Chapter 248 : Chapter 248
Chapter 248: Harein (3)
Serzila had money.
Not as much as the imperial family or the Church, but enough to stand right behind them.
They had arrived empty-handed, yet there was already a Serzila Intelligence Bureau agent infiltrated into Akuldag. It was not difficult to procure gold coins.
‘If the Tower of Earthquakes and the auction house are unrelated.’
If the kidnappers had not taken Shura to the auction house.
If Shura did not appear at auction.
Then she could not play the card of magic.
This was the Empire.
‘A guest of honor can only skim the surface anyway.’
Only the merchandise could reveal the auction house’s true worth.
That was why Harad—or rather, Harein—had chosen to become a slave.
“Have any children come in among the recent slaves?”
Kubel asked.
At once, the old man’s eyes narrowed.
“Why do you ask?”
“I want to adopt an obedient daughter. Around eleven years old would be ideal.”
“Ah. You’re from the desert, then?”
Kubel nodded.
“But your skin isn’t.”
“I was born with a cursed constitution.”
At that, the old man’s narrowed eyes relaxed. It was not uncommon in the desert to take in a promising young slave as one’s child.
“No. And even if there were, I could not tell you. If you want to buy merchandise, wait for the auction.”
The old man clicked his tongue.
This was an auction house. It did not deal in rough, improvised business.
“If there is, I’ll lower the price on this slave.”
Kubel said, presenting Harein.
Harein frowned. How dare he say such a thing.
“If it were a son, then yes. A twelve-year-old with talent for the whip. Clever enough now to be obedient.”
The old man took the bait at once.
But what he offered was not a girl, but a boy.
“I prefer a daughter.”
“Tsk. Regrettably, there are no young girls at the moment.”
The old man smacked his lips.
‘That did not sound like a lie.’
Harein’s price had essentially been set as a blank check.
If lowering her price were truly possible, the old man would have been perfectly willing to throw in another slave.
‘Then either it’s a miss. Or even the appraiser doesn’t know.’
Both were plausible.
‘A valuable Origin.’
The kidnapper’s words scratched unpleasantly in her mind.
Both the kidnappers and Shura were mages.
The auction house could be unrelated. Or it could be secretly running auctions for mages.
It was Harein’s task to uncover the latter.
Kubel and Ellen would prepare for the possibility that the auction proved a dead end.
The road had already split into two, and now it had been torn into three more branches. Shura was involved. They had to prepare for every possibility.
‘A valuable Origin.’
That unpleasant phrase also offered hope.
They would not dispose of a mage whose Origin had value.
The Otherworld favored valuable Origins.
Not even a full day had passed yet. Shura should still be safe.
‘And Jis is there too.’
She had to trust him and cast impatience aside.
“May I come back tomorrow with the price? It’s difficult. She is such an exceptional slave.”
Kubel asked, fluttering the blank paper.
It was an excellent decision. The moment he wrote a number on it, that number would become Harein’s price. If it was too low, they would be suspected. If it was truly enormous, that too would attract unwanted attention.
Either way, they needed to avoid that for now.
“Take your time and think it over. Of course, it would be better if you came back before the auction. It makes no difference to me, but those above me will want to put a price on her.”
Naturally, they would try to set it lower than the final winning bid.
The appraiser was kinder than expected. Perhaps it was the camaraderie of similar trades. Both slave traders and slave appraisers were ultimately at the mercy of the auction house.
“When is the auction?”
“A few days from now. A slave isn’t the sort of merchandise that can be sold the moment we take possession of it. We only select high-quality slaves, but the quality of the customers who come is higher still.”
There was a reason this was an auction house that admitted only nobles and honored guests.
‘Be careful, Lady Harein.’
Behind Kubel, Ellen mouthed the words silently.
Harein began to frown, then stopped.
One could tell just by looking at her face. Her lips were playful, but her eyes were full of worry.
In truth, Ellen was better suited to playing the role of a slave.
Unlike mages, knights were not constrained on the continent.
The role of Harein was Harad’s own selfishness.
He did not want to stand by and watch Ellen be treated as a slave, even falsely.
If she had taken the role, then all the humiliation Harein had endured on the way here would have become Ellen’s.
