"A slave collar is a collar that with multiple purposes, the main purpose being that to prevent the slave from escaping or retaliating against its master. If the beast has any hostile intent, the collar will inject mana into the slave's collar to cause it unbearable pain. The slave collar can be modified to fit most of your needs if you so choose." Dirk was explaining this to a middle-aged man in fancy robes. Orou had overheard that he wanted to mass order them for the "upcoming events", though he had no clue what those were.

He channeled the spirits to his eyes in order to examine the collar closer. It was a bit bigger than what would fit a human, but not by a lot. Multiple circles interlocked with each other throughout the whole collar and he could see that the collar was constantly drawing in spirits into the formation within. It was weird because the spirits weren't integrated within the collar, but instead were absorbed by it, turning into a blue mist that circled inside of it.

Orou's spirit sight had been all but confirmed. It was a day after he had been sold to Dirk. He was getting outfitted with the new collar when he couldn't resist casting his spirit vision in order to examine it closer. He didn't get to take a look at it for long before some sort of mage came from Dirk's room and cast a spell on the collar. Spirits surrounded it to lift it up and it began to close onto him. Although Orou wanted to resist, it simply floated onto his head and slightly tightened itself, securing itself tightly to his body.

The mage then proceeded to start chanting a few spells. He formed a formation of various squiggly lines in the air and started to channel spirits to it. The formation that the mage formed was as complicated as the Leon had formed with his flame lance spell, if not even more complicated. The spell launched a ball of spirits into the air, each of them rotating around each other. It was quite interesting to watch how the spirits seemingly played around with each other while propelling themselves forwards.

Only after a few seconds did he see that the area around the ball was completely devoid of spirits. Both Dirk and the mage were staring at Orou with wide eyes and it was only then that Orou realised that he couldn't see anything with his normal vision. He quickly dispelled his spirit vision, but it was too late as Dirk started jumping up and down. Orou swore to himself that he would always check the surroundings before the spell first, considering that it was not the first time he had seen something invisible.

Jumping back to the present, the deal between the two had been struck as the man purchased more than a hundred of the collars for a large amount of gold. Orou was more interested in the collars than the deal as he had been trying to intently analyze anything and everything magical during his time here.

Ever since Dirk learned about his spirit sight, he had been kept in the lavishly decorated room isolated by the barrier and he was brought food by Dirk himself. Orou made it clear when he wanted to be fed, hissing and showing his fangs to him each time he got hungry. Once Dirk got the gist of what Orou was trying to convey, he stopped bringing small animals and brought bigger prey for him to feast on.

The usual workers weren't allowed in this room, so Orou had a lot of time to spend by himself, seeing as Dirk didn't actually visit this room so often. He had stared at the blue barrier for hours, examining how it works and how the spirits interact with each other. Staring at the barrier and looking at the incomprehensible symbols on the books, these were the two activities that occupied his mind on the daily basis.

Orou would have preferred to stay in the room with the rest of beasts as staring at the barrier all day was mind-numbingly boring. Although it was nice that food was provided for him, Orou enjoyed the process of both hunting down the prey and killing it himself. The thrill of the hunt simply wasn't there when he was eating already dead beasts.

Several days passed as Orou stopped keeping track of them. All of his wounds from the battle were gone and his head wasn't pounding as hard as it was a few days ago, though it wasn't completely gone. When he got bored of looking at the barrier, he would try and manipulate the spirits in the air, looking at how he could affect them. All of his attempts on the barrier were unsuccessful as the spirits there were held in place and wouldn't move even a bit.

He tried imitating some of the formations he had seen being formed in the air, but seeing them for a few seconds simply wasn't enough to imitate the complicated formations. He tried to surround himself with the spirits to form some sort of armor, but it was so damn hard to make them stay in place, the second he ceased concentrating on the spirits, they retreated back to their original positions.

Following that, a few more days passed in boredom, he had no sudden breakthrough in his thinking and understanding of magic and he still couldn't understand what was written on these damn books. He was once more concentrating on the books when Dirk came into the room with a big smile on his face.

With him was another man dressed in a green tabard. As Dirk entered the room with him, the man's eyes snapped to Orou as he excitedly said to Dirk: "This might be the biggest sale we've ever had. His price is bound to be ten times higher than what we brought him for, and that's underestimating the interest people have in this ability."

