Chapter 275: "Scythe

"Ron, stop scaring him," Liya said, walking over with her longbow in hand. She looked the man up and down—he was big and burly, yet always acted like the victim. "My tavern happens to need a cook. I might as well just take him off your hands."

"Mom?!" Aive’s eyes flew wide. "Didn’t you hear what Silvia said? He’s a murderous maniac!"

"Hah, a murderous maniac?" The former longbowman scoffed. "To me, he’s nothing more than a little brat."

The Elf seemed completely unconcerned about Baka’s "glorious deeds." "Luring helpless, ordinary people into the back of a kitchen, killing them, and turning them into meals... What kind of maniac is that? I wouldn’t have even stooped to playing such childish games back when I was still a kid."

Liya walked up to Baka and slammed a fist onto the cannibal chef’s shoulder. "But I stopped doing that sort of thing a long time ago. So if you’re willing to come with me to Rose City, you’ll have to stick to making proper dishes, understand?"

"Y-yes! My Lady, as long as you spare my life, I’ll do whatever you say!" Baka bobbed his head emphatically. When Liya’s fist had connected with his shoulder, he thought his bones were going to shatter.

’This is an Elf? *This* is an Elf?!’ He had cooked with Elves before, but those ’ingredients’ were hardly different from regular humans!

"Lady Liya once participated in the siege of the Hailan Empire as a longbowman," Ron added, as if casually warning Baka. "And Elves aren’t generally considered adults until they’re a hundred years old, so you’d best take what she says seriously."

’A hundred years old?’ Baka’s lip twitched. ’It’s been over a hundred years since the Hailan Empire fell! Doesn’t that mean this female Elf is at least two hundred years old?’

’By that math, even if she only killed one person a year, she would have killed more people than I have in my entire life!’

For a moment, Baka didn’t know whether he should be relieved or terrified. ’This lady is from Rose City, so it should be a simple matter for her to save me from a trial in Carolina. But is working for her really a good choice?’

But even as Baka weighed his options, the situation was completely out of his control. After much deliberation, he swore an oath and signed an employment contract, dedicating the rest of his life to the Night Wind Tavern. He pledged to cook only conventional cuisine and never again engage in his former... activities.

"I’d rather have just killed him," Ron said with a shrug. "But since this is what Aunt Liya wants, I’ll go along with it."

"You should have just killed him," Daniel whispered, leaning in close to Ron. "Now it’ll be much harder for me to use our patrons as an excuse."

"You’re a distinguished member of the Rose Council, for goodness’ sake. What are you doing spending all day slaving over a hot stove?" Liya shot a glance at her husband. "I hear the normal dishes at his restaurant were actually quite good. He should be able to free you up."

Daniel didn’t say a word, just shot Baka an aggrieved look that made the chef’s hair stand on end. ’This poet is looking for a chance to kill me, I just know it!’

With a lord from the Rose Council vouching for him, the Carolina patrol that arrived later naturally turned a blind eye and let Baka go. They merely seized his restaurant and his thugs to serve as scapegoats. Predictably, a new batch of high-priced slaves would soon be hitting the market in Carolina.

But none of that mattered to Ron and his companions anymore. They had only one final piece of business to attend to: the instructor who had abused Seymour.

For one, because of the strange Elf Seymour’s group had encountered, Ron and the others decided not to act rashly. They chose to lay low for a while and make their move just before they were set to leave. For another, the slave instructors in Carolina were generally reclusive, and Ron hadn’t been able to find a suitable excuse to get close to their target. As a result, the matter dragged on for nearly a week before an opportunity finally presented itself.

"I’ve finally made a breakthrough with our contacts in Carolina," Quest said, knocking on Ron’s door one day. "Tomorrow morning, we can use the pretense of an ’observation’ to see the instructor. It’ll be at a quarry outside the city."

"A quarry?" Ron paused. "Shouldn’t it be at a training ground? You must have misheard."

"He’s not wrong," Seymour said, following Quest into the room. "A slave is still a slave, after all. Only someone like me, who already had real skills and performed exceptionally in the assessments, could escape hard labor by becoming something like a Death Squad reservist. The other slaves, even those chosen for training, still have to put in eight hours of manual labor every day."

"Eight hours? Then how long do you train?"

"Eight hours," Seymour said, fiddling with his dagger. "Eight hours of hard labor, eight hours of training, eight hours of rest. But since the instructors and foremen are always trying to stay on schedule, they often shave time off that last eight hours and add it to the first two. It’s usually not much, maybe four or five hours."

"They have to leave at least four hours," Quest interjected. "It’s supposedly a rule from the days of the Hailan Empire that slaves must be guaranteed four hours of rest—but in reality, most races other than Elves and Undead Creatures need far more than that."

"Even as slaves, Elves are considered ’first-class slaves’," Seymour said with a cynical smile. "I have my surface-dwelling cousins’ efforts to thank for that."

"But the instructor I want revenge on is a sadist. The slaves under his command don’t even get four hours of meditation time, and they’re constantly being interrupted." As he spoke, the hatred in the Zor’s voice was almost palpable. "If you can kill him, you’d be doing all the slaves in Carolina a great kindness."

"What’s his name?" Ron asked, setting down the Spellbook he’d confiscated from the Necromancer’s home. "I’ve happened to learn a few new tricks these past few days. As long as I know a target’s true name, I can place a curse on them to a certain extent."

"Unfortunately, nobody knows his true name," Quest said with a resigned smile. "Most of these instructors are former bandits and chieftains who were recruited. Even their entries in Carolina’s official registries only list their monikers."

"Take this soon-to-be-dead instructor, for example. The name he’s registered under is ’Scythe’."

"Scythe?"

"That’s right. His weapon of choice is a giant scythe. He was supposedly a hired hand on a farmstead who, for some reason, killed the owner and became an outlaw. When Carolina started recruiting slave instructors, the man used the opportunity to wipe his slate clean. Even I haven’t been able to dig up any more details."

"So trying to cause trouble for him from here is likely out of the question. But... didn’t you confiscate that Erosion Gemstone from Henry Robertson’s Mage Tower? Why not give that a try?"

"That?"

As one, the eyes of Ron and the others fell upon the desk, where a Gemstone radiating a powerful Magic Radiance lay silently in the shadow of a stack of books.