Chapter 12 Part 3

As soon as we had confirmation that everything was taken care of and I declared loud and clear that I wouldn't fall for any potential bullshittery they may have been trying to get sneaky with, I once more grabbed Yua's hand and hurried for the exit. We rushed past the maids bowing and politely offering to help us find our way, as if we couldn't find the exit we'd only just come through a few minutes ago and thrust ourselves back into Amoranth proper.

        We didn't stop there, though. We bulldozed past the workers still unloading Lord Barrily's carts and all the others that were only now arriving. Seems the auction house was pretty popular, as the line of carts and wagons lining up down the street seemed to go on and on without end. Seeing this, I quickened my pace. Having more people coming to sell their goods could only mean that the chances of our ring selling were going to plummet. We needed to prepare.

        "M-Master," Yua said, struggling to keep up, though that was probably just due to how I held her. "What are we doing?"

        "We need to head to the dungeon."

        "But why? I thought selling the ring was going to be good enough."

        "It might be, but we can't just assume it will actually sell. And, because the auction house takes a cut for themselves, we need to hurry and do our best to make up that difference while we still have time. Just in case. Otherwise, we won't have enough to pay off your contract."

        I chose to leave out the option of it not selling at all, so that I can maintain that small amount of hope that it won't come to that. I just needed to keep hoping.

        On the brighter side, even if it did sell at the starting bid, then the amount we'd need to make up for would be much, much lower. But we'd still need to work our butts off in the meantime.

        "Okay…"

        Yua sounded almost as worried as I was once I told her this. For one that loved fighting so much, I found it a little odd that she wasn't excited to hear we were going back to the dungeon. Did she not know how auctions actually worked? I mean, I'm no expert either, but if she had some sort of trauma regarding them stealing her old friends away, I figured she'd know at least a little.

        We continued down the line of carts, ignoring the drivers and passengers that looked at us in confusion and especially those that held enough contempt in their expressions to mar their faces. Be it our poor state of dress compared to theirs or maybe they just thought I had somehow smuggled one of the slaves for sale out of the auction house they were about to grace with their presence, it really didn't matter. Their opinions didn't matter. We would be an eyesore for the brief moment it would take for us to pass them. So, they can shove their opinions up their collective asses.

        This felt so incredibly odd. Being so close from paying off Yua's contract and at the same time, being so far away. The entirety of our future together, or whether or not there would even be one, now rided on what happens tomorrow. 

        Yua and I could settle our differences and if she willed it, we'd go our separate ways. I may hate it, but I'd take her loss as my punishment for buying her in the first place. As long as she was safe, I could live with that.

        But, for whatever reason, if the side of her that smiled to me this morning was the side that greeted me when all this was done, then…

        "Master…"

        "We have to hurry, Yua," I said, cutting her off as we ran. "If you need to, we'll take a short break once we get there. I don't want to have to wait in line too long."

        I say so, but it was me that was breathing heavily. This new body of mine could keep pace with her no problem in the short term, but my heart was beating so fast while thinking of all the possible outcomes for tomorrow that I couldn't breathe. She seemed to have picked up on this as her brow furrowed with what looked like concern.

        "Master, I think you need to calm down."

        "I'm fine. I'm just a little… excited, I guess."

        "No, Master. Your heart is… You really need to calm down."

        "I agree," said a third voice that stopped us in our tracks. One that I didn't need to be a beast-kin to recognize and one that neither of us wanted to hear.

        We skidded to a stop on the street, my mind for some reason briefly thanking myself for stopping to buy Yua her boots for this exact occasion. Once my legs stopped moving, my lungs finally caught up to me and, against my better judgment, I sucked in a deep breath just as the owner of the voice that only Yua could hate more than me climbed down from his carriage.

        Alphonse DeGrave had been waiting in the same line that flowed towards the auction house. From the looks of it, it was only him in his carriage and none of the ones behind or in front of him were the sort used to ferry people through the city, so he didn't seem to be heading out to sell off more of his slaves. Nor did he seem to be hauling anything else along with him.

        If he was connected to Lord Barrily in some way like I thought he was, then he might actually just be heading that way to say hello to an old friend once he received word he arrived in the city. My terrible luck must have just reared its head and forced me to run into him here.

