The following morning Marc woke up feeling much more refreshed, he had a peaceful night without any dreams and his body was well rested. He found Paulet cuddling against him in the kingside bed, it was the best pillow Marc ever had.

Going to untie Lagakh, he found her already awake. She was glaring at him like if she was daring him to let her free. Reminding her that she was forbidden to harm him or to run away he unknotted the bonds.

After a light breakfast, Marc had disposed of all the human meat the last evening, they went to tour the castle. Along the way the language lessons resumed.

The place was bigger than Marc had thought at the beginning, he had only seen the non crumbled part of it.

At the center was the castle himself, a strong building with four floors, but without the roof and half the last floor. It was pretty circular and must had a diameter of one hundred meters. Near the wall’s gate was a well, granting fresh water to the castle’s inhabitants.

Surrounding the castle, at one or two hundred meters depending on the side, was a first wall, that had been greatly damaged in the past, as all of the other buildings had been. It was the only construction, with the well, that had seen some repair. It had been crudely done and with only poorly cut wood. The orcs had probably tried to fortify it, but they were no masons.

At three hundred meters from the inner wall, was another one, but it was in an even worse state than the first before the orc started to consolidate it. This wall would not even stop a deer to enter the area.

Outside the wall was a forest and at some place near the castle were spaces in the foliage, probably where some old buildings were standing, nothing more than ruins now. The castle’s ruins were on a small hill, allowing peoples on the walls or at the top floors’ castle to see far away. Down and behind the hill was a river, granting an easy access to water. It was certainly connected to the well.

Between the two walls, the vegetation had started to reclaim its rights. It was not yet a forest, but a lot of bushes were growing there.

Inside the castle were multiple rooms. The kitchen, the prison, the dining room and Lagakh’s former bedroom, Marc already knew. He had also already and quickly visited the dormitory. But now he was more interested in the other rooms.

First, they went in the basement. Passing in front of the cells they went to a room at the end of the corridor. It was a big room and it was there that the orcs kept the result of their raid. It was their treasure room. There Marc found a lot of chests, but when he opened them he was disappointed to see that almost all of them were empty or containing only some fabric. He had hoped to find a lot of money here, that would have made his future life easier. The fabric could be useful of course, but a lot less than some gold, he would have to sell it, and he didn’t had the least idea of their value and how the economics worked around here.

On the first floor there was nothing more than the kitchen, the dining room and the barracks. After a quick inspection of it, Marc, Lagakh and Paulet went to the second floor. As usual Marc picked Paulet to go up the stairs, as it couldn’t do it with his little legs.

On that floor were Marc’s room, previously Lagakh’s one, the former room of the shaman, and three other rooms. Those spare rooms didn’t have furniture in them, they didn’t even had curtain to close the windows, the wind and the rain could easily come inside, explaining why they weren’t used.

On the third floor were only three rooms. A really big one who had certainly be the master bedroom. The two others were communicating with the big one, one was just below the missing part of the last floor, so it didn’t had a roof. The last room was a library, but almost all the books were gone, only three of them were still there. Marc picked one of the books and when he opened it he was startled to recognise the letters. The book was written with roman alphabet! Marc couldn’t understand what was written in it, but he had imagined that the alphabets in use on this world would be completely different from the ones used on Earth. After a quick check he found that the three books were written in roman alphabet. It was a really great surprise for Marc, meaning it would be easier to learn to write and read the local language.

Touring the castle finished a bit after midday, so Marc led his group to the kitchen and they ate some of the remaining food. The stock getting low Marc decided to send Lagakh hunt for some meat. He didn’t know if she was a good huntress, but he didn’t care.

“Go forest, bring food, fill the bag, come back before night.” He used only very simple words for ordering her around, after all he didn’t talked the same language as her yet, despite his quick learning.

While Lagakh was outside Marc rummaged through her old bedroom and the shaman one. In her room he found some spare clothing and what she must had considered as toys to use on her slaves.

