Victor shook his head a little bit at what he had just heard. Using his quote-unquote magic to remove the beast from existence, for the time being, had caused a bit more of a stir than he had expected with those around him. While he got the idea that storage tools and storage magic weren't the most common form of magic, he was a little surprised that it was something they found impressive.

As he was about to speak he suddenly heard the question that Alena asked, “Then, why don’t you just use that to take away what’s killing Drelt?”

The question gave Victor pause. He thought about taking a single coin out from a stack, but he never tried to take something out of something else in that way. Especially something he didn't know much about.

Thinking about it, since Drelt was his property, from this world's view at least, it should work. Although his own view was fighting with the concept of a person as property and so far the only one he was seeing as a slave at all was Dorun. Even then he still wanted to see him as a person.

“I’m not sure I can manage to store something I don’t know about. I mean I haven’t seen what it is. I don’t know about its shape I don’t know its location, beyond where I see the bubbling, and I don’t know anything about how it feels or the color or anything. I just know it’s in there and that there are two of them. I haven’t even seen the monster that did this to him.”

Drelt started to make some motions with his hand and drew something in the ground that looked similar to a cat or a dog, except its tail looked to be something like a snake. He then pointed at his own teeth and made a biting action while pointing at the creature's head and the end of its tail.

Victor looked at it, but it wasn't able to give him a lot more compared to the nothing that he already knew. As far as he could tell from the drawing and information he had, it was some sort of fang, he was guessing, from some sort of creature that had a snake for a tail and used both of its heads to bite. Something like that could be dangerous for certain and he wouldn't want to find one dropping in on them suddenly

Letting the beast back out of the card, it fell not far from him onto the ground with an audible thud. The sound got a small chuckle out of Victor as he imagined using the body of the beast as a droppable weapon like on some older cartoon might have done.

"I'm not making any promises on this but I'll try," Victor started before placing his hand just above the bubbling flesh.

"If I can see first hand what this creature was like and such I'll try again later, but for now don't hold your breath."

"Why would he hold his breath for this?" Dorun bellowed, "Is that something needed for you to do your magic?"

Victor sighed as he tried to remove the foreign object from Drelt. Despite his best efforts, however, nothing seemed to have changed or appeared in his card.

"I just meant don't expect it to work. Normally I store things I can see or at least have experience with. It isn't like I can just snatch whatever I want at any time I want to. It doesn't seem to work like that."

Drelt offered a slight smile and gave Victor a one-armed hug, patting him on the back. It wasn't much, but this small act made him want to help the slave even more as he imagined the bravery it took to comfort someone when what really happened was a small hope was just ripped away.

Alena, meanwhile, approached the beast and, picking up a large chunk of the cart that was damaged, poked its rear right leg.

“Well, at least we know you can take things out of other things. The mana core isn’t in this guy anymore. That would have brought in a nice chunk of money. I think I remember it being at least as big as my fist, maybe even larger.”

Looking at the corpse of the beast, Victor couldn’t tell anything was different than before. Unless you count that there was no pool of blood around it anymore.

“Alena did mention something about noticing things in things,” he thought to himself as he took his card out.

Looking at the main body of the card he saw that it was empty, as he was used to when there was no image or wording upon it like when it was empty like any other time it wasn’t in use, but he did notice something.

The bar on the right and side of the card looked to had gotten filled up even further. When he looked at it he noticed it was nearly full and suddenly Victor started to have a lot of worries and hopes mixing with each other.

He began to speculate on the different things that the card could have happen once the bar was full, especially since it didn't have a proper instruction manual.

Would the number on the back go from one to two? Would it stop working or allow him to use magic in addition to his card? Maybe if the number did increase he could store more than just one of an item in it, even if it was restricted to just being the same type of item. Would it allow him to alter what’s in the card by drawing on it or even create new things by drawing on it?

“I hope it’s not that. I can’t even draw worth shit.”

“I would hope you don’t draw shit.”

Turning a bit Victor wasn’t surprised to hear that it was Doliy speaking to him.

“I don’t know what you’re on about but if you can’t get that stuff out of him let’s put away the corpse and get going. We can get to the next town by sunset and figure out what to do once there. It’s a pretty small town so they probably can’t spend a lot but I bet we can sell that thing, or at least part of it, and take the rest with us.”

Victor nodded his head once, “Right. The other people did say that the town was close, but the hills made it seem like it was further than it really is."

"At least without any major luggage….. Well except what Ruuz has, we shouldn’t have too much trouble. Did you get a name for the place?”

“It’s called Quileg. Simple community apparently. Mostly farmers and hunters and the like. A nice small place for travelers.” Doliy stated as she gave Ruuz the last of the things that needed to be packed.