        Once he set his neatly polished loafers on the cobblestone road, the thug holding the reigns of the carriage moved to disembark and join him, likely meaning to act as his bodyguard, but Alphonse just smirked at me and held up a hand to stay him. The thug shrugged and used the opportunity Alphonse gave him by facing us to slouch lazily in his seat. Though, he did eye me wearily and thump a hand on the hilt of his sword. An obvious threat if I ever saw one.

        Alphonse smoothed his slick hair back and, wearing what looked to be the same half-hearted attempt at a merchant's smile he neglected to show me back when we first met, he looked from me to Yua, then without even fully turning his smug face back to me, he laughed through his teeth.

        "What's so funny?"

        "Hahaha. Nothing, I suppose. It's just, I see you've managed to grow enough of a backbone not to run from Amoranth."

        Backbone? Did he really see through me so thoroughly that even my lack of confidence was obvious? I swear, I remember handling our negotiations at least fairly well. Sure, he got the jump on me on multiple occasions, but that was only because he pinpointed bits and pieces of the things I said and stretched them out until he found the truth. For all I was worth, I thought I had at least put up a façade worthy of being called confidence, right up until I found out how he tricked me. I guess my confidence boost failed me there, too.

        I clenched my teeth.

        "We both know that it wouldn't have mattered if I did."

        "True. But seeing you so desperate to buy this one, I figured you would have tried to run away with her the second I let you out of my house. Honestly, I was hoping for a chance to chase you down."

        Despite Alphonse's blustering remarks, I could hear Yua muttering under her breath. I couldn't quite make out anything she said, but from the utterly unrefined anger in her burning expression, I didn't need to ask to know that if she spoke any louder, the thug waiting in the driver's perch would have jumped down with his sword drawn.

        It was almost strange seeing her like this. The last time the three of us were together, she looked so despondent over her attempts to avoid being sold had failed that she couldn't even pull her gaze away from her feet, but now she looked like she was honestly trying to set him ablaze with just her eyes.

        After learning what little about her life in the slave house, primarily how he dressed and fed her, I could easily say that his name took up so much of my shit list that it came before the title and took up the whole first three pages by itself.

        But still, Yua looked to be biting back every urge welling up in her to slam her most powerful Iron Fist right into his jaw, shattering his teeth like they were nothing more than bits of brittle chalk. Seems like the single day of freedom she's had from him was enough to make her forget any sort of need to be respectful. And, were it not for his continued smirk, I would have thought he still feared her as much as he did when I watched her toss around his men.

        "Because if you ran, I'd be well within my rights to end our contract on the spot," he clarified, not that anyone asked.

        "Sorry to disappoint," I said, my own anger unwilling to let him get the better of me again. "But we're doing everything we can to…"

        "Oh, yes, I've heard," he interrupted with a flippant wave of his hand. "You've been running around in the dungeons. It's more proactive than begging for coin on the streets, I'll give you that, but I'm sure you've noticed by now."

        The provocative twist to his lips no doubt meant that he was well aware that the more conventional method of looting the monsters in the dungeon couldn't possibly pan out the way we wanted. I was so aware of that fact that it practically gave me heartburn.

        However, despite the fact that he was apparently keeping tabs on us, he seemed unawares of the ring we just put up for auction. Obviously. I stuffed the thing straight into my item box almost as soon as we found it and it's been there ever since. The only other time we'd taken the thing out was to try and sell it to Albert at the General Store. And even if his little birds managed to catch wind of this without us noticing, I still felt it fairly reasonable to say that he shouldn't know about it yet.

        Which means he's still expecting us to fail.

        I thought to use this moment to bluster and puff myself up, but I wasn't sure I could pull it off properly. Not after realizing how I failed last time. And not when the issue of the ring not actually being sold yet would inevitably come up. In fact, telling him about it might be dangerous. If he's friends with that Lord Barrily, he or they may have some amount of sway within the auction house. Bragging about it now might cause the auction to drop the sale of the ring altogether.

        It wasn't worth the risk. I had to take his laughter on the chin this time around.

        Then, as if only just noticing where we'd come from, despite the line of carts heading straight to it, he looked to the auction house and back to me.

        "My, my. Whatever are you doing here at Amoranth's Auction House? Let me guess…" he put a hand to his chin and pondered, though he didn't look even half serious. "I see what it is. Yes. You thought that having another slave to help you in the dungeons would help you earn coin faster, right? But since you no doubt hate me now, you couldn't bring it upon yourself to drag your feet back into my house, so you came here, only to find out that the next auction isn't until tomorrow. When it would be well-too-late."

