...
{3rd Pov}
He woke up in a damp place that reeked of a pungent smell, something resembling iron and rotten meat mixed together. He would have vomited again if there had been anything left in his stomach to throw up.
As he slowly pushed himself up, he hissed in pain from the concussion on his head. The throbbing ache immediately reminded him of the circumstances that had led him here.
That was when he realized he was inside a dirty cage, with iron bars locking him in and chains wrapped around his arms and legs.
“Oh Lord!”
He tried to move and instantly regretted it. The chains pulled taut against one another, throwing him off balance and causing him to slam against the hard floor of the cage.
A groan escaped his lips.
Everything hurts, even breathing felt uncomfortable.
“Oh, he has woken up, boss,” a man said with a grin.
Ayan turned around and saw an unfamiliar man staring at him through the bars, the grin on his face making him feel even more uneasy.
Taking a deep breath, Ayan forced himself to calm down and observe his surroundings.
Panic wasn't going to help him.
There were cages similar to his all around the room, each one containing a person, they included men, women and even a few children.
The sight made his face slightly pale, his eyes widening in terror.
Most of the cages were much smaller than his own, barely large enough for someone to crouch or sit in a single position. There was almost no room to move around inside them.
Some of the captives had their heads lowered while others stared blankly in the air like lifeless dolls.
A few looked toward him with hollow eyes before turning away.
“With his body and that face, he should sell for a good amount,” the man said as he looked at Ayan as if he were a sellable object rather than a human being.
Ayan remained silent for a moment.
His heart was pounding, but he forced himself to think.
Begging was definitely not going to help him here, he had seen enough movies to know about that.
Then an idea came to him, as he grinned to make himself look confident.
His grin made the two slave traders confused. One of them immediately scrunched up his face in disgust, while the other narrowed his eyes suspiciously.
“You are in bad luck. I know Reinhard, and you should know that slavery is illegal in the Kingdom,” he said with a grin, trying to bluff them.
Honestly, he was bluffing so hard that even he wasn't sure whether he believed his own words.
Still, if there was even a small chance it would scare them, it was worth trying.
The two men became silent for a moment.
For a brief second, hope appeared within Ayan's chest.
Then they burst out laughing.
“Slavery is illegal, he says! Hahah! Boss, I can't take it!” the man laughed while holding his stomach.
The other man, who was probably the boss, merely chuckled.
“We've had plenty of smart slaves saying they know this guy or that guy before.”
“Yeah, and every one of them suddenly becomes friends with knights, nobles, and royalty the moment they get caught,” the other man added between laughs.
Ayan's expression stiffened.
Okay.
Maybe that hadn't worked.
“Not to mention, do you not even know that slavery is illegal in name only? And that's only for humans?” the boss said with a grin.
The words made Ayan freeze.
What?
That wasn't information he remembered from the anime.
Then again, the anime hadn't exactly spent its time explaining the legal loopholes of Lugunica's slave trade.
The realization only made his situation feel worse.
Because if what the man was saying was true, then nobody was going to burst through the door and rescue him simply because slavery was illegal.
And if Reinhard wasn't going to magically appear either...
Then for the first time since waking up in the cage, Ayan began to understand just how bad his situation really was.
Ayan's eyes narrowed as he suddenly realized something.
'Wasn't there an IF story where that guy... what was his name...? Yes, Otto was some sort of slave?!'
He remembered it vaguely.
The details escaped him, but he distinctly remembered something involving Otto and slavery. At the time he hadn't paid much attention to it, yet now that memory suddenly resurfaced in the worst possible situation.
Ayan's expression became grave.
Perhaps slavery was indeed illegal but as the man was saying, perhaps it was only illegal in name and perhaps that law only applied within Lugunica or perhaps it only applied to humans.
Leaving out all those perhaps and uncertainties.
Honestly, he didn't know.
His understanding of the world was based on an anime he had watched years ago, not a legal textbook.
After all, why would slave traders continue capturing slaves if they couldn't sell them?
That suggested there was a market for it, profitable enough for these people to capture people and then sell them off.
