I knew what people would say.

  That my behavior was reckless, that I'd endangered Ragna and Ilyra and everyone else in the chamber for the sake of a girl I didn't know and slaves I had no obligation to free. And that I'd made a needless enemy of a dead man's family, painted a target on Ilyra's House, and turned a dungeon dive into a political incident that would echo through courts I'd never see.

  They'd be right about all of it.

  Most of my anger came from the way he tried to lay hands on Ragna and spat on Valtherian pride. If it had been anyone else, I probably wouldn’t have gone this far.

  Veric was a slave owner, so he was judged likewise. Not that I was a judge or a hero, but this was a world where strength ruled all, wasn’t it? At least Veric believed it so. I’d only treated him with the same rules he thought the world operated by.

  Back in my previous world, the common argument against slavery was that it violated basic human rights. And that was true, it was also more than enough of a reason. But I'd always felt like that answer stopped one step short of the real problem.

  The beatings, the collars, and the forced labor… Indeed, those things were pure evil, I can’t pretend otherwise. But they were more like the symptoms rather than the disease. The actual disease was quieter and more dangerous. It was the fact that slavery taught everyone involved that a person could be reduced to a thing.

  Once you accepted that a person could be a thing, everything else was just paperwork. Wasn’t it? Collars, contracts, ledgers, and even polite markets where men simply pretended that they were buying grain. All fell under paperwork.

  The whip was the obvious evil. The real theft was quieter.

  I'd thought about this too much in my previous life. Occupational hazard of a philosophy degree, I suppose. But the way most people understood it, a person was a body with a mind rattling around inside, like a coin in a box. And if that was true, then slavery was just stealing the box. Terrible, sure. But manageable. You could write laws about boxes.

  But that was backwards. The mind wasn't inside the body. Really, the body was inside the mind. Everything, including reality itself, was limited within consciousness.

  Every sensation, every color, and every face I'd ever seen were technically inside my awareness. This fact even caused existential crisis among countless thinkers across history. But it was true. Consciousness was not a passenger riding behind someone's eyes. It was the place where an entire world existed.

  Every person who'd ever lived carried a world inside them, a universe. Every slave ever born carried one just as real as the one their master claimed to own.

  That was what made it insane to me. Not merely cruel, but insanity. After all, how can anyone claim to own a universe? Who gave them the right?

  A master could chain the body. He could whip it, starve it, and even collar it. But the awareness behind those eyes? That wasn't his to take. It never was. Otherwise, slaves wouldn’t chase freedom.

  It might sound strange, but back in my old world, science famously still couldn’t prove what consciousness really was. Yet, ironically, consciousness was the only thing that proved we exist. At the risk of repeating myself, how dare someone claim to own another’s existence?

  [...You’ve slain a Level 32 Human.]

  [You’ve earned experience points.]

  I stared at the system notifications again. Experience Points. What is considered ‘experience’ really?

  This world was governed by a System, an almost omniscient type of existence which was supposedly not even the most powerful form of it. The Perpetual System was coming. What bothered me the most was that… this strange System agreed that a consciousness could be owned by someone else.

  It credits a slave's merit to the owner, as if the doing belongs to whoever holds the leash. That bothered me. What’s this System, anyway…?

  Regardless. My decision had been made and executed, and I had no regret. Yes, I wasn’t a hero. But I had personal principles that I lived by. One must. Because if someone stood for nothing, their existence meant nothing.

  So I refused to practice looking away.

  “Stop staring at the air now, Thorvyn.” Ilyra Marcellis closed her eyes and sighed, her voice pulling me out of my thoughts. When she opened her eyes again, the green was sharp and cold. “I don’t care why you did this. Well I do, and we will have a talk about this, but not here. We must leave this place quickly. Before anyone finds this.”

  “What about the body?” Elayne asked. She had a cut on her cheek and her shield arm hung lower than usual.

  Ilyra looked at Veric’s corpse. Then at the Basilisk. Then at the dungeon walls, scarred and cracked and half-collapsed from the fight.

  “The dungeon killed him,” she said. “A Basilisk attack during a routine dive. His slaves tried to save him but couldn’t. Tragic.” She looked at me. “That’s the story. Do you understand? Or do you want the credit?”

  “I understand, ma’am.”

  “Stop being sarcastic!”

  She was really mad.

  She grumbled and pressed her fingers to her temples like the headache was already setting in. “Now we deal with the rest.”

  Ragna had moved the slave girl behind a column during the fight. Now she crouched beside her, not touching, just present. The girl had stopped convulsing but she sat with her knees pulled to her chest and her eyes fixed on Veric’s body.

  She wasn’t crying. But she wasn’t smiling either. She was staring at the dead man like she was waiting for someone to tell her it was a trick and he’d get back up.

  Ragna reached toward her shoulder.

