“What happened to me?” Riven coughed, dust coating his tongue. “Where am I? Why is there dust in my mouth? I need to move.” As he tried to stir, he realized his hands and legs were bound by chains.
“Riven, are you okay? Do you feel good?”
“Yeah, jack is that you? where are we? why are we in this carriage? What happened to the middle town?”
Jack helped Riven to sit down. Riven breathed heavily, and pain dragged a scream out of him.
Jack started to tell him, “yeah it’s me Riven. don't you remember what happened? We were attacked by bandits. They were more powerful than normal bandits. They looted the middle town and caught us.”
“Jack, how can they capture you? And what's that tattoo on your hand? I never see that on your hand,” Riven asked curiously.
Jack looked at the tattoo, and said “you know that I am not a fighting touched still I tried my best fight them if they don’t have a channel or multiple level surface people then I can’t at lest protect all of you.” jack took a deep breath, “it’s a slave seal. Riven we become slave.”
The word landed, and Riven's expression froze. Color drained from his face, eyes widening just a fraction. His mouth opened, as if to argue, but nothing came. His gaze slipped past Jack, unfocused. That can’t be right. “Jack, you are lying to me. Are you kidding me, right?”
Jack shook his head, “look at your left hand, you also have this tattoo.”
Riven stared at his left hand, a whisper escaping his lips: “It can’t be. Why? Why me? What about my future? What will happen to me? Jack, Jack, do something! You’re a surface-level touched!”
Jack took a deep breath, his voice heavy. “I can’t. I already tried, but I failed. They put a strong seal on us. I can’t even feel mana inside me. I feel like I’ve become a normal human, just like you. They’re too strong to be mere Sol-mar bandits. They even have channels and an imprint on them. It feels like an entire Sol-mar clan is behind this.”
Suddenly, the carriage lurched to a halt, throwing Riven off balance and onto Jack. Both cried out in pain. From outside, shouts erupted, warning of an approaching wave of monsters.
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“Boss, there are multiple Rank 2 monsters in the wave. I think there are five of them.”
“Tell Alpha and Beta to handle two of them. I’ll take care of two, and the rest will fight the last one to protect the goods from damage.”
“Boss, there’s a surface-level magus among the goods. Should we use him?”
“There’s no need to use him. His price will drop. It’s better to let him recover; we’ll get a better price then.”
“Understood, Boss.”
Listening to the conversation outside, Riven lost his composure. “Did I really lose my freedom? Did I truly become a product to them? Why? Why me?”
“Riven, Riven, calm down. You need to calm down,” Jack said, trying to comfort him.
“I can’t, Jack, I can’t! Did you hear what they were saying? We’re not human to them; we’re just products!”
“Yeah, I heard,” Jack replied, his gaze falling to the ground as silent tears began to stream down his face. “All this time, they kept saying they were lucky to have me, that they’d get a good price for me.”
Suddenly, something slammed into the carriage, tearing through a section of it. The impact sent Jack tumbling out.
For the first time in his life, Riven saw a monster. He sat there in stunned silence, his mind struggling to process what he was seeing. What was that ugly thing? Then, a jolt of realization: “Jack! Jack!” he yelled, panic rising in his voice. But there was no response, no matter how much he screamed. Jack never replied. At that moment, something fell from the monster’s mouth. Riven looked at the object and saw Jack’s hand.
“Noooo! You fucking monster, do you know what you just did?!” With that, the boss slashed at the monster’s head.
The monster dodged the attack, attempting to flee. In its escape, it further destroyed the carriage. Alpha and Beta arrived, attacking the monster together and finally killing it.
The boss approached the monster’s dead body, then angrily turned to his underling. “Ay! Go check the condition of the goods.”
Alpha and Beta approached the boss and asked, “What should we do?”
The underling returned, reporting, “Boss, everyone got injured.”
Upon hearing this, the boss’s face darkened. Alpha asked, “Are you okay?”
The boss glared at him. “Do I look okay to you? Don’t you know how much we’re suffering right now? We just lost a chunk of gold! Don’t you know our financial condition? And why did we even take this commission? We lost a huge amount of it. Those arenas were going to pay a fortune for that piece of sh*t to be eaten. Now every piece of sh*t has been injured. We’ll have to sell them at a discount. Take them and put all of them in the other carriage.”
“Okay, Boss.”
Witnessing and hearing everything, Riven lost all hope. He couldn’t process what had happened to him. He didn’t know what to do, how to survive, or what his future held. He couldn’t even process Jack’s death; it felt as if Jack was still with him. He hadn’t been intimately familiar with Jack, but as a touched individual, Jack had always been friendly. He had even helped Riven impress Maya a few times. Now, that person had been eaten alive right before his eyes, and Riven had been powerless to save him. It felt as if the world itself had crashed down upon him. He didn’t even know if he would be alive to see the sun tomorrow. Gazing at the deserts, he understood his life had irrevocably changed. He was no longer a free man. Now, his existence was dictated by another’s will, no longer his own. As a free man, this was an incredibly difficult truth to accept. “If I ever get a chance in my life, I will kill the bastard who is behind this incident. Whoever he is, I will come for you. Just pray I don’t get killed before I do.”
Two days passed in a blur, and now they stood before a city. At its gate, large letters spelled out ‘Dome of Dust.’ Seeing this, they all knew their future would be decided here.
