Doubtlessly, he was here on another get-rich-quick scheme—but still, he was of noble blood. Mjöllmile had checked into him enough to know that for a fact, so he couldn’t just show him the door on sight. That sort of behavior could lead to lèse-majesté, and then he’d have to worry less about his financial ledgers and more about his life. It made the job tricky for him, to say the least.
Ah, here we go again. The two of us, trying to outfox each other…
So Mjöllmile heard him out—and just as he thought, the story made him wish he’d hidden under the table. This man (the Viscount Cazac was his name) was seeking a financial investment so he could use slaves to open a shop for him. The merchant saw, to be brutally frank, no chance that it would ever succeed. Employing attractive female slaves wouldn’t be nearly enough to make the business work. Cazac needed to thoroughly analyze the market, his client base, and his potential location, not to mention employee costs.
Telling him all this, of course, was like explaining calculus to a pig.
“Huhhh? Why can’t you decide on a location for me? And you speak of employee costs? Now what sort of fool pays their slaves?!”
The viscount wasn’t interested in hearing any of Mjöllmile’s objections. “Payment” wasn’t exactly what he meant, only that slaves need food like anyone else. And clothing, and a place to sleep. Not to mention the up-front costs for them would be far from trivial. If you wanted a slave attractive enough to catch the eye of most people, the money you’d need to expend on the search could buy you a decent house. It’d be a far more effective use of funding to just hire part-time staff, much like Mjöllmile did with the public-fronting stores he ran in Englesia.
As he saw it, all beauties age over time, and thus it was too difficult to make back your investment on forced labor in situations like that. If you were aiming for quick profits running a sexually themed establishment, you needed to be even more careful laying the foundations, or else your place would become a hive of disease—which, again, would make both Cazac and Mjöllmile criminals.
The merchant sighed to himself. There was no way in this lifetime that he’d ever accept such a hazardous proposal.
“Yes, indeed, my good viscount, you have a discerning eye. I must take my hat off to your wisdom. However, regarding the slaves you mention, I fear it may be difficult to procure them at this time, would it not? Human trafficking is banned in this kingdom, and even if you turn to the illegal trade, I fear you may not find the quality you are looking for, you see.”
He tried his best to make his rejection sound as inoffensive as possible. It didn’t work.
“Ah…well, about that. I actually have an in. I’ll tell you about it, too, if you’re willing to invest. But you know, I have to keep this discreet… All I’ll say for now is that there’s a certain elf in the picture.”
The way Cazac never missed an opportunity to put on airs rankled Mjöllmile, but he had the willpower to retain his composure. A master merchant like him could never physically reveal his disdain for his customers. Anyone who did was below third-rate in this trade and incapable of ever pinning down a large-scale deal.
But this elf-slave talk piqued Mjöllmile’s interest. If he was telling the truth, that was beyond a luxury commodity. But even before that, Mjöllmile was a man with some influence in the underground, running a not-so-legal outfit and not afraid to engage in some dirty work now and again, albeit no more than he knew he could get away with. That was why he instructed his staff in this outfit to never stray past that one, final line in their work, even though he knew he’d get off scot-free as their boss either way.
Mjöllmile knew full well just how dangerous elven slaves were.
An elf? Only serious organized crime would get mixed up in that!
Elves were exceptionally long-lived. Many boasted mesmerizing beauty. They were intelligent, and most of them were well versed in magic. If an elf had been enslaved, it must have taken some extremely underhanded means. Enslaving an elven citizen of the kingdom was impossible— So did they find one hiding in the forest, or…?
Mjöllmile had an idea what this could be. He had heard about monster hunts, where rich people seeking exotic pets hired hunters to capture monsters in the forest. But if a demi-human had been snared by one of these hunters—and an elf, no less—quite a few nations would never let that go by without comment. The Dwarven Kingdom would immediately look into it, and the Sorcerous Dynasty of Thalion was even ruled by an elf. If word of this got out, it’d be a huge controversy. This wasn’t a small-time pickpocket or fraud; it was the kind of thing that could trigger an international standoff.
If he was dealing with a noble with no qualms about sticking his hand into the fire like this… There had to be something backing him up. Something huge, fearsome, and not afraid to kill for profit. Mjöllmile’s nose told him that getting involved would be dangerous.
His mind raced, thinking of a good excuse to turn down Cazac’s offer. He came up with nothing. But just as he was at his wit’s end:
“Yooooo! Mollie! Doing well?”
Someone opened the door and stepped right into their meeting, a beautiful young girl (or boy?) with golden eyes and silver hair that had a tinge of blue.
“Who are you, and how dare you interrupt my important business meeting?!”
As Cazac bellowed at the boy, Mjöllmile realized who the intruder was, stunned. There was no way he could forget that face, the face of the champion who’d saved his life—the demon lord Rimuru himself. He knew this was the leader of that nation of monsters, and hearing he had
