She doesn’t have her tools. With them, she could try to free herself. But she had lost them and now she’s chained with other peoples, in a cave.

Two months ago Lucia was a free girl, living a hard life in the street of Chalop, a small city in Drongard. Like most of the orphan girls in this town, she had a choice to make, selling her body or stealing. She chose the latter. But she wasn’t dexterous enough to be a pickpocket. Oh, she could snatch a purse or two from drunkards, but nothing more, each time she tried for better purses, she ended up beaten.

After a few beatings, she concluded she wasn’t trying again at it, and she was totally against the idea of selling her charms. Plus the only clients she would find with her young body were of the worst kind. The only people she could try to bully were so young it wasn’t worth the effort, or the occasional beating from an older sibling or other kinds of protector those lucky bastards sometimes had.

Fortunately, her small body was able to slip in tiny places and she was handy enough to pick simple locks. So she became a housebreaker. She would look for a house with at least two stories and wait for the owners to go to sleep upstairs. Then she would picked the lock the backdoor and search on the first floor for everything small and valuable she could snatch. It was enough to fill her belly and buy new clothes from time to time.

Unfortunately, two months ago she picked the wrong target.

She had carefully watched this building, a small leather shop. Each day, the owner would work on his leather, creating shoes, belts, and other leather stuff. Each night he would go to sleep. On the third night of her surveillance, she decided to strike. She picked the backdoor's lock and start to search for the gold. She also thought it would be a good idea to steal some new shoes and gloves.

She was too taken up rummaging in the store’s shoes that she didn’t hear the man approaching her from behind. She only felt the club hitting her on the back of her head.

She woke up the next day chained in a dark basement. Immediately she reached for her tools in her tunic, but they were not there, she left them on the table near the back door of the store. It wasn’t that bad, she had a spare set in her boots, boots she removed to try new ones. This was bad, she had no means to free herself.

She passed four days in the basement with other street children, chained like her, scared and crying like her. They only had one meal by day, a bit of bread and a little of water. Then the pirates came and took them away. They chained them in the lower deck before aligning every girl and women on the main deck ware a lot of pirates were looking at them, lust in their eyes and wicked smiles on their faces.

A woman walked to them and started to examine each one of the captives, she would declare them virgin or not. Each time the woman was declaring a prisoner a virgin the crew whined and the girl would be taken back inside the ship. The ones declared non-virgin were lead to the stern under the cheers of the crewmen. When Lucia’s turn came she was frightened and crying all the tears of her body, but in silence, other prisoners had been beaten for being too loud, one even died and she was smart enough to learn the lesson.

She felt the unfriendly fingers of the rude woman finding their way between her legs. She knew she was a virgin, but she was still afraid of not being categorized as one by the pirate woman. Fortunately, she thought, she was indeed recognized and declared as one of the few virgins.

When she was lead down, with the other virgins, she felt a bit relieved, she would not be raped by the pirates, a virgin could be sold at a higher price so the crewmen would make do with the non-virgins, and she would probably have better treatment, to not lower her value. But soon after she thought of what kind of men could buy a virgin girl like her. She was not a beauty, but she was rather cute, and her frail and petite body could attract the attention of the most wicked men. Fear came back stronger in her mind.

During the two months of travel, other slaves joined her group at irregular intervals. Then came a time when the pirates take back the newest prisoners, some kind of small and fluffy beast-girls they had just brought. Unlike usual, the ships sailed without addition to the cargo.

Some hours later, they moored anew. Like all the future slaves Lucia was wondering what was happening, never before the pirates had taken back prisoners out of the virgins’ group or sailed for so little time. Was it the moment they were going to be sold? Lucia started to cry again, she hadn’t cried in the last few days and was starting to believe she was out of tears.

The pirates came and took the girls out, they lead them with the other slaves in a troglodyte village and abandoned them there, still chained.

Now Lucia is crying. She’s hungry and thirsty. She’s afraid and tired. She’s certain she will die soon. She looks around at the other captives and sees something that could be helpful.

“Hey, you.” She whispers to a girl next to her. Some of the girls look at Lucia, including the one she’s talking to. “Yes, you, the blondie.”

“M… m… me?” The blonde girl stutters.

“Is that thing a metal hairpin?”

“W… what?”

“In your hair. Is that a hairpin?”

“Y… Yes.”

“And is it metal?”

“Y… yes i… it is.”

“Why are you asking that?” Asks one of the few man chained here and following the conversation, like those not to occupy to cry themselves to sleep.

“Because, if she can give it to me, I can try to open those shackles.” Responds Lucia.

“What are you? A burglar?”

