I kept the frown off my face as I watched my Mana closely.
I thought for a few moments as my Mana hit 50%. I tried to think of anything the name “Treia” made me feel. I got nothing.
I said.
Systie didn’t respond. After a few more moments, lightly pushed Amy away, who was far calmer and looked back at the woman who was carefully watching us.
“An Elemental and a Mana Vampire. What two great catches,” She sighed. “Who knows how many crystals you’ll sell for. I’ll assume that you’re under a contract together, so we can sell you as a package, though if there’s enough crystals, we may sell you separately.”
I could hear Amy grinding her teeth, unhappy to basically be called products. I was also not elated to hear that, but I pretended not to care and instead looked at my Status, which I was pretty sure I hadn’t looked at in a while.
Status : Jason
Name : Jason Andromeda (Bonded)
Level 104 | Tier 4
Race : Voidborn Abyssal
Health : 992320/992320 [24808 Mana/Min | 413.47/s](49616 Health/Min | 826.93/s)
Mana : 373234/992320 [37212 Mana/Min | 620.2/s] (74424 Mana/Min | 1240.4/s)
Class : Voidborn Abyssal Prince III (Unique)
Bond : Miana Andromeda, Systie
Ailment : Mana-Locked
Stats
Strength : 3101 (Base : 886 Effectiveness : 350%)
Dexterity : 3101 (Base : 886 Effectiveness : 350%)
Endurance : 3101 (Base : 886 Effectiveness : 350%)
Vitality : 3101 (Base : 886 Effectiveness : 350%)
Mana : 3101 (Base : 886 Effectiveness : 350%)
Intelligence : 3101 (Base : 886 Effectiveness : 350%)
Bond Status : Mia
Name : Miana Andromeda (Bonded)
Level 104 | Tier 4
Race : Abyss Blizzard Serpent (Lightning Attuned) (Humanoid Form)
Health : 1587712/1587712 [39693 Health/Min | 661.55/s](79386 Health/Min | 1323.09/s)
Mana : 793856/793856 (59539 Mana/Min | 992.32/s)
Bond : Jason Andromeda
Ailment: Mana-Locked
Stats
Strength : 2481
Dexterity : 2481
Endurance : 6202 (Base : 2481 Effectiveness : 250%)
Vitality : 6202 (Base : 2481 Effectiveness : 250%)
Mana : 2481
Intelligence : 2481
Bond Status : Systie
Name : [Redacted] Nickname : Systie
Level 104 | Tier 4
Race : System’s Eye
Mana Capacity : 3175424/3175424*
Bond : Jason Andromeda
Stats
Dexterity : 9923
Mana : 4962
*Mana cannot be regenerated normally. Mana can only be restored by Bond.
Nearly a million Health… Mia has over 1.5 million though. And Jesus, Amy nearly drained my Mana, I thought, looking away and out the cage once again.
“Welp, I don’t think there’s anything we can do,” I said. “Might as well relax and wait.”
Amy looked at me, about to retort before letting out a sigh and moving to the other side of the cage. “Might as well.”
The tall woman didn’t notice this as she walked off, her face full of greed.
~~~
The next few days were object torture. Mia, out of hunger had gone into a type of hibernation and the little food me and Amy were given was immediately pushed to me by her, since she insisted that she could just feed on my mana instead.
“It has to be bland, having the same thing all the time,” I’d told her. “You can’t do it forever either; they’re bound to find out eventually and then they’ll probably do something about it. They currently think that you only need Mana to live.”
She’d simply lifted her head from my shoulder and said, “Then make it less bland. Mix in a little Void; I can take that.”
So I’d done that, and, since then, we’d experimented with different amounts of each Lightning, Ice, and Void Mana to see which she liked best. We’d settled on a 37% Lightning 58% Ice, and 5% Void, since that was all she could handle due since she could outheal the Damage she took from it quicker than it could damage her. She had an uncanny taste for Void Mana, and it honestly worried me a bit.
By the fifteenth day, I’d noticed that we’d left the forest. However, I still was yet to see Merry, which worried me to unnatural points.
The sixteenth and seventeenth days passed with no sightings. It was on the night of the nineteenth day when we finally saw her.
Amy was dead asleep as she was every three days with me about to fall asleep when I heard a light knocking on the bars. At first, I’d thought it was just a branch hitting the cage and thought nothing of it until it sounded again, more rapidly this time. I blinked away the darkness and looked around in the dark, able to see perfectly, which probably had something to do with my race.
