“Oh my, oh my, I’m getting a little seasick. Like I said, long-distance travel really isn’t for me.”
“Shut up. Do you want the pirates to spot us?”
“Regarding that, I have five contingency plans. One of them has a 100% success rate, so I, Bai Ya, have nothing to worry about.”
“…”
“Besides, you’re currently heavily injured, Ya Cang. You have three fractures: your left shoulder, chest, and right lower leg. Your internal organs aren’t doing so well either. If you force yourself to move, you’ll probably collapse after taking a few steps. It’s impressive you even managed to sneak onto this ship. Tsk, tsk, tsk.”
A white-haired girl, draped in nothing but a oversized, tattered piece of yellow cloth, sat atop a wooden barrel. she tilted her small head slightly, letting out a sympathetic sigh.
The man sitting opposite her, leaning against a treasure chest, pulled his white beret down to hide his grim expression from her.
Ya Cang was well aware of his condition. His Golden rank strength was currently crippled, leaving him with less than a fraction of his power. Even though Bai Ya was not a cultivator, he was currently in no position to guarantee a victory over her.
The girl before him was named Bai Ya Eifil Clorome. She looked incredibly frail, wearing an eye patch with a golden sphere pattern over her left eye. A large burn scar marred her beautiful cheek, and her hands had been replaced by alchemical mechanical prosthetics. She was petite and looked no older than 14; according to her, she was currently 14 and a half.
If this were any other time, Ya Cang would have struck down anyone he perceived as a threat without hesitation. He felt an unsettling aura from her that he couldn’t quite place.
However, regardless of how irritated he felt, he had to suppress his hostility. He simply didn’t have the confidence to take her down.
Most importantly, Bai Ya was a slave girl—one of those rare girls born from the union of humans and other races who possessed terrifying abilities known as Racial Talents.
Ya Cang knew nothing about Bai Ya’s specific Racial Talent. In other words, the enemy’s capabilities were completely unknown. He had witnessed her use her talent to slay a Golden rank magic beast. Under these circumstances, his only option was to endure and wait for his wounds to heal before making a move.
“By the way, you could have recovered anywhere. Why did you copy me and hide in an empty crate just to let greedy pirates carry you onto their ship?”
After a moment, Bai Ya gripped the edge of the barrel to balance herself and swung her legs back and forth, looking at Ya Cang with curiosity.
“I have something I must do on this ship. Why are you here?”
“…” Ya Cang gripped his white beret and remained silent.
“It seems you’re a rather troublesome person as well,” Bai Ya concluded. At the same time, she summoned a status panel to check Ya Cang’s information.
[Status Window]
Name: Ya Cang
Age: 29
Origin: Amidal
Magic: White rank
Dou Qi: Golden rank
Race: Human
HP: 233/10,000
Status: Heavily Injured
Dou Qi: 0/10,000
Magic: None
…
Talent: Parry Counter (Sword Skill) — Launches a counterattack while parrying the first strike, dealing double the damage of the original attack.
Favorability toward Bai Ya: 1/10 (Threatening Enemy)
Looking at the information, Bai Ya realized that even in his weakened state, she wouldn’t necessarily be able to kill him if she attacked. Ya Cang’s total HP was more than twenty-seven times her own. Every time she compared someone else’s stats to her own, she felt a wave of frustration.
Unless she could strike a vital organ, killing him would be difficult. Furthermore, he possessed that troublesome talent called Parry Counter. Bai Ya decided to discard the idea of eliminating Ya Cang for now.
She also noticed that Ya Cang was wary of her. This served as a reminder that she had to keep her Racial Talent hidden. If he ever discovered that her ability, [Choral Theater: Saint of Redemption], was a skill that a single person couldn’t possibly use alone, she would be in grave danger.
And so, the two ‘companions’ in the same predicament remained vigilant, neither trusting the other.
By now, Bai Ya had successfully escaped the transport ship and spent 3 days living on the pirate vessel. During this time, neither she nor Ya Cang had been discovered.
However, she had overheard the pirates complaining about ‘rats’ eating their food. They were planning to give the ship a thorough cleaning soon, which meant she and Ya Cang would eventually be found.
During this rare period of downtime, Bai Ya couldn’t allow herself to relax. Aside from eating and sleeping, she spent her time reviewing the mysterious information about the world of [SLAVE] that had surfaced in her memory.
This world was truly something else — far grander and more dangerous than she had imagined.
The most defining characteristic of [SLAVE] was the sheer number of different races. The world consisted of eight parts land and two parts ocean, with only a single massive continent. Humans were the most populous race, accounting for one-fourth of all living beings. However, the various races did not coexist peacefully, resulting in a world of extreme chaos and darkness.
