SLV Chapter 2: First Contact
April 12
The air warped from the scorching heat, causing the clusters of sand-brick houses in the distance to sway and shimmer like mirages.
The sun had turned a deep red, on the verge of sinking into the endless sea of sand.
"Finally almost there..."
He had passed two oases along the way, both lush with water and grass and thick with slaves.
One belonged to a young widow, the other to a neighbor who had been eyeing Lin En with barely concealed hostility.
Lin En finally caught sight of his own little patch of land.
Calling it an oasis was generous. It was hardly different from a sand dune.
Only the heart well, a broken-down wooden shack, and the ruins of three sand spirit arrow towers told you that this land had an owner.
And being the outermost oasis at the edge of the outer city, most of its borders bled directly into the dangerous wilderness desert, not the contained desert of the outer city district.
At a glance, a handful of wandering desert wolves were already visible.
This brought back the nerve-wracking memories of the journey home after dark.
With a thought, he opened the ancient-looking title page of the manual in his mind once more.
Lin En noticed with irritation that the binding progress had only increased by a small amount compared to when he had last checked it along the road.
69%
The progress bar was crawling forward at a pace that could only be called glacial.
At this rate, there was no chance the binding would complete before the blood moon and what he needed most was to unlock the Slaveowner's Manual as quickly as possible and find a way to survive the blood moon safely.
This would not do.
He turned and looked back at Milya.
She was still biting her lip in pain.
Her small feet pressed into the sand, leaving footprints that were nine parts shallow and one part deep, as though she could barely stay upright.
Clearly, Milya's body had been pushed far past its limits.
"Let's get back safely first."
His body was too exhausted right now, leaving him without the mental energy to think through a solution.
When the heat rising from the ground had finally cooled, Lin En pushed open the door of the wooden shack.
The creaking groan of the door made his skin crawl.
Lin En dropped himself onto the battered wooden bed and caught his breath.
He walked over to the large clay urn whose surface patterns had long since worn away and took out the sheepskin flask.
He was about to fill it with water, only to find the urn had long since run dry.
He quickly reached for his last source stone and was about to toss it into the heart well, eager to soothe his parched throat but after a moment's thought, he tucked the source stone away again.
This was his only remaining source stone.
Without spending it for now, he wouldn't die of thirst.
Keeping it might save his life if something urgent came up.
With that, Lin En made up his mind to endure a little longer.
At least until he truly unlocked the Slaveowner's Manual and found a way to get more source stones.
He couldn't help grumbling inwardly. Before crossing over, he had been broke. After crossing over, he was short on source stones. What a miserable fate.
"Milya?"
At that moment, Lin En realized Milya was nowhere to be seen.
Had she not come in?
His heart tightened at once. He walked to the doorway, pushed it open, and looked outside.
The wooden door let out another teeth-grating creak.
Lin En saw no trace of Milya.
Could she have...
"Master..."
Just as a dark thought began to take shape in his mind, a timid voice drifted from the corner of the room.
Lin En followed the sound and only then noticed that Milya had curled herself into a corner of the empty shack.
Her dust-covered body blended almost seamlessly with the rotting wood in the shadows.
Milya's eyes were full of fear as she watched Lin En, clearly afraid of being scolded by her very first master.
So she had been hiding.
Lin En breathed a sigh of relief. He had panicked for nothing.
Looking at Milya huddled against the wall like a frightened little rabbit, Lin En furrowed his brow and began to think.
What exactly could he do to speed up the binding progress?
Recalling what Old Yuda had said, Lin En's mind started working quickly.
The loyalty extracted from a slave through the slave rune was, at its core, a passive form of loyalty.
It worked by establishing a punishment circuit through pain, turning a slave's obedience to her master into pure instinct.
So could he speed up the binding by cultivating active loyalty instead?
Something like raising a favorability rating in a game?
For instance, patting her on the head?
Lin En dug into his considerable gaming experience then he stood up and watched Milya's expression carefully.
Slowly drawing closer, he gently extended his hand but when he saw those eyes brimming with dread, and when his hand had drawn near enough that Milya shut her eyes with the resignation of someone accepting her fate...
Lin En withdrew his hand without hesitation and let go of the idea for now.
Clearly, patting her head was not going to work, and with both of them hungry and thirsty right now, trying to have a lengthy conversation wasn't realistic either.
Wait, right!
He had no water, but he did have food.
Flour, for instance.
And looking at Milya's frail body, it was plain she hadn't eaten a proper meal in a very long time.
