Later, on the gateway inside the first town in Velithra, four guards saw a man carrying a kid from a distance. The man looked as if he was soaked in blood, along with the kid he was carrying.
This man was the archer. And the kid was none other than Hajime himself. One of the guards approached the archer coming up to the gate.
At the gate, there were a lot of people coming and going into the Velithra. Everyone seemed too busy to notice the man and Hajime approaching.
"Stop right there!" The guard, approaching, barked.
The archer stopped, his face looked as if he was in a great amount of pain, and Hajime seemed lifeless cause there was no motion coming from him. And with the blood, it was hard for the guard to see his face properly.
"... Please, help!" The archer cried out.
"Who are you?! And what's your business here?" Suspicious, the guard asked.
"I... I am an adventurer, and we need someone who can help us." The archer said, his eyes filled with deception, but the guard didn't notice; he was busy staring at Hajime. His friends were still at the gate, just watching while helping other people with their businesses.
"Do you have any proof that you are an adventurer?" The guard with the man asked as his attention shifted, facing the man.
"... Yes... Here," said the archer, pulling out a bronze necklace.
"Let me see that?" The guard said, taking the necklace from the man. He still had his doubts that the man in front of him was an adventurer. He glanced at the necklace with caution, without knowing that the archer was handling a small dagger under Hajime.
'C'mon, you fool, can't you do your inspection later?' The archer thought as he glinted his teeth, while looking at the guard with the anticipation of killing him.
"Okay, you may go ahead. But I am keeping this with me till you get back." The guard said as he looked at the man.
"Thank you, kind sir." The archer said, passing the guard, his eyes forward to his next destination.
"I wonder if he was telling the truth." The guard muttered.
"A bronze adventurer at his age. How strange?" He wondered while looking at the necklace as he started to move towards the gate.
At the gate, the man passed through with Hajime without a single question from the other guards. Everyone stationed there turned their attention to him. Some felt a pang of sympathy, while others were disgusted by the blood covering both the man and the child. A few were simply confused; they had never seen anyone so badly injured in their lives.
Moments after passing through the gate, he slipped into a dark alley, noting that everyone had returned to their business.
"That was painful. Next time I come across that bastard, I'll finish him. I hope he burns in hell," he muttered, cursing under his breath.
From a distance, not far from where he was, there was a shabby-looking building that looked like it had been out of business for a while. And this building was the location where the man was headed with Hajime. There were a lot of slave carriages outside this building, but they were all empty.
The archer just went straight inside without bothering to see who was around. He didn't notice that there was a fancy-looking carriage standing at a distance near this building.
"I'm telling you, these are the only slaves that I'm left with." A man's voice echoed throughout the whole building. His voice sounded like he was intimidated by something.
"Hello!" The archer called out. But immediately, the man whose voice had just echoed earlier heard him and said to whoever he was with. "See, another one has just gotten here."
The man stepped out of a large room, its entrance draped with grimy white cotton. He was short and unassuming, the kind of person no one would suspect of running a slave market. His name was Lyraeus Vox.
"You're already here?" He asked.
"Were you just talking to someone?" Curious, the archer replied with a question.
"That's none of your business. Do you have the thing I asked?"
The thing he was talking about was more slaves, whom the archer and his friend, who had been killed earlier, had promised Lyraeus to bring him. Then Lyraeus noticed something; his gaze focused on the archer and Hajime.
"Where is the big guy?" He asked, his tone filled with curiosity.
"Oh, him. He's no longer with us."
"You see, this kid killed him when we were on our way here, and I had to luff him up a bit to prevent giving him a chance of slipping away. " He explained, looking at Lyraeus, while still carrying Hajime.
"But he looks dead?"
Hajime flinched; the chain tied to his leg showed itself.
"Hmm, interesting," Lyraeus muttered with interest, touching his chin.
The archer, unaware of what Lyraeus was interested in, set Hajime down on the floor. The floor was dusty and had some blood stains on it.
"So, how much are you willing to pay?" he asked, looking at Lyraeus with anticipation.
Lyraeus looked at Hajime and the archer. He looked disappointed, hardly the reaction of someone trying to purchase more slaves.
"Where are the others?" Lyraeus asked with a blunt expression.
"What do you mean?"
Lyraeus cleared his throat and started heading towards the exit at a slow pace. The archer kept quiet for a moment, as his eyes traced every step that Lyraeus took.
He suddenly stopped, as if he had noticed something by the exit. His right eye twitched for a moment before he turned back to face the man.
"I thought you said you would be bringing more today?"
The archer replied. "Yeah, but there was a change in plans, because the place we were going to raid had been surrounded with knights armed with strange weapons we had never seen before."
Hajime suddenly woke up; he had been conscious all that time the man had carried him through the gate. His vision was hazy, cause a fair amount of blood was distorting it.
...Where am? He wondered in silence.
He couldn't grasp the situation he was in, and he could only hear the voices of the two in front of him.
His body felt cold, and his hands had become numb. He couldn't feel anything aside from the blood rushing through his veins. His heartbeat rate slightly became high, as if it was about to pop out of his chest.
As he was about to stand up, he noticed something off. And it was that he couldn't control his legs to move.
My legs... I can't feel my legs.
Desperate to stand, he shifted one of his numb hands and placed it on the floor to use as balance, but in that split second, an insane amount of pain stung the joints of his hand, making him tumble. It was like the connection between him and his body was severed.
"So, how much are you going to give me?" The man with Lyraeus continued with their conversation. They hadn't noticed Hajime's awakening yet. They were too busy discussing his going price.
"I'll give you fifty silver veyr, give or take."
"Silver?" The man, surprised, asked.
"Yes, and you seem to know the reason why."
The archer looked at him with confusion in his eyes as Lyraeus started to move towards Hajime while he continued talking.
"You brought me a half-dead kid, which would be tough to sell for marketing, when earlier we discussed you and your good-for-nothing friend to bring me at least thirty new working slaves, and not one or two, which I would have given you at least a thousand veyr for each one I liked."
He swallowed and continued.
"But since you were both idiots who couldn't think for yourselves... You, you bring me this!" he pointed at Hajime.
"What did you say, old man?" Serious and furious, the archer asked.
Calling him an idiot and brainless, the man's mood completely flipped. But Lyraeus kept his calm and just ignored the archer's awakened mood.
"Take what I am offering you or leave with your baggage." Looking at him, he said while putting his left hand in his pocket.
The archer didn't reply, even though he knew that a beat-up kid wouldn't fetch a reasonable price. And of all the rotten luck in the world, he just happened to have a slave who was only worth one night at the public club in his region.
He bit his lower lip and looked at Hajime. He then released a deep breath and said, "You know what. I'm done caring."
Suddenly, a man came out of the same room that Lyraeus was in.
"What seems to be the problem, gentlemen?" He asked.
He had dark blue hair with several white stripes lined across it.
Lyraeus turned to face the man, a hint of nervousness in his expression.