        The all-around refined merchant's air he held himself up with seemed to be the only thing stopping him from breaking into a shit-eating grin. And, I had to say, aside from him being completely wrong this time around, he had a point. He himself brought up the concept of me buying cheap slaves specifically to earn money in the dungeon, so him coming to that conclusion was understandable. But understandable was all it was.

        Without knowing it, all he was doing now was telling me that he didn't know about the ring. And this time, I was positive I was right about his intentions.

        Seeing Yua continue to seethe, I put a hand out in front of her. I didn't think she'd actually risk hurting him since it would only cause us trouble. She didn't even get violent with me when I accidentally groped her, so her actually threatening Alphonse with a broken nose would only end up hurting her right back due to the slave spell, since he effectively owns half of her contract as we speak. Matter of fact, unless he truly gave up his rights to her in our trade, that meant that Yua was showing an absurd amount of self-restraint, if even her thoughts were somehow still free of blood. Which I doubted, considering how pissed she looked.

        I resisted the urge to bite my lip, but not so much so that he couldn't think his words hurt me. Maybe if I played along, I could get some answers out of him.

        "Why are you doing this to us?"

        "Pardon?" he said with a barely restrained laugh. "Are you seriously asking me that now? A bit late, don't you think?"

        "If all you wanted out of this was money, we could have worked something else out. You didn't need to go this far to ruin our lives."

        "Please. It's almost literally my job to ruin lives. What sort of fool expects kindness from a Slave Master?"

        The more he spoke, the harder it was to keep myself calm. And it most definitely didn't help to have him point out the fact that it was incredibly stupid of me to trust him in the first place, but also that I myself didn't deserve to be trusted. Regardless of whether or not I had the Slave Master class, I do own Yua. A person. I'm no more deserving of trust than he is. I'm no better than he is, even if my hatred for him wants me to think so.

        Still, unlike him, I was at least trying to be kind to her. He put up a front and faked a smile until he successfully screwed me over, but at least my smiles for her were the truth. Weak, but true. That's where we differed. And that, at least where I was concerned, was all that mattered.

        Seeing his smirk run its course and as he was about to turn to leave, no doubt thinking he'd won yet again, I noticed a slight twinge to his eye. Almost as if he'd said something he himself found vaguely distasteful and elected to run away from it instead of correct it. The tough front he put up immediately after was no doubt more resilient than mine, but after having to use one all the time myself, I was sure that the weakening of his smile signaled the end of whatever it was he found humorous. But the same way he plucked my true intentions from the things I told him yesterday, I knew there was something there for me to grab.

        I pressed for more. I wracked my brain for random things to talk to Yua about, but this one came up so easily that my lips barely had time to filter my question out into something coherent before it reached his ears.

        "How did you become a Slave Master, anyways?"

        The way he suddenly stopped as he was about to lift his foot onto the step ladder back up to the driver's perch looked so close to a flinch that I needed to suppress a smile. Not that I was wearing one, as the topic was dangerous.

        If you were to put aside the fact that him owning and selling slaves obviously made him a slave master by trade, it'd be easy to guess how he got the class of the same name. But it wasn't his first class. His first was Merchant. It was more or less speculation on my part, but after taking into consideration Yua and all the others I've met in this city so far, I had a pretty good feeling that the first class listed on any given person's info box was the class they were born with. Meaning that he had to do something to earn the class itself.

        Naturally, nobody else should have been able to tell this by just looking at him, but my info box didn't lie. It was this secret that put me in danger, as what I meant to sound like speculation was already a fact set in stone. In his info box that only I could see, but that he confirmed himself in his attempts to belittle my already self-aware incompetence.

        It's the same as how I've earned my classes so far. He may not have a trait that makes it easier to gain new classes and I may not be able to pinpoint exactly what I did to earn some of them, but I know I did something that made sense in the context of the class title. Using magic to become a Mage. Buying and selling items to become a Merchant. The Slave Master title suggested that the requirements should have been obvious, to buy or sell a person, but maybe it wasn't that simple.

        He did something to earn that class and, from the stiff look in his shoulders, that reminder of that something seemed to touch a nerve. Call it petty, call it justified, but I wanted to find that nerve and kick it in the dick. If you can gain classes and jobs by working hard at them, I had to know why he worked to earn the Slave Master title. Maybe I could use the information to my favor somehow.

        However, when he turned back to us, his expression was a picture-perfect example of calm. He'd wiped that smirk off his lips and he was no longer laughing, but if my question wounded him, he definitely wasn't going to let it show.