The thought made him feel sick, though the fact that he was a human probably didn't matter much anyway.
He had no background, no family, no status or no connection in this world.
At least none that could be proven.
As far as everyone in this world was concerned, he was just an orphan from some destroyed village.
A nobody and when nobody cared about you, laws became a lot less useful.
Perhaps he would be sold to some rich noble, working in a mine somewhere or would spend the rest of his life doing manual labor until his body gave out.
The possibilities running through his head only became worse the longer he thought about them.
They also hadn't even bought his excuse.
The Reinhard bluff had failed completely.
He gritted his teeth as he glared at them.
He was indeed feeling fucking scared.
Of course he was, only an idiot wouldn't be afraid in a situation like this.
But if he was going to end up as a slave anyway, then the least he could do was keep his dignity.
“I guess you still don't understand your place, huh?” the man said as he stood up from his chair, cracking his knuckles while glaring at Ayan.
The sound immediately made Ayan hitch his breath.
“I am not scared of trash like you,” Ayan barked back as he stared him dead in the eye after regaining his bearings.
If he sounded confident enough, maybe they would hesitate or so he thought.
The man simply smirked, then he began walking forward, looking at the other slave trader, he casually said, “Hey, open his cage.”
“Boss, are you sure we should beat him?” the other guy asked hesitantly as he looked between them.
His concern wasn't exactly moral; Ayan could tell that much in fact the man was probably worried about damaging merchandise.
After all, bruises and broken bones tended to lower prices.
“Well, he will be selling for less than the females anyway, and some women love handsome, tormented boys,” the boss chuckled.
The casual way he said it made Ayan feel sick.
They weren't even talking about him like he was a person anymore, to them, he was already a product.
The cage door rattled as the other man reluctantly moved toward it.
Ayan finally started feeling nervous.
No.
Scratch that, he was damn terrified!
His heart was pounding so hard that it felt like it might burst from his chest.
Every instinct screamed at him to run.
The problem was that there was nowhere to run, he was trapped in a cage with limbs chained and a man almost twice his size was preparing to walk inside.
Yet despite all that, Ayan continued glaring at him as if he wasn't scared.
He refused to look away, to lower his head because the moment he did, it felt like he would lose something important.
The boss noticed it too.
“Still staring at me like that?” he asked with amusement.
Ayan didn't answer as he simply kept glaring at him.
It was something he would regret later on, as his cries and howls rang throughout the confined room. The man dragged Ayan outside the cage and started beating him mercilessly. He grabbed him by the neck and slammed him against the floor until his nose broke and several teeth fell out.
Then he grabbed a pair of pliers and cut off one of his ears.
Ayan struggled in agony as his ear was severed, a bloodcurdling howl escaping his throat. The pain was unlike anything he had ever experienced before. It felt as though his entire head had been set on fire.
"That's more like it... Oh damn, I was so busy teaching this guy a lesson that I cut off his damn ear," the boss cursed to himself as if he regretted what he had done.
Though Ayan knew that wasn't because he felt guilty.
It was because Ayan's price would now be even lower.
The realization only made him hate the man even more.
All the while, Ayan lay on the ground. His face was covered in blood, and his throat had become too hoarse to cry out any longer. Every breath hurt, every movement hurt, and yet the pain from his missing ear remained the worst of all.
He could only lie there and endure it.
...
Ayan finally realized what it felt like to be enslaved.
You had no freedom, no hope, and no future.
The days blurred together as he remained trapped behind iron bars. He could only lie inside the cage, eating whatever sludge they fed him and drinking whatever water they gave him. The filthy smell that constantly lingered in the room made him nauseous, yet there was nowhere to escape from it.
There was no hygiene to speak of.
The stench of sweat, blood, waste, and dampness hung in the air at all times. After a while, Ayan stopped noticing it as much, which felt even worse to him.
They had also transferred him from the larger cage into a much smaller one.
Apparently, his value as a slave had decreased after the beating with the ear he was missing, the broken teeth he had alongside the bruises covering his body.
All of those things reduced the amount of money they could get from him.
Not that he cared about his market value.
The fact he was being assigned a market value at all was insulting enough.
