Okay, now my head hurts. The adverse effect of being drugged TWICE a day.

I’m really rethinking my plans of letting those merchants alive.

…

I think I’ll be extra evil with the mage guy, if I ever find them again…

Anyway, here I was, with my head spinning and waking up in another cart. But, it had a bed. We were still travelling, as I could feel the cart moving.

What? Oh that? Yeah, you heard it right. I was sleeping in a bed.

This totally confused me too, don’t worry.

Also, I think I should say that I was not the only one.

The catgirl from before was with me.

And, as you know, it’s a cart. It doesn’t have much space.

What I’m trying to say is… well… I’m sleeping with her.

And before you think anything kinky, no. Not that sleeping. Only cuddling. And, no, no need to call the cops.

From the way she’s holding me, I would guess she thinks I’m some plush toy.

No kidding. She’s even a bit taller than me.

Time to kill some things and grow, I guess.

After escaping from her hug, I quickly analyzed the situation.

I remember being drugged by the merchants. After staying on a cage, I remember being sold. But nothing afterwards. Why the hell am I in bed?

First things first I looked at my ring. The slave mark was still there, so no use analyzing the ring. Just gonna jump to the orders list

Current OrdersDon’t kill

Don’t escape (30m radius)

Don't use magic

And that’s it.

And it only helped to let me even more confused.

The only exit was through the front. I guess they still didn’t want us to try to escape.

With nothing more to do, I exited.

…

The one riding this cart was the leader from before.

He was wearing an overcoat, but I think that he was wearing leather armor too. He used a hat to protect his eyes from the sun. If I remember correctly, he was bald, but had a black beard covering his face. He had that air of a general, telling you that he should be respected.

I couldn’t help but lower myself into a fighting stance.

He saw me.

“Easy, boy” he was grinning. “No use trying to fight. You can’t kill.”

“I can ssstill hurt. And hurt badly.” I replied.

He seemed amused.

“So you can really talk. Guess you’re not a kid then.” He scratched his head. “Now, maybe you will worth more” he mumbled.

“Hey, I can hear you!”

“And you can’t do nothing about it” he said in a somewhat dark tone.

Okay, it got dark. Time to try again.

I sat beside him. My ability to ignore the almost fight was working wonders.

“Where we going?” Sincere curiosity, not that I’m not thinking on ways to escape (getting killed was still the one with most success rate)

“Just taking a rare one to a wealthy noble around here. He likes non-humans slaves, so I guess he will pay us handsomely” He probably saw my face and quickly added. “Not you. You are rare, but not what he usually likes. And we still have to read your skills”

I tilted my head, confused.

He saw that and explained it. “We don’t have anyone who can read the God’s Scripture, so you aren’t for sale. For now. And our current trade is too important to make it wait.”

He pointed to another cart.

“The main attraction is on that one.”

OK, he talks. He must be quite bored. Maybe I can reason with him, and he’ll let me go.

“Sssso, another thing. I’m not a real sssla…” He raised a hand, stopping me.

“Don’t even try. I don’t know how that old merchant got you, but it’s not my problem. They made a slave agreement over you. I paid money for you. You’re a slave now” He continued

to drive the horses like he just didn’t drop a bomb in a demon.

“But, sssir he kidna…” I tried to restart

“Do you want me to order silence to you?” Okay, that really made me shut up. I sat there, for many minutes, thinking if I should stay or go back to the bed.

I was counting the numbers of trees (we were in some kind of plains, so it was a rare occurrence) we passed when he suddenly talked again.

“If you still think about revoking your slave mark, you should talk with your next employees. I’m sure they will try to help you. But you will have to wait until you’re sold.”

Now he started to talk again. I’m not gonna lose my last chance to ask one more thing.

“And why that?” I asked.

He looked at me, confused. Maybe I was really ambiguous. Maybe I should train my speech?

I pointed to inside the cart.

Realization downed on his face, when he understood.

“Oh, the accommodations, you mean?” I nodded. “Well, you are our newest products. We don’t want you to break before you are sold, do we?”

Before you are sold. Thinking of what could happen after I was sold made me shudder.

“But the other kept uss in cagesss?”

“Well, Otis, that old merchant, doesn’t have a permit to trade slaves. We, on the other hand, have it” he looked at the other carts. “And we only deal with top products”

And two questions answered. We were being treated well, so we could worth more. And I got the name of the other trader. It will be a lot easier to track him down.

But one more thing was bugging me.

“One more thing, why you’re being polite with me?” Now, I’m asking the real question.

He looked at me, considering if he should answer.