In this world, the concept of social hierarchy was deeply ingrained, and slavery was a celebrated institution. The most powerful nation on the continent was a slave-based empire.
Bai Ya was no stranger to this empire. Only a few days ago, she was supposed to be transported to that country. With good luck, she might have become a common servant, but her luck was usually terrible.
Amidal’s reputation wasn’t just bad; it was abysmal. In that empire, hierarchy was everything. Those in power could strip away everything from those below them at a whim. If a noble were to swagger down the street and murder a commoner, no guards would lift a finger to stop them. If she truly ended up as a slave in Amidal, Bai Ya felt she might as well end her own life.
‘A country like that should be destroyed as soon as possible.’
While searching through the records of Amidal, Bai Ya briefly lamented its dark nature before focusing on how it became the strongest nation.
Amidal, the largest and most prosperous slave empire, had a history spanning over 1,000 years. It possessed the largest number of slave girls. Its current king, Spartacus Amidal, was a notorious autocratic tyrant. Having launched over a thousand annexation wars, the empire’s territory covered one-third of the world, making it one of the most formidable powers in [SLAVE].
Bai Ya noted that Amidal had never lost an annexation war. As the empire continued to expand its borders, its national strength never stopped growing. This was likely why it was considered the strongest.
But that wasn’t the core reason. Bai Ya researched Amidal’s first annexation war. Back then, Amidal was just a small, newly established country. Its founding king, Alexander Amidal, was ambitious. He led a newly formed army to invade a neighboring country, and somehow, he actually won. From then on, every victory Amidal achieved was hailed as “Alexander’s Glory.”
‘This… he must be cheating!’ Bai Ya thought, staring at the memories in her mind with disbelief. In the end, she couldn’t find the fundamental reason she was looking for. Perhaps the reason Amidal was invincible really was some ridiculous “Alexander’s Glory.” Ridiculous.
Bai Ya didn’t believe it for a second, but she would have time to investigate it later.
Aside from Amidal, there were three other major powers in [SLAVE] that even Amidal had to respect: Sky Sanctuary Hifa, the Ancient Underworld Prison, and the Holy Light Church.
The capital of Amidal was located in the south of the continent, the main campus of Sky Sanctuary Hifa was in the east, the Ancient Underworld Prison was in the west, and the Holy Land of the Holy Light Church was in the north. These four major powers essentially divided the continent into four quadrants, with Amidal occupying the largest portion of land.
Sky Sanctuary Hifa was a magic and martial arts academy independent of any nation, often simply referred to as “the Academy.” Located in the ancestral land of Angang, the Academy spent massive sums of money to hire world-renowned experts as instructors, giving it an extraordinary foundation.
The Academy was a holy land for cultivators. Any student who graduated from there possessed at least Golden rank strength and was treated as a VIP in any country. This environment fostered bad habits; it was common knowledge on the continent that any graduate of the Academy would be arrogant and overbearing. Students often openly committed crimes, but local authorities were too afraid of the Academy’s influence to do anything, letting the punishments fall through the cracks.
The Academy had been around for 10,000 years and remained a place cultivators yearned to enter, even though its reputation was as foul as it could be. Instructors turned a blind eye when students went out to rob or even kill people, and sometimes they even lent a hand.
As for why such a trashy academy that produced scum hadn’t collapsed yet and remained a major power, Bai Ya searched her memories and found that it had been established by four Sage rank experts.
The cultivation system was divided into eight stages: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Diamond, Grandmaster, Sage, and Emperor. Sage rank experts existed only in legends, while Emperor rank experts appeared in legends even less frequently than Sages.
‘It’s a classic case of living off an inheritance. A starved camel is still bigger than a horse.’ Bai Ya understood that the Academy was doomed eventually; it was only surviving on its past glory. She wondered if the four great figures who founded the Academy would jump out of their coffins in rage if they knew what it had become.
The Ancient Underworld Prison was a place of exile discovered by an Emperor rank expert. He had transformed it into a death prison where people could enter but never leave, becoming its first prisoner himself. The prison had a history of 10,000 years and held tens of millions of heinous beasts and criminals. Because it was located near the gates of the underworld, it was often called the Nether Prison. In [SLAVE], one of the most cruel punishments was being exiled to the Ancient Underworld Prison, which meant spending the rest of one’s life in filth and darkness until death.
Bai Ya paused for a moment before continuing. She carefully reviewed the memories regarding the Ancient Underworld Prison several times before finally nodding. She had hoped to find something good, but it was just as terrible as everything else.
The guardians of the Nether Prison were the Wang family, descendants of the Emperor rank expert who discovered the place. Every member of the Wang family had the ability to open the prison and temporarily release prisoners. They used this power to raise the Ancient Underworld Prison to its status as one of the four major powers.