Over the past few days, he had also realized that the man who called himself the boss had a sadistic streak when it came to dealing with slaves. The man seemed to genuinely enjoy tormenting those trapped under him.
Whatever the reason, the man clearly took pleasure in it.
So Ayan had happened to be very unlucky when it came to his captor.
No, fuck that.
He had been unlucky the moment he got enslaved in the first place.
Being captured by a sadistic slave trader was simply the rotten cherry on top.
The more he thought about it, the more he wondered what exactly he had done to deserve any of this. Yesterday he had been a normal man with a normal life.
Now he was sitting inside a cage, waiting to be sold.
If someone had told him this would be his future a week ago, he would have laughed in their face.
Now he couldn't even laugh properly because several of his teeth were missing.
All the while, Subaru was out there living in that mansion surrounded by cute girls.
Ayan knew it was wrong to think like this.
He knew Subaru's life was going to be very difficult. That place was no different from the hell he was currently in, just a different kind of hell. Subaru would suffer, die, and struggle more times than Ayan could probably imagine.
But at least Subaru had someone to rely on.
He had Emilia and had his love for Emilia and even if that girl had the mindset of a child at times and was painfully naïve, she was still an angel who would illuminate Subaru's life. No matter how many times he fell, there would always be people willing to help him stand back up.
What did Ayan have?
The answer made him bitter.
Nothing.
He had no family, friends, or anyone waiting for him.
Ayan couldn't force himself to fall in love with someone he didn't even know. He wasn't Subaru. He hadn't spent time with Emilia, nor had he been saved by her. To him, she was simply a character from a story and a girl he had briefly met from the memories of Subaru's returned by death.
Nobody even knew he existed.
If he died tomorrow, the only people who would notice would probably be the slave traders wondering why their merchandise had stopped breathing.
The thought made him laugh bitterly, though even that hurt.
He felt his body was hot sometimes, burning with pain or cold shivering with fever.
He didn't know if he was going to make it, or what the point of even being enslaved was if they couldn't at least keep him in decent condition.
To them, some slaves were treated well.
Those were what they called the premium products.
Meanwhile, others were considered discarded products or trash-quality merchandise, like him.
Ayan couldn't understand these people.
Why do this?
Even if it was for greed, wealth, and connections, what exactly did they gain from torturing a person they had already captured? They would beat them, lower their value with their own hands, and then complain that they had become discarded products.
It made no sense.
The more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that money wasn't the only reason behind their actions.
To him, they looked like the very definition of evil.
People who gained enjoyment from the suffering of others rather than having any real motive behind their actions.
Perhaps for that man, being a slave trader was merely a convenient excuse, an occupation that allowed him to unleash his sadistic desires without consequence.
After all, if profit was his only goal, then he would have treated his slaves better.
Instead, he seemed to take genuine pleasure in breaking them, making them cry until their throats became hoarse, reminding them that they were powerless.
Back on Earth, he had heard news about people like that.
People who enjoyed hurting others, who viewed kindness as weakness.
Yet hearing about such people and becoming trapped under one were two very different experiences.
As he lay inside the cramped cage, staring at the rusted bars in front of him, he felt something inside him gradually wither away.
The last thing Ayan said to himself before the loop ended was simple.
[Oh Lord, I hate this world.]
...
Ayan gasped as he was back and immediately broke into tears as he observed his body.
“I am safe! Safe! Safe!” he cried out as he checked himself frantically.
His still had his ear, his nose wasn't broken yet, and he still had his teeth in his jaws!
Everything was there.
He quickly looked around and found no one nearby, just like the last time he had woken up. Spotting a rag lying in the alley, he immediately grabbed it again and wrapped it around himself to cover his body.
Only then did he let out a shaky breath.
He wiped away his tears, though they continued to flow for a few moments as memories of the brutal torture he had endured resurfaced in his mind.
His body was fine now, but the memories remained.
And then he realized something.
'People in this world are mentally sick,' he came to the conclusion.
It was an unfair conclusion but at this moment, Ayan didn't care.