“Because you obeyed when I told you to be silent. I was taught that obedience should be rewarded. Don’t you think so?” Okay, it got serious here.

Of course I nodded. I won’t be debating life lessons with a slave trader. And disagreeing with him could potentially kill me. Yeah, it would help me to escape, but I think I will look for a less painful way first.

I wondered if it was okay for me to walk around. I asked the ‘nice’ slaver if I could, and he simply nodded.

“30 meters, don forget” he said, as I was getting off the cart. Better not disobey him.

There were four carts in our little crew. The cart I was sleeping was the last one. I guess two were for the slaves and the other two for the slavers. Because of what Leader told me (uhmm, I have to remember to get his name) I think that there were only three slaves on this group. At the distance, it was possibly to see a huge forest. It dominated the landscape, and i was only able to see it from left to right.

It somehow felt that there were less people on here. I remember at least 20 before, but now, I couldn’t even see half of it.

First, I wanted to go to the ‘main attraction’ cart. I got really curious of what they will sell. It was the second cart.

Well, it was my plan at first. But then I passed on one of the slavers carts.

There was a small statue there. A guy holding a purse and scales. It was very well made. Uhmm, I guess it was one of the minor gods? Something like the trading god, I wonder?

…

And then it downed on me.

This was a shrine.

I think my best plan to escape just went down.

IS a shrine equal to a temple? The goddess never said anything about it.

DAMMIT.

Now even if I die I will most likely resurrect right beside the slavers (maybe). But it was too risky. This WOULD make my price go up, but I don’t want to be known as an Immortal Slave.

Well, back to the planning board, I guess.

…

With this sullen mood, I proceed to the other slave with the catgirl by my side.

…

What?

I look again.

Yeah, she was there. The little catgirl from before. When did she get here?

“Hey” I said.

“Hi” she weakly answered.

And, that was it. Our biggest conversation so far. And of course, awkward silence followed it.

Well, let’s just walk to the other. She just followed.

By the way, while I was having a depressive moment, the Leader’s cart was almost reaching us. So now I had to walk a little more.

And together with the silent girl, we went to the slave cart.

The cart looked like a cage, so we could clearly see the slave inside.

…

He was HUGE.

Even bigger than the other Pilgrims, and I might add that most of them must had modified their height.

And he was buffed.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Not the magic buff, you gamers. The I-live-for-the-gains buff. He would easily put bodybuilders from my world to shame (random memory recollection, some muscle guys in tight speedos. Proceeding to re-delete it)

He was seated in a chair, while looking bored to the maximum. He had chains on both wrists and ankles. He was using a vest and cargo shorts (not really cargo shorts, but looked a lot like it). He was a Beastman, but I don’t really know which one. Since he was sat down, I could only see his ears, and it really wasn’t enough to guess it. He had a large scar starting on his forehead and making a straight line across his left eye. He was red haired, but since he was completely ignoring us (is he sleeping?), I couldn’t see his eyes.

The strange thing was that it looked like decoration. Even the cage seemed to make it look like some kind of presentation.

While we were astonished (catgirl even hide behind me. He was that scary), we got close our destination.

Ahhhh, that’s why there were less people, the rest had gone ahead to prepare the camp. They were starting to cook the lunch.

Nothing to do anymore, I called the girl to go back to our cart. I wouldn’t like no one to think we were trying to escape, would I?

On the way back, I finally got her to tell me her name. It was Katlyn. Her parents had a strange naming sense.

And when we arrived, I tried to talk with the leader guy again.

And I discovered some things.

We were stopping because there was a bandit gang on this forest, and before crossing it, the slavers had to pay a toll. Strangely civilized, I thought.

The place we were going was a castle owned by twins. They apparently wanted to breed more slaves to work on their mines, and so, they needed a strong male to get the right genes. And that’s what they would sell.

This took me a while to digest. Knowing that there were slaves in this world was one thing, but discovering they were doing selective breeding was in another level. I took a time to process it all, enough to make Leader-san worried with me (yeah, I forgot to ask his name).

After that, he left to talk with the rest of the dealers. And so, I had some time to myself, as Kat almost immediately went back to sleep.

So recollection time!

I was brought to a new world. Killed and was killed on my third day. Learned magic on the same day I was killed. Discovered that my race is totally looked down. Killed a wolf. Learned about my race specific ability. Killed the same wolf. And now I was a slave.

…

Yeah…

A lot happened. No doubt I’m feeling really tired. I guess it won’t be bad if I sleep a little.

I woke up with some guy yelling at me.

It was Leader-san. It was time for lunch.

I woke Kat up (it was easy. Maybe it’s because she had already been a slave), and we went to eat together.

