Mana System Chapter 209: Industrious (Patreon)

It was less than two weeks since we had left the island to its own devices. So I was a bit surprised to see two pirate ships docked at the port. Careful of a trap, I dropped Barcos and Em’ah off to scout things before we docked. Thankfully the merchant ship was a Guild ship and even if these were pirates, they weren’t dumb enough to attack a Guild vessel.

It didn’t take long for Barcos to send up an all-clear signal. With a weary shrug, I ordered Khikall to take us in.

It was soon apparent why Barcos signaled it clear. All along the dock were the corpses of pirates, hanging from poles every five feet. The populace was hurrying about, unloading spoils from the ships. One of the self-appointed freed leaders was waiting by the dock with Barcos and Em’ah.

The man nodded curtly and motioned for us to follow. Without waiting for a reply, he headed off at a quick pace toward the meeting hall.

With nothing to do but follow, I fell in next to Em’ah. “What the hell happened here?” I whispered.

She shrugged in response, “my guess is they killed the pirate crews. I assume we will learn more at this meeting.”

We were led into the same room we interviewed the slaves the last time we were here. This time we were on the other end as five people were seated behind a long table. Their talking ceased as we entered and the group stood and bowed to us.

Confusion clearly on my face, I bowed slightly in return.

One of the men, the distrustful one as I recall, spoke first. “I seem to have lost a significant amount of credits. I bet that you would not return and that your words had all been a lie.”

“You’re kind of an ass aren’t you. I said I would return and so I have.”

“I prefer to think of myself as pragmatic. Would you trust, you, in my position?”

I didn’t have to think long, “no, probably not.”

The man smiled knowingly. “Well, I am happy to see I was mistaken. As you could see from outside we took steps to ensure even if you didn’t return, that we could survive or flee if needed.”

“Yeah, how did you manage to deal with the crews?”

The five chuckled darkly and one of the women responded. “We simply fooled the idiots. We made it seem like we were pirates left behind, then when they drank themselves into a stupor, we struck. We killed many in their sleep, the rest we strung up. A few of us died but the cost was worth it to watch the life drain from their stupid faces as they choked out their last breaths.”

Note to self, stay the fuck away from this crazy bitch. “Impressive.”

“So what now,” Barcos interrupted with a bored expression on his face, like this was a normal day for him.

“Now we have choices,” a third member spoke up. “We have two well-armed ships and a Guild Merchant vessel willing to bring supplies. What we lack is people.”

There was a pause as muttering and whispered talk broke out amongst the five. They seemed to come to some consensus as they turned and the first man spoke again. “We would like to free more slaves… with your assistance.”

I couldn’t help it, I groaned and Khikall chuckled quietly behind me because he knew… he knew I didn’t want to start a slave uprising but here it was in its infancy. It wasn’t like I could even stop them at this point, that would likely get me swinging from a rope along with the pirates. Fuck my life.

It turns out the former slaves I met with weren’t completely forthcoming in what they told me. I learned from Em’ah that there was a third pirate ship that the slaves had freed. All of the freed pirate slaves were used to man that one ship and given the runic devices I had doled out to go from port to port, freeing other slaves.

The more I heard the more I got a headache. Why did they even need my assistance if they already decided on a course of action? I certainly wasn’t willing to put my life at risk to attack ships and free slaves that way.

Case in point, when the Guild merchant ship arrived, some fucking idiot decided they shouldn’t have slaves either and freed a few of their crew. Only to have one of those freed people turn on his savior and choke the life out of him before anyone could intervene.

The murderer fled before anyone could stop him, not that he had anywhere to go. Em’ah was quickly able to find this released criminal and subdue him. That wasn’t the issue though, now I was a mediator between a pissed-off captain and a bunch of freed slaves and neither side was willing to back down.

“You had no right to release those criminals from slavery!” the aggrieved captain screamed, hand on his sword and ready to pull it out in an instant.

Why they picked the loudmouth as the former slaves representative was beyond me but here he was spitting on the floor at the captain's feet and glaring at him, daring him to respond. “If they are criminals, kill them, no man, woman, or child deserves to be a slave.”

“And who are you to make proclamations to me? You are not a representative of the Guild, you are not even a member of the local governments, you are nothing. Cutting you down would be a mercy to the world.”

I was forced to grab the captain’s arm as he went to pull his sword out. It was easy enough to stop him, the man was a merchant, not a fighter. “Let's all take a few deep breaths and relax.” I had to ask myself why I even bothered stopping the man. Oh right, because getting a Guild representative killed when I was thinking about accepting a deal with them would probably be seen in a bad light.

