[We will not become slaves! We will become the masters of the world.]
This is a famous quote left by Teacher Grommash Hellscream. Although after shouting that line, he ended up becoming a princess. Come to think of it, isn’t that also a form of female corruption?
Anyway, leaving aside the digression, I didn’t want to be sold off as a slave to my fiancée. Marriage itself isn’t much different from becoming a slave, but I don’t want to reunite with my fiancée while shackled as a slave. Anyone would feel the same. Just like how a woman fixes her makeup before meeting her boyfriend, I also want to get rid of these damn shackles before meeting my fiancée.
I tried my best to remove the shackles, but they wouldn’t budge. The shackles themselves were sturdy, and the chains attached were strong. The makers of these shackles must be thorough. When I get out, I’ll take down the construction guild bastards along with them.
If only I had something like a metal pick, I could somehow get these shackles off.
Just then, I saw a slave trader passing by my iron bars.
“Hey, you! I mean, sir!”
The slave trader turned his head and looked at me. Wow, look at that face. If you saw him on the street, you’d immediately think, “That guy’s a slave trader.” Maybe he was teased so much for looking like a slave trader that he became one? A victim corrupted by his environment. But I have no intention of sympathizing with him. No matter what happened in the past, it was entirely his choice to walk such a trashy path.
“…Hey! Can’t you hear me? Why are you just standing there staring after I called you?”
“Sorry, I was lost in thought for a moment…”
“You call me over and then zone out? What the hell!”
“That face… You must have been through a lot… I sympathize, at least that much.”
I sympathized with that face that clearly looked pitiful.
“Huh? What are you talking about? My lover says my face is handsome. And I think so too.”
I need to correct myself. He was just a guy with messed-up eyes. And with a girl who also had messed-up eyes as a set… What kind of monster would come out if these two had a kid?
“You… make sure to use birth control.”
Before you unleash a monster into this world.
“What the hell are you talking about? What do you want?”
“Ah, well…”
Thinking about it, there’s no way he’d give me a metal pick. A fatal miscalculation. Originally, I planned to ask for a metal pick, use it to remove the shackles, break the door, and escape.
I messed up from the very first step… While pondering what to do, I came up with a brilliant idea.
“Can you give me just one sword?”
“Are you crazy? Why would I give a sword to someone locked up?”
“Then can you remove these shackles?”
“If I were going to remove them, why would I shackle you in the first place?”
“Damn it, this isn’t working, that isn’t working, what do you want me to do?”
“This guy’s completely insane.”
“Then let’s settle for one metal pick.”
“What?”
This was my secret plan. By continuously asking for something unreasonable and then presenting a slightly less demanding condition, most people would accept it.
How about that? Even Zhuge Liang would weep at my cunning.
“You’re one crazy bastard. I’m leaving, so stop causing trouble and stay quiet.”
Zhuge Liang did weep. From laughing so hard that tears came out. Damn you, Zhuge Liang, try being in my situation. Even you wouldn’t have an answer.
“Seriously, just give me one metal pick. You’re being so stingy.”
What’s so hard about that… It’s not like I’m going to stab someone with it. I just want to use it to break the shackles and the door to escape. Is the world so stingy?
Then, I heard a clanging sound as a piece of metal fell to the ground.
What’s this? Looking down, I saw a blunt, thin metal pick rolling around inside my cell.
“What the hell?”
“How bored must you be to want to play with a metal pick, tsk tsk…”
It was that slave trader. He must have mistaken me for some idiot who wanted to play with a metal pick out of boredom.
To give me a metal pick just because of that thought… That guy’s a real idiot. As a slave trader, he should be part of some underground organization, yet he hands over a tool that could be used for escape or threats for such a stupid reason. This is why people need to study. If you’re as clueless as that guy, you can’t even do the slave trader job properly.
Besides, if he knew I was a sorcerer, he wouldn’t have handed over that metal pick. He must be a low-ranking member who didn’t get the full briefing. Truly, the problem with society is always the low-ranking members.