“The hell…” My eyes went to a small figure who was standing outside the cage, looking down. “Wait… Merry?”
She nodded and I was about to race over to wake up Amy when Merry reached through the bar and grabbed my wrist.
“Don’t wake her… please,” she whispered.
Hearing the crack in her voice, I stopped my advance and slowly moved towards her as she pressed her other hand into mine.
“Merry…” I was at a loss for words for a few moments. “I’m going to be awfully honest here, but you look like shit.”
She looked at me for a long few moments before she pressed her head against the bars and let out a single laugh. “Of course you’d say that. Why did I ever want to talk to you?”
I pressed my hand against her head, making a shiver run through her entire body. I could tell she was wearing next to nothing. “Who knows. Maybe because you wanted to talk to somebody who wouldn’t ask as many questions.”
She hadn’t let go of my hand and seemed to have no plans to do so. “Jason… I don’t know how much longer I can last doing this. It hurts. So much. They don’t ever stop, no matter how much I beg them. I can’t… I can’t. I don’t wanna-”
Merry cut off as she began to cry uncontrollably. I simply held her hands and pressed my forehead against hers, unwilling to interrupt.
~~~
“Why the hell didn’t you wake me up?!” Amy complained. “You-”
“Be quieter, will you?” I interrupted. “She told me not to. Plus, she was definitely not supposed to be out here.”
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“I know that, dimwit. You still should have woken me up.”
“Shut up!” a woman yelled at us. “We’re here! Behave.”
“Ha! Make me!” I yelled back.
I got a snort in response and Amy sighed. “Are you sure you’re not part of them?”
I frowned. “Of course not. From what I remember, I’m part of the Dragon Keepers. Duh. Where else would I get the money to pay for the sheer amount of food Mia eats?”
“I dunno. I don’t live with you.”
“...Fair point.”
I looked out the cage, relaxing against the bars nonchalantly. I could see that the place around us was neat and well made, with buildings of smooth metal and, if I wasn’t wrong, lined with Runes. My type of place if it wasn’t-
“A slave market,” Amy growled. “The Elven Scouts have been looking for this place for over a century.”
“That long?” I asked.
“Yep. High Leveled people capture desirable races and sell them off to other people, or even demons. Damn them. Once we escape…”
I kicked her foot as we began to pass people who remarked about the size of Mia. I could feel a slight tinge of annoyance from Mia, who was still hibernating, from the various amounts of people who were touching her, which was a good sign. She shifted slightly, the chains holding her down creaking ominously.
Did that damn Serpent really pretend to be weaker than she actually is to get a chance to escape? Smart little devil.
“Out!” I heard a familiar voice of a woman yell.
I heard a weak yelp and looked over to see a familiar small, but actually clothed figure running to the cage, a collar present around her neck.
Merry ran directly into the cage before she could stop herself and looked up, confused. Once she saw us, she grabbed onto the cage and walked beside it as Amy rushed to her. I ignored their conversation as I found something that caught my interest about the band around my neck. I had to almost slap my hand against my face when I realized it.
They used fucking Runes. And they were the most easy to disable Runes one could possibly think of. Or maybe they weren’t. I’d have to get a closer look. And the only person who would let me get close enough…
“Hey, Amy? Can I ask you a favor?”
~~~
“Just keep still, dammit,” I said, trying to scratch runes onto Amy’s collar as she laid her head on my lap. “I can’t work with you moving around like a pissed off cat.”
“It feels weird! I can’t help it!” She snapped back. “Hurry up!”
Merry, who sat at the side, watched in silence as I attempted to mess with the collar around Amy’s neck, studying the various Runes to see what they did. The gist of it was that it locked the Mana around the user by dispelling any Mana that was used outside of the body. Theoretically, I could use some Skills as long as they only affected my body and didn’t manifest outside of me, including my Draconic Form, which talons I used to scratch at the very strong metal that I assumed was some sort of reinforced steel.
As I did this, Merry pulled on my sleeve. I raised a brow in response.
“W-what exactly are you trying to do?”
I looked around the underground cell we were locked in and shrugged. “I know my way around Runes. These-” I tapped Amy’s collar and she tried to bite my hand. “Use Runes. And if you do not stop that, I will find a way to put a muzzle on you, cause that does hurt, damn you.”
