Lament of the Slave

Chapter 48: Cutthroat

When I first got a slave collar around my neck, I was shocked, unaware of what was happening. Immobilized by magic, naked and surrounded by slaves who stared at me helplessly, unable to help me, I could do nothing but scream and cry at that time.

In a sense, this situation was the same.

Like back then, I was facing strangers, confused by what was happening. Even today, I was immobilized. Only instead of magic, it was the huge bruiser sitting on me who made it impossible for me to escape. The onlookers this time were not other slaves but seekers, merchants, and ordinary Castianians, apathetic to what was happening around them or unwilling to help me.

The only change besides that I wasn't stark naked was that I now had a system in my head, skills that were useless to me at the moment, and magic that was shackled by the runes hidden somewhere under the paving of Labyrinth Square.

I could do nothing but cry and scream silently into the gag in my mouth, soaked in what the system characterized as poison and was supposed to put me to sleep. For now, I countered the fatigue with [Indomitable Will], hoping that my regeneration would handle this poison like it handled mine.

Scratch that. I stopped myself when I realized my wrong assumption.

[Never-Dying] was not [Poison Resistance]. It was not a skill to counter poisons, but to heal my damaged body. I was just guessing, but the sleeping poison in the gag didn't work like the one in my tail whose goal was to destroy the nervous system, most often mine.

That made my regeneration useless in this case and meant that I would have to rely on my will and [Tireless Machine] to stay awake.

The sleeping poison was one of my least problems, though.

Everything I've accomplished so far, what I tried to achieve, my freedom, dreams, and hopes will be gone the moment the slave trader activates the collar.

The thought made me cry even harder. Desperate, I looked ahead, focusing my mind and my hopes on the only person I had seen in front of me who didn't seem numb to what was happening to me, Traiana. I knew it was just a statue, not a real person, but she was crying as hard as I was right now.

Whether there were gods in Eleaden and Traiana was one of them went beyond my knowledge of this world. She could be one, but I wasn't a believer, not even on Earth, and if I had just a little faith in me back then, I lost it entirely in that cellar in Arda. Even now, I didn't think of Traiana as a goddess, but I hoped with all my heart that she would help me.

I begged her to stop them from making me a slave again. I asked for her help, willing to do anything for it. I even moved the mana to the labyrinth mark, hoping I could teleport from this spot when I was so close to the platform. I didn't.

But it wasn't the end of my hopes, as I thought. The mumbling of people in the crowd drew my attention, the words of one man in particular.

"What was that on her hand? Have you seen it?" Pressed to the ground, I could see only his feet. Barefoot, hairy paws, he was a terran.

"Get out of my way, slaver," he pushed one of the trader's henchmen away and stepped forward. "Hey, big beef, show me her hand." the man demanded the bruiser.

My hand? Why my hand? Oh, the mark? Unaware of what exactly happened when I sent mana to the labyrinth mark, I did it again. Now that I focused on it, I saw it was glowing on my hand in my domain. Bruiser noticed too and swiftly covered it, but he was too late.

"Fuckers, she's a seeker!" terran exclaimed aloud in anger.

The crowd's reaction was immediate.

"Seeker?" "She?" "Probably a debt slave." "Terran like her, nothing weird." "She's [Slave], she can't be a seeker."