Stepping away from the beast, Victor pulled it into his card and placed the card in a pouch.

“Fine, let's get going,” Victor agreed, “I don’t want to camp out tonight if we don’t have to. Whatever we get from this thing should be enough for a warm bed and meal I hope.”

Dorun got in line with Victor as they moved on, “I’m glad to hear that we are having a room. Once you have a private room you will have no reason not to have your night service from whoever you prefer.”

Over the course of their travel, Victor had gotten, a little bit, used to Dorun's mindset and was only slightly shocked by the suggestion.

“I would take someone to bed if they say yes AND have the choice to say no. If I tell any of you to come to my bed you have to say yes so I will never ask. Well not everyone, but you know what I mean.”

Victor tried to step ahead of Dorun just a bit, tapping the butt of the spear on the ground as he walked. He held the spear close to its head while keeping his hand from touching it in case there was a slip.

“I might let someone sleep with me once free, but until then you are all off limits so stop acting like you’re my prop….. Well, you are my property but don’t act like it this much.”

“Yes master,” Dorun said, “Then I will free myself so I can choose to go back into slavery under your watch, and then you can use my body for work and pleasure.”

Victor barely held himself back as he thought about punching the slave in the face. The honor or loyalty or whatever bullshit was keeping him in the mindset that he wanted to be a slave and that was all he should ever desire made him mad and he started to think if there was a way to use that mindset to get him to want freedom.

When his mind lingered to the elves in a magic story he read as a kid and how they had a mindset so different than people and wanted to serve. Imagining Dorun as one of them, Victor mentally sighed. Sure he didn't understand this man, but perhaps he should take his feelings a bit more into account with what he was doing.

“You know what. Sure free yourself and then we can see what happens. In the meantime shut up about wanting me to have sex with my slaves. I like free people better because it makes me feel like I earned it. If I want something like that I'll visit a brothel, at least then I'll have more variety and can leave right after."

Victor struggled to not let his anger slip into his words, instead choosing to put his energy into trying to move just a bit faster so they could get to Quileg sooner. With a slight mental chuckle, he couldn’t help but wonder if a slave who wanted to serve a master who didn’t want slaves would make a good comedy show of some sort. He did remember it being said somewhere that even the worst idea can be entertaining if done right and imagined a small skit being done about this sort of scenario.

Traveling the rest of the day was fairly simple. Without any oversized luggage, beyond what Ruuz carried, they were able to make decent time. At the top of one hill, they were even able to plan out a route around some hills to avoid a lot of the difficult elevations that the carts would have to deal with since they couldn't just go through the more narrow or vegetative elements they would just walk through.

Thanks to the shortcuts, and a desire to have a roof over their heads for the night, the group was able to find their way to Quileg before the sun was beginning to set, albeit not by much.

The community looked to be about two dozen good sized homes and a few businesses, along with stalls set out in places in the center of the village near a well. Each of the homes looked to have barns on the property farther out and one had a smaller second home farther down the property, while another looked like it had one being built. A few of the homes even looked like they were having expansions being built, despite the already large size.

While fairly quiet the few people that saw the group approach waved at them and, before too much time passed, a small gathering of four people came up to them.

“You here for a while or you just traveling through?”

The group consisted of nothing but beastkin's and based on how they looked Victor assumed they were all family.

There was one who was older than the rest and two that appeared to be a kid or young teenager. It was the eldest of the group who seemed to have the most pronounced beast-like features. Victor guessed that he might be in his sixties and reminded him of some of the Disney characters or furry art he had seen online, while the children looked human except for fangs and tiny patches of fur starting to grow. He couldn't help but wonder if the difference was part of aging or some other characteristic.

“We just want to find a place to sleep tonight…” Victor began before Doliy cut in, using her magic to stop his words in his throat.

“And tomorrow we got something we would like to sell. Even if it doesn’t all sell people can cut off what they want and buy it like that if that’s allowed here. We don’t want to break any laws after all. My fiance and one of our slaves hunted down a beast and we thought we might sell some of it since it’s pretty big and it would go bad if we bring it all the way to the big communities.”

A look passed between the two older men as the kids, a boy and a girl, looked curiously at Dorun and Drelt.

“That is fine,” the younger of the two men said, “Depending on what you have we might want to buy it. Maybe we can make a belt from its hide or something. Just park your cart with the creature outside wherever you're going to be staying.”

“If you need a bed they got a longhouse thing over there where people can borrow a bed.” the assumed daughter said, partially hidden behind her assumed father.

“Thank you, little lady,” Victor said, once again finding his voice, “Stay safe. Sleep tight and don’t let the…. Ah well, maybe I shouldn’t say the rest.”

