"How much for all of the slaves you own?" Reinhard asked calmly, his voice carrying no emotion beyond simple inquiry, as though he were asking about the price of bread. The merchant was stunned for a moment, his eyes widening at the sheer scale of the request before a wide, greedy grin spread across his face. A buyer looking to purchase his entire stock at once was the kind of customer every slave trader dreamed of.
"I have a total of one hundred and nineteen slaves currently on hand. Just for you, I will give you a generous discount of six thousand gold coins." He said with a bright, practiced smile, the kind that had closed countless deals before.
Reinhard simply looked at him without responding, his gaze flat and unreadable. The silence stretched on long enough to make the merchant shift uncomfortably, the confidence in his smile faltering as he realized his opening price hadn't landed the way he intended. He awkwardly cleared his throat and spoke up once more.
"Three thousand gold coins. I can't go any lower than that." The merchant said, his tone carrying the rehearsed finality of someone who had haggled for a living. Reinhard nodded in acceptance.
"Give me a sword. I shall enchant it," Reinhard said calmly, stunning the merchant with the unexpected request. Although unsure of what Reinhard was planning, the merchant retrieved a sword from his stock and handed it over without argument—there was something about the way Reinhard spoke that made refusing feel unwise.
Reinhard took the blade and channeled the skill Disaster into it. It was his first time using the ability, but he quickly got the hang of it, fusing the curse into the weapon's edge with a precision that belied his inexperience.
Reinhard then turned and cut one of the cell bars with the enchanted sword in a single, casual motion. He handed the weapon back to the merchant, who took it with a confused expression, unsure of what had just happened or why Reinhard had damaged his property.
But the confusion froze into shock as the merchant watched the damage the cell had suffered beginning to grow worse on its own—the cut widening, the metal warping and splitting further with every passing second, the destruction spreading outward from the initial wound like a living thing.
"Any damage inflicted by this sword, no matter how small, shall grow worse over time. The injuries it causes are also unhealable unless a sixth-tier spell is used to counteract them. A weapon like that is worth at least ten thousand gold. So how are you going to make up the difference?" Reinhard asked calmly, his tone leaving no room for argument. The merchant was left stunned, staring at the sword in his hands as the realization of what he was holding settled in.
[Gained New Blessings.
The Blessing of Evaluation: He can determine if an item is of good or bad quality at a glance, and if the item is physically in front of him, he can evaluate its condition and quality with perfect accuracy. However, if he is evaluating an item he has never seen before, he can only discern whether it is good or bad in general terms, and gains no knowledge of how it is used or how much it is worth.
The Blessing of the Death God: Attacks imbued with this blessing's power leave wounds that are unable to be healed, even by gods. The power of the blessing increases the closer he is to the target, and he can even reopen wounds others have inflicted if they are close enough and were originally caused by him. If the wound expands, so does the effect of the blessing. If the original wound was a light cut on a finger and the target chose to cut off said finger to be rid of it, the new wound left behind becomes the blessing's new target. The effects disappear only if the user dies.
The Blessing of the Coming Death God: Injuries inflicted and imbued with this blessing shall double in severity every minute. Meaning that in twenty minutes, a simple paper cut shall kill a human. However, this blessing can be slowed with healing magic, or those with high enough regeneration can outright overpower its escalation. But the more injuries one inflicts upon a target, the stronger this blessing's effect becomes, compounding with each new wound.
The Blessing of Haggling: He excels at haggling to such a degree that he could negotiate the most expensive of goods down to nothing.
The Blessing of Enchantment: He excels at enchantment magic, allowing him to alter and enhance the properties of anything he touches to whatever he wishes.]
'...' Reinhard's face went completely blank at that last blessing. It was essentially useless to him if he couldn't use magic in the conventional sense. What good was excelling at enchantment if his body wouldn't allow him to use magic?
But he chose not to dwell on it, pushing the thought aside and turning his attention back to the merchant, who had pulled out a magical tool from behind his counter. The device had the spell Appraisal permanently infused into its construction, allowing anyone to use the spell through the tool regardless of their own magical ability. The merchant pressed it against the sword's blade and activated it.
