Chapter 24: Chapter 24: Distrust

Rope

Appraisal gave a simple one-word answer, and sense mana didn't react at all. I'd considered declining their offer and making my way into their territory unofficially, but as far as I could tell, it was a completely mundane length of rope. With no enchantments or curses to worry about, I could item box it off just like clothing.

Going with them now would be a bit of a risk, but it was possible I could get some sort of official permit to enter. If I declined and turned back, then climbed down the cliff later, it would be tough to explain myself once I got caught. I was under no delusions about my luck; if I snuck in, I would get caught at some point, probably with the least convenient timing possible. Between trigger respawn, or escaping from bondage and either running or slitting my own throat, I felt safe I could escape quickly enough if things took a suspicious turn. I decided to go along with them for now.

They insisted on checking I wasn't any sort of shapeshifter first, which they did by pricking me with a knife and checking that I bled, then I let them tie my hands tightly behind my back and to my waist, leaving the rope ends free for the guards to hold like a leash. They did a pretty good job, but sure enough, they'd completely failed to account for item box. Even if the rope itself was somehow immune, I had enough movement in my hands that I could summon a spider claw and cut myself free. It was unlikely that item box was a common skill among these people.

For that matter, did they have skills in the same way as me at all? This was my adventure, and NPCs didn't generally get to level up. The big centipede certainly hadn't expected my disease resistance.

They led me through the door, one guard in front, holding my leash, and one following behind, his spear aimed unerringly at my back. Coupled with the way they weren't asking any questions, even ones that had nothing to do with my identity, such as 'will there be any more centipedes coming,' it was obvious they still thought of me as some sort of monster, and didn't trust anything I said. Nor would they answer any questions of mine, telling me to wait until we saw whoever we were going to see. Hopefully, whoever they were leading me to meet would be more amicable, or this was going to be a wasted trip.

Behind the gate was a squad a dozen strong, all equally armed and armoured. Being able to free myself was all well and good, but with a large group of big, burly, heavily armed men around, there was no way I'd be escaping afterwards. At least not back up here. If I was forced to use trigger respawn or die to escape from a threatening situation, it was going to do nothing to help my claim that I wasn't a monster when I showed back up, fully alive.

The tunnel had been modified, the walls evened out and lighting installed, in the form of white glowing crystal plates clamped to the walls in shallow, circular yellow fittings. The defensive wall did indeed have gaps, and given the extra light behind it, there's no way I should have missed it shining through. Some sort of illusion? I certainly shouldn't have missed the ten centimetre wide barrels that poked through some of the holes either, shining so brightly to sense mana that I could barely even see their shape... I hadn't been able to sense them at all from the other side! How much firepower did they have aimed at me?! That explained where all the centipedes went, anyway.

I also saw my captors themselves far more clearly, and they were blatantly beastmen! They were mostly human, but had fox ears, accompanied by long, bushy, fox-like tails. Their fur tended towards darker colours than the brownish-red I thought of when thinking about foxes, and their tails seemed a bit long, but nevertheless I couldn't think of them as anything other than fox-kin. It was a shame the entire squad was made of muscular, scarred men. Men had no business owning such floofy tails.

What would appraisal make of them? I looked at the guard holding my leash.

Si'chieen, vulpes sagax
This race of intelligent monsters came about after a particularly bored draco rubrum taught their ancestors how to set things on fire, then decided that the result would be far more entertaining if they were intelligent enough to not set themselves on fire too, engaging in biomancy and animancy to boost their intelligence. This particular specimen has greater physical abilities than is usual for the species, but has no affinity with magic.

So, apparently this was a fox that looked a bit human, rather than a human that looked a bit foxy. And he had a name. I mean, that shouldn't have come as a complete surprise, but no-one had asked me mine, nor had they introduced themselves.

And then there was the elephant in the room that appraisal explicitly called them out as monsters! The hypocrites! I probably should have appraised them before letting them tie me up, but I had seen some sort of town down here. If they were civilised, did it matter if appraisal called them monsters or not? I didn't want to be racist here...

After a brief whispered discussion between the fox-people, my pair of appointed guards led me down the passage, still one in front and the other behind, leaving the other ten to defend the gate. I heard it swinging closed behind me. Hands tied behind my back or not, I wasn't getting back past them.

