Leisure time always slips away too fast.

The day to trade grain in Tren arrived swiftly.

I set aside five thousand gold coins. The rest would fund our irrigation projects.

Other expenses? No worries there.

Within Baha Balm’s territory, money flowed in a simple cycle: people bought grain and supplies from us, we paid them wages, and they used those wages to buy more grain and supplies.

Flawed? Yes. But surviving this downturn came first. Details could wait.

Grain was the linchpin—real, tangible, impossible to conjure from thin air.

I boarded the carriage and waved to Alto, seeing me off nearby.

"Sas, return safely. No matter what."

"I will. Hah. Wait for good news!"

"Strategist, I—Mentu—will give my life to protect you."

Quiet as Mentu was, he stood firm when it counted.

"Enough talk. Let’s go!"

"Hyah!"

At my command, the coachman cracked his whip. The caravan rumbled forward, leaving Baha Balm behind.

---

Tren, Imperial Capital.

Gone was its former facade. Even Uler Empire’s hollow prosperity had crumbled.

Tren now resembled hell itself.

"Let go! Ah! Release my daughter!"

"Mama, waaah! I don’t want to go!"

"Shut it, madwoman! We can barely feed ourselves—why keep this deadweight?"

"She’s our child! Are you insane?! Give her back!"

The man was selling his young daughter to a slaver.

Not a grain of rice remained at home. In these starving times, the girl was just a burden.

Selling her meant coins. Survival.

The mother clung to his leg, howling like a wild beast.

"You’re mad!"

He kicked her away and burst out the door, clutching the girl.

"Let me go! Waaah! No! Nooo!"

She struggled fiercely, but her tiny strength couldn’t loosen his grip—not even as she vanished from her mother’s sight.

This was Tren’s daily reality.

Slavers adored this place. Easy pickings. They sold captives to drunken nobles or labor camps, raking in fat profits.

Streets now teemed with slave caravans: long chains binding hollow-eyed figures, shuffling like corpses toward unknown horrors.

Slavers hadn’t dared such open trade before. But Tren’s lawlessness made it possible.

One girl stood out in the chain—not just her body bound, but her fate.

Silver-white hair drew every eye. Even more striking were her crimson, glass-bright eyes—once fierce as a beast’s, now dull and lifeless.

Like all slaves, she wore iron shackles.

Her strength had been terrifying. Two slavers died under her unnatural power before they finally subdued her with drugs.

*Prime stock*, the slaver thought. Her exotic looks would fetch fifteen gold coins easy. Nobles would pay handsomely for a bodyguard-slave.

Still, he feared her. He kept dosing her, draining her strength until her body and spirit nearly broke.

She was an outsider—from the Zim Continent.

Her family had faced prejudice here for their strange looks, yet they’d built a simple, happy life.

Until the slaver raiders came.

They’d tried to seize her whole family.

Her parents fought back, shielding her.

But there were too many.

Her father fell first. Her mother... was violated before her eyes, then slaughtered.

Terror flooded the girl’s young heart.

Hate... hate... hate.