“It’s weird when your claws-”
“Talons.”
“-scratch against my neck! Hurry it up and stop it from being all annoying.”
I pulled on her ear in annoyance and she jumped up, trying to wring my neck. Merry simply watched the two of us with the same emotionless expression as usual. Once Amy finally calmed down, cursing under her breath, she put her head back in my lap and I studied the collar once again, noticing something on the front side.
“Aha,” I softly said.
I nodded. “You can get up; I figured it out.”
Amy, clearly eager to get up, shot into a sitting position, her forehead smacking into Merry’s, who reeled back, not making a sound.
“Sorry, Merry,” Amy said, leaning over to her. “Did I hurt you too badly?”
Merry shook her head silently. She then looked over to me.
“Are you going to check mine as well?” she asked, barely a whisper.
I shrugged. “If you’re okay with it, I guess. I’m sure that you-”
Before I’d finished my sentence, she’d already put her head on my lap and was resting there while looking straight up.
Suddenly very uncomfortable, I began to study her collar, which was much more… complicated than Amy and I’s collars. I poked at it for a good half hour, in which Amy had begun to sit cross-legged next to me, pondering something and Merry fell asleep on my lap, one of her hands gripping one of mine, halving the speed I could inspect the collar. Finally, after an hour, I found it.
“By all that’s holy,” I grumbled. “That took far too long to find.”
Amy opened one of her eyes and frowned at me. “Why’d it take you twice as long?”
“It’s way more complicated than ours, but that’s to be expected. It’s literally keeping her from doing anything worth mentioning as long as it has something to do with Mana. But, even if I do unlock her Mana, what the hell’s the point if they’re just going to find out.” I flexed my talon and pulled on one of the bars. “The only way out is us being bought. From what I could tell from the people in this city, we’ll be very recognizable. Plus there’s the problem of Mia, who’s starving. She’ll need a huge amount of food to even be functional. I doubt she could even fly in her current state.”
“So you’re proposing that we get bought off by the highest bidder?” She glowered at me.
With a sigh, I responded, “I’m just telling you our best chance. I don’t know what we can do. I don’t make plans; I rush in and do whatever comes to mind first.”
She grit her teeth. “You’re reckless. One day, someone you care about is going to get killed because of your stupidity.”
Before I could snap back, there was a bang on the cell door. “Quiet! The inspector is arriving for you four. You best be on your best behavior for her.”
I snorted and turned away from the bars, annoyed. Merry shuddered slightly, but didn’t wake up. Once the person who was banging on our cell left, I lifted up Merry’s small figure and set her in Amy’s arms.
“You take care of her. I’m probably going to get manhandled or something when this ‘inspector’ arrives. For that-” I completely shifted into my Partial Draconic Form, which I was happy I could do “-I’ll look like this.”
It took another ten minutes before anything happened. I soon heard footsteps in the hallway and then somebody entered the room. I sniffed the air and was taken aback by the sheer stink.
<{Corruption},> Systie hissed.
I immediately disabled the Form and frowned at the person entering the room. She was relatively tall, but definitely shorter than me. However, she walked in a way that made her seem larger than the world itself, self-important and self-reliant. I couldn’t make out many details, but I could see the dark hair pouring through the hood of her cloak.
“Hm…” A female voice mused. “Interesting. Abyssal, are you?”
The woman walked up to the cell and I scowled at her as she reached through the bars.
“I’d love to say that’d I’d bite your hand off if you touch me, but you already stink too much, you invasive vermin-”
I was interrupted as she slapped me across the face, throwing me across the cell and smashing me into the wall. It didn’t hurt but it certainly stung.
“I don’t need to hear that from You, damned pest. Your kind always defends the System for such dumb reasons,” she hissed back.
“The hell are you?” Amy snapped, nearly waking up Merry. “How could you possibly know-”
The woman snapped and something wrapped around Amy’s mouth, silencing her. “Your little boy here knows exactly what I am, don’t you?”
I forced myself not to click my jaw at her. “Honestly, I don’t, but I can make a pretty good guess. You’re an {Avatar of Corruption}, aren’t you? Someone who purposely infects Dungeons and makes my job harder than it needs to be.”
The woman, clearly not believing I’d know, froze in place. I took this chance to throw myself close enough to grab her and slammed her head against the bars by her neck while scratching out one of the runes around my neck. By the time she had a knife at my neck, I already had half a dozen [Shards Of Oblivion] pointed at her.