Victor found himself, once again, stopping himself from saying something he thought of as a small saying. Sure to him it all made sense, but here the mindset was different. It reminded him of aliens dealing with humanity and its quirks in some short stories he had read between classes on some blogging website he kept up on.

It wasn't hard for the group to find their way to the longhouse that had been pointed out to them. In the front was a desk built directly into the building with a man sitting behind it. He looked to be middle-aged and in need of a good bath.

Seeing them come in he put down the piece of wood that he had been carving, “Welcome to my place. This going to be a couple nights before you go or a long term stay?”

“Short term stay,” Doliy said, “One night maybe two.”

A look over the group, the man slowly took out an abacus, “Do you want your slaves to have a cushion you can put near your bed or will they just be leashed up to the wall? We can do other accommodations but those are my usual options.”

Looking at his slaves, Victor thought a bit. It would seem odd to ask for beds for them, he was guessing. At the same time though they were people and not in perfect health, except for maybe Alena. Eventually, his concern won out over his budget.

“Can you just make it so we all have beds? I don’t mind if there is sharing so long as nobody sleeps on the floor or attached to the wall.”

“We can use the floor or the wall master. There is no reason to spend any…” Dorun said before he was cut off by Alena.

“Speak for yourself. I want a bed. Do you realize how many years it’s been since I’ve been in a real bed without someone wanting to get inside of me for the supposed niceness they were offering? Or for me to get between her legs? I don’t care if I have to share with someone or even who I share with. So long as it’s a bed and I don't have to bend over or open up or do some foul tongue bath, I’ll take it.”

Letting out an exhausted sigh, Victor pointed at Dorun, “I'm going to attach him to the wall and the other two slaves can have a bed to share. Yes I know I'm spoiling them, but they have been good slaves and I think they deserve a reward.”

Grabbing onto Victor's arm, Doliy put on her fiance act again, tracing a finger up and down his arm as she spoke.

“I think it’s silly to waste money on your slaves like that sweetie. Just a bed for you and me to share and one for our little helper should be enough. We can save money since we don’t know how much we’ll make tomorrow.”

Looking at Doliy, Victor turns his head and holds up three fingers, “Three beds. One for the slaves the two for us three. I'm going to attach Dorun to the wall. We’ll figure out the rest if that’s alright with you.”

The man told Victor the price and offered to rent them movable privacy walls in case they want to be unseen for any reason, to which he declined the offer and paid for the night.

A small walk found them in a room that was empty except for some gear under one bed and the worker told them to pick their beds, pointing to how there were rings on the wall spread out to leash up slaves.

“People are going to find you weird if you don’t treat your slaves more like slaves,” Ruuz said as she got settled.

The sleeping area for the short term visitors was just a lot of beds lined up to maximize the available beds available while still having a generally open area in the middle for those staying the night to do anything they needed.

“I am weird,” Victor stated bluntly.

Claiming one of the beds, since it was an open choice setting, Victor pointed towards a spot on the floor near the bed, and Dorun went over to it and set himself down on it.

“I don’t even want him to sleep on the floor but he wants to be a slave, so you know what? I’ll do some of what he wants but not all. I'll treat him a bit more like a slave until he figures out that it isn't the right way to think. At least then I can work with him."

"Drelt, well, I want him to heal properly so I want to find a place I can see what bit him and work from there and Alena… Well her I see her buying her freedom the second she can and never seeing me again.”

“Oh she won’t leave that quickly,” Doliy continued as she set herself upon Victor's bed, “She knows that even if she is free she won’t have much to work with if she is broke. She’ll have money saved and or tools and such ready before buying her freedom I bet. Unless I misunderstood her.”

Alena nodded as she took a bed with Drelt.

“If I’m free but have nothing that’s barely better than being a slave. I’d still take it over slavery, but I want to be able to buy an apprenticeship or something when I’m free. When I have my own store I’ll give you a discount. Not a big one though just a little one.”

“I hope you sell stuff I want then,” Victor replied, even though he had higher hopes for returning home before someone could learn about and set up a store.

"Regardless we got time to eat before it gets too late so let's relax, figure out dinner, and then we can go to bed. We can sell some of that um.... sorib tomorrow."

"Slarib." Ruuz said to correct him.

"Sure slarib," Victor agreed, "Either way we're selling it for a while tomorrow then heading out so try to relax."

The rest of the evening was the group relaxing, talking, and enjoying a meal before everyone slipped off to sleep for the night.

When morning came, Victor noticed that Dorun wasn't in bed with him, but was instead under it. As he was about to question why the man chose to get under the bed for the night he noticed that the leg of the bed was broken and that the man's body was holding it up by resting across his chest.

With a heavy sigh, he lifted Doliys arm off him and got out of bed wondering if he would ever be able to manage this man or if he would have to force freedom on him in the future.