from.”

“Aye.”

“Who are you?” The man who caught my eye earlier asked.

“Save your questions for when night comes. All of you. For now, just act sad and don’t get surprised by anything you see us do.”

With my orders given, we made it back to the barn. Bellamort had already paid for the carriage, and was looking over the amus. I gave a questionable look to Luna when she got excited at the thought of seeing her brother. I let them have their small reunion while I tagged my new amus with CMP, since nobody other than my group was around to see, and let them lay down to let the effects start passing. I didn’t feel like having to deal with needing to tell people exactly how to guide them, so this was the best way to handle that issue. Everyone looked surprised at the whole thing but didn’t ask any questions, thankfully.

If I mark these six with the bran, I’ll have to work extremely hard to raise the maximum number of brans I can hand out. Guess I have no choice but to go hunting tomorrow with the amus. Actually, couldn’t I just split us up into two hunting groups and a home group? If all six amus are out killing things, then I would level that much faster. Yeah, that’s the way to go.

After waiting around for an hour, I got everyone inside of the carriage and woke up my new amus. Hm, seems a bit cramped back there. I guess the carriage is only good for eight people in the back. I got into the couchmans seat and had the amus steadily bring us to the front gate, where we met up with K. I didn’t feel like wasting too much time, so I had Bellamort sit in the coachman’s seat while myself and K grabbed the other amus and we rode out. We did stand out a bit since the corrupted amus were almost twice the size of regular amus, but nobody really paid too much attention to us, so we kept moving down the road until I was sure villagers couldn’t see us.

I dismounted off of my amu, and walked to the back of the carriage. “Ok, everyone out and stretch your legs.”

They all did just that, while Bellamort and K switched places. I looked off towards the village, then scanned to the left, slowly moving my sights to our destination. Yeah, there’s nobody that actually heads out there. Well, I guess the good news is that if we stay exactly this far away from the village, nobody will know where we’re moving.

“Hey, what’s your name?” I asked the man that prompted me to make additional purchases today.

“My name is quite difficult to pronounce. You can call me Rigurd, though. That’s what everyone calls me these days.”

“Aight, Rigurd… It looks like only eight people will fit comfortably in the back, so you’ll be in the coachman’s seat with K. Don’t worry about learning how to drive the carriage, the amus know what they’re doing.

“Wha-? Will you be explaining that tonight, then?”

“Among other things,” I said as my trusty amu walked over to me and sat down next to me. “Aight, everyone load up. Except you, Luna.”

She looked at me, jaw gaping and all, but I ignored her shock and dragged her over to the amu and forced her on it, then climbed on gracefully, and grabbed my makeshift reigns. Well, they were more like handles of rope to hold onto while they ran. Then we all took off towards our temporary base.

When we got back, Eliquis came out to greet us, but quickly retreated when the spider poked its head out of its makeshift cave. Everyone except Bellamort started freaking out at the sight of the spider, so I walked over to it and started petting it on the head. Oh, it's not just fuzzy, it’s soft. I had the spider make a second cave on a nearby hill, and had the new amus head over there with the carriage, along with two of the slimes. I didn’t have them change into humans though. That would’ve been a pain to explain right off the bat. Instead, I had the other slimes in their human forms help Eliquis prepare something to eat for everyone.

“It’s not quite night yet, but I’ll explain what I can. Just know that there’s going to be more questions than I have answers for. So, who has the first question- oh and tell me your name as you ask them. I’ll try to remember them.”

“Maryne. What was that thing you did to the amus earlier?”

“I gave them a bran. It changes their species and allows them to get stronger and obey orders. I’m still figuring out how exactly it works and the restrictions regarding it, though.”

“Rigurd, in case you forgot. Why do a lot of your companions have the same face?”

“They’re not human. They’re slimes that have learned [Mimicry]. It allows them to take the shape of something they’ve seen before, or something like that. I’m actually not too sure of what it can and cannot do right now.”

“Who are you? Oh, and the name’s Liora. Pleasure.”

“Well aren’t we polite?” I was taken aback at her courtesy, but collected myself a few seconds later. “Name’s Garem. Or at least I think it is. I don’t really know much else other than that.”

“Marie. Why did you purchase us?”

