Mythran's Master Of All

As the pile of things dwindled, the female dwarves had less and less to stand on. After Ren had stored everything, the 5 women were left standing between the wall and the floor because the angle the room was tilted at wouldn't let them stand on either surface safely. One crouched down and tried to sit, but the rest just braced their feet and leaned on the wall. Ren took out several chairs and braced them against the wall for them to sit on. They thanked him and looked around the now empty room.

“Wow.” One of them said. “A whole year of my life spent here, and all that's left is an empty room.”

One of the women laughed. “I've been here 3 years, and I've always seen it as empty.” She said, and reached a hand out to the other woman. “Except for the great company.”

“Yeah.” Another said. “With all that stuff gone, you see what really matters.”

“Each other.”

“I can't believe it's over.” One of them said, and a tear came to her eye. “What am I going to do now?”

“Hey, it's all right.” The last one said, and hugged her. “No matter what, we stick together. We'll figure something out.”

Ren had pulled out a desk and started searching through the drawers. “At least you won't have to worry about money for a while.”

“Wh-what?”

The search of the desk turned up nothing, even with Enchanted Eyes.

“Since I already have all of the things from this room stored, why don't you take them and split the profits?” Ren asked. “I told you before, I don't need the money.”

“By the gods, you're crazy!” One of them said. “No one in their right minds would buy all the things that were in here!”

“Throgg wasn't in his right mind when he bought them the first time.” One of them laughed. “Everything was custom made and covered in gold.”

Ren shrugged. “I'm a business owner. I can sell the items at a 10% loss and give you the money for it.” He said. “Watch.”

Ren selected the desk and chose 'sell back to the system'. He received 3 platinum for the custom made gold covered desk, and handed the money to the closest female dwarf. She stared at the money like it was a snake that was trying to bite her.

“You... you...”

Ren took out the cabinet next and opened it. It was full of clothes, and he searched through it. There were no hidden compartments or enchanted spaces.

“Don't sell it!” One of them said.

Ren chuckled. “Don't worry, I wasn't going to.” He said. “I assumed it had your clothes in it, and I wouldn't sell it unless you wanted me to.”

She sighed in relief. “Yes, we'd only have the clothes on our bodies if you sold all the cabinets.”

Ren stored it and took out a dresser. He searched through that as well, but found nothing. This was repeated several times until he came across the iron and wood chest and took it out of inventory. The entire thing glowed, and the lock on the chest glowed, too.

“This looks promising.” Ren said.

“Stop!” One of the female dwarves said. “You shouldn't try to open that.”

“Why?” Ren asked.

“It's a trap.” She said. “It drains your Health and Mana until they're empty.”

Ren looked at her. “You saw it working, didn't you?”

She nodded. “It was our first day.” She said. “My friend and I had signed the contracts at the same time, and Throgg had ordered us to put our clothes away. My friend thought it was a normal chest and tried to open it.” She sighed. “After a few moments, she collapsed to the floor and died.”

“That's why there's also a lock on it now.” One of the other women said as she hugged the other. “Throgg didn't want to pay another monetary penalty to someone's family for having their family member die under contract.”

“That's also why we were ordered to stay in this room.” Another one said. “To protect us.”

“He was such an idiot.” Ren said, as he thought about using the Knock spell on the chest. “He should have ordered you not to touch something so dangerous.” He said and took out the wand. “That was one of the first orders I gave to my own personal maid.”

All of the female dwarves stared at him with open mouths at Ren's admission, then watched as he took out a wand and shot the lock on the chest. It stopped glowing and popped open. He removed the lock from the chest and used the Knock spell again. There was a loud click, and the chest popped open.

“By the gods.” Ren whispered.

Inside the chest was a stack of parchment almost 6 inches thick. That wasn't what had surprised him, however; it was the 12 small wooden boxes beside the stack that looked identical to the one he had looted from the head of the Thieves Guild's body.

Ren picked one up and opened it. He wasn't surprised to see the three rows of 15 shadow markers. With 12 boxes, that meant there was 540 shadow markers in total... with a value of 54,000 platinum.

“Oh, those horrible things!” One of the female dwarves said. “He was always counting them and making sure none were ever missing.” She laughed. “Like we'd ever touch things like that.”

“He's been collecting them forever.” Another one said. “It bothered me to know the only way to get them was to be hired for a...” She looked at Ren, and blushed a deep red. “He did a lot of bad things.”

Ren nodded to her, and she gasped from the Honor gain. “It's okay. I know all about the shadow markers.” He said. “Any time I come across one as loot, or someone who found one as loot, I buy it from them.”

“You WHAT?!?”

“I don't want them floating around.” Ren said to her. “Like you said, the only way to get them is if you do something bad. Either by doing a bad thing for someone, or by killing someone that was hired to do something bad.” He explained. “I've made it a standard practice to offer 30 gold coins for them, as if they'd found a special pair of boots and sold them for the value.”

“Oh... oh my...” One of the female dwarves said, and Ren looked over at her. It was the one that had the broken wrist and wanted to have sex with him. She had her eyes closed and he could see her arm moving; but he couldn't tell where her hand was because it was tucked into her clothing. He could make an educated guess, though.

Ren smiled and looked back at the chest. He stored the 12 boxes of shadow markers, and they joined the stack in his inventory with the other two, then he started to flip through the stack of parchment papers.

This is taking too long. Ren thought, and stored the stack. His inventory sorted the sheets into smaller stacks. One was business contracts when he checked them, another was a list of contacts. I'll look through that one later. He thought, and checked the next small stack. It was a stack of property deeds, and he noticed that each of them had a payment amount on them for taxes.

He was milking the taxes from the people, then shorted the government by making smaller payments. Ren shook his head as he stored the stack of property deeds and took out the last stack. There were 15 personal contracts, and he flipped through them. He didn't know which ones were for personal maids, or what the other ones were for.

“I found the contracts.” Ren said and held them out. “There's 15 of them, though.” He said. “I'm not going to ask you your names...”

“Aww.” One of them said, and they all laughed.

“What I am going to do, is read out the name on the contract. If you hear your name, let me know.” Ren said, and looked at the first contract. He started to read the names, and as he progressed through them, each of the female dwarves let him know which one was them and he handed them their contract. The second last name he spoke was the fifth woman's name, and he handed it to her. All 5 of the female dwarves stared at him with wide eyes when he finished.

“I don't know what these other contracts are for, so I have to keep them for now.” Ren said. “I'll head to the Hall of Records later to see who they are, and what the contracts are for.”

The women didn't speak at all, and Ren looked at each of them.

“What is it?” Ren asked them.

“You... you just... you're giving us our contracts?” One of them said, and then started to cry. “You're letting us go?”

“Of course I am.” Ren said and stored the other contracts. “You've been under contract long enough, I think.”

The women exchanged glances and then looked at the piece of parchment they held.

“On three!” One of them said. “One!”

They all gripped their contracts to tear them up.

“Two!”

Each of them smiled.

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“Three!”

They all tore their contracts in half, then in half again, and tossed the pieces of parchment into the air. As the pieces started to fall, they disappeared; and 3 of the women were quite happy. The last two were quite sad that this part of their lives was over. Just as the last piece of parchment disappeared, Ren received a popup.