Chapter Ten
A New Pet
Rosie and I returned to her parents’ place, washed up, and then headed back out while the day was young.
There were two things we—well, I wanted to do before we went into our next dungeon.
One, recruit a new ally.
Two, spend our money on buying some gear so that I wasn’t walking around in the default starting armor that didn’t even offer any extra defense nor stats.
Now, there were a few different places we could have gone to go get a new companion, but the perfect one came in mind when I saw a girl with a metal collar around her neck being led by another woman.
That reminded me of one of the setting’s more controversial elements.
Or rather, I didn’t forget about it, but I wasn’t exactly thinking about it because I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to feel about it in the context of this world.
Slavery.
Back on Earth, obviously, it was horrible. The more ancient versions of it might have had some nuance to them, but all the more modern versions of it were more or less objectively disgusting.
In this world… well, it felt like another one of those situations where Seth included it for the sake of his fetishes while also trying to implement it in as guilt-free of a way as possible.
For example, slaves were only criminals, and being found guilty while innocent simply didn’t exist, so there was nobody in jail for crimes they didn’t exist. Very convenient, but I wasn’t going to complain about that.
A justice system with 100% accuracy was a great thing.
Then, criminals had two choices. They could either sit in jail to wait out their sentence, or they could opt into being sold as slaves.
As slaves, they would be protected by law so that they couldn’t be abused or anything like that and the owner would be legally required to pay them a fair wage for any work done.
Basically, slaves were criminals who decided to get jobs to expedite their sentences.
There was also a list of jobs they could consent to being purchased for or refuse to take.
So, it wasn’t like someone could buy a slave and take them into the dungeon where their life would be in danger unless they consented to that in the first place.
Did that make slavery alright?
Was slavery still objectively evil in this context?
I didn’t know.
However, I had to lean toward it really not being that bad.
They were criminals who deserved punishment, they opted into the slavery program in the first place, and were protected by laws that guaranteed their fair treatment.
They were legally the property of their owner until their sentence was up, but they were still treated with respect.
At the very least, it was probably more ethical than most modern prisons back on Earth.
And there was one other important fact to consider, but… well, maybe that was different. It probably wasn’t, but I was sure I would find out soon.
There was also someone’s feelings I wanted to confirm before even seriously considering buying a slave. “Rosie,” I said as we walked through the streets.
“What’s up?” Rosie asked.
“What if I tell you I want to buy a slave?” She was a girl who cared about justice and doing the right thing. Of the many companions in Custom Dungeon World, she was one of the most objectively “good” ones when it came to morality in the context of the setting.
“Are… are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“What makes you ask?”
“Well… I mean… they’re criminals. Aren’t you afraid of hurting your reputation?”
“Is that something I need to worry about?”
“A lot of people don’t like slaves because they take jobs away from, you know, people who aren’t criminals.
They think slaves shouldn’t even get the chance to be slaves and should be locked in a cell until their sentence is over.
It’s not really a punishment if they still get to walk around and live a normal life.
Look over there.” Rosie pointed off to the side where an obvious slave girl was smiling and humming to herself while filling up a grocery basket with fresh produce.
“Does she look like she’s being punished for her crimes? ”
“I guess not?”
“And if you buy a slave, you have to feed them, pay them, provide shelter for them—non-criminals don’t even get all that guaranteed to them.”
“Huh. So, you’re saying that people might look down on me for owning a slave because slaves are legally required to be provided for more than non-criminals, and because I’m not leaving the slave to wait out their sentence in a cell?”
“Basically.”
“And how do you feel about it?”
“Me? I’m super supportive of slavery. I mean, I’m all for rehabilitating criminals if we get the chance to.
Leaving them to rot in a cell isn’t helping them grow or change as people.
It’s cruel and inhumane to leave criminals locked in prison, in my opinion.
If anything, we should abolish prisons and enroll all criminals in the slavery program to make sure every single one of them gets a chance to grow and become better. ”
“What you just said is something that would only make any sense in a world like this.”
“Hm? Did your world have slavery?”
“Yeah, and it was basically pure evil.”