The slavers were eating and making a mess. It almost felt like those guild scenes, with everyone eating and talking loud, except this was more like a picnic. And it was a group of slavers. And I had the first real look at the group. All of them were human. Guess it makes sense, as we were in a human continent. There were even some women that looked equally scary as the males.

The bandits who controlled this forest had arrived too. So they were sharing food with the slavers before going into business.

Both groups completely ignored us as we went to pick our food (it was some kind of soup). Only the cook talked to us, pointing to where we should eat. The Beastman was already eating. So we sat next to him to eat.

And again, he is huge. His bowl was huge too; being easily bigger than mine and Kat’s bowls together (Kat looked with envy at his plate). And I got to see his eyes. It was red, almost at the same color of his hair. And the great surprise. I got to see his tail.

At first, I thought it was a raccoon-like tail. But the color reminded me of another animal.

It took me a while to remember it. But I did remember. The fluffy and having nothing in common with this giant, the red panda!

…

Okay, he looked a bit cute after this funny discovery.

Anyway, we ate our meals. Quietly. It seems silence is a Beastman’s trait.

After eating we just sat there, waiting for something to happen.

It gave me some time to think about random things.

What are the others doing? Will I ever be able to escape from slavery? Are the red panda men a race with only red heads?

While thinking these, the giant got bored too. He took out a pack of cards. It seems he wants to play.

Kat, who was glooming around, suddenly got happy, snatched the pack from the big guy (this made me worry for her life) and started to teach me how to play it.

He didn’t seem to be angry about it, and only laughed at her action (thank god!), and just waited her to explain it to me. But he looked a little eager to play.

So, regarding Beastman, second trait: loves card games. Hope it’s not a gambling game. I’m terrible at those.

Luckily, it was not a gambling game.

Still, they totally obliterated me on it. We played it for hours.

Whenever I thought I had good cards, they seemed to vanish, and I was left with some pretty bad cards. Whenever it seemed I would win, both suddenly pulled it out. I was only able to win one round. But I won’t talk about how many I lost; I still have some pride on me.

But regardless of my ability to lose most rounds, it was funny. Kat was cutely laughing, and the big guy (I discovered his name was Reka) didn’t stop smiling. We even attracted the attention of some slavers.

At that point, I was simply spent, so when the others started to enter, I just quit. And thus, they started to gamble.

With nothing else to do, I simply laid down on the grass. It was peaceful, with the shadow of the tree covering me, and the weak breeze that was blowing.

And I simply let my mind wander.

When it was getting dark, Reka and Kat had taken almost all the belongings of the slavers. It was surprising that the slavers simply let them stay with their coins. I guess it means that slaves are not as low as animals for them. That, or it would be too embarrassing for them to use their position to win against a little girl.

I had to take Kat away when they started to bet clothes. A little girl shouldn’t play so far in a gamble. It could take a serious turn in events.

So I dragged a complaining (and slightly richer) kitty to the cart we were sleeping.

Leader-san was there, so I guess the negotiation went okay. He told me that tomorrow, before the sun rises, we would continue our way, and we should get some sleep.

We entered the cart and went to sleep.

Or tried, in my case.  It seems I had sleep enough already and I couldn’t make myself asleep.

So, I climbed the cart to look at the night sky. Leader-san was sleeping on the chair he was sitting while driving the cart. I got a little worried about him. And immediately facepalmed.

I was worrying about a slaver. I sighed. Guess Stockholm syndrome is really a thing.

Up there I stargazed.

My old world pollution made the stars more difficult to see. Here, I could see more stars than I had ever imagined. The twin moons were glowing, red and blue, giving the starry sky an uncanny look.

From the south (at least, I think it was south) there was a beautiful aurora. It shone in red, blue and yellow.

I stayed the whole night gazing at the beautiful sky

----------------------------------------

Author note:

Aaaaaaannnnnnnddddddd new chapter! Finally!

And now, I'm going to proceed destroying the image everyone has of slavers! MUAHAHAHA! But seriously, Gyp was lucky. He got one of the nicest bunch. But still, don't go around defending slavery. It was only to make them slightly more interesting. And he didn't even interacted with them yet.

And apologies for being so late to write this one. I had a lot of tests and seminars in these past weeks, and only now I could get time to finally finish it. And I still have more tests, so the next chapter might be a liiiiittle delayed too.

Anyway, thanks for all the people who are following this fiction, it's almost embarassing to have so much following. Some more and I will break the 100 mark!

If you see any grammar mistakes, please, comment (including odd sentences, my native language is getting on my way a lot).

Thanks For Reading!