"While it sounds like it a fairly good deal, you seemed to forget that I have my own uses for them. Did you think I could bring prosperity to this place if people learned that even after rebelling, they could get away scot-free?"

As expected, the overlord wasn't going to just let me get my way. It would be way too easy if he were to just agree right away to my request!

But that didn't mean I was going to give up!

"So to sum things up, you are worried about the consequences of me offering a better life to the people you subdued? If that's the most important thing, I can easily take care of this problem!"

The easiest way to settle this matter was to pose as someone evil, looking to use them up just like a cattle, but that would lead to mistrust right off the bat. Unless I would find a way to convey a secret message between the lines aimed to scare them, they could very well just find a sharp-ended piece of wood and cut their throats with them to avoid the horrible fate they would expect from me!

"It's not only about making the example out of them. How do you think I managed to make this land prosper? While I'm not proud of it, without a proper amount of slaves both used in developing this sorry piece of land and traded off for resources required to boost our progress, we would never be able to reach such peaceful times. If you want me to give up an entire batch of fresh slaves that my soldiers bleed and died for, you will have to offer something worth at least as much in compensation!"

So this guys dabbled in slave trade as well? Now, his trips around the neighbouring islands and tribes suddenly make sense… While I already suspected that he picked Chrilaka fruits as the basis for their cultivation resource mostly because it was unavailable naturally on this island, granting him a reason to travel while blocking others from doing the same, but it seems that this ploy was actually deeper than I initially believed it to be!

But it didn't really matter. While he could present his points and attempt to force me to raise the stakes… In the end, it was all up to me to decide how much I would offer. Being the one in possession of the elusive good which knowledge is, I was the one to name its price, as much as the one limiting my own output for these negotiations!

Even if I pretended to cave in under his demands, I could teach him exactly the same stuff that I aimed to trade-off right off the bat, just by calling it more elaborate names!

"While I'm not going to refute what your lordship said, I would like to remind that slaves are only a temporary ware. If one decides to sell them, they present rounded up monetary value. If one decides to use them, they can only bring so much manpower while forcing one's hand to provide overseers while infusing society with too many slaves could easily lead to revolts. Knowledge on the other hand…"

I wasn't going to just finish my sentence here. With the intention to up the tension at the table, I reached out for a glass of vine from the table and took my sweet time to savour the taste of every single sip I took, before emptying the cup.

Putting the glass away, I wiped my mouth clean with the back of my right hand, smiled and picked the topic up.

"Knowledge is something that prevails and can boost both the fighting prowess and the productivity of the entire social group. If you can't value knowledge properly, I don't see any reason to conduct business with you, if I could simply extrapolate my current advantages to get whatever I would ever want from you. When you think about our situation in this way, don't you think that I'm offering you a rather good deal?"

Even if I could accept any demands of this Overlord and just bank on my superior position to make the end result just like I wanted it in the beginning, if I wanted to finish this in an easy way, I had to show some resistance to Overlord's negotiation points.

Otherwise, what would be the point of bargaining in the first place? If this guy was soo keen on doing so, as his guest, I could only follow his wishes!

And well, if he couldn't take an honest dose of threats and enmity included in the package called "negotiations"... Then there was always the option of just taking whatever I wanted from his island by force!

To be honest, if not for my morals and upstanding standards of behaviour, I would simply act like everyone else in this world and follow the rule of the strong eating the weak. Just the fact that I was willing to sit down at the same table as him an lower myself to negotiating business with him was huge favour from me!

"You dare to threaten me? While dining in my home at that?"

Hearing my bold statements, it was obvious that the Overlord would flare-up. Even if there was a slight chance that he would be smart enough to derive the true meaning behind my words and keep his own words and emotions to himself, from the way he was behaving so far, I calculated the chance of this occurring to be too small to be taken seriously.

"Threaten? By no means!"

Seeing how everything was going according to my plan, I burst out with a laugh, genuinely enjoying the moment.

"I'm just showing the reality to your lordship! If you thought that the previous test was only for your lordship sake, then I will have to disappoint you!"

There was no point keeping the kind pretence anymore. I wanted something that he had and had the ability to steal it away from him. Unless he was willing to kill all the refuges for the sake of angering me and blasting his own fate into smithereens, he could only try to get as much as he could from the negotiations!

In other words, it was a check-mate!