It was the next morning, and the caravan was moving again, Mia was leaning on the cage with lifeless eyes, staring back at the carriage behind them as she mulled over the events of last night.

After the elders had placed the collars back on their necks, they refused to speak further about anything, causing everyone to lose the will to talk, the mood was too heavy. The slave merchant also did not feed them, provide any blankets, or do much of anything besides shout “Shut up and go to bed! Don’t make a peep until morning!”

Mia fell asleep on the hard wooden floor that night, with her tail serving as her only source of warmth. The morning was not much better, each of them getting lukewarm `soup` for breakfast. The soup just being a watery broth that was heavily salted that they were ordered to eat without complaining. After that everything was packed up and they continued their travel, and to where Mia was at right now.

“The whole village…” She grumbled “My mother, father, and sister…” Her face slid down the iron bar, landing on the wooden ledge of the carriage. She was so hungry she couldn’t even muster the energy to get angry anymore, which just left her feeling depressed. “Was there anyone NOT manipulating me in my life?”

She shifted her lifeless gaze towards Riley, who quickly turned her head away from her. She then looked towards the mother, who did the same, then to the kid…who was in a similar state to her… now that she thought about it, the kid hadn’t spoke at all, and went along with what ever he was told to do. ‘Guess he isn’t aware yet…’ She looked back to Riley “How did you become aware of what the collars do?” she asked, not moving from her spot against the cage.

Riley froze, her eyes darting around frantically before she closed them, taking a deep breath she then let out a big sigh. She shifted in her seat, facing Mia “It isn’t that hard, especially if you get really angry.”

“Mhm…” Mia could relate “What did it?”

“… It is not important anymore.” She shook her head “Anyways, what would make you angrier then suddenly being forced into slavery, not knowing where your mother is… or if she is even alive.”

“True~” Mia then tilted her head, banging it softly against the metal cage as she went back to staring out into the world. ‘Wonder how my mom is doing…’ she thought to herself, she already knew from the last cycle that her sister makes it out because she was away on the hunting trip with her father, if that wasn’t a lie, she didn’t know about her father but if her sister was alright, she didn’t see a reason why her father would not be as well.

But this cycle was different, the majority of the village had left in search for her, those staying getting caught, wait. Her head rotated towards Riley “You stayed behind in the village?”

“…” Riley stared at her, before finally answering a moment later “Mom wanted me to stay behind and watch the house, then the lights fell and the next thing I know, I am on the ground with a collar on my neck.”

“oooh~” her head rotated back into place, hitting the metal cage with a light thud. If her mom was among the group then she might still be alive. She dragged her face out of it’s position, looking at Riley once more “Did my mom go and look?”

“…” Riley repeated what she did earlier, staring before answering “…yes.”

“Good.” She said, a moment later a light thud ringing out as she placed her head against the metal bar. So her mother was alive in this cycle? That was good, but for some reason she couldn’t get excited about it. Not to be confused with the collar’s usual effect, she was well beyond being affected by that, no, she was just depressed.

In an attempt to distract herself during this long journey she opened up her status page, she still had 131 points left to debate over, the first thing she tried was to dump it all into luck, with no luck. Nothing changed in her status page when she tried to do so, she then opened up the description of the title that was the cause.

[Title: Unlucky Child. You are particularly unlucky, to the point a god has taken pity on your soul. Luck has been permanently set to 1, the effects of the luck stat are reduced. Luck works differently for you, particularly unlucky events build points, the higher the point value the more likely luck will be manipulated in your favor, after which the point count will be set to 0. Current points: 584]

‘heh, forgot that had a point cost.” The last time she looked at that skill was when she had just found the language skill, but 584 points since then? That seemed a bit high. She didn’t know what luck dictated, or if this skill even counted singular occurrences of bad luck as a single point but given the high number, she assumed that it didn’t.

She wondered if she could manipulate it somehow, forcing a win when she was supposed to lose, but the title didn’t say anything about that…wait… 584 seemed high from her point of view, but what about from some one else’s? It had only been a day, not three months, to everyone else. So was she just really unlucky in that single day or did it count the whole three months?

‘Ah.’ No, she was being dumb, skills experience carried over between loads, so of course the points would carry over too, she’d watch it from now one to confirm but she also had to consider she was dealing with a god.

She frowned, she did not like how she questioned something obvious like that, the conversation from last night had her paranoid. While questioning things was something she was working on so she wouldn’t be taken advantage of, mulling over it for too long was also bad. That also made her question what she did last night with [Assist]… she really should check to make sure.

[Assist: Enable me.]

She paused, did she set that up just then or…

[Assist: ENABLE ME.]

‘…can she still see what is going on even when disabled?’ She decided to check one more time.

[Assist: Yes, now enable me.]

‘…and she can read my mind…great…’ She REALLY wished she didn’t know that, she decided to just ignore it. Moving back to stat allocation, in favor of not having drawn out fights, she decided to dump 100 into dex, putting the rest in strength. Again, she did this slowly as to avoid sickness. Her logic behind this being she was eventually going to get magic locked, she hoped she could avoid it but this was John we were talking about, his big mouth would say anything to get his way, and dex was her favorite stat at this point, no arguing that.

She looked through everything one more time, noting [Willful] Had leveled up, one more and it would be able to evolve, she was looking forward to more stats, curious to see what it would give. ‘hrm, wonder if I get a skill that, when it evolves, it gives luck. Can I get higher luck that way?’ it was doubtful.

Mia yawned, lifting her head off from the metal bar, she felt a bit better now that she distracted herself… and having something scarier to worry about, but at least she was not feeling that depressed anymore. Now she just idly watched the scenery as it passed by, the long travel not over yet.

Night fell, the caravan was stopped again, the pattern from last night repeated, the people in the caravan breaking out into a full-blown party. She wondered why they did this? And also wondered why they failed to feed them again… she did not remember it being this bad last time… She decided it was best to just get some sleep, laying down on the wood floor and moving her tail to cover herself.

She felt something shift besides her, awakening her from her sleep. Opening her eyes, she saw Riley had sat down beside her “I’m sorry.” Riley said “I… should not have been angry with you.”

“…” Mia narrowed her eyes, sitting up and dusting herself off “No, you shouldn’t, but I am used to it.”

Riley blinked “Excuse me?”

“I am used to it.” She shrugged “Everyone getting mad when I try to help, complaining and making it harder than it needs to be.”

“You what? I was just saying I’m sorry!”

“Yeah, I get it. Everyone always i-ow“ Mia flinched, Riley had hit her on her arm.

“I don’t know what is going on with you Mia but what ever it is don’t take it out on me.” Riley stood up “I was just apologizing for getting mad, not doing… what ever it was you are all mad about. Clearly you got a lot going on but that doesn’t mean you have to be an ass about it.”

Mia watched in stunned silence as Riley stormed off a few feet away, where she laid down on her seat facing the wall. She rubbed her arm, noting that one punch did about 12 damage as she laid down herself ‘…what did I do wrong…?’ she thought, dozing off to sleep.