"My name's Katie, by the way," I volunteered, trying once more to get them talking. "I don't believe we've been properly introduced."

Si'chieen only gave a non-committal grunt in response.

"You lot aren't very polite. Why are you so scared of me? I'm barely up to your chest!"

"Would you please just shut up," muttered the guard behind me.

I huffed, but followed the instructions of the grumpy, muscular guy with the overly pointy spear.

It took another five minutes before we exited the passageway, emerging into something like the wolves' upgraded cavern writ large. The same crystal trees were present, but grew in tight clusters of different colours. Between them was little more than bare rock, which explained why the ground still looked so dark from up above, but hints of black, dead crystal jutting through suggested that the trees used to grow everywhere. Had they deforested their cavern? Why? They didn't seem to be using the extra space for anything. Were too many of the trees in one place harmful? Did they want the crystal for something? So many questions, and such silent, boring travelling companions, unwilling to answer any of them.

Our destination turned out to be the town I'd seen from up above, which took us another half an hour to reach. It was walled, and I could see guards pacing along the top, with more standing in front of a few gates. The gates would only have fit a person, and not anything bigger, which seemed strange for a town. Did they not have wagons, or any sort of vehicles? I hadn't seen any, so it was possible. Larger monsters wouldn't fit through the small gates, even if they were open, so it made defensive sense. Living in a dungeon must bring its own set of problems, logistical and otherwise.

We didn't head for the gates, but for another structure built up against the outside of the walls, surrounded by fences marking out individual plots of land. I could see monsters in some of them, horned beetles being the only species I recognised. There was a type of spider that looked rather similar to the ones upstairs, but these were flatter and lacked the claws. Was this supposed to be some sort of monster farm? Was the person we were going to see a monster farmer? A complete waste, but hopefully they'd be able to tell these two that I wasn't a monster, so we could go see someone more appropriate.

Si'chieen handed my leash off to the second guard, giving me the chance to appraise him and learn that his name was Si'janrii, then disappeared off into the building. I watched the monsters with interest, while Si'janrii remained tense, spear still in hand and not taking his eyes off me for a second. I couldn't help but notice that the monsters in the fenced off sections were all wearing silvery metallic collars. None were in appraisal range, but they responded to sense mana, leaving me a tad suspicious about what they were for. I'd bet they were more than just a mark that the monsters were domesticated, especially given that the fences looked far too flimsy to actually contain any of them.

Si'chieen emerged ten minutes later, with an older, shorter, less muscular fox-kin in toe. He still had a few scars of his own, though. Maybe monster farming went wrong from time to time? Appraisal named him as Ja'yakril.

"So, this is what you wanted me to see?" he asked Si'chieen, despite staring straight at me. Guess he's just as rude as the others. "It just let you tie it up like that?"

"She," I corrected. "Not it."

"Yes, it did," answered Si'chieen, putting extra emphasis on the it.

"How interesting," Ja'yakril continued. "Not to mention that she could approach the town barrier this easily, despite not wearing a collar. Either she's so docile that we don't need to be concerned, or else she's so desperate for something that she was prepared to put her life on the line for it. I wonder which it is?"

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Okay, maybe he's not quite so rude; at least he corrected Si'chieen there. But his analysis was rather thrown off by the way my life wasn't on the line. And the collars were some sort of magical badge to let them through a barrier? Phew, I was assuming magical enslavement.

"I'm not the sort of person to kill in cold blood, if that's what you're asking," I answered, ignoring the repeated muncher genocides I'd committed simply to raise my combat skills. Si'janrii snorted at my description of myself as a person, but thankfully kept his mouth shut.

"An interesting claim, but hardly something we can take your word for, obviously. Let's see now. If you hold still a moment, this will let me check if you're telling the truth."

While speaking, Ja'yakril had pulled out a hinged metal ring that looked exactly the same to my sense mana skill as the collars around the monsters in the fields.

Enslavement collar
This enchanted collar forces the wearer to obey all commands issued by the collar's registered owner. Collar can only be removed by the registered owner.
Owner: Ja'yakril

Yeah... no. My first guess had been correct, and the barrier access an added extra. Maybe I could item box it, given that it wasn't labelled as cursed, but no way was I risking it. "Sorry, but I'm not going to let you put that on me," I said, activating trigger respawn as an extra backup. This situation had just shot way past anything I considered acceptably risky.