Dirk took out some sort of rod and tapped the cage Orou was residing in. It started to fly up into the air and levitate off the ground, pointing the rod forward he said: "We've spread the word everywhere, there's already a crowd of people gathered and there's going to be more coming."

The two of them started walking out of the room, and Orou floated behind them. Dirk started looking around and said towards the other man: "Be sure that you bring out all the beasts that might be of interest to mages, we can't miss this opportunity to showcase all of our wares, it's not only them who will be coming here. A large crowd is sure to attract even more attention."

They exited the tent and Orou saw a crowd of people in the distance. There was a huge wooden platform erected where all of the cages usually stood, now featuring around fourteen other cages, with both beasts and beastmen. As Orou floated out of the tent, he attracted some attention. Pretty soon, almost all of the people in the crowd were staring at the cage, pointing fingers and whispering to each other.

Dirk and the man didn't seem bothered as they continued to walk towards the platform. Orou looked at the crowd and there be at least a hundred people there, probably a lot more. The number of people with staves in their hands and dressed in robes was no small amount. He turned on his spirit vision by instinct and the whole place was a mess. Spirits were flowing in and out of the crowd, some twisting around certain people, some going down into the crowd and disappearing.

His head started to hurt by trying to make out the effect this crowd was having on the spirits, so he dispelled it while looking at the other creatures in the cage. Five beastmen and nine other beasts were on display, available for everyone to see. He was placed last in the long line of cages as the man with Dirk said his goodbyes and started heading towards the platform.

The man didn't head up the platform but started chatting with some of the people in the crowd. As time passed, more and more people started to filter in and it was getting a bit crowded, but the people running this had made sure that everyone had enough room in order to see and bid.

For Orou who has been locked in a single room for days, the variety of people there was a delightful surprise to him. He continued to focus in on some people, mostly on people with obvious magical items like staves in their hands. The crystals of these mages interested him, but he didn't want to activate his spirit vision here.

An hour or so passed before the man in the green tabard stepped onto the platform. He stepped in front of all the cages and calmly looked at the crowd, saying a single word that silenced the crowd.

"Attention!" The man's voice was magnified multiple times as his voice could be heard clearly to people at the back of the crowd. The sounds of chatter stopped as heads turned in his direction.

"Welcome ladies and gentlemen to today's auction. We're going to be showcasing multiple beasts and beastmen that can be very useful to both mages and regular people." His voice was cheerful as he snapped his fingers, with a start, the first cage started levitating up in the air. It featured a beastman covered with multicolored feathers, yellow, red and green spots of feathers could be seen on his body.

"We'll be starting this auction off with a beastman of musical talent. He's a descendant of the rainbow peacock, his voice is as heavenly as the rainbow peacock himself. He has learned the art of combining both music and magic, being a very formidable foe in combat capable of boosting his allies or disrupting his enemies. For mage's, learning this new way of spellcasting, using mana and combining with songs could lead to having a breakthrough in your magical research. Even for those not gifted in magic, his already wonderous voice combined with magic is like heaven to your ears. Our starting bid will be three thousand gold. "

Orou didn't really see the attraction of this beastmen. He didn't understand why a beastman was being sold, but no humans were being sold. The voice inside of his head told him that they were both children of Arathaniel, so why would this sort of thing happen? Eventually, he was sold for double the starting price to a man wearing an oversized hat with some sort of book in his hands. The beastman looked sad as he continued to sit cross-legged in the cage, grimacing over the final price and him being sold. The man yelling out the bids was paying no attention to the beastman, immediately after yelling out the final price, he started auctioning off the other beasts.

The rest of the beasts were sold without any problems, they had useful abilities that could be used in daily life, as well as some novelty that appealed to the mages. Soon after a silver wolf had been sold, Orou was the only one remaining on the stage. He was used to being levitated in the air, but this time he was levitated up higher than ever. He saw the whole crowd and the entire city from up here. The city was neatly divided into multiple squares and the divide between each area was quite distinct.

"This is what you've all been waiting for, the six-meter long snake caught deep in the Forest of Shadows. On its own, it's formidable enough to almost wipe out a mid-ranking hunting party with its impressive strength and regenerative abilities. In addition to that, it possesses the ability to peer into the parallel plane and see mana in its natural form. If a mage could obtain this ability, casting spells would be as easy as snapping your fingers and magical research would be as clear as day. Even if you can't manage to tame this beast, a powerful magical artefact could be crafted out of his eyes, a powerful device capable of seeing mana. Starting price of a hundred thousand gold."