Back in his world, even if people like those slave traders existed, society at least considered them evil. The overwhelming majority of people would condemn them for their actions.
But in this world?
People seemed to treat those things as a normal part of life.
Maybe that wasn't the whole picture, he knew there were good people too.
Maybe he had simply encountered the worst of the worst.
But for the current Ayan, all he knew was that the people of this world seemed far more willing to unleash the evil side of themselves than the people back on Earth.
And after everything he had gone through, it was difficult for him to believe otherwise.
Ayan hadn't even thought about stealing anything. At first, he had planned to get a job and then try to meet Old Man Rom.
In fact, he had previously decided to stay away from the slums because of how he had been robbed after being knocked unconscious. He didn't even know if he would survive long enough to meet Rom and had simply thought about securing food and clothes first.
'What a fucking stupid idea?! Did I really think there would be people kind enough to give a job to someone they don't fucking know?! If there was so much goodwill in this world, there wouldn't be slums in the first place,' he thought bitterly.
The more he reflected on his previous actions, the more naïve he felt.
He had arrived in a completely different world and somehow expected strangers to help him out of pure kindness.
What was he even thinking?
Still, he hadn't completely given up on the idea of finding a job or perhaps locating Old Man Rom or Reinhardt.
Those were still his best options.
But at the very least, he couldn't go as he was right now.
'First, I will need to secure food,' he thought as he rubbed his stomach.
Although his body didn't remember the taste of the sludge they had fed him, his mind certainly did. And now that he was free from what he desperately wanted to believe had been nothing more than a nightmare, he wanted good food.
He didn't know the value of what he had until he lost it.
Previously, good food wasn't a privilege; it was simply something he had grown up with. He never had to think about where his next meal would come from or whether he would eat at all.
But now?
For a loaf of bread, whether it was soft or hard, he wanted it desperately.
Even the thought of plain bread made his mouth water.
Obviously, it was Gluttony, the desire to satiate his most primal craving.
Ayan decided not to look for a job anymore.
He knew he couldn't get one while looking like this either. Not after everything that had happened. Right now, he needed to focus on surviving first and worrying about morality later.
He decided that, for now, he would steal something to eat to ensure he got the nutrition necessary for his body's functionality and healing. Meanwhile, he would continue trying to find Rom or Reinhard.
He knew it was wrong to steal, but he was desperate, and he had already seen where the other path led him.
Into a cage, slavery and torture.
'Oh Lord, please forgive me for my sins,' he prayed with his hands clasped in Anjali mudra.
The prayer lingered on his lips for a few moments.
Then he opened his eyes.
So, while chanting the Lord's name under his breath, he decided to secure food for himself. Even if he had to dirty his hands to do it.
Of course, he wasn't a dumb idiot.
First, he identified a shop that was very close to an alley. Then he walked around the alley for a bit to familiarize himself with the surrounding paths leading toward the slums. Although he had no intention of entering the slums again, even staying near the edge of them was enough to make most people keep their distance, and it would be far less dangerous than venturing deep inside once more.
At least, that was what he hoped, because a man like him could only hope, he only had hope.
Finally finished with his planning and mental mapping, he moved closer to the shop and leaned against the wall of a nearby building, acting as nonchalantly as possible.
Then he waited.
His plan was simple, he was going to wait for a crowd to gather and vendor to become distracted then take something and walk away before the man noticed or, if he was lucky, before the man noticed at all.
Ayan kept his eyes on the stall while pretending not to look at it. Every now and then he glanced around to make sure nobody was paying attention to him.
His heart was beating faster than he would have liked, he didn't know if he was doing this right and couldn't know how big the risk was.
At least, it was the best option he could think of.
Because no matter what happened next, there was one thing he was absolutely certain of.
He was not returning to THAT CAGE ever again.
When the crowd became denser, he quickly moved, slipping among the people. His hand reached for a loaf of bread, and he clumsily grabbed it, the sense of guilt growing stronger within him as he quickly retreated with the bread in hand.
His intention was to simply walk away normally so that no one would notice, but—
“Hey! That guy is stealing your bread!” a lady called out as she noticed Ayan's movement.
