The woman wore a light blue off-shoulder dress. Her long golden hair fell over her shoulders, and it was as if she had no awareness of her situation at all. A faint, gentle smile still rested on her face.
"Bring her out. I want a closer look."
Blake gestured casually. The shop owner, who had already been kneeling at the entrance, scrambled inside and soon brought the blonde woman out. The two of them knelt together in front of Blake.
"What is your name?"
The woman kept her head bowed, not daring to look directly at him.
"Lord Celestial Dragon, my name is Stella."
"Stella, huh…"
Blake repeated the name under his breath. By then, he had already remembered who the woman in front of him was.
Even though Stella had only appeared in a movie, and even then only in flashbacks, Blake's impression of her was deep. No wonder that after she had stepped out of two dimensions into three, he still felt she looked familiar.
In his memories of the original story, Gild Tesoro and Stella had met through music when they were young. Tesoro worked himself to the bone to earn enough money to buy her freedom from a slave trader, only for a Celestial Dragon to show up just as he was about to succeed, intending to purchase Stella as well.
Stella was bought by that Celestial Dragon, treated as private property, and subjected to inhuman torment. In just three short years, she died.
Before she died, she told Tesoro that she was happy simply because he had existed.
That experience had pushed Gild Tesoro down the path of darkness, until he became the Golden Emperor, a man who controlled twenty percent of the world's wealth.
Of course, that was not the main reason Stella stood out so strongly in Blake's mind.
The real reason was the famous painting she left behind when she was taken away.
In that picture, Stella wore a soft blue dress. The hem of the skirt rippled like water, adding a chill, melancholic air to her figure that contrasted sharply with the pallor of her face.
Her golden hair was lifted gently by the sea breeze. Threads of light seemed to catch at the ends, as if the dying sun had gilded her strands in amber.
There was a collar around her neck. The rope attached to it was held in the Celestial Dragon's hand. The metal bit into her throat, yet there was still a smile on her lips.
It was a smile that bordered on reverent. Her eyes were half closed, as if murmuring a prayer, or as if savoring the caress of the wind brushing past her ear.
There was no hatred on her face. Only a gentle, almost sacred softness. As if pain, humiliation, shackles, all of it, no longer mattered.
The first time Blake had seen that image, the sense of something broken inside it hit him like a hammer. Even after all these years, he still remembered the feeling vividly.
The Stella before him still kept her head lowered, so he could not see her expression.
Blake spoke slowly.
"This slave is not bad. I will take her."
He waved a hand behind him. A maid quickly stepped forward, joy practically bubbling off the shop owner as she pulled him aside to discuss the price.
For the shop owner, any connection, no matter how small, with a Celestial Dragon was enough to profit from for a lifetime.
"Remove her collar."
Blake gave the order. One of the CP agents reached out and drew his hand through the air. The collar snapped open and clattered to the ground.
Despite how they were portrayed as half-comedic in the original story, every CP agent was a carefully selected combat genius. Plenty of pirates with bounties in the hundreds of millions would not necessarily win against one in a straight fight.
It was just that the opponents CP usually faced were monsters among monsters. That was the only reason they looked like glorified background characters.
Being able to take Stella home on this trip already left Blake quite satisfied. He was planning to return to Mary Geoise before nightfall.
Blake understood perfectly well what Celestial Dragons represented in this world. Until his strength reached at least the level of an elite Marine Vice Admiral, he had no intention of wandering casually around the open sea. That would make him feel far too unsafe.
Once he reached elite vice admiral level, only a handful of people, such as the Four Emperors or members of the Seven Warlords of the Sea, would be able to seriously threaten him.
And by that stage, those pirates were no longer reckless hotheads. They understood that opposing a Celestial Dragon was a huge risk with very little reward. They would usually go out of their way to stay clear.
Not long after the Sanctum sailed away from the Sabaody Archipelago, back in Grove 16, Tesoro stood in front of the shop's floor-to-ceiling window in a daze, staring at the spot where Stella had once been. In her place now stood a slave he did not recognize.
"Congratulations, Ralph. I did not expect the quality of your slaves to be so high that even a Celestial Dragon would come in person."
"Please, please, you flatter me…"
Listening to Ralph's falsely modest chuckling, Tesoro felt his heart sink to the bottom of his chest.
He lunged at Ralph like a madman, grabbed him by the collar, and roared in his face.
"What did you just say? Where did Stella go?"
Ralph jumped at the sudden outburst. Seeing the bloodshot rage in Tesoro's eyes made his heart skip in panic.
Then anger surged up to bury his fear. Some lowly wretch dared grab him like this and shout in his face, even making him lose face in front of all his peers.
"Someone, seize him!"
Slave traders were all sinister and vicious by nature, and they kept whole gangs of slave hunters under their control.
The moment Ralph spoke, a group of burly men emerged from behind him. Without a word, they rushed Tesoro and pinned him to the floor.
Ralph ground his heel against Tesoro's head.
"You want to know where that girl went. Fine. I will tell you. She was bought by a noble Celestial Dragon. Someone like you could never comprehend the greatness of the Celestial Dragons, but you can at least experience what it feels like to be a slave. Take him away."
Even without coming face-to-face with a Celestial Dragon, Tesoro still ended up walking the same path as in the original fate.
Fate truly had a strange sense of humor.
By then, Blake had already returned to Mary Geoise. Naturally, he knew nothing of what happened afterward.
Even if he had known, he would not have cared.
Because of some things he had experienced in his previous life, Blake had developed an almost extreme fixation on the idea of "mind your own business and do not worry about anyone else's troubles."
He knew very well that his sense of empathy was thinner than most people's. That was also a key reason he was able to adapt so quickly to the identity of a Celestial Dragon.
Two lifetimes had still not changed the core color of his personality.
Similarly, Blake had never once thought about changing the world. His only plan was to pick up the scraps after Nika and Imu finished their war.
"There is not that much in this world that needs fixing. As long as the one sitting on the Empty Throne is replaced with me, it will be perfect."
When he returned to his estate, the maids led Stella away to have the brand of the so-called "Hoof of the Soaring Dragon" burned into her. Blake sat back, enjoying singing and dancing while eating his one hundred-course dinner.
When it came to Stella, Blake was indeed very interested.
To him, most of the people around him were nameless NPCs who had never even been given a line in the original. Now that someone with an actual name and story had appeared, of course he would pay more attention.
There was no rush, though. Stella might be smiling constantly on the surface, but inside she was surely uneasy. Better to leave her alone for a while and let her calm down.
Blake was not exactly the same as those sadistic Celestial Dragons. At the very least, he did not intend to use tormenting slaves as entertainment.
After dinner, Blake took a walk around the courtyard to stretch his legs. He ordered the guards to let the newly acquired mermaid live in the swimming pool for now, then instructed them to inform the craftsmen to start building a gigantic fish tank.
Blake had a feeling that his manor would be seeing a lot more mermaids in the future.
After giving out all his orders, he finally returned to his room and lay down on the bed.
"System, activate."