Into The City

Another three days passed.

I continued to make pills, my success rate increasing marginally every single day, while occasionally helping Alex out on the field. Alex continued to cook, work in the field, and boost my pills.

We both took some of the boosted pills to keep our Magic and Stamina up for as long as possible, but unfortunately, we were far from having good and pure enough pills to work throughout the entire day without rest. The Replenishing Pills I made could only be taken twice a day before we caught a case of pill toxicity and, at best, they only supplemented ten percent of our Stamina and Magic Reserves.

Still, it was enough to cut back on an hour or so of rest and we currently needed all the time we could afford to save.

By the end of our first week at our new home, we'd made enough progress for it to be worth making a trip to the nearby city. I had hundreds of Poor Quality Pills that were worth tens of thousands of Zenicopper; easily enough for a Creedless commoner to live comfortably for a year.

All I needed to do was follow the maps I'd integrated with [Plant Identification] to lead us to the city that was six kilometers away from the house, locate a buyer for my pills, and then… I don't know how much a slave would cost, so I guess it depends.

…

"Ugh," I groaned as we entered the city.

God, I'm out of shape…

I couldn't understand why as I was sure I regularly exercised in my past life. I'm pretty sure I worked out for lifestyle quality and not strength and muscle definition, and that even a ten-kilometer jog should have been trivial for my conditioning. But, I guess my body had been reset due to the whole revival process or something along those lines.

Oh well… I guess I'll just have to start all over again to get back my fit body. Not anytime soon, but after I wasn't under a time crunch to meet the Emperor's demands, I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard in a world where Magic is a thing.

"Excuse me," A petulant voice drew me out of my thoughts; how a voice could sound petulant was a surprise even to me. "I believe you two are the Heroes who have business with me," the nasally, unflattering voice belonged to a tall and lanky man.

"What business?" I asked, understanding our clothes probably gave us away. I would have to look into buying new clothes as disguises before I sold my pills.

"Why the slave trade, of course!" He laughed. "Why else would you come into the city if not to pick up your mandated slaves? Or were you actually foolish enough to come here to sightsee instead of work for the Emperor?"

"Nobody told me we were going to get free slaves," I muttered, annoyed to be kept in the dark about this matter.

"Why would they? Anyone with even half a working brain would have figured out rather quickly that your required contributions to the Yyvel Empire would be impossible to fulfill with your terribly useless Creeds. Sooner or later, you were bound to either head into our lovely city of Demoire to ask for some help or flee from the situation and die soon after. It's honestly pathetic to see that you've taken this long to get here."

Oh? That's a lot of juicy, useful information you've unintentionally gifted me, my good sir. I'll accept it graciously without begrudging you for your misguided insults and stupidity.

"I understand Mr…"

"Deanon," the slaver said.

"Mr. Deanon, then. Lead the way so we can pick out our slaves and get back to work," I smiled.

He led us into the pearly white building he had been standing in front off when we met and what I saw inside was… Pretty much the opposite of what my understanding of cliches had me expecting.

There were no helpless victims locked up in the worst living conditions imaginable. Instead, the "slaves," if they could even be called that, were free to roam the building or relax in their rooms at their leisure. They all had clean clothes, access to food and shelter, and if they didn't want to work to pass the time, there didn't seem to be any repercussions for their insubordination.

"Ok… Is it just me or does this world have a different definition of slavery? I mean, really… Nothing about these people's situation seems like they're being forced to do anything," I commented.

"What were you expecting?" Deanon asked.

"I don't know, like a bunch of disheveled people locked in cages? Maybe a couple dead-eye workers toiling away at some random labor-intensive job. Not… Whatever the hell that is," I pointed at one of the projections that showed a shirtless man laughing himself into hysterics as he watched a show in his personal room.

Yes… Some of these slaves even had their own TV projectors.

"Why would anyone treat their slaves like that?" Deanon frowned, "Even the cheapest slave is worth thousands of Zenicopper. That kind of investment needs to be properly maintained to not be a complete waste of money. Not to mention, most of our available slaves are under contractual slavery instead of absolute slavery. Only an idiot would waste their money on a victim for them to bully."

"Slavery where we—" Alex and I, "—were from was practically abolished worldwide. Perhaps the media I watched there dramatized the worst aspects of slavery to make it seem as evil as possible. But never mind that. Tell me more about the difference between contractual and absolute slavery."

"First, I believe that you must understand how the slave trade as a whole works. To legally operate as a Slaver in the Yyvel Empire one may only brand and sell willing slaves. Why would anyone willingly "enslave" themselves?" He mock asked. "Because I, as a slaver, make and possess a ludicrous amount of money," He answered.

"Usually the people who become slaves do so because they have debts that they can not pay back. They come to someone like me to help them absolve their debts and depending on the circumstances around them, they may either submit themselves to becoming a temporary slave or an absolute slave."

"A contractual slave is a temporary slave whose services or Skills are in effect what's being bought for the period of their enslavement. Basically, a person buying a contractual slave is paying for a discount lump sum of the labor they think their slave is capable of."

"An absolute slave, on the other hand, is a permanent slave whose entire life is bound to their master. It's not just their services that their owners are paying for, it's all their past experience and future potential as well; obviously, they are much, much more expensive than contractual slaves."

"I see…" I nodded. I quickly presumed a lot of information on how the system might work on a deeper level with the context of Deanon's explanation. But, I didn't want to waste any more time talking to him than was strictly necessary. Sooner or later I would find more books, scrolls, or texts to learn more about the world and how it operates.

"So, I'm guessing there's a list or something like that for us to pick our slaves from, right?"

Deanon simply grinned as he fished out two scrolls from behind his back and handed one to me and Alex individually. Alex then gave me his scroll since he couldn't read the thing and after Deanon left, I used [Plant Identification] to scan through both lists in the blink of an eye.

What I learned was almost too good to be true.