        "How I became a Slave Master? What has you so interested, hmm? Think you can become like me and sell Yua here off to someone else to make up what you owe me? Because you can't. Her contract is still mine until the appointed date in which… Ha. I suppose she will still be mine."

        "I wouldn't sell her even if my life depended on it."

        This time, I answered without hesitation. There was no stuttering, no mumbling, no skirting around the issue or pretending at falsehoods to hide my feelings. Nobody short of Yua herself was going to separate us. If the ring didn't sell, I'd find some other way to end this in a way that would keep her smiling.

        Thief or not, after what she's been through, she deserves that much.

        Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed some of the heat in Yua's expression die down as she opened her mouth to wordlessly comment on what I said.

        "Then why are you so interested?" Alphonse said, apparently unimpressed with my response.

        I put my hands in my pockets, feigning a calmness to match his own, but I was actually pinching my thigh to spur myself on.

        "Call it professional curiosity."

        I couldn't pin down which of my classes it was, but one of them was on to something. Whether or not learning his reasons helped us in the end was irrelevant. Just like in the video games I wasted my life on, I felt as though I'd stumbled upon a hidden dialogue option that needed to be explored in detail.

        Alphonse looked to Yua again, possibly noticing that her anger had slackened a bit, because his smirk returned as he faced the long line of cart intended for the auction house. He shrugged.

        "Fine. I suppose I have some time to play along. It's not exactly a secret at this point anyways."

        Feeling some of the momentum I felt building dissipate with the ease in which he gave in, I waited quietly for him to continue. As did Yua. From the look of confusion on her face, I guessed she hadn't heard, or maybe hadn't been interested in, his reasons for being what he was.

        "Back when I was around your age, I was betrothed to a woman by the name of Alicent Greyloch. She was so beautiful and so far beyond my means that I was left dumb and speechless when she actually accepted my proposal. After a mere handful of months' worth of me visiting her parent's pottery shop just to make small talk. I was just a fruit vendor myself at the time, after my mother retired and gave me her cart and, honestly, I have no idea what I said to earn her favor. Even now," Alphonse's expression almost turned into that of an older man thinking back fondly on old memories, but he quickly righted it. "We were a mere two months from the altar when she was being fitted for her wedding dress. Everything went fine and the dress fit perfectly. However, when she took it off, she'd forgotten to remove the garter belt before leaving the store. Of course, being the kind soul she was, she hurried back to return it, but by then it was too late. She'd become a Thief.

        "We hid it well enough. Or at least, we thought we did. The next two months of impatience and continued promises that I'd take her secret to the grave, we found ourselves at the altar and, when she showed up in that gorgeous wedding dress of hers and she took my hand, you'd never have thought that she'd spent the last few months panicking by the way she smiled at me.

        "We said our vows, kissed and everyone cheered. Unfortunately for us, when I brought her back home and into the bedroom we were now going to share, we found a pair of disgusting Adventurers waiting for us.

        "You see, Alicent's father was a little too good at his job. He'd apparently come up with some technique or other that allowed him to make his pots noticeably more durable, so that they wouldn't shatter like glass when dropped. He, however, refused to give or even sell his secrets to his competitors. One such competitor, who's shop I've since metaphorically burned to the ground, hired a couple of men to come and take in the Thief known now as Alicent DeGrave. On her wedding night, no less."

        In the brief lull in his story that Alphonse took, no doubt remembering that night, I posed a simple question.

        "But if they broke into your house, wouldn't they themselves have been marked as Thieves?"

        Alphonse snapped himself out of his melancholy jaunt through memory lane to roll his eyes.

        "No, fool. Just breaking into someone's house doesn't make you a Thief, stealing does. And even if it did, it wouldn't have mattered. I'd just bought the place a few days prior and the paperwork wasn't done yet. The bastard that sent those men thought everything through perfectly. They knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that we'd be alone on our wedding night because we were going to… well, I suppose you already know."

        Alphonse's eyes darted quickly to Yua, but he didn't give either of us time to question why.

        "They came. They took her. I fought back to the very best of my abilities, only to wind up with a broken nose for interfering with their apprehension of a criminal. They were entirely indifferent to the fact that she was still wearing her wedding dress as they hefted her over their shoulders and carried her away. I crawled after them as fast as my beaten and broken limbs would allow, but my vision was already growing feint.

