Holy Galarc Kingdom, Quain Town.
In a dark and damp underground passage, a blond youth in a pristine white priest's robe, holding a magic staff in his hand, slowly followed the short and fat slave merchant.
"Priest Lucian, what kind of beast slave are you looking to buy?"
The slave merchant asked the blond youth as he moved forward.
The blond youth's eyes flickered; after a moment of thought, he said, "The slave will be my assistant. The church is a sacred place that serves the gods and doesn't tolerate any kind of impurity. She must be a virgin."
"Hmm, that makes sense." The slave merchant agreed with the blond youth.
Only pure maidens were qualified to join the church.
The blond youth's name was Lucian Whiteley, twenty-one years old this year and an Apprentice Priest at the Quain Town's Holy Church. He was mainly responsible for preaching.
Yesterday, Lucian unlocked a cheat called the Strongest Supporting System, which rewarded him for completing various system missions.
Lucian's first mission was to form a contract with a beast slave.
The two walked towards the deepest part of the dungeon, where the environment was damp and dimly lit and the air had a strange smell of sweat mixed with filth.
The stingy slave merchant was unwilling to even spend money to clean the slaves' quarters to save costs.
Small single rooms were built on both sides of the passage, where human and beast slaves were imprisoned.
The slave merchant stopped in front of an iron door and opened the small window on it. "Prist Lucian, what do you think of her?"
Lucian peered through the small window, where he saw a scrawny girl was curled up in the corner of the dungeon.
She had squinting eyes with single eyelids, a large square face and a pair of pointed grey fox ears on top of her head.
She was a fox girl.
"This one is too thin and weak. She doesn't have the strength to work. Let's look at another one."
The slave merchant continued to lead Lucian forward and stopped in front of another iron door. He opened the small window on it and asked, "How about this one?"
Lucian looked inside; a slender black-haired girl sat against the wall, disheveled, with a pair of fluffy black cat ears among her dark long hair and a long black cat tail wrapped around her waist.
"How old is she?"
"Nineteen."
"Let's see her first."
The slave merchant took out a key and opened the small room's iron door.
The two walked into the small room.
As someone entered, the cat girl immediately became alert; the fur on her cat ears and tail stood up and she bared her teeth. Her eyes were fierce.
"You still dare to bare your teeth?"
The slave merchant took a leather whip from his waist and whipped it in the air.
Crack!
A crisp sound.
The cat girl instinctively shrank her neck.
This was a conditioned reflex, indicating that she had been whipped more than once on the way here.
Faced with the slave merchant's whip, the cat girl hugged her knees with her arms and curled into a ball. Her eyes filled with fear, as if to say—please don't hit me.
Just as the slave merchant was about to whip the cat girl, Lucian raised his hand to stop him, "Don't hit her."
Glaring fiercely at the catgirl, the slave merchant put away his whip.
Lucian walked up to the cat girl and said, "Please stand up and let me see you."
Daring not to resist, she stood up, revealing her bare feet, slender legs and a tall figure.
Although she was disheveled, it couldn't hide her extremely high attractiveness. If she were to be cleaned up and dressed, she would have a promising future.
"I'll take this one. How much?"
"This cat girl is not only young and beautiful but also a virgin, without any injuries or disabilities. So the price is quite expensive, one hundred gold coins."
(1 gold coin = 100 silver coins = 10,000 copper coins)
In a small western border town like Quain Town, the average annual income was around three gold coins, so one hundred gold coins was a large sum for ordinary people.
The slave merchant was worried that Lucian might think the price was too high, so he started to explain the situation to Lucian—reassuring him that you get what you pay for.
"Alright, I'll buy her!"
Lucian bought her without hesitation.
Anyway, this money was coming from the Church and any money saved by bargaining wouldn't be his own.
"You are truly a generous person, Priest Lucian."
Rarely encountering customers who didn't bargain, the slave merchant beamed with joy, his fat face revealing two large front teeth like a groundhog.
"Let's make an IOU first and I'll pay you after I get reimbursed."
One hundred gold coins was not a small sum and Lucian didn't have that much cash on hand.
"No problem."
The slave merchant easily agreed to extend credit to Lucian.
Everyone in Quain Town knew that Lucian was an Apprentice Priest at the town's Holy Church.
Clergy members belonged to the privileged class in Holy Galarc Kingdom, a religious country, with a social status comparable to that of high-ranking nobles.
Becoming a Priest of the Holy Church was the dream of every young person in Holy Galarc Kingdom. Among the women in the country, there was even a saying: they would rather marry an ordinary Priest than a wealthy merchant with millions in assets.
Therefore, offering credit to a Priest carried very little risk.
"Little kitty, what's your name?"
With a smile on his face, Lucian approached the cat girl and asked in the gentlest voice possible.
Wary of Lucian, the cat girl lowered her head and remained silent.
"Her name is Anna," the slave merchant introduced.
"Let's sign the contract first."
Beasts were stronger than humans, so they had to be bound by a slave contract to prevent them from harming their master.
Lucian certainly didn't want to be killed by his own slave in the middle of the night.
The three left the dungeon and went to a room on the second floor of the slave shop.
An old man with white hair dressed in a black robe was sitting leisurely at a desk in the room reading a book.
The slave merchant pushed the door open and said to the old man, "Garran, sign a slave contract for this guest and the slave."
The old man was a magician working for the slave merchant, specialized in signing master-servant contracts between slaves and masters.
He put down the book in his hand, took out a golden contract document from a drawer, picked up a quill pen and wrote some mysterious runes on the contract document.
Then he took out two knives and walked in front of Lucian and the cat girl.
An old voice sounded, "Just cut your finger and put your bloody fingerprint on the contract document."
Lucian took the knife, cut his index finger and pressed his fingerprint in the "Master" section at the lower right corner of the contract document.
The cat girl took the knife with a hesitant expression. Signing the slave contract meant that she would be at the mercy of the slave owner for the rest of her life and would lose her freedom forever.
"Sign it quickly or do you want to be whipped again?" the slave trader urged fiercely.
Accepting her fate, the cat girl cut her finger with the knife and left a fingerprint in the "Slave" section at the lower left corner of the contract document.
The old man took the document and chanted an unknown magic spell.
Instantly, the golden contract document turned into countless golden light particles and flew into the bodies of Lucian and the cat girl.
Immediately afterwards, a blood-red contract mark appeared on the back of the cat girl's hand.