Chapter 184 – Black Fortress Camp

Punk walked step by step across the land of Black Fort, where the soil had taken on a peculiar black-purple hue from being saturated with too much blood. His leather boots made a disgusting, sticky sound with each step.

Since spellcasters were ultimately fewer than combat professionals, most of those entering Black Fort were either hot-tempered evil-aligned warriors or Stalkers. Their gathering created an overwhelmingly noisy environment, with liquor bottles flying through the air like bullets. Frequently, muscular warriors covered in scars would inexplicably grapple and brawl with each other.

As he moved through the Black Fort Camp, Punk tilted his head slightly to dodge a liquor bottle flying at near-bullet speed, then stepped over several corpses on the ground. Meanwhile, Bloodclaw walked ahead laughing heartily, appearing to thoroughly enjoy the atmosphere of Black Fort Camp as an evil-aligned sorcerer.

“Hurry up, my robed friend. It’s getting late already. If we wait any longer, all the good slaves will be sold out.”

Bloodclaw casually pushed away a seductive woman who approached him while speaking to Punk without turning back.

Punk followed silently behind, curious to see this slave market that Bloodclaw praised so highly. After all, there was no need to worry about traps here.

He followed the light-footed Bloodclaw through the chaotically arranged tents. Along the way, at least five or six drunken combat professionals attempted to grope the female Golem No. 2 following behind Punk. Naturally, they all now lay on the ground with their heads shattered without exception.

These incidents gave Punk deeper insight into the level of chaos in Black Fort. Essentially, neither theft nor robbery received any attention here, likely because there were too many madmen who dared challenge Formal-Level Mages despite being only Apprentice Rank.

Yet Punk felt something was somewhat amiss about this place. A trading market this chaotic and lax didn’t seem to align with the interests of the Archmage who established it. However, Punk suppressed his speculation – he had been here for less than an hour, and the information he’d gathered wasn’t sufficient for basic reasoning.

After observing throughout the journey, Punk followed Bloodclaw to what he called the “Yubeika Livestock Cabin” that “often had quality slaves.”

Located at the center of Black Fort Camp, the wooden cabin’s spacious front yard was divided into three large sections. The leftmost area contained the lowest-grade slaves, whose living conditions were worse than some peasants’ cattle sheds. Most slaves here were barely alive commoners, including several coughing, sick elderly and disabled individuals.

These slaves were typically crammed dozens together in single cages sold as “bulk packages.” Slave buyers had to carefully check whether the slaves in the cages were still alive, as many no longer responded to external stimuli.

In contrast, the slaves in the central section received much better “treatment.” They at least had individual small cages for shelter and were mostly physically healthy. Aside from their depressed and lifeless mental state, they showed no superficial differences from ordinary free people.The slaves on the far right clearly belonged to the high-end category. Not only did they have cages decorated with numerous ornaments, but they were also dressed in lavish clothing. Most importantly, most of these slaves had extraordinary backgrounds. Punk noticed a young girl in a light pink dress whose placard introduced her as the former only daughter of a certain duke.

When Bloodclaw arrived, a heavily made-up Boss Lady with Formal-Level strength quickly emerged from the building:

“Oh~ my adorable vampire sweetheart, I’ve missed you to death!”

As the Boss Lady exaggeratedly swayed her body, streams of makeup powder continuously fell from her face. The low-level professional customers nearby endured their disgust and quickly moved away.

“Enough of that. I only like young, beautiful girls. You promised last time to save some high-quality merchandise for me. This time I’ve even brought you a wealthy client – you should give me a better discount, shouldn’t you?”

Bloodclaw lightly stepped aside to avoid the powder falling from the Boss Lady, laughing and joking before heading toward the high-end slave area on the far right.

“Oh my, how rude of me to neglect a guest! Young man over there, our shop recently acquired several beautiful fox tribe girls. Would you like to take a look?”

Only after Bloodclaw’s reminder did the Boss Lady seem to remember and turn her attention to Punk.

But Punk wouldn’t indulge the Boss Lady like Bloodclaw did. He completely ignored the high-end slave area on the right and went straight to the ordinary slave area in the middle.

In Punk’s calculations, buying slaves from the middle area was the most cost-effective. After all, the “corpses” on the left were already too close to being actual corpses and couldn’t be used for high-intensity experiments after purchase. As for those on the right… they were purely entertainment luxuries.

Seeing Punk show complete disdain for the dozens of beautiful women of various races and backgrounds in the high-end area, the Boss Lady pretended to sigh sorrowfully:

“Sigh~~ another mage who doesn’t appreciate romance…”

“How much for these ordinary slaves?”

Punk asked.

“Three Gold Coins for males, five for females.”

The Boss Lady seemed to know her sales pitch would be ineffective, so she didn’t bother saying more, instead sticking close to Bloodclaw and chattering incessantly.

Punk ignored Bloodclaw, who was already captivated by the flock of beauties, and carefully examined the slaves in the middle area.

Price-wise, slaves in the black market were generally about twice as expensive as those from legitimate channels. Moreover, most of these slaves were illegal – meaning they were still considered free citizens under Dillon Kingdom’s laws, and black market slave traders wouldn’t take any responsibility for the slaves or buyers after the sale.

Even though the prices were somewhat exploitative, Punk still decided to buy as many as possible. On one hand, money wasn’t an issue for him, and on the other hand, Punk didn’t want to stay longer than necessary in this eerie “Black Fort.”

His special soul’s intuition told Punk that everything about Black Fort definitely wasn’t due to poor management by the Archmage – Silver Staff. The waters here ran deeper than anyone could imagine.

But… would everything go this smoothly?Punk’s objective was to select experimental subjects, so his pace was naturally far quicker than Bloodclaw’s method of “appreciating” each girl one by one. In fact, after verifying that these slaves were relatively healthy, Punk directly placed a large order with the Boss Lady.

Upon hearing that Punk wanted to purchase all over a hundred slaves present in one go and pay the full amount immediately, both the Boss Lady and Bloodclaw were astonished. Although five to six hundred Gold Coins meant little to a Formal-Level powerhouse, it was exceedingly rare to encounter a mage like Punk who would buy hundreds of slaves at once.

After all, generally only those crazed perverts obsessed with human modification or evil god sacrifices would do such a thing. Punk’s actions naturally surprised the two members of the evil Lawful faction.

However, their reaction was merely surprise. On a road leading to the “Yubeika Livestock Cabin,” a burly fellow was experiencing sheer “shock and fury”!

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(End of Chapter)