Despite my additional precautions, the unpleasant feeling lingered.

If I had to describe it, it felt familiar, like the stench of blood and gunpowder.

I didn't think it was likely that he would be here—after all, with me gone, I couldn't think of anyone alive who'd be able to kill him without incredible luck—but since I had been transported here, I couldn't discount the possibility that he somehow was as well.

I decided my original plans for defenses weren't enough. I'd heard rumors of a black market where one could buy defective reagents for a fraction of the cost.

If handled improperly, they could easily kill the person using them, but with my mana control, it shouldn't be an issue.

Around midnight, I showed up at the black market.

After obtaining what I was looking for, I was getting ready to leave, when a man walked up to me.

"We heard you were buying mana-rich reagents. Would you be interested in our special product? It can be used as a renewable mana source."

I nodded, intrigued. While living things could replenish their mana by drawing it in from the environment, it was much less common to find materials that were able to do this. Magical plants and animals did not make for great mana sources because their mana was imbued with their will, so it required a complicated process to wrest it from them.

Materials that could automatically restore their own mana tended to be quite valuable.

He lead me into a basement and I felt my blood go cold.

Lining the walls were cages. Cages full of people. People being sold like livestock with no will.

My vision became a sheet of red.

"This is what you meant by a 'special product'?"

By the time I regained my senses, I was grabbing the man by the throat, lifting him in the air with one hand.

Fuck. I shouldn't have done that.

I recovered quickly and tossed him to the ground.

"If you're bringing me here for low quality items like this, you must have no respect for my time. If you've got anything better, bring me to your boss. Otherwise, we're done here."

I said it with enough confidence and aggression that the man scrambled to bring his boss without taking pause to notice any inconsistencies.

Upon observing properly, the people in cages seemed to mostly belong to the beastfolk races.

This made a fair amount of sense, as beastfolk tended to have much higher average mana capacity than humans, although they typically lacked the external mana control needed to cast complex spells. And unlike plants or animals, they were capable of understanding how to transfer their mana to others.

From a perspective of pure utility, they were a fantastic mana source.

But my perspective wasn't one of pure utility.

The man returned with his boss.

I talked him into showing me his hidden "stock" and found out how they bound their captives to their control. I verified that they were innocent people who were being held against their will.

Then, I rendered him unable to call for help and stabbed him through the shoulder, pinning him to his own expensive desk.

It had been a while since I'd wanted to kill someone this much and I'll admit I took longer than I had to. His pain and fear filled the air around him so intensely I could practically smell it.

I locked the door to the basement from the inside. His employees were dealt with next. I also killed some clients that were there, for good measure.

Then I burned the material components for the enslavement spells and started unlocking the cage doors. After I unchained them, some of the less injured people helped me free the others. We made quick work of it.

I'm not sure if people would exactly call me a 'good person', but as a human, I thought this was the bare minimum I should do.

I didn't think it would be okay to vent my emotions by killing some people I hated and then just leave their victims to either be blamed for it or starve to death.

I asked the freed captives to channel their mana into me. It was quite the large quantity, enough for me to teleport them back to their country. Not everyone had lived in the same city before they were captured, so they'd have to do some traveling, but they could deal with that themselves.

One of them wanted to stay with me, saying that her entire village had been wiped out. After I refused her, she opted to stay in the city alone. That was her decision, so it wasn't my business.

I left the black market and went home. Behind me, people noticed the massacre that had happened in the slaver's shop, and a commotion started to break out.

It had been a bit of a hassle, but I finally had my reagents.

Tarania moved silently through the city, following the scent of the masked man.

He had done a good job of concealing it—had he used magic to clean himself?—but an expert tracker like her could still trace him.

She had been the pride of her small village. Thick, chestnut hair, with delicate ears sticking up on top of her head gave her the sort of adorable look that filled people with the desire to protect her.

With her natural talent for mana, she had dreamed of growing up and joining the military to help protect people, as there were many victims of trafficking in the villages near the border. Her country was not a safe place, and she wanted to make that better.

She never expected to become one of those trafficking victims herself. Her village was razed. Those who fought died. Those who didn't fight died as well, since sable beastfolk were known among collectors for their expensive pelts.

But while most of her kind were more valuable dead than alive, the men who took everything from her saw how exceptional she was.

