The negotiation with the Ashen Hand had ended much smoother than expected.
The information I’d pushed by even chewing and swallowing Adam and Eve’s Fruit seemed worth verifying, at least in her eyes.
Of course, that gaze of hers was still like this.
A bastard desperate for the family’s acknowledgment, putting on a death-defying show?
Such a look.
But my spirit alone had caught her interest.
“Three days from now, we’ll strike the Versailles Barony.
Come for the blue fruit four days later.” A single chance.
The princess had tested me that way, and I’d seized it.
For a first contact, it was pretty successful.
On the way back, I slipped the antidote fruit from the teahouse manager into Karen’s mouth.
Since that organization had been the original source of the sedative, they naturally carried the antidote.
And now, on the road back to the mansion.
“…Karen, you okay?
Your face looks a bit—” “Ah, please don’t talk to me.
My head’s been throbbing since morning, and if I have to hear your voice on top of that, I might just lose my mind?” She was utterly vicious.
Having been forcibly put to sleep and then woken, a lingering headache was only natural.
But even so, this attitude was downright astonishing.
She might be a maid in name only, but that tongue-clicking was a blatant disregard for who was servant and who was master.
I swallowed a curse that rose halfway up my throat.
‘…Fine, hold it in.
I’ll replace her soon enough anyway.’ That was when the shadow of the Argent mansion came into view.
And it was right then.
A whip crack echoed from the main gate.
Crack!
“Hurry up and move?
Want me to make you crawl?
Or should I break a limb or two as an example?” It was an ice-cold voice.
A line of merchant wagons stood before the mansion’s main gate.
But these weren’t carriages announcing a noble visit.
Iron railings, hardened stains of dried blood and mud, scraps of cloth crawling with maggots.
“Transport vehicles for hauling people” was the more accurate term.
Clunk.
As the wagon doors opened, chains clinked against each other in an eerie metallic ring.
And one by one, faces utterly drained of hope were shoved to the ground.
Hardened ropes around their necks.
Wrists swollen with scabs inside iron collars.
They were less living people and more like half-dead lumps of organic matter.
A mother clutching her child, an elderly man barely standing while gripping his whip scars, a woman curled into a ball since even rags weren’t allowed.
Despair formed a procession leading into the mansion.
“Ah, so it’s that day today.” Karen let out an irritating snicker.
“New slave intake day.
Those poor things can’t even imagine the hell that awaits them, huh?” She spoke as if sightseeing a familiar landscape.
It should have sent chills down the spine, but she seemed to enjoy it.
Eyes that accepted this hell as a matter of course.
In Vengeful Goddesses , slaves fell into two broad categories.
The first were contract slaves like Karen—nominally paid to serve the household.
The second were ones like those being dragged in chains right now, bought and sold their entire lives, treated like beasts of burden.
And once a month, the Argent Family brought in hordes of the latter.
They purchased people like they were expensive merchandise.
Used without a penny in pay as family property until their bones ground to dust and their breath gave out, then discarded.
The reason the Argent Family reigned as one of the kingdom’s four great houses.
The filthy truth no one dared voice aloud, yet everyone knew.
Wealth built on the blood and suffering of slaves.
And that vile, ugly foundation was the house bearing my name.
Lucas Argent.
The family this possessed body belonged to.
‘…Fuck.’ A scene I’d witnessed countless times in the original story.
Yet seeing it with my own eyes made it feel entirely different, even if it was the same.
Revulsion.
My head throbbed hotly.
My stomach churned, my vision narrowed.
The instinctive human loathing for filth-ridden malice.
But— I swallowed it down.
Right now, I was a whelp with claws and fangs yanked out.
A newborn tiger could die bitten by a pig.
If I charged in now, the outcome was obvious.
So… I endured.
As I ground my teeth and prepared to head inside the mansion, it happened.
While passing the procession of dead-eyed slaves, a voice tore through my ears.
“Ugh, why’s this one so damn broken?” “Sorry… It’s a beastkin, runs too fast… By the time we caught it, it was pretty banged up….” “You bastard!
Even so, this is scrap!
You think the Argent folks will buy shit like this?!
Fuck—” Thud!
Thud!
The sound of kicking a meaty lump.
At the slave hunter’s toe, a small orange shadow tumbled across the dirt.
For a split second, my pupils shook violently.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇ No one hesitated to name the biggest buyer in the illegal slave market.
The Argent Family.
Other nobles traded discreetly in back alleys, but this insane house took it a step further.
They didn’t just buy and use—they raised them themselves.
Sponsoring, arming, and training slave hunters.
The literal industrialization of “hunting.” Farms cultivating humans as resources.
And once a month, the captured slaves were dumped into the underground training grounds.
Survive, and they became toys for perverted nobles.
Fail, and they were discarded.