Lin En stood up, went to the wooden chest, and took out a clay pot and a small half-bag of flour.
Without another word, he walked out of the shack.
…
"Is it about to start..."
Milya squeezed her eyes shut, every inch of her skin gripped by dread.
She recalled the wretched sights she had seen back in her home city-state, slaves being publicly tormented.
She had heard that once slaves were brought back to an oasis, things only got worse for them, especially for female slaves.
Because female slaves existed by nature as tools for their masters' release.
The creak of the door closing rang out.
Milya slowly opened her tightly shut eyes.
Her gray-blue pupils swept across the room.
The figure that made her heart tremble was gone.
Only the columns of light from the setting sun, slanting in through the ventilation gaps, remained.
Milya curled her body even tighter and buried her face between her knees.
She began to dread what her master would do to her when he returned then the sound of the door came again but this time, before Milya's heart could clench with fear, the warm and pleasant scent of wheat reached her and set her at ease.
She opened her large gray-blue eyes again, blinking, gazing at the clay pot in Lin En's hands with unconcealed longing.
She couldn't help swallowing, very carefully.
Naturally she was afraid of being heard, afraid that her master would notice a desire that a slave had no right to hold and then receive a lashing for it.
"Finally done."
Lin En picked up a utensil that had no place in this world, two dried sticks he had whittled into chopsticks.
He plunged them into the sand inside the clay pot and began to dig around.
Soon he had pulled out a flatbread, one side burned black, the other a charred golden-brown.
This was the sand cake, made using the distinctive desert cooking method.
By the standards of most slaveowners, or even common freemen, it was a pitiful, barely edible thing but in Lin En's eyes, it was the product of his own labor, so no matter how he looked at it, he was satisfied.
He flipped all the sand cakes out of the sand, placing the better-looking ones on the first clay plate and the worse ones on the second then Lin En set the first plate in front of Milya.
"You're hungry, aren't you? This is your dinner."
"Din... dinner?"
Milya stared at the sand cakes on the plate being offered to her, instinctively flicking out her small tongue to wet her dry lips then a look of bewilderment crossed her face.
"So I can have food without crying. And it's even... food that freemen eat."
She thought back to the days since Old Yuda had picked her up. Every time, it had only been when the female slaves broke down crying that Old Yuda would impatiently toss them some sand balls.
Sand balls. Those were things baked from sand and bran husks mixed with a bit of sticky, rotten meat.
Her master... was truly so kind.
But could her master really be that kind?
Looking at the sand cake in front of her, Milya still did not dare reach out for it but the pain in her back intensified.
Slave Rule Two:
A slave must obey any command issued by her master, unless that command conflicts with Slave Rule One.
Though Milya's heart was still full of unease, to avoid the sharp agony of the slave rune, she steeled herself, raised her hand, and reached for the sand cake.
The first bite was still tentative and cautious, but the taste of the sand cake fully awakened her body's primal need.
She began to briefly forget her anxiety and fear, eating faster and faster.
The detached expression on Lin En's face gave way to a trace of delight as the sand cake disappeared into Milya's stomach.
His guess had been right after all!
The binding progress leapt in an instant from 69% all the way to 91%!
When he looked at Milya again, the plate was empty, not a single grain of flour left.
"Do you want more?"
Lin En said it gently, and he could also see that Milya no longer looked at him with the same fear as before.
At least her body had stopped trembling.
Milya blinked, then shook her head.
"Thank you... kind Master."
Hearing that, Lin En noticed that Milya's little belly had rounded out, plump and full.
Lin En raised his hand again, this time making another attempt at contact.
This time, Milya flinched only slightly.
The moment Lin En's large hand touched her head, an inexplicable sense of calm settled into her heart.
"Master's hand is so soft."
Her little head even began to lean unconsciously into his warm, gentle palm and while Lin En stroked Milya's head, he watched the binding progress climb rapidly.
Until... one hundred percent!
No longer confined to the title page, the ancient Slaveowner's Manual in his mind began to flip through at great speed.
The first page displayed text and images resembling an entry in a catalog. It was Milya.
Then it flipped all the way to the last page, which looked like a kind of chart or route map.
In between were countless pages, most of them blank.
[Slave Catalog Unlocked]
[Score Reached: 23 Points]
[Calculating Slaveowner Score Reward for Reaching 20 Points...]
[Reward: Source Stones ×10]
[Reward: Title Draw ×1]
[NEXT CHAPTER]