Mages and nobles would pay a lot for her tender face and mana capacity.

The first man who bought her said he didn't approve of slavery, but he really needed someone to help him. He was an adventurer, and under him, she learned how to hunt. Stealth, tracking, avoiding traps—in dangerous areas, she became invaluable.

The man said he saw her as his daughter, and she began to care for him in return. He even told her they could undo the slave contract, but when he said it, she saw a strange gleam in his eyes.

Perhaps she had imagined it, but she thought it was a look of wariness.

Was it a test? She didn't know, but she wasn't willing to risk displeasing the man who controlled her fate. She had told him that she didn't want to undo it.

The look of happiness on his face told her that she made the right choice. He had probably been lying.

As she got older, her body began to change. She noticed that the way he looked at her gradually became more and more strange. She soon understood what he wanted from her and was unable to refuse him.

After he abandoned her for a woman more fitting of his status, she was sold again.

This time, she knew what to do from the start. Her new master quickly raised her status to his favored pet.

When she watched other beastfolk get abused to death from within her gilded cage, she felt awful. Mostly, however, she felt relieved that it wasn't her.

Over the years, the voices of her various masters blended together into a constant refrain.

Be grateful to us. Without us, you'd be sold to someone worse. Without us, nobody would protect you. Without us, you'd be killed and skinned, just like the rest of your family. You've seen the fate of other beastfolk girls.

Then, with no warning, a man had walked in, slaughtered her owners, and set her free.

"Since you saved me, you have to take responsibility for me," she had said.

He had just scoffed at her.

"What kind of logic is that? I killed those men because I wanted to. You had nothing to do with it. If you don't want to be saved, go lock yourself back up. Although that would be truly pathetic."

"I'll earn my keep. I can help you with magic experiments and do anything you want me to, as well."

"Can you leave me alone?"

"..."

"If you really can do anything I want you to, then leave and live your own goddamn life."

"But I don't know how to do that."

That elicited a sigh. Was there genuine empathy in there? She couldn't tell.

"That's something you'll have to figure out on your own. With your mana capacity, I'm sure you'll be able to find work. At the very least, the adventurers guild should be happy to have you. If you want my advice, start from there."

Could she become an adventurer?

Without us, nobody would protect you.

She couldn't survive on her own.

The man who had saved her was strong and kind. He helped without wanting anything in return. He even divided her owner's money between the slaves.

If she could gain his protection, she wouldn't have to live in fear.

He had refused her, but that had been because he was a good man. He wasn't allowing himself to think of her that way.

If he walked into his bedroom and saw her lying naked on his bed, would he still be able to avoid looking at her that way?

Tarania doubted it. She would show her sincerity and help him overcome his inhibitions. That was the way for her to survive.

She found a safe spot to take a nap, then spent the next day preparing. Before the man got home, she cracked the many locks on his door and stealthily entered his residence.

The traps near the door seemed geared towards restraining intruders. She recognized them from her time with the adventurer and knew how to avoid them.

After, there were many strange mana flows that she did not recognize at all. Well, since the house belonged to a good man, whatever was in here probably wasn't that bad. She'd take her chances.

Lightly jumping into a location she thought looked safe, her body was suddenly wracked with agony. She stumbled sideways, triggering another trap. An explosion of force shot from the floor and turned her to dust.

When I got back home, I saw that a few of the traps had been triggered. I thought those damn kidnappers had already given up, but apparently not. The runes they had set off had been expensive, too.

But when I checked the footage, I was surprised to find that it was not a kidnapper from the Temple of Light, but one of the women who I had met the previous night, the one whose village had been wiped out.

Most of the time, if someone tried to stalk me, I would consider disintegrating them personally, let alone having a trap do it for me. However, this woman had just survived something incredibly traumatic and had probably not been thinking straight at all.

If I had known she would do this, I would've been at least kind enough to dump her at the nearest mental hospital. What had ended up happening to her seemed a bit harsh.

I think a normal person should feel guilt in this situation, but as usual, my heart was entirely calm. I felt nothing. With that knowledge came a sort of bleakness.

I heard the voice of the one who called herself my mother.

"You'll never be human," she said.

"Get out of my head," I stared coldly at nothing, talking to someone who wasn't there.