“Yes, I was. So I know how to open a lock without the key, but I need something to do it. And that hairpin could do the trick.” Lucia sais to the man. “So give it to me.” She adds in direction of the blonde girl.

“You think we’re going to trust you? You just admit being an outlaw.” Interferes the man.

“Now shut up, you dumb fuck. You don’t know her, we don’t know you, nobody knows nobody here. And if you’re afraid of a little girl that can pick a lock, you should be more afraid of me.” A tall and heavily bruised woman intervenes a big smile on her face, showing sharps teeth. “Not, sweet pea, please give the little fox over her your hairpin.”

“Don’t talk to me like that! You whore!” Responds the man.

“Y… yes h… he… here.” Says the blonde girl reaching for the hairpin and handing it to Lucia.

“No!” Screams the man, throwing himself in the way, pulling the slaves chained to him and sending the hairpin away.

Everybody look at the man in disbelief, then start to scream at him.

“That’s it, you’re dead!” Yells the sharp teeth woman throwing herself at him and biting him in his neck. She pulls at it and tears its throat open. The man slowly dies, losing blood and drowning in it.

Just a few seconds after that, another man reach for the fallen hairpin and hand it to Lucia. “He was a dick anyway, always lamenting about how it was unfair to be chained with us, that his father would not let this unpunished and all, only shutting up when the pirates were there. My names Jack, and you?”

“I… I’m Lucia. T… thanks.” Lucia’s still a bit shaken by the sudden death of the stupid man, but she starts to work on the lock of her shackles. A few hours later all the ninety-six slaves have their hands and feet free from the chains. And the dead moron is swimming with the fishes.

---

I’m rather glad about the outcome.

Out of the ninety-seven test subjects I got. One is dead, giving me a bit of pleasure rush, he wasn’t as good as the pirates, but it was still pleasant to feel. Two have made a good impression on me, the young Lucia and Mililaria are resourceful enough, they’re the ones who managed to free all of them. And the last one, the man named Jack, shows some talents at leading the group, he organized some of them to take care of the most wounded, some other to gather food and a last bach to searched the village.

Lucia is a young girl, barely adult from what I understand of her conversations with the others, but she looks younger than she is. She’s supposed to be sixteen and looks like a thirteen years old. Her body is pretty small and she has almost no womanly form, but her face is rather cute, with a small nose and freckles on her cheeks. She’s human and has black, moderately long and messy hair and green eyes. She’s resourceful and active, she’s the one who made the first move to free the slaves and who managed to do it.

Mililaria on her side is a perfectly formed woman, with curves where men like them. She has a finely shaped face. Her sharp teeth, slit red eyes and pointed ears indicates that she’s not human, but I don’t know yet what she is. I don’t have the information in my reclaim or new knowledge and no one dared to ask her yet. She has a dark tone of skin that emphasized the red of her eyes and hair making her even more beautiful, the numerous bruises and grazes on her skin barely lower her beauty. Looking at her body is making me feel weird, I haven't felt that sort of thing since a long time, even in my last life, I’m a rock now, I shouldn’t be able to have carnal desires, but I have some for her, it’s disturbing.

Jack is a gnoll. He’s tall and has really broad shoulders, he’s pretty muscular. I think the pirates had planned to sell him as a bodyguard or menial slave. His fur is white with black dots. He has falling hears and a short tail. It can be strange to see a gnoll leading a group of mostly human so easily, but as most of them are weak and/or young, they’re not really resistant. In addition, Mililara is supporting him, reinforcing his authority.

A fourth slave has caught a bit of my attention, but not in the same way as the others. Stella is the young blond girl that gave her hairpin to Lucia. She’s nineteen years old and follows Lucia everywhere. Her visage could be beautiful, if not for an ugly scare barring it from the left eye to the right shoulder. She has the body of a porcelain doll and I can feel a life developing in her belly. The pirates must have played with her, she has a nice body if you can ignore the scare on her face and the multiple ones on her back. From what I understand she had a painful childhood and starts to see Lucia as a role model.

The former slaves have succeeded in their first test, freeing themselves from the shackles. I will now prepare the second test. I start to dig a maze in the walls around the village. It will allow them to reach for places with fruits and vegetable of other kind and better quality than those already in their cave. I also install some treasures, like glowing stones, or tools I create out of steel. Before reaching those places they’ll have to stride through the maze and kill the creatures roaming in it while avoiding simple traps. It will be like the first floor of a proper young dungeon, with weak monsters and easy traps, with time I will make it bigger, with other and more dangerous floors, for training the former slaves and making them in a defense line for me.

I will also need to directly make contact with them soon, but before that, I want to single one out and try to claim it.