Ayan almost yelped, he quickly reined himself in and charged forward.
“Thief! Thief! Follow him!” the lady cried out.
After that, the shopkeeper also began shouting.
Thankfully, no one immediately chose to chase Ayan. As soon as he turned into the alley he had already planned out beforehand, he continued running without looking back.
The bread was still clutched tightly in his hand.
Just keep running.
Just keep running.
That was the only thought in his mind.
Then he heard something, sound of boots striking against the ground.
Ayan's face became pale.
Someone was following him and before he knew it, something struck his leg.
A sharp blur flashed past his vision.
Then he fell on the cobblestone road, the world spun around him as he crashed hard against the ground.
Then it hit him out of nowhere.
A hot, sizzling pain.
A pain so intense that it felt as if fire itself had erupted inside his body.
It burned through his entire leg.
“AAAAAHHHHHHH!”
A scream tore itself from his throat.
The bread rolled away from his hand as he writhed on the ground. Every instinct in his body demanded that the pain stop, but it only grew worse with every passing second.
He flailed helplessly before turning to face his attacker.
Then he saw it.
For a brief moment, his mind failed to comprehend what he was looking at.
His right leg was gone.
Sliced clean off from down his kneecap and blood continued to be poured onto the ground as the severed limb lay several feet away.
“A fucking gutter rat, as I expected. Only filthy beings like you can be thieves, a damn scourge upon Lugunica,” the Knight cursed as he looked at Ayan's ragged appearance and immediately came to a conclusion.
Ayan held onto what remained of his leg and clenched his teeth as hard as he could, refusing to scream again.
'Why?'
The question echoed inside his mind.
'I just stole a bread... is this my punishment? Then what about that scum? Then what about all these people?! Why don't they get their own punishment? WHY?!?!'
He fell back onto the cobblestone road, his chest heaving heavily as blood continued to spread beneath him.
The pain was unbearable.
His vision blurred with his body trembling uncontrollably.
The Knight walked closer and looked at the bread Ayan had been holding, then sneering he kicked Ayan's hand.
Crunch.
Ayan felt his palm being crushed beneath the metal boot.
“ARGHHHHHHHH!” Ayan howled as tears streamed down his cheeks.
The pain from losing his leg was already overwhelming.
Now this.
The bread rolled away across the dirty ground, gathering dust and grime as it went, no longer palatable.
Ayan stared at it with wide eyes.
He couldn't understand.
This man had fucking sliced off his leg because he stole a loaf of bread...
Then why the fuck was that bread now rolling across the ground?
Shouldn't he at least secure it?
Wasn't that the entire point?
Wasn't that why he chased him in the first place?
The contradiction made his head spin.
Or perhaps there had never been any logic behind it.
Perhaps the bread had only been an excuse.
An excuse to hurt someone weaker.
The Knight looked down at him with contempt, while Ayan lay there bleeding onto the street.
And somehow, watching the bread roll away hurt almost as much as everything else, because it reminded him why he had stolen it.
He had been hungry.
That was all.
Hungry.
And now he was lying in a pool of blood for it.
[Oh Lord, I wish to forget the ability to question.]
...
After his leg had been healed by a healer, who thankfully restored the leg that had been sliced off, Ayan was thrown into a prison meant for criminals, or as they liked to call them, gutter rats.
When his leg had been healed, he had felt hope.
But despite everything he said, the healer ignored him after treating his injuries. The man merely looked at him with disgust before turning away, and shortly afterward Ayan was thrown into this prison.
He didn't know whether to despair or feel blessed that he still had his leg.
He lay on the cold stone floor of the prison.
There was no bed, no chair, no blanket absolutely nothing.
Just cold stone beneath him and iron bars in front of him.
The prison cell smelled damp, and every sound echoed through the corridors, making the place feel even more depressing.
Unable to hold it back any longer, he burst into tears as memories of his old life resurfaced.
The life he had before entering this shithole of a world.
“Mama, Papa... I miss you, I miss you so much,” he whispered.
His voice cracked.
He remembered his parents' loving smiles.
The way his mother scolded him whenever he did something stupid.
