CHAPTER 123: SLAVE

Leon’s smile faded.

He crouched down, eyes gleaming.

"You’ll do anything, huh?"

His question lingered in the silence.

The monster’s silence was worse than a blade.

The beggar didn’t know whether to beg louder or stop breathing altogether.

The beggar, still with his head on the ground, replied with fear visible in his voice.

"Yes—I will do anything..."

Leon paused for a moment; the beggar’s fate was already sealed in his mind—he would die just like the other one. Still, Leon offered him a sliver of opportunity to speak, to plead his case.

But that hope was nothing more than a cruel illusion.

"Hmm... but you have already betrayed the duke’s eldest son by telling me who was behind the attack." His eyes turned sharp as he continued.

"So how can I trust you now?"

NOOO!

The beggar realized, just by the tone of the monster’s voice, that no matter what he said, he was doomed from the start. Since he had snitched on the duke’s son—but he had only done that because he feared he would be killed outright otherwise.

Nothing coherent came to his mind. Thud!

His forehead slammed against the solid ground, then again—thud! Thud! Thud!—a brutal rhythm of desperation as he repeated the same plea.

"Please don’t kill me!"

"Please don’t kill me!"

"Please don’t kill me!"

The sharp sting of stone against skin echoed with each strike, and a warm trickle of blood began to seep down his face, drip... drip..., staining the floor. No matter how ruthless Leon might be, the sight almost bordered on excessive. Unlike others who had resisted in terror, this man collapsed entirely into fear, offering nothing but raw submission.

Before Leon could act, the beggar slowly raised his head. His bloodied face was now streaked with fresh tears, his shoulders shaking faintly with each breath. It wasn’t clear whether he was faking it or if this man—older, beaten, and terrified—was genuinely weeping in front of him.

He had attracted quite a crowd around him. All of them kept their distance, but their voices made him learn some important things about some events in the past, yet he focused on the man in front of him.

"I-I remember something... a way I would never be able to betray you."

The beggar knew this information might be useless to most people, but with the right affinity, someone could make use of that skill stone. It was the only shred of value he possessed that might capture the interest of the devil standing before him. His voice dropped to a tense whisper.

"A skill stone that can let you turn people into slaves—"

Before he could finish the sentence, fwsh!—Leon’s hand shot forward, grabbing the beggar by the collar. In the blink of an eye, they vanished, crack!—teleporting to an empty rooftop shrouded in silence, far from prying ears.

"Continue."

If what the beggar was describing matched what Leon had read in the novels from his old world, then this could be a windfall—an opportunity too valuable to ignore. He needed trusted laborers, people he could rely on to maintain operations, such as keeping the soup supply consistent within the Time Dimension.

And if he wanted assistance from anyone within that space, only those marked with a slave seal could leave. If this information proved to be true, he would genuinely consider sparing the beggar’s life. If not, the man would suffer before meeting his end.

The beggar, meanwhile, was stunned by how they had suddenly arrived on the rooftop, but it didn’t slow his tongue. The monster’s interest in the skill stone was obvious, and he understood why—who wouldn’t want something that powerful? Still, he silently prayed that this wouldn’t backfire on him.

"Yes, my lord, one year back, I was on an expedition along with the commander. We were entering a dungeon that had just formed after years. The boss was likely going to have the strength of a Level 10 apprentice-ranked."

He paused, a look of fear in his eyes—a reminder of the dungeon.

"But the dungeon wasn’t like anything else. It was filled with monsters named undead, which were very hard to kill. One-third of our expedition members got wiped out, despite our commander being with us, and we were only barely able to defeat the boss. The commander fell unconscious after the battle. We were the ones to carry him out of the dungeon."

"That was the only reason we were aware this skill even existed. It was an Epic-rank skill stone. A rank we had never even heard of before. Named Slave Mark—the name was enough to tell what it would do."

The beggar’s voice shook at the last part, as this was the most important point.

"No one has been able to learn that skill even now. The king had tried to find people with rare affinities, but no one could learn it. It needs a special element to be learned, like other elemental skills."

Leon was not the least bit bothered by this information. He had all the affinities and was even more fired up, as it was still present. If not, he would have likely killed the person who had learned the skill and tried to dig his body like a monster to see if it would drop the skill. The skill Slave Mark was too useful to him.

"Where is the skill stone right now?"

"It is in the royal treasury, my lord. I believe with your mysterious power, you can definitely retrieve it."

The beggar didn’t believe for a second that the devil in front of him—despite the strength he had displayed—would be able to do it, as the commander guarded the royal palace. No one could be stronger than him. The fight with the undead boss and the knight commander was still vivid in his mind.

This fucker can die for all I care. I need to escape from here. I haven’t even had the chance to touch a single woman, being an assassin...

He didn’t want to die a virgin.

Royal treasury... I had already looted everything from there, so the skill stone was in the treasure, which I hadn’t checked up till now...

It was such good news to him.

While even when he was going to spare the beggar’s life, it would have been like doing manual labor in his Time Dimension all his life—but now he could even use him as a test subject for the Slave Mark. It was rather convenient, being both labour and test subject.

With a flicker of thought, shhhk! a dome of glimmering ice spiraled up from the ground, sealing them inside with a hiss of frozen mist. The air grew still, dense with cold silence. Leon detected no presence nearby—but caution, to him, was survival.

Thud! Thud! The beggar, limbs shattered, slammed his bloody head once again into the ground. Crack! A new split opened across his scalp, fresh blood oozing down his face, pooling beneath his cheek with a sticky warmth.

Leon’s gaze didn’t waver. He stared down at the pitiful display, his expression unreadable, the light in his eyes still and glacial.

Should I just let him bleed out in front of me? Just let him crack his own skull until there’s nothing left?

It was irritating, pathetic. But the man was still a test subject... a potential laborer. Killing him now would be wasteful.

"If you bang your head one more time, I will end you right this instant."

It froze, hearing the cold tone, and sat on the ground like a obedient duckling.

Leon stretched out his hand as a surge of mana pulsed from deep within his core—whoooom! The air trembled faintly around him. A radiant green hue enveloped the beggar, the Life element blooming like an ethereal flame around his battered frame.

Crackle... hiss... the magic worked swiftly, and in less than ten seconds, the beggar’s mangled body began to mend. Bones snapped back into place with quiet pops, torn muscles stitched themselves together with smooth ripples beneath the skin, and blood reversed its course as the wound on his forehead sealed shut without a trace.

But the magic didn’t stop there. He could feel it—the deep aches, old injuries, and buried trauma etched across his body for years were gone. A warmth spread through his chest and limbs, unfamiliar and weightless.

He felt reborn, as if he had never known pain at all.

The beggar recognized the element—it was the Life element.

But the man in front of him had done something even the priestesses of the Church of Life couldn’t do. He wasn’t sure if the man in front of him was an angel or a devil.

Still, there was some reverence in the beggar’s eyes now, along with fear. He was on his knees, didn’t even bother to stand or try to run despite being fully recovered—better than before.

In the next moment, a shimmering silver-white portal opened right next to Leon.

The beggar couldn’t even react, and Leon threw him inside the portal and closed it instantly.

If this worked, he wouldn’t need loyalty—he would build it, brand it, bind it. Leaving his mark would be all he needed.