  The girl flinched. A full-body recoil that pressed her spine flat against the stone. Ragna’s hand froze in the air. Something moved across her face, rage at the people who made the little girl this scared, before she locked it down. She pulled her hand back and settled for sitting beside the girl with her club across her lap.

  “He’s dead,” Ragna said. “He’s not getting up. Thorvyn, can you…?”

  Somehow, I knew what she was asking.

  I walked over Veric’s body and once again tapped into Storm Call. I used crackling fire to burn the body to a crisp, amplifying the effect using my Aura. I felt a dozen eyes on my back as I did it, shock, surprise, and fear amid them, but I ignored them.

  When I was done, I turned away from the ashes and looked at the little girl. The girl just stared. Then she looked at Veric’s ashes. She looked at Ragna then and nodded once, very small, like she was testing whether the world would punish her for believing it.

  I pulled my eyes away because there was no point in watching it.

  The wolfman had picked up his sword and sheathed it. He stood with his shoulders squared and his jaw tight, staring at the dead collar in his hand. He’d pulled it off his own neck. The skin underneath was raw and scarred, old marks layered over older ones.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Amara hadn’t moved from where she’d stopped.

  She stood with one hand still half-raised, gold eyes fixed on something that wasn’t in the room. The collar on her neck was dark but still there, a golden choker with a dead red light.

  “What happens to them?” I asked Ilyra.

  She rubbed her face with both hands. When she looked up, the political machine behind her eyes was already running.

  “Now you’re asking. The master died,” she said, “but that doesn’t free them. Ethenian law transfers ownership to the nearest Bondsman’s Office. They get processed, shipped back to wherever they were purchased, and sold again.”

  Ragna stood up so fast that the slave girl pressed herself further into the wall.

  “What the fuck? Who made these fucking rules?!” Ragna started.

  “Evil people,” Ilyra finished. “Yes. Welcome to civilization. You’d assume there won’t be such loopholes, but oh well.” She pressed her knuckles against her forehead.

  “What’s the solution?” I knew there had to be something.

  “There aren’t any,” she said, and I gave her a look. “Well. Unless someone pays for their freedom directly. A buyer can purchase them from the Bondsman’s Office and then file a release order. A priestess removes the collar brands, and they walk free.”

  Ragna looked at the slaves. The wolfman was standing rigid with his dead collar in his fist. The ox-woman still pressed to the ground. The crying man. And the girl behind the column. Amara shrugged.

  The craziest part was that all these slaves knew that fact. And yet they got so happy when Veric died. Which showed how much of a trash Veric truly was.

  “How much?” Ragna asked.

  Ilyra’s eyes moved across the group with the calculation that always crept in. “They’re battle-trained. Strong. The weaker ones, maybe ten gold each. The wolfman should be fifty?” Her gaze settled on Amara. “The Ashkari woman would cost one hundred at a minimum. Seventh Ascension, rare bloodline, and combat specialist. Any slaver in the Empire would mortgage his house for her.”

  She paused. “All of them together? About 260 gold? I don’t know.”

  If I convert that to USD, it should be about $1.3 million. I scowled at the realization as I recalled the conversion rate I’d calculated back in Solstara.

  Ilyra watched Ragna and me the way you watch someone reaching for a hot stove. “That’s a fortune, you two. Most knights don’t earn that in their lifetime. What’s your plans now?”

  Ragna’s face didn’t change. “We’ll pay, it’s fine.”

  Ilyra blinked. Then she blinked again, slower, like her mind had to recalculate a person instead of a number. “You have 260 gold?”

  Ragna looked at me.

  I thought about our funds. The mercenary fees from our recent missions. We’d been careful with it, mostly because Ragna didn’t care about money and I’d handled the finances. So we saved a little silver there.

  Of course, that wasn’t enough. Thankfully, I had a bigger fund. A thousand gold coins, the payment from Isolde for services rendered to the Thalassarian Crown.

  It was the kind of money that bought mansions, funded large expeditions, and changed lives. It was also sitting in my spatial pouch doing nothing.

  “We saved a nation, remember? We have the money,” I said.

  Ragna nodded like I’d confirmed the sky was blue. The slaves exchanged glances and then stared at her. Not with gratitude just yet. But they stared at her the way starving people stared at food they hadn’t been told they could eat. Hope sitting right next to the certainty that hope was a trap.

  The wolfman moved first. “My name is Arkhun of the Blackwolf Tribe. May I know your name, warrior?”

  “It’s Ragna Valteria.”

  “Great Warrior Ragna of the Valtherian Tribe, then.” He dropped to one knee. His sword clattered beside him and he bowed his head low. His shoulders shook once and a single violent tremor that ran through his entire frame, and then he steadied himself with a breath that sounded like it had been held for years. “Thank you.”

  Hey, where’s my thank you? For some reason, this Arkhun was avoiding me. Was it because we fought? Jokes aside, there was something strange.

  He seemed a bit weary of me for some reason.

