Interlude.
On a different planet from our dungeon but in the same universe.
No matter the planet or universe, greed exists. It festers and grows even in the brightest places. People are never happy with what they have and some times their greed leads to their doom but most of the time nothing happens.
The system does not frown upon slavery that is humane and puts a roof over their head and feeds them. Everything else is pretty grey. You do not need to pay your slave and beating your slave is pretty standard as long as you don't kill them.
The system frowns upon forced slavery and will give the enslaver a multitude of debuffs in the hopes that the slave can kill their enslaver. People always figure out a loophole though so it still happens however rare.
There are five different species of sapient beings on this planet, humans, elves, dwarves, beast people and the mixed races (melting pot of all beings). The system allows all of it beings to reproduce with whoever they choose.
The beast people are a mixed bunch, some have a lot of mana and some only have small amounts. They tend to stick to their own races for protection. Most beast people tend to live almost two hundred years, but it depends on the amount of mana in their bodies. The race with the most mana are the fox people, followed by the peacock people, and then the bear people and the one with the least was the ape people but they made up for it with strength.
The humans are a varied bunch and some can use mana and some can't, even with the system. They have the shortest life span of all the races. The elves have the longest life span and they tend to stick to their forests for protection. Dwarves live almost as long as the elves and like to live together near volcanoes as they have learned to use them for smelting and forging.
Katherine was young by the standard of her people but old enough to know that her life had been awful since her parents died in a dungeon, at only seventy three years old she should still be living at home in her village with her family. But she had been running around for close to thirty years now and it was starting to wear her down.
She needed a break needed somewhere safe to hang low and get strong. As a fox girl she is a hot commodity anywhere she goes, even her own village was prepared to sell her off after her parents died. She had been fifty-ish at the time and none of it had really made sense, as she had been very sheltered by her parents. She only knew a few people, those her parents would leave her with when ever they would go out leveling.
Over the years she had managed to get some levels and the most basic skills, normal animals don't give much experience so it was pretty disappointing. If her parents were still alive she was sure they would have helped her figure it all out.
She's supposed to be considered a child until her second tail comes in on her one hundredth birthday, but she didn't really feel like a child anymore she had suffered so much over the years. She was so tired, mentally and physically. Even her fatigue skill wasn't helping her anymore.
She felt dead on her feet, so she found herself a cave in the mountain that smelled musty and unused and decided this would be good enough to rest for a while. She just needed half an hour and then she would eat something and get back on the run.
While she slept soundly people gathered around the mouth of the cave, they had been following this girl for weeks waiting for the right moment to strike. This was their best chance yet and they were going to take it.
They all put on their enchanted masks and tossed a vial of deep sleep potion into the cave. They heard her wake up and try to understand what was going on but it was useless, she passed back out within thirty seconds. They waited until the smoke cleared out of the cave before they picked up the girl and her things and disappeared from the location with the teleport scroll they had be given.
Katherine felt both refreshed and terribly confused. She was pretty sure something had happened but her brain felt like it was covered in fog and for some reason she was having trouble clearing it and waking up. It felt like a really long time before it started clearing and she began to wake up.
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Wrong. It was all wrong. The feeling of the floor, the scent of the room and the voices. She shouldn't hear anyone. She reacted without truly thinking and jumped up and smashed the top of her head on metal bars. She couldn't fully stand, she had to crouch and it was very uncomfortable. She took in the scene around and her it was incredibly depressing.
There were a bunch of people in cages around her. Most were of the beast races but there were some of the other races mixed in too. No one is safe from slavery.
She wanted to rage and fight and get out of this place but she didn't have the strength. She was scared, just terrified. She wished her parents were still alive so this wouldn't have happened. She didn't want to accept her fate but for now she would sit here and try to think of something, even if she did end up someone's slave she would not go quietly.
When someone finally came over to her cage they didn't say anything they just picked her cage up and carried her to the backyard where she was washed while still in her cage. Apparently they were not going to give her any chance to escape.
She was quite depressed, she had lived in the wild for thirty years and never been so mistreated. But she would persevere, she would not let this stop her on her path to freedom. After they dried her off with magic they brought her to a different room and tried to strip her clothes off her to change them but she went primal and scratched and bit anyone who came near. In the end no one wanted to fight with her over it so they left her be. It didn't last long though, they brought in four people, two women and two men.
They opened up her cage and didn't even give her the chance to bolt before they grabbed her arms and pulled up out of the cage and hung her up by her arms. The women took this as a cue and ripped off her clothes and helped her into a very simple dress that hung so low in the back her tail was hanging out. She was appalled, she was considered well off in all the right places but she was still considered a child and she had never dressed so provocatively before.
She wanted to lash out and start biting and scratching people again but she couldn't move her arms and no one was close enough to bite, she tried kicking out a few times but these women weren't pushover's and they would jab her in her ribs and make her momentarily lose the ability to breathe. It was excruciating, she only did it twice.
She was locked back in her cage and put in a different room again. It was more luxurious than the other rooms she had seen so far and it all felt very ominous to her. It didn't take long before a pair of men came in talking and laughing, one was fat and balding and the other was younger but no prize pig either.
She couldn't help but growl at them. They obviously didn't take her seriously and carried on talking about her as if she wasn't even there. They called her a great specimen, like she was an animal or something below them. She was offended, when all nine of her tails came in she would have a chance at becoming a god. She was above these nasty humans, not that she had ever thought like that before. All creatures under the system are equal.
Things took a turn for the worst very quickly and she became frightened again. They were going to put a soul collar on her. It was considered taboo by the system and many people didn't bother with it because of the risks involved. Her face turned ugly. You don't escape a soul collar, you live with it until your soul returns to the system for reincarnation.
The fat one rang a bell and shortly after a third man came in the room, he looked sick, like the wind could blow wrong and it would tear him apart but looking into his eye, it was like having your soul sucked away. Such darkness. It made her shiver.
There was a lot of money and treasures exchanged and then the sickly guy turned towards her and gave her a creepy happy smile and she almost wanted to just kill herself right then and there.
She backed herself into the furthest corner of my cage to keep away from him but it didn't help, he grabbed her arm and pulled it out from the bars and carefully sliced the palm of her hand.
He then proceeded to say some spell and wipe her blood on a trinket he had given to the young pig guy. When he finished speaking she felt like something was pushing down on her chest and it became hard to breathe and she began to scream and then she heard a ding in her head but she couldn't focus on that at the moment.
She trembled weakly in my cage, grateful it was done and ashamed she still lived. She decided to check her notifications.
[Registered: soul slavery mark. The caster has been given a lot of debuffs. Please kill him and regain your freedom. Good luck.]
Katherine was stunned. This must be some kind of joke right. She's only level four and hasn't killed anything bigger than a boar, much less another sapient being. She still had the urge to try though, so before anyone could react she grab the pale man that was still within arms reach of her and pulled him toward the cage and tried her best to rip his throat out but the pig men yelled at her to stop and pain exploded all over her body and she involuntary let go.
She howled in anguish and rage. She deserved better than this, and if she had strength she wouldn't even be in this mess. She wished she was stronger.
Life did not pick up for Katherine after that, she was taken back to pig mans house and was used as a mana battery during the day and every night when the sun went down she was sent to pig mans room to be his toy.
She tried to escape twice in the first year and she was whipped terribly for it. It took her months to heal both times and after that she decided she would try to plan something out rather than go in the moment like she had. She hated her life. Every day she prayed to the system to free her. She kept waiting for an answer.