"Amazing. I will give you the gold!" He cried out, nearly dropping the appraisal tool in his excitement and shock as the results confirmed that everything Reinhard had said was completely true.
The sword was worth far more than what Reinhard was asking in return. Quickly, almost frantically, the merchant disappeared into a back room and returned with gold bars, which he presented to Reinhard in a stack. Reinhard frowned slightly as he accepted them, realizing he had no bag, no pack, and no practical means of carrying this much weight with him.
[Gained a New Blessing.
Blessing of the Pocket Space: Grants him a special pocket dimension that only he can access, allowing him to store away anything he touches and summon the stored items back instantly with a thought. This pocket space remains connected to the user permanently, even if the blessing itself is somehow lost.]
'That one is pretty useful.' Reinhard thought, and the moment his fingers made contact with the gold bars, they vanished—absorbed into the pocket space as naturally as breathing. This shocked the merchant, who watched his payment disappear into thin air, but he dared not comment or question what he had just seen.
He had effectively handed over his life savings to Reinhard. Twelve thousand gold coins—wealth accumulated over years of selling slaves and using other slaves as labor to generate even more income on top of the sales.
Slave traders made enormous amounts of money in this world, and the sheer size of this merchant's personal fortune was a testament to that. To put it in perspective, a single gold coin was enough for a normal family in this world to live comfortably for three months—assuming they spent wisely and were careful with their purchases, but three months off a single coin was substantial by any measure.
Translated into Earth money, this merchant was the equivalent of a millionaire many times over. The fact that he had given Reinhard all of his accumulated wealth without so much as a second thought was a demonstration of just how powerful Reinhard's luck truly was, compounded by his natural charisma. The world simply loved him, and that love bent probability and human behavior alike in his favor.
After receiving his payment, the slaves were brought out and freed from their cages—all of them. Those who had already been broken, sitting hollow-eyed and silent in their cells, were released. Those locked in the basement who were currently undergoing the process of being broken—subjected to whatever horrors the merchant employed to crush their spirits into submission—were pulled out and brought upward.
Even those who had yet to go through the process, the newest acquisitions who still had some fight left in their eyes, were gathered together. All one hundred and nineteen of them were brought before Reinhard.
"Well, I bought you all. I would like to say you're all free… but what's to stop them from capturing you all once again?" Reinhard said softly, his voice gentle as he looked over the group before him.
The slaves stared back at him in confusion, unable to process what was happening. Freedom was a word that had lost all meaning to most of them, and hearing it spoken so casually felt more like cruelty than kindness—a promise too good to be real.
"So, I guess you're all mine to protect then. My name is Reinhard, nice to meet you all." Reinhard said with a bright smile, warm and genuine and completely without pretense. And to those broken slaves standing before him, the world around Reinhard suddenly seemed to brighten, as though the sun had emerged from behind clouds that had covered the sky for years.
"What do you want from us?" A young man near the front of the group asked, glaring at Reinhard with open unease, his body tense and his fists clenched at his sides. After all, who in their right mind would trust a noble?
In their experience, nobles viewed everyone below them as tools—things to be used, exploited, and thrown away the moment they outlived their usefulness. Commoners had no right to even defend themselves against a noble's whims, much less a slave. Kindness from someone of status always came with strings attached.
"Nothing. I will give you all your own lives back soon. But that will take some time." Reinhard said with a smile, and despite every instinct screaming at them not to believe it, even those who had been most guarded against him felt their tension ease slightly.
But many of them had seen the smiles of nobles before—perfect, charming smiles worn like masks while schemes churned behind their eyes. So they didn't trust Reinhard. They couldn't afford to. But they had no freedom, no choice, and no power to resist even if they wanted to. They were slaves, and slaves followed whoever held their chains, regardless of the promises being made.
With over a hundred slaves trailing behind him in a long procession through the streets, Reinhard naturally drew attention from every direction. Heads turned, conversations stopped, and curious eyes followed the strange sight of a strikingly handsome young man leading an army of battered slaves through the city as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world.
But the slaves who followed him were the most shocked of all. As Reinhard continued his walk through the city, he didn't stop at the slave merchant's shop. He went on to buy every single person he saw that was for sale.