In the shaman’s room Marc found some papers with strange runes on it, he couldn’t read them for a dime. He also found a lot of strange herbs and preparations that looked like game’s potions, but, not knowing what was inside, he’d rather not touch them. He also found two leather collars. They looked like the slavery collar he put on Lagakh’s neck but they seemed much simpler. Lagakh’s one was all black and had some silver runes on the inside they looked like the ones on the shaman’s paper. Also when it was put around a neck it looked like it was a single piece without locks. When the two new collar were of simple leather with normal locks and the runes looked more simpler. Marc concluded that Lagakh’s collar was a high version of slavery collars while those ones were a basic one. There were also some dirty leather clothes, probably spare for the shaman.

After his little inspection of the two bedroom Marc went and took the roman alphabet books and settled himself on the former Lagakh’s throne. It was the comfier chair of the building.

“Go forest, bring food, fill the bag, come back before night.” With those simple words Lagakh was sent out. Marc had given her a bag and her weapon and pointed at the forest. There wasn’t a way to go around those orders, they were too simple to search for any loop hole, she had to comply or to suffer again. They weren’t bad orders, the pantry was almost empty after Marc had burnt all the human and halfling meat.

Going trough the forest, searching for the traces of some animals, Lagakh began gathering fruits. Strangely after the few first ones, the tingling in the collar diminished, it was then that she come up with a way to disobey Marc’s orders. She was in the forest, she had food to bring back and the bag was full, as long as she came back to the castle before night she woulds have fulfilled her orders. It was almost nothing, but it was about disobeying her captor and showing him that she was not a simple doll to order around.

She still had a lot of time before nightfall, so she unsheathed her sword and started training in the forest.

Status

Name: Lagakh O’ Malo

Race : Dark orc/ Goliath

Sex: Female

Age : 19 ans

Characteristics

Level

17

Experience

78%

Strength

125

Mental

73

Endurance

128

Abstraction

92

Agility

142

Understanding

85

Perception

113

Sagacity

83

Skills

Skill trees

Name

Level

Experience

Type

Evolution

Dark orc

Night vision

4

67%

Passive

Unavailable

Goliath

Goliath’s stomach

8

98%

Passive

Unavailable

Gladiator

Sword mastery

10

Max

Passive

Available

Public strength

6

32%

Passive

Unavailable

Finishing blow

7

63%

Active

Unavailable

Small enhance agility

10

Max

Passive

Available

Titles

Shackles Breaker

Looking at her status, she sighed, she couldn’t train her fighting skill further, without going to a Sacred Place and spent her stat and skill points. Only Finishing blow and Public strength could be trained for battle. The first needed killing something strong, making it hard to level on her own, only on the little chance to cross path with a strong beast. And the last had such a strange set up that she couldn’t train it here, she needed an audience...

As for going to a Sacred Place, that would take a really long time before she could, she refused to bring Marc to such a place. That would allow him to become to much powerfull, killing all her men should have granted him a lot of points. But maybe, if he became strong enough he would became overconfident, and she could lure him into freeing her. Then she would reveal all her strength and take revenge on him.

She had planned to raid a human village soon to allow her and her warrior to use the Sacred place there. But now it was completely impossible.

After going a few time through the books Marc did some experiment with his Extradimensional inventory skill. It looked like he was able to put all that he wanted except living thing inside, he tried it with some ants passing by. They were a limit of approximately one cubic meter of content. All he needed to do to put something in or out of the storage was to touch the thing and think about it. Every time he took something out, it appeared in his hands, meaning he could immediately equip a weapon, but not an armor. Every object put inside was congealed in its shape, he tried it with a drop of water and it didn’t spread on the rest, but he didn’t know yet if it could preserve food.

Skill Extradimensional inventory had level up!

You can now store more weird stuff in your personal little space out of space. Keep putting things in and out and you will be able to quickly put away the proofs of your mischiefs!

Somewhere along the way he receive a notification telling him that his skill had levelled up. After that he saw that he could store things up to two cubic meters. Meaning the space doubled at every level or that it gained one cubic meter. The notification was accompanied by a strange message, like for the Poison creation skill.

Checking his status he remarked that his Linguistic skill had also gained a lot of experience, it was at 78%. The language lessons and the attempts at reading the books seemed profitable. Seeing this he tried even harder to read the books, and manage to level up his linguistic skill.

Skill Linguistic had level up!

You can now speak better with your fellows. Keep practicing and you’ll soon be able to lie all the content of your heart!

Again a strange declaration, whoever wrote those notifications must have a weird view on things.