Once she crossed that entrance, it might become something worse.
A truly beautiful woman could topple nations. Ellen was such a woman.
The old man ducked his head into the small room.
A moving hand was briefly visible, and then the iron bars blocking the entrance opened with a clang.
In the meantime, Kubel lowered his head slightly toward Harein. Ellen conveyed her warning with her eyes. When the old man emerged from the little room, Kubel and Ellen vanished up the stairs.
Now she was alone.
Harein thought that was for the best.
Acting as someone else in front of people who knew you was more exhausting than expected.
More so when that someone was a different sex.
“What’s your name?”
The old man asked.
“I do not care to tell it to an old man who will soon die.”
“You crazy bitch.”
The old man shook his head and clicked his tongue.
He muttered that she was thoroughly insane.
“You are mistaken. I am not mad. I am not a slave, but a king. Go and report that to those above.”
“Don’t worry, bitch. I’ll report it soon enough.”
“You had best.”
“Sure. And what kind of king are you?”
“The King of Prophecy.”
“Prophecy?”
The old man tilted his head.
That was the normal reaction.
Prophecy belonged to the Otherworld.
She had to find the one who reacted to the words King of Prophecy.
If she beat that one down, the next clue would appear.
“There is such a thing, you ignorant old man. All you need do is report it.”
The old man let out an incredulous laugh.
“Fine. I’ll be sure to pass that on.”
That was precisely what she wanted.
***
This was an auction house that dealt in high-grade slaves.
But slaves were slaves in the end.
No matter how high their grade, there was a clear limit.
“Get in.”
The old man opened the second iron gate.
It was clean, but it was still closer to a prison cell.
“There is no bed.”
“Crazy bitch.”
There were already slaves inside.
Two women and seven men.
“Am I truly expected to enter a place like this?”
Harein snorted and pointed at them.
No matter how she looked at it, they were not of her grade.
“Run along and tell your superiors to prepare my room. That is an order.”
“They will. So get in. It’s not your room, it’s a waiting room. I’ll speak to my betters and come fetch you.”
“Hmph. I will endure it for a moment.”
Harein entered without resistance.
The old man smiled nastily. The nine slaves already in the cell laughed at her or sneered. The proud slave Harein had now become a proud but naive slave.
“Do not lay a single fingertip on her unless you want to be executed.”
The old man threatened the other slaves.
“As if we’d touch goods meant for noble masters. We may end up serving the same master.”
One of the slaves answered with a snickering laugh.
He was a man whose scalp was covered in scars instead of hair.
Clang.
As the old man locked the gate, he stared intently at the man.
That was all.
The old man checked that the gate was secure and disappeared.
‘So he’s careless. Or rather, nothing has ever gone wrong here before.’
The customers were nobles or honored guests.
Just as the auction house staff were cautious, the slaves likely were too.
Harein stood in the middle of the cell and looked down at them haughtily.
‘Two for ornament.’
One man and one woman had pale skin.
The rest were either attractively tanned or over-darkened. Shackles bound their hands and feet. The pale pair and Harein had no shackles.
‘Former warriors.’
There were many uses for slaves.
Those people would be used as guards or fighters.
Their eyes were dark and dangerous.
They seemed to be unwise warriors. They had probably caused trouble in the desert and chosen slavery as their fate.
It was as though freeloaders had come in search of work.
They were slaves of high quality in terms of ability.
“Were you born to the highborn?”
One of the warrior slaves asked.
It was the man who had answered the old man earlier. His slack eyes were especially revolting.
“No.”
“Then what?”
“I am the most precious being in the world. The sort of one a low thing like you should not even dare look upon.”
The man flinched.
Harein thought that only natural. However high their grade, they were still slaves. Excellent slaves existed, but truly exceptional people did not become slaves.
“Then why is someone like you here?”
The flinch lasted only a moment.
The man curled one corner of his mouth and mocked her.
That was one of the disadvantages of being a mage.
On the continent, a mage had to begin at a disadvantage. If it were Ellen, she would have broken something first and moved on from there.
“There are circumstances beyond the understanding of low creatures like you.”
The man’s hand swung without warning.
To Harein’s eyes it was absurdly slow. Her head tilted back, and his hand struck only empty air.
“Well now?”