The Guild captain relented, allowing his sword to slide back into his scabbard while the former slave representative smirked in unfounded victory. I decided to figuratively slap the smirk off the man’s face although literally smacking it off would have brought me more joy. “As for you, how dumb can you possibly be? Do you know what I had to go through to get a merchant to come here? No of course you don’t, because you are shortsighted and pigheaded. I don’t like slavery any more than you but I know when to not poke a bear. It's admirable that you want to see all slaves released but maybe you should ask yourself why they are slaves in the first place? Or don’t you care that one of your people died while the man he freed is now hanging from a post?” I punctuated my statement by pointing to the man in question.

For the first time, I saw the cocky idiot actually think about the actions of ‘his people’ instead of just going with the mob mindset. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long before an angry sneer replaced his thoughtful look. “If you aren’t here to help us, then you should just leave and take your Guild lapdog with you. We can free slaves on our own.”

I wanted to laugh in the man’s face. I had handed out maybe a dozen of the runic items to speed the process of freeing slaves on the island. But these were not items designed to last. I couldn’t imagine them freeing more than a few thousand slaves before the items stopped working. By then the man would either come begging me for more or attempt to force me to make more. They certainly had the numbers to do so not that I or my crew would make it easy on them.

I decided on a third course. I would offer them more but add in certain stipulations for my assistance. I still needed this island as a base of operations so making nice with the locals was required, despite my distaste.

“Captain, if you will excuse us, I need to have a word with the island’s representative alone.”

Grudgingly the captain nodded and left the room. I sighed as I turned back around to face the irate former slave. I turned off my fake smile and glared at the man, causing him to flinch back and grip the broken table leg he used for a club. While fearful of what I might do he wasn’t spineless. Good, I could work with that.

“I agreed to help you, people, because I needed your help in return. Your actions today have put all of that in jeopardy,” I said as I paced slowly around him, hands clasped behind my back my eyes never leaving the man. “Yet not a month later and your ideas have grown beyond your means. You even went so far as to assault a Guild ship. A monumental height of stupidity that even I wouldn’t entertain.” Well, technically not true, I had attacked the Guild multiple times but he didn’t need to know that. “And for what? Your people freed four people before getting caught, And of those four, only one wasn’t tossed off the island and that’s only because your people caught him and hung him. If you want me to keep assisting you with these lofty goals of freeing slaves, you need to be smarter about it.”

Seeing as I still had his attention, I continued, “No more of this attacking ship's nonsense. Do you know how many slaves aboard a pirate ship, weren’t former pirates or murderers?” I waited for his response.

He slowly shook his head.

“Well… neither do I but I know someone who does and they have informed me that most if not all are former criminals or pirates. So let me ask you… this ship you sent on its merry way, did you put any trusted people aboard it for your cause?”

Hesitantly he nodded. I shook my head at the stupidity. “Well, you might as well mourn their deaths. I can almost guarantee the freed pirates killed those people and took the ship as their own.” I let my words sink into this man’s thick skull, watching as his face fell as the realization of what they had done donned on him.

“I will take my ship and track this vessel if we can, to verify my words. But I have little doubt about what I will find.” I stopped in front of the man as his former gruff demeanor melted away to reveal a defeated man with sagging shoulders. I decided to add the carrot now since the stick was broken. “You are now a leader and people trust you to do what's best for everyone. Sometimes that means not doing something despite what you wished you could do. I approve of your goal, I find slavery to be the most reprehensible thing anyone could do to anyone else. But I am only one person and the Multiverse is enormous. Start small. Maybe one day your efforts will bear fruit and slavery will no longer exist.”

Seeing as my words finally got through to the man, I handed him another dozen rune tokens. “These things don’t last forever. Use them wisely because I won’t always be around to make more. You may eventually have to purchase them yourself… from the Guild.”

Seeing understanding in his eyes, he nodded, accepting the items and shuffling out a back door to the building.

I heard soft clapping from behind me and when I turned I spotted Barcos leaning against the wall with one foot pressed up against it. “Wonderful speech, captain, I almost believed it myself,” the man said with an infuriating grin on his face.

“Shut the fuck up. Go get the others, we got a rogue ship to track down.”

With a jaunty salute, the man pushed himself off the wall and vanished.

I sighed internally. It wasn’t complete bullshit that I spouted to the former slave but I doubted his rebellion would go anywhere. I just needed these people to survive long enough for me to make use of this island before they pissed off so many people that the local governments were forced to step in and deal with them. Did this make me a horrible person? I guess arguably I was already a horrible person, I mean I wantonly slaughtered people for nothing more than slighting me. What was one more lie on top of hundreds of deaths?