I couldn't really condemn them for their behaviour. If they'd never seen anything like me before, and given the behaviour of other intelligent monsters I'd met, they had every reason to be on their guard. That didn't mean I was going to let them put that collar on me, though. It was possible that they intended to ask their questions and then remove it, but I didn't trust them any more than they trusted me, and there was no way I was going to hand them that much power.

"Perhaps his politeness caused you to misunderstand," smirked Si'janrii, raising his spear, "but it's not optional."

Si'chieen seemed to agree, grasping my hair and holding my head in place, exposing my neck.

Right... So, escape time then. The rope vanished with a muted pop as I invoked item box, then before anyone could react, I grabbed Si'janrii's spear just behind the tip with one hand, and the collar with the other, before they both popped out of existence too, vanishing from their respective owners' hands.

"Whu?" explained Ja'yakril as he jumped away from me, clearly alarmed.

"It tricked us!" exclaimed Si'janrii. "It took my spear! Hurry and kill it!"

Si'chieen wasn't in a great killing position, having been concentrating on holding me still. I took advantage by pulling a spider claw dagger out of my item box and plunging it into his wrist, causing him to let go very quickly.

"I really don't want to fight!" I exclaimed, backing away from the three of them, "but I'm not going to let you turn me into a slave."

"Pah," spat Si'janrii, drawing a long knife from his belt. "You should be thankful to us for letting you live at all."

Ja'yakril seemed to have recovered from his shock and was now staring at me with naked greed. "I've never seen anything like that before. She has the ability to erase anything she touches! No wonder she let you bind her; it had no effect on her to start with. It doesn't seem to work on living things though, or else she would have used it on Si'chieen."

That made me pause. I'd never actually tried item box on a monster. It could store my mossed shield, though. It wouldn't have worked on Si'chieen because of capacity constraints, but could I store a muncher?

"Not just that," muttered Si'chieen. "It stabbed me with something. Maybe retractable claws? Regardless, you'd better make this worth the trouble, old man."

"Oh, don't worry," answered Ja'yakril. "I'll give you a fair price for her. Given how unique she is, to do otherwise would be sacrilege. But we do need to collar her first, which is going to be hard if she keeps erasing my collars. We'll need to subdue her. Since her ability doesn't work on living things, let's give my pets a go at her. They fight with their bodies, so should render her abilities ineffective. I wouldn't want to cost you any more weapons."

Well, that confirmed it then. They were never interested in investigating the truth of my story to begin with, and they kept me alive only to sell me to some sort of monster collector. Now I quite happily could condemn them. This was no longer them being concerned and playing safe. Although, from the behaviour of the two guards, it did seem like they legitimately believed me to be a dangerous monster. If I was one of them, and it was one of those intelligent sadistic spiders in front of us, would I complain about enslaving it? How could a dungeon of monsters be so morally ambiguous?

Whatever, I didn't have time for debate. Ja'yakril didn't need words to summon his enslaved pets, and I could see movement all over as the collection of monsters surrounded us. The way they leapt over the fences served only to rub in that they stayed in their areas because they were told to, and not because the fences were any sort of barrier.

Most of them stopped in a ring at a fair distance, but one continued walking, only pausing once it was standing in front of the group of three fox-kin. An armadillo-like creature, slightly larger than it should be, but not so large as to be obviously monstrous. It was actually kinda cute.

"Please," called Ja'yakril. "I don't want to hurt you, and I don't want you to harm any of my precious pets, either. You can't possibly escape from here. Just let this little one give you a nip and you'll fall right to sleep. By the time you wake up, you'll be safe, and have nothing left to worry about. I'll take good care of you."

His obvious sincerity left me feeling sick. He really meant what he said.

"I'll fight to the death rather than let anyone enslave me," I said.

Well, I was going to die regardless... I'd already activated trigger respawn, after all. But if he wanted to give me more combat experience in the meantime, I wasn't going to get too annoyed. Maybe some of these unknown creatures could give me some resistance skills I don't have yet? Aside from the armadillo thing, which appraisal confirmed did have a venomous bite that knocked its prey unconscious, everything else was out of appraisal range, so I didn't know what they could do.

"A pity," he said, and he sounded very much like he meant that too.

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