“Do not look, low creature.”
This time it was a punch.
Fierce, yet laughable. Both hands were bound together by the shackle. The pair of fists came at her side by side.
The even more laughable part was that the fists were the feint, and the real attack was the iron ball dangling at the end of the chain.
Clang!
The iron ball and Harein’s fist collided. The ball shattered. Her white fist remained smooth.
“Your skill and your spirit are both miserable.”
The man was a former warrior.
That meant he possessed Aura. He could have broken shackles like those whenever he pleased.
But he did not.
He feared the punishment of the auction house.
Even though he had ignored the old man’s warning not to touch her.
“Behave yourselves. Answer my questions and I’ll spare you.”
“Kill her!”
The man shouted.
Of the eight seated, five rose.
So he was the leader.
The handsome pale pair in the corner trembled.
Another man, who also seemed to be a former warrior, remained sprawled on the floor and simply watched.
“Didn’t he say touching me would get you executed?”
“Don’t kill her. Just beat her until she can’t move.”
The man corrected himself.
It did not seem to be because the old man’s warning had only now occurred to him. His eyes glittered sickeningly.
“So you’re just idiots.”
Harein clicked her tongue, having read his gaze.
A truly beautiful woman could topple a nation.
Ellen was not here, so they had transferred that value onto Harein instead.
And it was not only that man’s thought.
Those people had gone blind to the pleasure right in front of them, more blinded by it than by the execution they had already been warned of.
‘This is unpleasant.’
Harein wanted to go back to being Harad.
Crack.
The man and the five following him broke their shackles. The fact that women were among those five disgusted Harein even more.
‘No wonder they became slaves.’
Do not pity slaves.
Harein recalled a proverb of Norbu. It was true enough. Aside from a few exceptions, slavery was already becoming an old tale.
Aura rose ominously from all directions.
There were six of them in total. They did not rush her immediately. They had seen Harein smash the iron ball with her bare fist.
The desert shunned stupidity.
‘What should I do?’
Should she avoid it, or embrace it?
If the former, she had to be prudent. If the latter, she would have to manifest magic.
To borrow Grand Duke Elaine’s expression, those people were idiots. Yet they were merchandise handled by the auction house. That meant only their ability ranked high.
No matter how well her body had been tempered, bringing down six Aura-wielders barehanded would not be easy.
‘Not that I couldn’t, if I had to.’
It was not a difficult thing either.
She had learned the sword from none other than Grand Duke Elaine. And not just the sword; she was skilled in hand-to-hand combat as well.
Still, she did not particularly want to.
If this place had anything to do with Shura, then sooner or later she would have to manifest magic anyway.
As his previous life had proven, a tempered body was a definite variable. There was no reason to reveal it first.
A mage was a creature who hid what was theirs and investigated what belonged to others.
The iron ball might pass without much notice, but the killing of six Aura-wielding warriors would not stay hidden.
‘If I manifest magic here, and this place turns out to have nothing to do with Shura.’
Then she would have to run.
The person named Harein would lose her value.
Harad would lose the ability to move freely through Akuldag. He would be reduced to waiting for Cassion to make a mess of things.
“You seem troubled.”
It was then that someone spoke.
It was the former-warrior slave who had been lying in the corner, watching all this with his arm propping up his head. He looked thoroughly entertained.
“I am. If I kill them, I’ll have to leave this place.”
“Wouldn’t leaving be a good thing?”
He tilted his head.
His tangled hair shook roughly. His eyes flashed secretly from between it.
“So you’re not an idiot.”
“Praise from a beauty always feels good. So what’s your answer?”
“I cannot leave. There is something I seek.”
“Same as me.”
The man bared his teeth in a grin.
The sound was rough. Like a beast growling.
“You. Are you really the most precious in the world?”
“The third.”
“What is your name?”
“Harein.”
“Harein. I like it.”
The man rose.
He was not large, yet he seemed enormous. He swept back his yellow hair. It was like a lion fluffing its mane.
“I’ll help you.”
His whole body blazed.
Not with fire. With Aura that resembled fire. Within it, pale eyes that looked like flames shone fiercely.
“Then you’ll be mine.”
“……This place is full of idiots.”
Should I just set the place on fire?