Foreign Land Reclamation By a Vegetable-growing Skeleton - Chapter 571 - Chapter 571: Chapter 225 He Plans to Give Money_1

Chapter 571: Chapter 225 He Plans to Give Money_1
 

On the outskirts of Roland City, at Riverside Town, dawn was just breaking. Desperate slaves were driven forth, lining both sides of the road. Each slave bore an expression of sorrow, yet even more sorrowful were the slave traders’ faces.

Ange walked along the road, curious about the scene unfolding before him, with the equally curious Luther trailing behind him.

Slavery has been in existence from time immemorial, Roland City has a slave market filled with contract slaves who have sold themselves and captured individuals from different races, such as dwarves and elves.

Of course, elves cannot be openly sold in the market; they can only be covertly traded in the black market, as the elves fiercely suppress such sales.

But the audacious and unscrupulous slave-traders who dared to defy even the Pope wouldn’t care about the elves, would they?

The very act of suppression only pushed the trade of elves from the open to the hidden, consequently raising the price of elves and making their trade even more profitable, causing an influx of desperate slave merchants willing to risk capturing more elf slaves.

Small mercenary groups now and then would seize the lucrative opportunity, given that one elf could fetch tens of thousands of Demon Crystals – enough for retirement.

The elves once negotiated with the Pope to send their own task forces into human territories to eliminate the slave traders dealing in elves.

However, they often found their intelligence to be flawed and unreliable, leading them to mistakenly attack legitimate businesses. In addition, these law-enforcing elves would become targets for slave traders themselves. Even trips to the necessary room were risky.

In the end, the elves were left with no choice but to minimize contact with human territories. Any necessary dealings were handled through intermediaries like mercenaries.

Contrastingly, dwarves hardly cared if their kin became slaves. As long as they weren’t brutalized or harmed, they couldn’t care less.

Moreover, some dwarves who had grown tired of dwelling in the mountains would descend to an inn for a drink, passionately pat their empty pockets and declare, “I have no money. I would sell myself for a drink each day even if it means becoming a slave.”

Impressively, these self=selling dwarves made demands that exceeded those of contract slaves.

Given the enormous food and drink consumption of these dwarf slaves, few commoners could provide for them, and their selling price was quite low.

As they were rarely requested, they were seldom captured. In bad times, they were turned away, freeing the traders of the burden of their sustenance.

Elves couldn’t resort to such tactics as the dwarves, simply because elves, even male ones, were too alluring. Anyone purchasing elves did so for purposes other than labor.

Elf trading was driven into the black market, and Riverside Town was one such black market.

However, of late, not just illicit goods were sold in Riverside Town. Due to a sharp spike in bankruptcies, a horde of individuals were turning into contract slaves or slaves.

Contract slaves were bound by a contract that once fulfilled, would release them from the status of ‘slave’ to freedmen or commoners.

On the other hand, slaves had no human rights left. They were nothing more than possessions, with the distinction between the two being that one is human and the other an object.

But when faced with starvations, few cared whether they were being sold as humans or objects. Being sold to a slave trader at least ensured a meal.

However, as more and more people fell into slavery, slave prices drastically declined and hence impacted the profit margins of slave traders.

Famine also led to plantation owners and nobles turning their tenant farmers and serfs directly into slaves, cutting out the need for slave traders and thus eliminating the brokers’ fees.

The traders benefited less and less from the trade of slaves, yet the slaves still needed food. Unsellable slaves meant potential loss and even more worry for the traders.

In the past, slave traders with conscience would tear up the contracts and set the slaves free at this stage, but the ones with conscience were few and far between. A man with conscience wouldn’t be a slave trader in the first place, would he?

The more ruthless traders would ‘dispose of the merchandise’.

However, they did not dare to do so this time around. Word had been secretly spread by envoy sent by Anthony, substitute Pope of the Eastern Diocese, stating that anyone who dared ‘dispose of the merchandise’ would have their entire family murdered. If the slaves could not be sold, they were to be sent to refugee camps by the border.

Anthony’s quiet threats of ‘murdering entire families’ were far more effective in terrifying the traders than the threats of the Elf Queen. If Anthony dared to cause a schism in the church, was there anything he wouldn’t dare to do?

If the traders lacked a conscience, Anthony would simply ‘impose’ one on them. Hence, many slave traders seemed to have developed a conscience overnight, reluctantlym selling slaves with the gloomiest of expressions and sending those unsellable to the border once the contracts were torn.

Riverside Town, a black market turned slave market, was on the brink of becoming a regular marketplace due to the influx of slaves. With more sellers than buyers, both slaves and traders watched Ange and Luther with anticipation as they entered.

Some slightly attractive slave women coyly fluttered their eyelashes and postured enticingly to catch Ange and Luther’s attention.

It was, however, a bridge too far.

Upon seeing Ange, Negris and Durken struck up a conversation. “We should buy some dwarf brewers and have them brew the ale that dwarves love.”

“Are you daft?” Durken asked.

“Huh?” Negris froze in confusion.

“Why do we brew ale? We do so to watch the recorded games of dwarf chess, a holy place to dwarves where outsiders are typically unwelcome unless offered an irresistible enticement. Let me ask you this, if the ale were brewed by dwarf brewers, why would the dwarves refuse? They could easily brew it themselves,” Durken questioned.