The way his father praised him when he became a doctor.
The pride in his eyes.
The happiness in his voice.
Those memories felt so distant now.
He remembered arguing and bickering with his siblings over the most meaningless things.
At the time, those arguments had seemed annoying.
Now he would give anything to experience them again.
He remembered spending the romantic moments with his fiancée.
The plans they made together, the future they had talked about building.
A future that would never come.
Now he had lost all of it because he had been summoned into another world for reasons he didn't know and couldn't understand.
Natsuki Subaru already existed in this world, so why was he summoned?!
If they had to beat him nearly to death, then why did they enslave him?!
If they had to capture him for the bread he had stolen, then why did that fucking knight make him discard it as if it were trash?
If he was filthy trash, then leave him alone with his filthy food!
If he was a lowly being, then leave him alone in his lowly life!
Why couldn't they simply leave him alone?!
The questions kept circling inside his head, each one making him more frustrated than the last.
Nothing made sense.
The people of this world acted as if they had reasons for everything, yet the more he observed them, the less their actions seemed to follow any kind of logic.
“Look, Rodeo, this is the new one... Another slum rat.”
Two knights passing by his cell stopped and looked at Ayan's tear-stained cheeks.
“Is he fucking crying?! Do these rats think acting like a fucking helpless man will cut it?” Rodeo growled.
“Yeah, it's always the same with these people. First they commit a crime, then they act innocent,” the other knight clicked his tongue while looking at Ayan with disgust.
They had already judged everything about him as if they knew his entire life story.
Ayan, who had been listening to this the entire time, gritted his teeth.
“A bread! ALL I STOLE WAS A FUCKING PIECE OF BREAD THAT ONE OF YOU THREW AWAY!” Ayan shouted, his breathing becoming erratic.
His chest rose and fell rapidly.
The anger he had been suppressing for days finally burst out.
There was silence for a moment.
Then one of the knights spoke.
“Did he just fucking shout at us?”
His voice had grown noticeably colder.
Ayan immediately felt a chill run down his spine, the moment the words left his mouth, he regretted them.
Soon, his fears became reality.
Both knights entered the prison room.
Ayan instinctively backed away toward the corner of his cell, but there was nowhere to run.
Nowhere to hide.
The iron bars that trapped him had made sure of that and soon, he was being tortured again.
...
The days passed slowly within that prison and the two knights continued visiting him.
In fact, Ayan felt a chill whenever he thought about them.
The way they beat him wasn't random.
It wasn't the uncontrolled violence of angry men.
No.
They seemed to know exactly what they were doing.
They inflicted the maximum amount of pain while causing the minimum amount of lasting injury as if they had done this many times before and were experienced in doing this sort of thing.
At one point, Ayan lost all his hope...
And then it hit him again.
Return by Death.
Subaru died and the last ten or so minutes before his death were transmitted into Ayan's mind as he experienced everything from the first-person perspective once more.
'No! Please no!'
He screamed helplessly.
First, he felt his body growing weaker.
Then, as Subaru struggled to stand up, Ayan felt every breath he took.
Every sensation Subaru felt, he felt it, every bit of exhaustion Subaru felt it, he felt it.
It was as if he had become Subaru.
Then he heard the rattle of the morning star.
Ayan's eyes widened in horror in his mind.
He knew what was coming.
He remembered this from that damn anime!
He screamed desperately, as if trying to warn Subaru, as if somehow his voice could reach across whatever strange connection existed between them.
But it was useless as the morning star struck.
Pain assaulted his mind alongside Subaru's.
Ayan realized that Subaru's left arm had been torn off and then it felt as though his own arm had been ripped away as well.
“AAAAAHHHHH!”
Subaru struggled to breathe, Ayan struggled to breathe.
Subaru gasped desperately for air, Ayan gasped desperately for air.
Blood seeped beneath Subaru, Blood seeped beneath Ayan.
The morning star swung again.
Subaru's body convulsed, Ayan's body convulsed.
Then the final blow came.
The morning star struck Subaru's head.
Subaru's head burst apart, Ayan's head burst apart.
Oh no! They were dead.
To be continued...