“Oh. Well, it’s good here! In my opinion, anyways.”
“You’ve convinced me. I’m doing a good thing by buying a slave, right?”
“Right!”
Seth made sure that his fetish for slave girls was justified as a positive thing.
And, like I said before, me and him did share interests.
I remembered exactly where the slave market was from the game, so we made our way over to it.
The market itself was on a wide open street with some slaves standing out advertising themselves, others in cages with their details next to them, and a large tented area in the center of it all where most of the “undesirable” slaves were kept.
Only the highest quality slaves got advertised out on the street.
As for the atmosphere, it was weird as soon as we got there, but not in a bad way. It was weird in a more… unbelievable way.
It confirmed that other important factor I mentioned.
Just like in the game, one of the top fantasies for women of this setting was being the slave of a man.
“Pick me!” a fox-eared woman shouted while shoving her breasts around one of the bars of her cage. “I’ll do this for you every night!” She made sure to grab the sides of her breasts to slide them up and down around the bar so it was impossible for me to not understand her.
Then there was a cat girl on all fours pressing her rear up against the cage toward me. “Me, nyaa. I’ll let Master do pervy things to me all day.”
There was another girl who looked like a harpy with winged arms who simply sat on her knees with her eyes closed, mouth open, and tongue hanging out in my direction.
Rosie looked at each one of them with disappointment. “I wonder how many of these desperate girls purposely got in trouble so they could end up here… maybe some of them would be better locked up after all…”
Going by an interview Seth gave once, since that was exactly the kind of question he would answer in interviews, at least 60% of slaves purposely got caught after breaking the law in desperate hopes of becoming a man’s slave no matter how low the chances were.
You really made a crazy world, man, I thought to Seth.
I could imagine him smiling down on me from above while winking.
Anyways.
“The smell here is getting stronger by the second,” Rosie groaned.
“Must be some kind of localized humidity anomaly,” I replied.
“Uh-huh. I wonder what’s causing that.”
I ran one hand back through my hair while striking a stylish pose to be as cheesy as possible. “Could it perhaps be… me? Perchance?”
“One, I don’t even know how to reply to that. Two, don’t just randomly add ‘perchance’ to things.”
“But it’s a fun word to randomly use. Perchance.”
“I’ll hurt you.”
“Are you flirting with me in front of everyone?” It was time to up the cringe factor even more. That was why I grabbed her by her chin, looked into her eyes, and whispered, “What a naughty kitten you are.”
I was purposely trying to be cringe, you know?
So, why did Rosie look so excited?
“That was supposed to be cringe,” I explained. “You’re not supposed to like that.”
Rosie could barely even speak at first. “Don’t—I—that was—do you have any idea how many romance novels for women are written with men talking like that in this world?! Why wouldn’t I love hearing something like that?!”
“The women of this world need higher standards. Wait… is this how women felt about men back on Earth? Well, considering that most men on Earth could fall in love over a single compliment made in a casual moment…”
“Men—men were that easy where you’re from?”
“Even though there were technically more women on Earth, most men were desperately fighting each other over them. Don’t even get me started on simp culture where thousands of men would donate money to their favorite girls just to get two seconds of attention.”
“I can’t even imagine that. It sounds like pure fiction to me. No, if someone wrote a story here where men acted like that, everyone would complain about how it’s unrealistic wish fulfillment and accuse the author of being too greedy for wishing she had multiple men pursuing her.”
“You know, now that I think about it… harems for men are normal here, right?”
“Yeah?”
“Do women enjoy reading about harems of men? Like, a female protagonist with multiple male lovers?”
Rosie tilted her head as if she just heard a weird question.
“I guess some stories like that exist, but isn’t it too unrealistic?
I mean, what’s even the point? A guy can get several girls pregnant at a time, but a girl can only get pregnant by one guy at a time.
It doesn’t make any sense for women to have harems.”
“What if they don’t care about having children?”
“It’d still be kind of weird, wouldn’t it?”
“I think it’s this world that’s weird for making you feel this way.”
“I thought you loved this world?”