As soon as he left, I inserted the metal pick into the keyhole of my shackles.
Clink, clink, the sound of metal scraping against metal echoed.
I had learned how to pick locks and handcuffs harshly as a child, so this was a piece of cake. But cake is surprisingly hard to eat. It’s better when it’s hot; cold cake has no flavor.
Clunk!
The shackles came off. Finally free, I sympathized with the black slaves who spent their entire lives in such shackles.
And I made a resolution. I would take revenge on those slave trader bastards who oppress others. I had to unleash the punishment for imprisoning the Archmage Werner and the resentment of the slaves who spent their lives in labor.
“Wind, become a blade.”
A sharp wind sliced through the iron bars like tofu.
As I stepped outside the bars, a patrolling slave trader saw me and was startled.
“How did you get out? The shackles were supposed to seal your magic…”
“Blame yourself for not properly training your subordinates.”
“What?”
“Lightning, crawl like a snake.”
High-voltage electricity shot from my fingertips, snaking around and wrapping the slave trader’s body. The smell of roasted chicken spread, and other slave traders came running.
“What the hell! The sorcerer’s out! Get him!”
“Don’t kill him! Just break one of his limbs!”
“Which bastard let him escape?”
They rushed at me in chaos. They must have thought that since Werner was a sorcerer, he’d be a bit clumsy in close combat. Well, Werner’s martial arts skills were indeed just decent compared to his magic.
If Werner’s magic skills were at the level of the Schrödinger equation, his martial arts would be at the level of a quadratic equation.
But that’s Werner’s story…
“Ahhh! This guy’s not just a sorcerer! What’s with his fists…?”
“Damn it, my leg! It’s broken, damn it!”
The me inside Werner isn’t so weak that I can’t handle a bunch of thugs relying on numbers. I’ve been trained since childhood to easily deal with such vermin.
As I twisted one guy’s arm, he screamed.
“Ahhh! My arm! My arm!”
Why is he suddenly looking for his arm? Is he planning to climb the Himalayas?
After taking them down, a bald guy who seemed to be the leader appeared. His muscular body covered in scars suggested he wasn’t ordinary in martial arts.
“Heh heh… Your movements are impressive. Your martial arts skills are excellent.”
“Are you the boss here?”
“Yeah, if you beat me in a martial arts match, I’ll release all the slaves here.”
“Oh, really?”
He took a fighting stance.
“Before the match, let me introduce myself. I am the one who can even shatter mountains…”
“Wind, become a blade.”
A sharp wind blade sliced the boss into pieces.
“I never agreed to the match in the first place, yet he’s acting all high and mighty.”
I had no intention of sparring with criminal slave traders. If I beat them, they’d release the slaves? No, I’ll just take them all down and release the slaves myself. The world is full of fools who can’t do the math. Maybe they became slave traders because they couldn’t do the math.
“Boss…! The boss…!”
“What the hell do we do now?!”
They started to panic. As the saying goes in military strategy, if you take out the leader, the underlings become a disorganized mess.
“Hey, you guys.”
“Y-Yes, are you talking to us?”
They seemed a bit more polite after seeing my magic. Magic truly is a great way to instill manners. These uneducated slave traders are using honorifics. How splendid. If Confucius had known magic, he would have written a magic book instead of the Analects.
“Then who else would I be talking to? The other slaves in the cells?”
“What… do you want…?”
“Get inside the cells.”
It’s annoying to watch them one by one, and if I look away, they might take someone hostage.
“All of us…?”
“Next time, I’ll just start chanting a spell without saying anything.”
“We’ll go in!”
The remaining slave traders scrambled into the cells.
Looking at the slave traders crammed into the narrow cells, I thought:
If I use magic here, it’ll be a massacre.
But with transcendent patience, I suppressed that desire and decided to free the other slaves first.