Volume 4 - CH 1.05

I think we have to prepare ourselves for the eventuality that the purchase of such a clearly specialized personnel will definitely not be a cheap one. However, no matter how much money this next slave purchase is going to cost us, I feel like we cannot allow ourselves to make any compromises on it, because our safety in the future battles in the Labyrinths is going to be depending on it.

「I think that bolstering our ranks with the new Party members is a good idea as well, since it will definitely be exactly like you said, master: the higher in the Labyrinths we will go, the more difficult it would be to fight the increasing numbers of enemy monsters with just the two of us alone.」

Good, it looks like Roxanne is not opposed to the idea of getting more Party members after all.

Going back to the issue of choosing a male or a female slave for my next one for a bit, this is a problem that runs deeper than it initially looks. I mean, just think about it. Labyrinths are supposedly like a living organism all their own, and so they actively seek out ways to kill Explorers and Adventurers so that they could use their remains as sustenance for themselves to grow and expand, so there might come a time when I will end up having to sacrifice one of the Party members to prevent the rest from getting annihilated and allow them to escape with their lives. Should it come to such a worst-case scenario, then admittedly I would have an easier time sacrificing some bearded old man instead of a potential hottie that could still be of good use to me outside of the Labyrinths, either with house chores or in the sheets during the night. Yup, taking an old man might just be the best thing to do after all from a strategic point of view, actually. Having someone like that on board means that I will easily know who to sacrifice in the event of things getting dicey beyond the point of no return, and be able to make that decision in a split second without any delays or having second thoughts. If such a time ever comes around, I will do everything I will have to do to ensure that Roxanne and I will emerge from such a predicament without as much as a scratch on us! It might sound like a dickish thing to say, but thank you, some random old man that I have yet to meet and turn into my slave. The sacrifice that you will be forced to make one day will definitely not be forgotten, because you will sacrifice yourself so that Roxanne and I, two younglings who still have their entire lives to live, which you can be sure as hell that we will do at your expense. And after that, it is No More Old Man! No more. . .  oh, but. . . but then it would be back to just Roxanne and I, so we would be back at square one, huh? Well, dang it.

「You think so as well? That is good to hear then.」

「Yes. That is why I think I am going to come along with master after all. Would that be all right?」

「Sure it would be, most definitely. Having a second opinion is always appreciated, especially since there are still many things that I do not know about or do not fully understand, so I am gladly going to take any advice you would be willing to offer me.」

This is also going to be a good opportunity for me to see how Roxanne is going to react to my attempt at picking a girl as the new slave. If it so happens that I will try to pick a girl and she is going to hate that idea, then I will not push it any further and just pick a guy instead.

「Very well then. Just let me know when we will be going and I will be sure to be ready to depart at any time.」

「Please do.」

Then again, another thing that I forgot to consider with taking a man as the next member of our Party. An ideal choice would have been an old man who could be easily sacrificed without any regrets if push ever came to shove, but what if the old man I would aquire turns out to actually be a perverted old man?! Having someone like that in the same Party as Roxanne would be pretty dangerous, not to mention that it would make me hellishly angry! I swear to God, if I catch such an old geezer eyeing Roxanne’s chest EVEN ONCE, then the old fart will be sentenced to death. . . no, scratch that, EXECUTED on the spot! So note to self: if I ever decide to include guys in my party, old, young or anything in between, it does not really matter. What really is going to matter is that I will have to discipline them in such a way that they will know they cannot look at Roxanne, cannot talk to Roxanne, are forbid from so much as breathing the same air she does or else! She is my very first slave, and that makes her special in such a way that I am the only one who is allowed to interact with her. . . . . . . . . . . .  Arghhhh! But even such a strict discipline would not amount to anything, since if we all lived together in our house in Quratar, they would still be able to see Roxanne’s glamourous body clad in nothing but the negligee that I have bought for her just the other day. . . . . . .! Just as I thought, old guys and men would be useless to me! No More Old Guys! No More Men! From now on, I am introducing a new policy: only girls and young women are allowed to be added to my Party from now on! That is my final word, and something I will not be budging on no matter how others might beg me to do so!

After we finished eating breakfast, we warped to the Labyrinth of Vale where we hunted for the good portion of the day after which we went to the Adventurer’s Guild located in the town of Vale. This was the little detour that we had to do before heading off to Alan-san’s Slave Shop so that we could sell all the items we have obtained during our trek through Vale Labyrinth’s seventh floor.

「We would like to sell all of those items, please.」

「Certainly. Please give me a moment while I calculate the exact amount, sir.」

There is another reason why we did some hunting in the Labyrinth before coming here, of course. Now that I am selling all of the items we got from the monsters there, I can safely utilize the gimmick of my Thirty Percent Discount Bonus Skill. Since my aim is mainly to sell the Yellow Magic Crystal here, doing so along with other items will not make the whole operation as conspicuous as it could have been if I was selling the Yellow Magic Crystal alone and nothing else beside it. After all, one hundred thousand Nars is ten gold coins. If I only sold the Yellow Magic Crystal with the Thirty Percent Discount Bonus Skill active, I would obtain one hundred and thirty thousand Nars for it, in other words: thirteen gold coins, and there is no way in hell that the Adventurer’s Guild’s staff would not notice this clear-as-day discrepancy. That is why I should avoid selling anything else or buying things from the Adventurer’s Guild and make my shopping somewhere else for a good while, just to decrease the chances of me being placed on the Guild’s blacklist and getting my face remembered. Maybe, I should avoid coming to Vale to do shopping altogether for a while, after purchasing my new slave today of course.

Thankfully, today is going to be the first time I will ever sell the Magic Crystal that I own so there should not be too suspicious of me, but there is a possibility that they might catch the wind and connect the dots if I were to come and sell another Magic Crystal to them, so I should make sure to only do that again after a substantial amount of time has passed as well. After all, I could only accumulate so much magic energy in my Magic Crystal due to having the Bonus Skill Crystal Accelertion, which increases the speed at which Magic Energy is being gathered into the Magic Crystal. Without it, getting my Magic crystal from Black to Yellow would have probably took many, many years of tedious grinding.