Almost as soon he finished introducing Orou, a voice, clearly enchanted with magic shouted out: "Five hundred thousand gold!"

The crowd was silent for a few seconds as the man who shouted could be seen smiling. He was an old man in his fifties dressed in plain robes with no sign of a staff or any magic on him. An awkward silence filled the crowd as the man that had finished shouting looked a bit bitter and stared at the man who shouted the price.

"A million gold." A voice that wasn't particularly loud stood out in the silence. A young woman, probably in her mid-twenties was standing there, people visibly shying away from her She had long, blonde hair that reached her waist. She had a cloak made out of some kind of white feathers that fluttered in the wind. The man who had shouted the earlier price turned his head around to glare at her, but once he saw who he was glaring at, he meekly turned his head back. Some of the people who were standing around the edges, just for the sake of watching the auction started to leave, disappointment visible on their faces.

"A million gold going once, twice, thrice, sold!" It was unclear what kind of expression was on his face as Orou started levitating down. The people who had won the bids had already arrived near the stage as the woman started approaching. Money proceeded to change hands as cages started to levitate away with happy expressions on the faces of those who bought them and the unhappy expressions of those in the cages.

Orou coldly observed the woman approaching slowly approaching him. He didn't like being in captivity, and this recent development wasn't anything good for him. He saw no way of breaking out of the cage, but if the woman released him from the cage, maybe he could do something about the collar if he learned more about magic.

As the woman finally arrived next to Orou, the man who was grinning all of this time due to money being passed into his hands stopped smiling and with a cold expression on his face he said: "Hand over the gold and the snake is yours."

She took her hand and thrust it into the air, but the hand disappeared as she did so. A bit later, a chest filled with coins hit the ground. The man hefted the chest up with surprising strength and weighed it. After a few minutes of making sure that there is a million gold in there, he handed her a rod and some sort of ring.

The woman tapped the rod on the cage and started walking away, heading towards the direction of the district with the tower. Throughout the entire journey, she didn't say a single word nor did she even look at Orou. Considering that, his eyes flickered as he cast spirit sight on himself and inspected this woman. The ring and the rod were clearly magical. The rod had a trail of spirits that attached it to the cage, presumably to make it levitate. The ring had some sort of blue mist inside of it, so Orou could only assume that it was linked to the collar.

Besides that, she didn't carry any enchanted items with her. Orou would have expected to see something, perhaps an item that allowed her to magically pull out that chest out of nowhere, but there was nothing. Orou was a bit disappointed, but he kept intently looking for something.

He found nothing as the cage stopped in the air. He looked up and he saw that they had stopped in front of a house. It was a bit bigger compared to the rest of the houses he had seen, but not by too much. The house made from gray stone looked worn out by time as if it had been here for ages.

The woman pushed the door open and walked inside. Orou floated towards the door as the cage hit against the stone door, too wide to fit it. The woman turned her head around before sighing and walking towards the cage. She tapped the rod against the door of the cage and it unlocked.

Orou stood there in confusion for a few seconds. He had imagined all sort of scenarios to happen, but not her immediately unlocking the cage. He was still a couple of meters in the air but he slowly descended downwards, not having moved in quite a while. The cage awkwardly levitated in the air as the woman paid it no attention and closed the door behind them.

His collar prevented him from harming the woman, but could he simply slither out of this house? He most likely wouldn't make it out of the city anyways. Thoughts raced through his head as he slithered into what seemed to be the living room. Although it wasn't as lavish as Dirk's room, it wasn't bad off either. A table made from high-quality wood and a carpet of various colors, a chandelier hanging above it and the paintings of various people made this room seem stuffed.

"You're going to be living here, don't wander out of the house and don't interrupt my research, you're free to do whatever you want otherwise." Her cold voice resounded through the room as she looked at Orou. Following that, she simply walked into an adjacent room, leaving Orou alone.

No one besides his creator had addressed him like he understood what was meant. This woman was the second person to do so, and Orou didn't know whether to be worried or excited. His first thought was to follow the woman, but he would have plenty of time to observe her later. Seeing that the woman was gone out of his sight, Orou looked at the adjacent rooms, turned on his spirit vision and went to work scouring for anything magical.