        "I thought we hid the fact that she'd become a thief perfectly, but when I woke the next day to the worst headache I'd ever had, I found out just how eerily fast rumors spread in the city. By the time I found out myself, the whole city knew of her accidental crime. So, nobody cared when I went to them for help, because they already knew there was nothing they could do. Not even her father, could do a thing to help. He ended up falling so deep into the bottle when I told him what happened that he ended up closing his shop for good."

        He paused again, this time an anger I'd never seen on him causing several strands of his once perfectly combed hair to fall over his face.

        "… I'm sorry to hear all of this," I said honestly. "But I don't see what any of this has to do with my question."

        "Right," Alphonse said, pushing his hair back into its rightful place. "In short, I found out that she'd been forced into slavery. Honestly, it's what we all thought would happen. She was too pretty, too valuable to be executed. So, I grabbed every coin I had to my name and bullied what I could out of her father and brought it all to the slave house she'd been given to. Only, I didn't have nearly enough… She was sold to someone else not even a week later."

        I felt more of Yua's tension slip, but not all of it. Never all of it. She still very clearly hated the man despite this, and so did I. It was hard to argue that he didn't have it rough, but if despite all of this, he still intentionally screwed people over the same way that had been done to him...

        He continued.

        "It was when I went to that slave house and saw just how much she was worth to me, that I realized my way of making money simply couldn't compare. So, I used what money I had to play the market. I bought myself a couple weaker, less attractive slaves. Prettied them up, got them into shape and when there was no more improvements to be made, I brought them to auction. As luck would have it, they sold for several times what I paid for them."

        "But why go that far? If it's the slave house that sold your wife, why fund them further by buying from them?"

        "To get my beloved Alicent back, obviously," he snarled, then composed himself as if that little slip were an honest accident. "One thing I learned during my time as a Merchant is that everyone has a price. So, I thought that if I built up my purse well enough, I'd be able to buy her back from her master and we could continue the life together we were denied."

        "And did you?" Yua asked through her teeth, no doubt thinking on all the slaves Alphonse must have toyed with just to try and win his wife back.

        "Oh, yes, I did. And then some. A year later, when I showed up to that man's doorstep with a bag full of gold, he was more than happy to sell her back to me. See, he'd fallen on rough times himself. Seems that a horde of demons attacked a caravan he'd hired to ferry some very expensive works of art to another city. Everything was very much destroyed and he was very much desperate to recoup on his losses. So, he practically through her at me the moment I walked in the door. She, of course, was elated to see me and jumped into my arms. I was so… happy, that I dropped the bag of coins on his table, which was worth well over what he was asking for, and finally brought my Alicent back home. However, our happy ending was never to be.

        I felt something ominous well up in my gut, but I couldn't bring myself to question its meaning. Whatever it was he was about to say, I knew I wasn't going to like it.

        "You see, when I brought her back home and finally brought her to bed, I found that she was so utterly used up by that man that she disgusted me. My beautiful, loving Alicent was so… loose, so worn that I couldn't bring myself to look at her anymore. In my stupor upon realizing this, she tried all sorts of things to try and usher me back to the marital bed, but I wouldn't have it. I couldn't have her anymore."

        "So…."

        "So, I sold her off," he said, utterly unconcerned with the shocked gasp that stole the rest of Yua's anger.

        "You did what?!"

        "How could you?!"

        In the face of our combined uproar, all Alphonse did was shrug.

        How in the hell could he work that hard for the woman he loved for an entire year, only to get rid of her the moment he realized he didn't like what she became. It's not like it was her choice. And from the sound of things, her love for him never died out despite what happened to her. What kind of heartless bastard would just turn a woman like that away? I mean, I most definitely can't get behind the methods he used to get her back, but how?!

        "Why would you willingly trade away the woman you love after trying so hard for her sake?"

        "Why? Don't be stupid. She was no longer the woman I loved. She was something else entirely. An unknown entity that was wearing her face to mock me. And, thankfully, she was still very much beautiful, so when a new buyer came to me and liked what he saw, it was a done deal. The price he offered for her was too much to ignore. And, as if the universe were laughing at me, it was her sale that finally earned me my Slave Master class."

        Where did that twinge go? What part of the greedy smile he was wearing now was it that made me feel as though he had some lingering regrets over what happened?

