"I am not going to hurt you," I reassure her, raising my hands to show they're empty.

Upon closer inspection, the revolver in her hand isn’t just made out of cheap material, it also doesn’t seem to have been maintained since its construction. It is full of dirt and grim and I’d be surprised if it didn’t jam after a shot or two.

She doesn’t raise the revolver at me but doesn’t come closer either, staying at the edges of the illuminated remains. “Why?” she asks in a hoarse voice.

I can’t help but scowl at the straightforward but oh-so-confusing question, answering with a question of my own, “Why am I not going to hurt you?”

She shakes her head, hair bouncing, but doesn’t give me anything else as an answer.

“I am sorry but you’ll have to give me more to work with,” I explain as I take out one of my rations, heating it over the fire, “Feel free to stay around and take loot from the bandits, they won’t need it anymore.”

I doubt that she has any problems with taking the stuff of her slavers but I still keep an eye on her just in case that she might decide to attack me.

Her eyes widen and she takes a step forwards before hiding behind the cart next to her. “Please don’t.”

I grab the potion Lily made me and down it in one go, absentmindedly answering her “Don’t do what?”

The Potion burns on the way down but I can feel my wounds begin to close, blood clotting over them. I’ll need a blood restoration potion or something, I am not used to seeing this much of my blood.

Although I have to admit that Lily's potions are quite useful, even if they are ridiculously expensive normally.

“You’ll burn the jerky,” her voice comes from behind the cart.

I start rifling through the pouches I set next to me and count the coins inside while keeping an eye on the cart she was hiding behind. “I like it a little burnt sometimes, gives it a different taste that’s needed during weeks of travelling.”

She emerges from behind the cart, now wearing an outfit cobbled together from the remains of the bandits, tightly bound together by belts and a piece of rope. The shackles around her wrists are gone. She wipes over her mouth with her sleeve, leaving a streak of red on her cheek.

She promptly walks over to the fire, grabs a stick that hasn’t caught fire yet, and pushes the jerky back out of the fire. “Burnt food is bad for you.”

[???- lvl4]

I jerk away from her, freeing my revolver from the holster and aiming it at her head. I’ve never seen someone whose class just shows three question marks except Idanu. “Explain your class, now,” I order.

She quickly raises her hands in a placating gesture as she answers, “I don’t know why it shows like that, I’ve had it since I was twelve and it doesn’t even show a name to me.”

I have to test something, if she knows who he is or if she has the same class as him, I don’t know what I’ll do.

“Idanu.”

She tilts her head in confusion. “Nice to meet you Idanu, I am Kara.” she answers in an unsure tone.

“No. Idanu isn’t my name. I just had to test something, sorry.” I explain, putting my revolver back into its holster.

“Alright,” she concedes before rifling through another set of pouches from the bandits, “What are you doing here anyway?”

“I took on a bounty to kill the bandits, I didn’t know they kept a slave. Feel free to follow me to the next city if you want.”

She raises her head and looks at me, trying to figure out what I am thinking. It doesn’t take long for her to figure out that it is a genuine offer to stick together until safety. “Sure,” She says and after a brief moment of hesitation she adds “but I’ll be making my own food.”

“Sure, I wasn’t about to make your food either way.” I readily agree.

“I would have starved myself before eating your stale hardtack and burnt jerky,” she says, grabbing supplies from the pile and vanishing them with a flourish of her hands.

A Spatial skill?

Those are extremely rare, especially as one of the first skills. I wonder if I could replicate something like that with my Gems, I’d need to isolate a pocket of space with some combination of the elements-

A pop-up in the corner of my vision drags me away from my musings, demanding my attention.

[You have the option to accept the Slave Contract(Kara) if you decline, the Contract will stay open for others to accept.]

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

It will stay open for others to accept? Doesn’t killing her slaver mean I freed her?

She must have seen my eye flicker to the side as I was reading the notification because she stops rummaging through the food and stares at me, red eyes unblinking.

“Everything alright?” I ask, moving a hand to my revolver beneath my coat and readying myself to use [Quick Draw].

“Yeah, Everything is great,” she says, keeping eye contact as she continues, “Do you want some of the food?”

I grab the jerky and bite into it, the smoky flavour stained by a metallic note. “I’ve got my jerky, thanks. What are you making?” I say as I chew the stringy, burned meat.

“Unpoisoned Food.”

That- Why is she specifying that it’s unpoisoned?

I keep an eye on her and finish eating my jerky while she begins cooking. She grabs a plate of metal and uses it as a Griddle to fry some cured meat and vegetables.

