The Shadowed Legacy of the Soulless Messenger [EN]: Chapter 189

“Did you wait long, boss?! We were a bit late cleaning up some of the really rotten ones!” With Scott’s boisterous voice, a number of beings appeared. Undead surged out from the sugarcane field near the clubhouse.

The adventurers were startled by the appearance of the undead, armed with sugarcane harvesting sickles and various farming tools. They couldn’t even handle one Messenger Clan member, and now there were undead!

“Eek?!”

They were the farm owners who had already been injured by the blunderbuss’s grapeshot. They had been staying put while the blood mage treated their wounds, but they should have risked the wounds getting worse and fled when they were still minor.

“…Oh.”

The farm owners also understood that they could no longer overcome this situation.

From the start, this man had prepared his forces and deliberately entered the clubhouse alone. To persuade the farm owners? If so, there was still room for negotiation.

“W-wait a minute.”

“Ah, I get it. I get it.”

“We lost!”

“We’re impressed. We’re impressed. You’re a truly amazing martial artist!”

“C-can we pay you? How much do you want?”

The farm owners were flustered as Azadin approached them. But Azadin scoffed at them.

“Now you want to negotiate? But if I let you go now, you’ll probably try to hire S-class adventurers or use a human wave tactic with your private soldiers, won’t you?”

“N-no, we won’t.”

“We’ll agree to your negotiation. We already thought it was pointless to play soldier.”

“Come to think of it, no matter how many ragtag soldiers there are, they’d all scatter at a dragon’s roar, right? No matter how many chickens there are, they can’t fight a dragon!”

The farm owners finally realized that Azadin had deliberately sent them out even though he wasn’t under a spell. Just to show off his skills. He knew that negotiations would go smoothly if he did this.

But how arrogant was that? Hiding his companions, deliberately coming alone, then deliberately handing over the farm owners to the adventurers, only to take them back again.

However, arrogance was the privilege of the strong. And Azadin was strong enough to enjoy that privilege.

*********

As the farm owners and adventurers were completely overwhelmed, Azadin smiled.

“Hmm. It seems like you’re finally in the mood to listen to me. It’s sad that people resort to violence. We have the tool of language, so why do we insist on using barbaric means to seek understanding? We can just talk it out.”

Azadin spoke with a cynical tone, but the farm owners nodded as if they were listening to some golden rule.

“Y-yes, that’s right. W-we agree!”

“We made a mistake. A very big mistake.”

However, Azadin played it cool as he looked at the farm owners.

“But come to think of it, abolishing the slave system isn’t a simple matter. Even if I say I’ll abolish it, the slave system has been banned by the Emperor’s law and the laws of the Eight Kingdoms, but it’s been going on secretly, right? Do you think that can be eradicated in just one day? I think it’s important to have a continuous will to change. Don’t you think so?”

“Y-yes, I suppose so.”

“Do you think we’re going to be so fickle that we’ll just go back to the way things were?”

“We’re people of high status. We don’t make empty promises.”

“Don’t underestimate the Bell Hoda Sugar Business Association. We are people who know honor.”

The farm owners pounded their chests and asserted their honor to Azadin. But Azadin ignored them and beckoned to the people wearing bird masks.

“Second Spirit… sir.”

“We have arrived at your call. We apologize for being late.”

They bowed their heads to Azadin. They were the subordinates of the Messenger Clan in charge of this area, whom Azadin had summoned using his position as the Second Spirit [a high-ranking member of the Messenger Clan].

“You’ve come just in time. I called you urgently, but you came so quickly. Even if we’re from the same clan, aren’t you guys too elusive? Haha.”

Azadin joked and pointed to the farm owners.

“These people are running the farms and forcibly bringing people to work for them. Isn’t that quite a talent?”

“Yes?”

“And they probably know how to make delicious sugar too. Right?”

“Y-yes, I suppose so.”

The Messenger Clan’s servants cautiously answered, not knowing Azadin’s intentions.

‘What’s his plan?’

‘I underestimated Azadin of Mu-an, but he’s already been promoted to Second Spirit…’

‘Is he trying to harm us?’

The Messenger Clan members, who had something to hide from Azadin, had no choice but to be on edge about his words and actions. So they just agreed and waited for Azadin to say more.

“Our clan is one that invites anyone who can teach us, right?”

When Azadin asked that, the Messenger Clan’s servants nodded. Now they understood what he was talking about, and they breathed a sigh of relief.

“Yes. That’s right. That’s right.”

“If we find someone with a talent that our clan needs, we recruit them and make them use that talent for our clan.”

“Or we have them teach us.”

“Some people refuse our offers, but with a little persuasion, they all happily become members of our clan.”

The words of the Messenger Clan’s servants were exactly what was happening to the human hunters of Bell Hoda.

Just as the sugarcane farms of Bell Hoda kidnapped people to get workers, the Messenger Clan’s servants also kidnapped those they needed.