        "Don't be so surprised. When you deal in slaves, there is one thing you quickly come to understand," he said, leaning in to us like he was letting us in on a secret. "There is nearly nothing else in this world that is anywhere near as valuable as another living being. I made so much off of her sale that I was able to open my shop. Here in The Great City of Amoranth, no less. Sure, I had to start over, buying for cheap, selling for high, but it got me to where I am today."

        The man was almost cartoonishly evil, yet the confident smile he wore now showed no signs of breaking character. That twinge that suggested he regretted his decision must just have been another ploy of his to mess with me. He must have baited me into asking because he knows that Yua and I were in a nearly similar situation.

        Like his wife, she was going to be taken from me. And, even if with all my cheat abilities, I was able to save up enough money to somehow magically win her back, it'd be too late in various meanings.

        I wanted his reasoning and I think I got it. I don't know if it was because I was an Adventurer like the men that beat him and stole his wife, or if it was because he realized exactly how hard I fell for Yua when I first met her and decided to spite any potential relationship between us because his own happiness was denied.

        "You sold your wife just to make a quick buck?"

        "Buck? I told you, she wasn't my wife anymore. But yes. You see, beauties like her and like this one here are my biggest money makers."

        He pinched and tugged Yua's cheek with the same sort of out of place smile that a parent might have when doing the same to their child when calling them cute. At the same time, the utter hellfire in her eyes did nothing short of prove that, while he still owned her in some aspect, she was not bound by the same slave spell she was with me, because I was sure that, had he pushed her a second longer, she'd have ignored the threat of his hired thugs and snapped his neck. But she didn't.

        Unprompted, he let go and looked back to me.

        "So, there you have it. Did you get what you wanted?"

        Despite my efforts to remain composed, my mouth fell agape. The grin he turned on me was not one of a man that just proudly told the story of how he started his own business. It was that of a trickster. A liar. Someone whose very existence could have been a falsehood had he not been standing right in front of me as living proof.

        Was everything he just told us a lie? Some sob story meant to make me feel for him, only to then break that sympathy over his knee to slap me across the face with it?

        Or was it all just meant to make me put myself in his fabricated shoes? To tell me that, if I beat him and completed her contract, that I would somehow end up like him? All to dishearten me from even trying.

        Without even knowing it, he actually suggested a really smart, but really evil plan. I could buy a cheap slave, but instead of prettying them up like he claims he did, I could use my experience boosting abilities to make them level up absurdly fast, therefore raising their value as battle slaves.

        Is that the sort of man I would have become if I'd dragged Yua to bed the moment I bought her instead of the dungeons?

        No. That absolutely would not be the case. Given the continuing deepening of the pit in my stomach ever since I bought Yua, I could never do that to another person. I could feel myself sweating at the thought, but I knew two very good reasons as to why this could never be the case.

        Yua had been enslaved for years, but in all that time she never lost herself. She still put up a fight whenever she could and even after someone bought her, she still put up an attitude that suggested she'd never bow to her master. Not fully, anyway. She'd never break completely.

        And then there was me. I would never sell her off like that. Not to make up what I owed him and not because I didn't like what I saw once I had her. Hell, I can't tell if she's really a Thief at heart. One waiting for me to let my guard down, but I can still say that I love her. I may be a fool for saying so, but I can't help it. It's true. It's so very true that it hurts just seeing her so furious.

        I am not him. That much, more than anything else in this world, in my life, I can say with confidence. If any of his story was to be held as truth, then he just lost his way long ago. Maybe that beating from those adventurers just broke his mind as well as his body, but it didn't matter anymore. His past, real or not, was irrelevant.

        I won't play his games anymore and I won't let myself slip into despair at the thought of maybe sharing a few characteristics with him.

        As if sensing this determination in me and deciding that it was hilarious, he let out a bellowing laugh that might as well have disproved everything he just told us. He looked to the still glaring Yua and grinned.

        "I suspect that her value's likely declined by now, but…."

        "Let's go, Yua."

        Cutting him off, fully regretting having fooled myself into thinking I could outsmart him again, I took Yua's hand and left Alphonse to shrug to himself, unawares that even the thug in the driver's perch of his carriage was looking at him with disgust written plainly on his face.

        "Yua…" I said, once we were far enough away from him that he couldn't hear. "For future reference, would I be labeled a Thief or anything of the sort if I were to punch him in the face?"

        "No, Master… You would not. So long as you don't kill him."

        "… Good."

        Regretting having stayed to listen to him, but using his little story as yet more kindling to fuel my want to pay off Yua's contract, we hurried to the dungeon without any more delays.