I put the few coins the bandits have into one pouch, barely filling it up. They mostly have food, water and ore. I hope they weren’t part of Tharon but they must have focused on merchants either way.

The food she is cooking smells amazing even without any spices except salt but I can’t stop thinking about the implications of that open contract allowing anyone to claim ownership of her. “H-Hey, do you know how to get rid of your Tattoo?” I ask

“Yeah,” she says, shrugging, “I just have to find who put this on me and force him to cancel his skill before killing him.”

I suck in air through my teeth, dreading her reaction, before answering “You know that he, or anyone else, can take over the contract right now?”

She stares at me for a few seconds before flipping the meat on her improvised griddle. Her lips curl slightly as she snivels before asking “That’s the notification you got earlier, isn’t it?”

I nod while trying to come up with a solution myself. “Maybe you can travel around like me, I’ve been on the run since I unlocked my System. It’s kind of lonely but you meet all kinds of interesting people,” I propose.

“Yeah,” she says unsure, “Except the first person I come across will accept the Contract and enslave me again.”

“I didn’t.”

She looks at me with wide eyes, a trace of confusion in her features with tears threatening to fall down her cheeks, “Yeah, you didn’t…”

“Why don’t you come with me to Strendorrs Mine? I might know someone inside who would treat you like a human being instead of an object,” I propose.

She gives me a deadpan stare before cracking an egg onto the griddle and in between the pieces of meat. “I can’t just walk into a town with the open contract, Idiot.”

Oh, yeah. I take my rifle out of the sling and start cleaning it thoroughly. “You could wait outside and I can talk with her if she’d be willing to take care of you if you help her cook and take care off her daughter.”

“I am not good with kids but I guess it could work as payment,” she agrees, finishing her food and shovelling it into a mess kit she liberated from the Bandits before grabbing a smaller bowl and filling it with the scraps. She pushes the bowl towards me wordlessly.

It is just meat, eggs and vegetables fried on a griddle but I thankfully accept the bowl, chowing away. It’s good, smokey meat with fresh vegetables and eggs, you can’t go wrong with that.

Kara finishes her late dinner and simply pushes the griddle into the fire. “Wait a second, what happens if I meet someone while I am waiting?”

I detach the Bolt and Receiver Cover while answering “They would be able to accept your contract. I could accept it so it doesn’t get offered to others and hand it over to my colleague later.”

She stares into the fire, lost in her thoughts.

I decide to give her the time she needs and take off the bolt carrier, getting to the Gem inlays surrounding the receiver and checking them for any decay. The Explosive gem firing pin has a crack along the side and a rounded end so I’ll have to replace it when I get back to Morgan's workshop or it might misfire. I don’t really know how to shape it properly on the road without the tools although I might make a mould for the seed gems and try to grow them in the right shape.

“What if…” she says, “No, never mind.”

“Go ahead, every idea has merit,” I encourage her, the notification still blinking in the corner of my sight.

She adjusts the belts at her wrists as she explains “You could accept it but I’d have to go with you into the city, hiding my tattoo, and explain my situation myself.”

“That… makes sense, you’d effectively be free and you only have to trust me,“ I reason.

She runs a hand through her hair as I detach the magazine. “You could have just accepted it so I do not have much of a choice either way,” she says, “The evil I know is better than the unknown evil.”

“Uhmm, Thanks,” I concede before confirming, “So you want me to accept the [Slave Contract]?”

She nods, bracing herself for something to go wrong or me to betray her.

[You have the option to accept the Slave Contract(Kara) if you decline, the Contract will stay open for others to accept.]

[Slave Contract(Kara) accepted.]

It’s done.

I focus on the contract, trying to prompt the system to get me the detailed description.

[Slave Contract(Kara): Open Contract, Vicinity Inhibitor, Verbal commands, Branding of the West.]

Focusing on the singular aspects of the contract doesn’t show me anything else, except the “Verbal commands”.

[Verbal commands: The Slave bound by this contract has to follow any verbal commands made by its Owner to the letter.]

That means I’ve gotten something wrong about the Open Contract, the System would show me the description for it if I knew about it. Why you have to know every specific detail you want the system to tell you about is one of the things about the system no one I know understands. A Sign for the System being a sort of natural phenomena.

“Done,” I say, pulling out a small tub of grease. I take a piece of cloth and slightly grease up the locking lugs and the cocking cam before starting to reassemble the rifle.

Her eyes flick to the side in a telltale sign of a System Notification before confirming “Alright, I guess we should go to the city then, right?”

“Lets.”