The farm owners weren’t stupid, so they could understand the meaning of what Azadin and the Messenger Clan’s servants were saying.

“Eek?!”

“N-no way!”

“You’re going to take us as slaves?! You crazy bastard! If you do that…”

“If I do that, your heirs will be very easy to persuade, right? If they don’t work to abolish the slave system, their fathers will come back.”

“……”

“Besides, once you’ve experienced forced labor, you might gain some enlightenment about life, don’t you think?”

“N-no way. Do you think our children will like that?”

“Then do you think they’ll hate it? Do you think you’re such good parents? You’re probably indulging in pleasure, with multiple wives and children, right?”

“……”

Azadin’s words hit them right where it hurt the most. It was as painful as sticking a twig in their nose and hitting it with a large wooden mallet.

“Well, then, let’s give these people a chance to experience what forced labor feels like. There’s an old saying that suffering in youth is something you should seek out…”

“Ugh! We’re not that young!”

“But then again, isn’t the time we think we’re old the youngest we’ll ever be in our remaining lives? And they say there’s no end to learning. Life is too short to learn and realize everything.”

“……”

The farm owners despaired at Azadin’s deliberate nonsense. This bastard was really going to take them as slaves.

They had hunted countless people and dragged them into slavery, forcing them to work without proper wages, without any pangs of conscience. But now that they thought about being in that position, they were terrified.

“Take them away.”

“Understood.”

“We will escort them.”

The masked Messenger Clan’s servants grabbed the farm owners at Azadin’s command.

“N-no! You bastards!”

“What are you doing!? Stop them!”

“I gave you so much money! You useless fools!”

“If you don’t have enough people, call the private soldiers, the farm’s private soldiers!”

“If you save us now, no, if you save me, I’ll give you my weight in gold! I mean it! Ughhhh!”

The adventurers were speechless, just watching the scene unfold.

They couldn’t even handle Azadin alone. And then there were the undead forces and the Messenger Clan members. There was no point in fighting against so many forces.

‘That bastard. He had forces ambushed nearby from the start, didn’t he?’

‘He fought alone just to break our spirits…’

‘And to warn the farm owners’ heirs. If he had just quietly infiltrated and kidnapped the farm owners and then asked for a deal with the farm heirs, would they have listened?’

The adventurers realized that Azadin had deliberately fought them to show his power, and they shut their mouths.

“Ughhhh! You bastards!”

“This is too much! We weren’t born to be slaves!”

“To be dragged into slavery now! I’m going to die! I’m going to die of a heart attack!”

The farm owners couldn’t believe their fate and tried to resist, but the Messenger Clan’s servants gagged them and shut their mouths.

The farm owners of the Bell Hoda sugarcane farms now had to take a bold step towards the new life that awaited them.

*********

“When I made the petition, I never thought… things would turn out like this.”

Randa Banema sighed as she sat in the association office.

Unlike the clubhouse, the association office was a proper stone building.

If the clubhouse was a private building built for the farm owners to compete in their pleasures, this association office was an official building for business.

“But I never thought I’d become the association president.”

Randa Banema was still dumbfounded. Just two days ago, her business was on the verge of collapsing. She thought she was suffering in a cycle she could never escape.

But…

This stranger had solved the problem so easily and made her the president of the Bell Hoda association. The position of president of the Bell Hoda Sugar Industry Association, which was originally held by the Salco farm owner, now belonged to Randa.

“Congratulations on becoming the association president.”

Azadin congratulated Randa Banema and chewed on a piece of sugarcane.

“Wow, this is really sweet. Unlike the sugarcane that was floating in the water, this is really fresh and has no worm-eaten parts.”

“You ate sugarcane that was floating in the water? That’s what beggars eat.”

“……”

“Ah, no, I mean, in Bell Hoda, that is.”

“In other words, even beggars in Bell Hoda know the taste of sugarcane. That’s amazing, isn’t it? Hmm. Well, enough about sugarcane. How was the petition? Were you satisfied?”

“Rather than satisfied… is this okay?”

Azadin had kidnapped the farm owners of Bell Hoda by force.

Of course, if you called it kidnapping to Azadin himself, he would jump up and down and spout all sorts of nonsense. He would deny the kidnapping with various excuses such as ‘job placement’ or ‘resocialization process’.

“Well, I guess I should say I’m satisfied with this petition? It’s not the ending I wanted, but if I had to choose between an ending where I was ruined and this ending… of course, I prefer this one. I can’t ignore your hard work.”

“Hmm. It sounds like you’re not very satisfied. If you were to rate your satisfaction from 1 to 10, what would it be?”

“I acknowledge your hard work and skills. If it’s out of 10, I’d give you 11.”

“Haha. That much?”

Azadin was pleased with the generous score.

“But if you’re going to give me 11 out of 10, you might as well give me 110,000.”

“I’m not that satisfied.”

Randa Banema drew a clear line.