She looked around before chuckling. “Seems we’re at a stalemate.”
I responded. “You try to kill me, I kill you and vice versa. What to do now?”
We stared at one another for a few moments. She then sighed. “How about a temporary ceasefire? I’ve got a bargain you may not be able to resist.”
I tilted my head, only just realizing that my horns had appeared at some point. “Uh huh. And what exactly does this entail and why should I even consider it?”
She gave me a grin wider than her face could possibly do naturally.
~~~
In the end, the woman bought all of us without seeming to have paid much at all. We’d made an agreement that I hoped she’d hold up to: For the next year, she’d refrain from Corrupting any Dungeons while also allowing me to purify already Corrupted Dungeons. In exchange, I would have to convince the Elven Army to not attack the slave trading city.
She walked us out of the city before stopping next to the forest with a sly grin on her face as I ripped off the now useless collar from my neck, the lock popping open. Amy also removed her collar as I went up to Mia’s motionless body that had somehow been transported out of the city and pulled off the collar for her. I undid her muzzle and, with Amy’s help, pulled it off the giant Serpent. I then sat down in front of her, forced her mouth open, and threw in a few cow carcasses. I couldn’t even remember where I got them from, but I knew I’d killed them and I tossed them in one by one.
As Mia chewed, slowly waking, I glared at the {Avatar Of Corruption}, having long since hid my horns so as to not alarm Merry, who was still oblivious to my identity.
“Question: why are you even considering this?” I asked her. “There’s no reason for you to release us at all.”
“Answer: I like experiments. I’ll be watching you, Andromeda.”
Before I could snap back she fell backwards… and disappeared. She was just completely gone. I clenched my jaw and looked back at Mia, who was raising her head from the ground.
“Of course. That’s always gonna be the first thing you say, what’d I expect. Do you think you can shift back?”
She went quiet for a few moments before shrinking into her Humanoid form and sitting on the ground, looking a bit woozy. I lifted her off the ground, wondering how something of her size could possibly fit into such a small form.
Mia, how the hell do you fit a damned Serpent the size of a few trucks into such a small body? Also, why did you choose to look like a child?
“Welp, Mia’s out of service until she eats enough food to satisfy her needs,” I said, pulling out a tray of muffins and watching as Mia inhaled them.
“Then how do we get back?” Amy muttered. “She didn’t really provide us with a map.”
“...That would’ve been counterproductive, don’tcha think?” Merry muttered, suddenly seeming to be slightly more like herself. “Plus, I think the entire point of letting us go was to make it harder for us to get out of here, right?”
I sighed. “For once, you actually make a point.”
She gave me a flat look. “Are you mocking me?”
“No. I’m stating a fact, Merry.”
She was about to snap back but instead sighed, deflating. “Merry, huh? Nice to be called by my name instead of…” She didn’t finish her sentence, but I could tell from the crack in her voice what she was speaking about.
“Eh, don’t worry about them. They won’t show themselves. They already got paid more money than I can process, so I doubt they’ll come chasing.”
Merry gritted her teeth.
“How can you say that so nonchalantly?” Amy said for her. “You know what they did to her, Jason. You can’t be-”
“What the hell do you want me to say? That I’ll hunt them down to the ends of the fucking galaxy for doing what they did? I would love to, but I won’t. Even if they’re all dead, it’s not going to change what they did to Merry. The only thing you can do is make it so it doesn’t happen again.”
Merry then growled, “I want to kill them all. Not just because they humiliated me, used me, and treated me like an object, but for Henry. They killed him just because he was useless to them. Because there was no point in selling him. The only reason they kept me alive was to ‘play’ with me. I don’t think you understand how much I hate them, Jason. Do you even care about what they did? For how they treated me? I know that you hide your emotions, but this is just insane that you can’t even show sympathy when someone clearly needs it.”
I was about to snap back when I processed her words fully. Did I really care? Or was it the part of me that used to be human reacting to what they did to her?
“Heh. Do I care, huh? I don’t even know how I feel anymore. There’s so much wrong with me, I don’t think I can fix it, can I?” I sighed. “Thanks, now I’ll have a few days of wondering what the hell is wrong with me.”
Merry shook her head. “You really don’t care about others, do you? I’m starting to question why I ever liked you.”
“I’m starting to question why anyone would like me."