“Ah, good question. There’s a lot of reasons, really. This is gonna take some time to explain, so save your questions for the end. First, I originally went to that place to purchase Fayne, since Luna made an agreement with me. But I knew that if I just purchased him, it would cause a scene. I also didn’t know exactly what kind of slave he was being sold as, so I had to play it off by asking for labor type of slaves. Specifically those good in construction, since I need that knowledge. I also asked for young slaves who could be taught how to do the trade. Hence, Fayne showing up. I also asked for slaves good in etiquette to be shown to me. I wasn’t expecting to purchase any today, but that was just to make Allendoux nervous and more likely to not question the slaves I was already purchasing. Then I noticed that Rigurd wasn’t broken like the other slaves and was prepared to move into a combat-like stance. So, I decided to take a closer look at the rest of the group to see if any would fit the bill and saw you three. So I purchased the four of you, since I have questions about the layout of that mansion.”

“Planning a prison break?” one of the slaves let out a hearty laugh. “Oh right, and name’s Gary.”

“Well, it’s definitely on the list, but not my priority. I plan on destroying that entire district and if possible rescuing the other slaves. But if a rescue can’t be done without sacrifices, I’ll just cut my losses and focus on destroying the place.”

“Seriously?” Gary became speechless at my nonchalant mention of destroying the area where the council member lived. That entire fortress looking place reminded me of where me and Eliquis were just over a week ago, and I wanted it gone before we left this area.

“My name’s Will and my only question is why did you need to know about construction?” He spoke very slowly and it annoyed me, but I let it pass.

“Well, living in a makeshift cave is fine for now, but I would prefer to eventually have a real place to live. And it's not like only you two will be building it. The spiders, slimes and amus are a great labor force. Anything else?”

“Well, if you were to build a house, where are you planning on making it?” Mayrne asked.

“In there,” I pointed to the forest that everyone in the area avoided. “I’m having the spider and slimes scout out the woods for an area that’s worth building a house in, but it looks like it’ll take a while since how many monsters are in there.”

Rigurd raised his hand. “So, what are we going to do?”

“That depends, really. Eliquis and Gavin are my comrades and Luna basically sold herself to me. Bellamort might be joining me as well. But the rest of you have a choice, really. Once I learn everything I need to know about building a house, I can free those two, but Fayne has to stay. As for the four of you…”

“What about us?” Liora asked.

“Well the original plan was to build a really big house and pretend I was rich for a day or two- with maids and a butler. But the feeling’s gone, now. You’re free to leave if you want.” I tossed their keys to where they sat. “I honestly don’t care what you do, as long as you don’t tell anyone where we are or what I’m planning.”

“You don’t need us to fight?” Rigurd raised an eyebrow in suspicion.

“Need isn’t the word I would use. Sure, it would be easier to have four more bodies, but it's not necessary. Hell, I don’t even have high expectations for Luna. She’s just kinda there because she provided me with some interesting information.”

“WHAT?!” Luna yelled at me. Oi, my ears.

“Yeah. Sorry, but it looks like your brother will be at least a hundred times more useful than you. And you remember our deal right? You’re gonna have to try really hard to meet my meager expectations for you.” I’m not lying, girl. I don’t expect anything but failures from you.

“Well, that’s harsh,” Rugurd said stroking his chin. “Well, are you against me sticking around for the fight?”

“Either you’re one of us or you're not. I don’t have the time for temporary truces. Make your decision after you eat. Well that applies to everyone except Fayne, Alex and Josh. Luna pretty much sold all of you to me, so get comfortable.”

It was a late lunch of some sort, but it was pretty quiet as everyone ate in silence. Eliquis tried keeping close to me at first, but got the hint after a few iron grips to her face. I appreciate the sentiment, but no. And never. I’ve got to keep my priorities as they are.

Everyone had decided to stick around for their own reasons. I didn’t question them, I, instead, looked at them with a grin on my face. “Alright, I’ll warn you. You’re going to experience hell and it won’t get better until tomorrow. You sure about this?”

Everyone looked at me questioningly, but Eliquis gimanced since she knew what they were about to experience. I didn’t wait for them to find some resolve. Instead, I targeted them all and grinned as they were marked with my bran and fell into agonizing pain. I watched them wither around for a few minutes before each of them passed out.

“Eliquis, watch over them. I’m gonna take a few of the amus and go test some stuff out for a bit.”

“Then you should probably take a few slimes with you,” she handed me a rucksack with extra weapons and clothing that K had bought earlier.

Hm, so there’s enough weapons and clothing for [Mitosis] to be used three times? I thought to myself as I strapped the bag onto one of the Amus and called K over. Two other slimes joined him. The four of us mounted one amu each, and we headed into the woods where the spider was waiting for us. I need to know how often the amus, spider and dryad gain skill points. That’s priority one. Priority two is training. And the third is improving my Bran skills, which can only be done by leveling up. It’s a race against time, now. Two Weeks is a long time. I doubt many of them will be alive by then.