The day was reaching its end and Lagakh should soon come back, so Marc went to wait for her at the entrance of the Castle.

Not long after, the female orc arrived and Marc went to see the result of her hunt. She was strongly smelling of sweat like if she had do sport all the afternoon. She was looking at Marc with a wry smile on her face when she handed him the bag.

When he checked it, Marc found dirt, pebbles, leafs and a total of seven strawberries in her bag… She had managed to fool him.

Marc felt anger growing inside him, at him for not making his order without flaw, and at her for contouring them. Coming back to his mind was the trahison of his ex-girlfriend and his brother, and also what Lagakh did to him his first night on Jezoi, making the anger grow even more.

Listening to it, Marc slapped Lagakh in the face, but she didn’t flinch and only looked at him with disdain in her eyes. The pain in his hand and the look in her eyes only served to infuriate Marc.

“You bitch! I’m gonna make you pay for everything you did to me! Follow me in silence and don’t resist!”

Marc reached to her collar, dragged her to his bedroom, he striped her by putting her leather armor in his storage and then he tied her to the wood structure he had been tied two days ago. “Don’t move!” he ordered her.

Grabbing a whip in Lagakh’s old trunk he start to flog her with all his strength. He quickly managed to redden her back, and soon he also broke her skin, adding fresh wounds to the scars.

Seeing the blood flow on her skin Marc froze. He looked at her back, the at the whip in his hand and let it drop. He rushed out of the room.

He rushed out of the building and tripped over a root between the two walls.

Finding himself looking at the starry sky and the rising moons, he thought about the events of the previous days.

He had a chance to live a new life, and he wanted it to be peaceful, not filled with hatred and resentment. For that he had to treat Lagakh better, he couldn’t let her free or she would kill him, but he didn’t want to treat her like she had treated him. He was better than that, he had grown in a country where the human rights were in high regard and he had wanted to become a medecin. He wanted to save lives, not destroy them.

He understood the fact that he needed to kill the orcs to avoid being killed by them, and that they surely deserved it. But he had never been a partisan of the death penalty, always thinking that a life imprisonment was a better way to punish criminals. For him, the only case where giving the death could be tolerate was to save a life, or to end the suffering of a dying person. He was for the legalization of euthanasia.

Marc also had to think of a story to tell people about his origins. He could tell the truth to Lagakh and then order her to keep it a secret, but he didn’t think that the population or the authorities would believe him. Or if they did believe him, he had no idea of the way they would react. Was there even local authorities?

Focusing his mind on Lagakh and his current situation, he saw her enslavement as a long life period of hard labour. And he decided that he would heal her back and let her have a good sleep. Tomorrow he would give her better orders when he’d send her gather food.

__________

As always Lagakh was surprised by Marc’s reaction.

First was the anger, she saw that coming. His slap was weak. She had seen a true hatred in his eyes, and that had surprised her. Then he had screamed at her in his strange language and drag her to be punished, that was a little unexpected from what she understood of him. But the hatred in his eyes made her fear for her life a second.

She hadn’t been flogged in a long time, and the memories that were brought back weren’t of the pleasant kind. That only made her more determined to kill the human. Then when the hit started to inflict a bit of damage they stopped.

She heard the whip hit the ground and Marc rushed out of the room. That was a surprise. She waited patiently for him to return and do whatever he wanted to her, as she could not free herself of this place.

A bit later, Marc came back, talked a bit to the mushroom, and then he did the most surprising thing of the evening.

He healed her back with his magic. Put her in her bed and hugged her.

“Sorry, I go too far this night. I not whip you again. I want not hatred in my life. I want simple life.” He had difficulty to speak, but he truly was learning fast, so fast that he must had a skill to help him. He even knew words that she had not teached him yet.

But the content of the words were strange for her, he really looked like he was sorry for what he did to her. He even had some tears in his eyes and was trembling a little while hugging her.

He didn’t looked like he was about to rape her, like she had first thought when he had hugged her naked body in the bed.

__________

Paulet was wondering what was happening.

The Master had punish the dark lady, then he had went outside. And when he had come back he had healed her.

He had also congratulated it for guarding her. Paulet was a good familiar, it looked after its master.

But now, the woman was in the arms of its sleeping master, that was its place. It wasn’t pleased with that outcome.