  The girl behind the column started crying. Quiet at first, then louder. The crying began to sound ugly and broken in no time. Ragna didn’t touch her. She just stayed close and let her cry.

  The ox-woman lifted her face from the ground. I looked at her. Her eyes were red and wet; she looked at Ragna like she was trying to memorize her face in case this was a dream she’d wake up from.

  Amara of the Ashkari showed the least reaction. She didn’t kneel nor did she cry. She was the skeptical type, I realized. She turned her head and looked at Ragna with an expression I couldn’t read.

  Then she looked at me.

  “The Valtherian spirit,” she muttered. “The stories are true.”

  What stories is she talking about? I didn’t have an answer for her remark, so I let it drop.

  Ilyra exhaled through her nose. She looked annoyed at herself as much as anyone else, the expression of a woman who’d just watched her careful plans get smashed by people who didn’t care about plans. Or maybe she’d hoped we’d ask her for a loan because surely we couldn’t actually have that kind of gold.

  “That’s good then,” she said. “Let’s leave already and get this situation resolved before anyone connects us to this chamber.” She pointed at the tunnel. “Let’s move, all of you. We’re going to the Bondsman’s Office, and then we’re leaving this city tonight.”

  She started walking. Then she stopped and looked back at me. “Since you’re so rich, you’re going to pay me back for the tavern roof from yesterday,” she said.

  “Fair.”

  “And my roots too. Do you have any idea how much mana it takes to grow those in volcanic soil?”

  Last time I checked, I’m the mercenary. “That one’s under review.”

  She gave me a look that promised paperwork later and turned away. Elayne fell beside her, and Harlan took the rear. The freed slaves followed in a loose cluster, some walking and some stumbling.

  Ragna helped the girl to her feet. The girl leaned on her, not because Ragna offered, but probably because her legs wouldn’t hold her up. Ragna shifted her a little higher and took the weight without comment.

  Arkhun walked close to them, one hand hovering near his sword as if he expected someone to snatch the girl away. Behind him, the ox-woman wiped her face with a shaking hand, and I saw her mouth moving as if she were praying. Amara came after them, collar dark and eyes sharp.

  I was the last one out. I looked at Veric’s ashes one more time.

  One less chain in the world.

  I followed the others into the tunnel.

  ****

  It was a strange sight for Richard, the Vampire. He’d been waiting outside the dungeon to meet Veric and collect information from him, but Veric didn’t come out.

  Richard counted them from the rooftop across the square.

  Ilyra Marcellis walked out the dungeon entrance with a series of slaves behind her into Harrowgate’s smoky evening air. A massive dark-skinned man, with wolf ears and tail, stepped forward to the confused guards, explaining to them the situation inside. The guards looked shocked and unsure, but Ilyra spoke up to deal with the situation.

  Thirteen people. Five were Ilyra and her group, whereas the others were slaves. They wore dead collars and moved like people who hadn’t walked for themselves in a long time. Richard had met Veric before, and knew these slaves belonged to him.

  What a development, Richard wasn’t surprised. That Veric had always been a weakling, he was destined to die one way. However… there was something odd.

  Two massive figures stood at the end of the slaves, like titans protecting their folks. The famous Valtherians. One was a white-haired man, and the other was a red-haired woman. Something about their happy expressions told Richard that, given what he’d heard from Master Lothar, there was more to this story.

  Messy.

  He catalogued the targets as they crossed the square below.

  The green-haired Marcellis walked too fast, her boots hitting the cobblestones with the pace of someone hurrying while trying not to look like it. Two knights flanked her. The older one kept scanning the rooftops.

  Richard held still. The old knight’s eyes passed over his position without catching. That old man had solid instincts. Years of drilling. Richard would have to kill him first when the time came.

  The red-haired barbarian woman favored her left side and carried a human child on her hip like a sack of grain. That was a reckless one. Her blood smelled like iron and volcanic ash, heavy and hot. Richard wasn’t a fan.

  It was then that the white-haired one passed beneath his perch.

  Richard’s breath caught. He inhaled. “W-what…?”

  He felt a shiver down his spine. This barbarian’s blood didn’t smell like his partner’s, not at all. It didn’t match anything Richard knew! Not human or beast, not a delicate mage either. Something older sat under the surface scent and made his teeth ache.

  The Father? Or t-the Queen…?!

  Richard didn’t know why that word came to his head. He felt hunger, yes, it stirred in his chest, but there was also a sense of dread. A strange mix of feelings swallowed Richard, and he couldn’t move.

  The group turned a corner toward the eastern gate.

  The road between Harrowgate and Maricall was long and mostly empty after dusk, and as long as they remained in the city, Richard would have a chance to confirm what was going on. He dropped from the rooftop and slipped into the flow of people, heading for the same gate. He had time. They didn’t know he existed.

  He adjusted his cloak and started planning routes on the road ahead.

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