SLV Chapter 5: An Unfriendly Neighbor
Creator profile picture
Aint Translations
April 12
SLV Chapter 5: An Unfriendly Neighbor
April 12
When the first rays of dawn touched his face, Lin En opened his eyes.
"It feels like I blinked and it was already the next day."
Sleep that deep hadn't happened since he was in nursery school.
Most likely, ever since crossing over into this godforsaken place, his nerves had been wound tight without a moment's rest, and last night had been the first time he'd managed a truly sound sleep.
Without waking Milya, who was still deep in slumber, Lin En got out of bed on his own.
The desert morning was still bitterly cold. Even his breath condensed into white mist.
He pulled a large tattered blanket from the wooden chest and draped it over his shoulders for warmth.
Only then did he move the clay urn aside and step outside.
The dawn glow spread across the horizon. At the far edge of the desert, pale yellow met fiery red met deep blue, three colors weaving together at the boundary of the world.
When Lin En took in the scene outside the shack, the corners of his mouth could no longer be contained.
With the sand spirit arrow tower he had activated as its center, the wide stretch of sand was strewn in every direction with bleached white bones.
Skeleton remains as far as the eye could see.
At a base drop rate of ten percent, how many source stones had that netted him!
He was just about to go and collect them one by one when, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a figure standing on a distant dune, looking in his direction.
Lin En turned at once toward the Zalimu oasis.
Standing on that far dune was Ruleh, the son of slaveowner Zalimu.
Him again.
Lin En's brow furrowed slightly.
He had nearly forgotten. This one came to scout the edge of his oasis every single day.
Scout for what, exactly? Naturally, to check whether Lin En had died yet.
Not out of any goodwill to collect his corpse, but because he was coveting the sand spirit arrow towers on the oasis.
More precisely, the source energy obelisks inside them.
Everyone within the bounds of the city-state was subject to the power of the Law Codes.
Not like Common Law, an unwritten body of rules passed down by word of mouth and held together by shared consensus.
Nor like a written social contract carved into stone slabs but a genuinely existing, mysterious force.
To defy the Law Codes was to invite punishment from that mysterious force.
Some punishments were like the agony the slave rune inflicted on slaves.
Others were death.
For instance, entering another's oasis without permission would bring unbearable suffering that would not cease until the trespasser left.
Another example: killing someone within the bounds of the city-state would bring on an overwhelming pain that would halt the killer in their tracks.
Slaveowners, by virtue of owning an oasis, enjoyed far greater protections under the Law Codes.
Freemen had both protections and restrictions.
Slaves, on the other hand, had no protections at all. They were bound by the slave rules and remained subject to them even out in the open desert.
In short, under the protection of the Law Codes, a slaveowner was absolutely safe within the bounds of their own oasis.
Unless the slaveowner was killed by undead, or died for some other reason.
At that moment, the oasis would become ownerless.
Before the city-state could send someone to reclaim ownership, a window of vulnerability would open.
The oasis would lose the protection of the Law Codes, and outsiders could encroach on it freely.
Lin En had nothing to his name. The most valuable things he possessed were the source energy obelisks inside the sand spirit arrow towers.
The original owner's father had purchased all three at great expense, and those purchases were one of the main sources of the debts he had inherited.
Today, source energy obelisks on the open market were priceless, with demand far outstripping supply.
Lin En looked at Ruleh's bloated frame standing up on the dune.
He no longer felt the anger that used to rise in his chest at the sight.
Only a mild sense of the ridiculous.
Still fantasizing about watching him die?
That was never going to happen now.
He was about to ignore Ruleh and head out to search the skeleton remains for source stones, but he stopped after a single step.
Under normal circumstances, slaveowners would simply send their slaves out to clear away the night's undead remains but he would be making the distinct motion of picking things up.
With Ruleh watching from just over there, it would be very easy for him to notice that something unusual was going on.
The fact that killing undead could yield source stones was a world-shaking secret.
If word got out, it was difficult to imagine what kind of consequences would follow.
Better to wait. The source stones weren't going anywhere, they were sitting right there among the bones.
As long as he moved before the wind-blown sand covered the remains, he would be in time.
Lin En then strolled around in a visible spot, making sure Ruleh could see him, before walking back into the shack.
…
"This Lin En, why hasn't he died yet?"
The moment Ruleh spotted Lin En's figure, his face twisted into a scowl.
Every day Lin En failed to die was another day Ruleh had to drag himself out of bed early, brave the morning cold, and make the long trek out here to check then his eyes landed on the restored sand spirit arrow tower standing upright, and a flash of surprise crossed his face.
"He even repaired a sand spirit arrow tower!"
"Father was right after all!"
Ruleh thought back to what his father had told him before. He hadn't taken it seriously then, but now he believed it completely.
He waited a good while longer, but Lin En never came back out, and there was nothing more to learn.
Ruleh finally rolled himself down the dune like a round stone and lumbered back in the direction of the Zalimu oasis.
At the Zalimu oasis, out across the fertile grounds, five male slaves and more than a dozen female slaves had already begun their day's work.
They were busy drawing water from the heart well and carrying it into the large wooden building to fill the urns on the ground floor.
When they saw Ruleh returning, every one of them set down their wooden buckets and dropped to their knees before him.
Ruleh's gaze swept over each of them with a look of practiced indifference.
Inwardly, he was thinking of what his father had said, that these lowly slaves had to be kept in a constant state of fear. The more afraid they were, the less likely they were to slack off and it suited his own twisted sense of pleasure just fine.
Of course, any punishment had to stop short of leaving a slave unable to work. Otherwise it was simply damage to his own property.
As he passed the youngest and most beautiful of the female slaves, Ruleh suddenly lashed out and drove his boot hard into her chest.
A choked cry escaped her.
Watching the slave girl clutch her chest and crumple to the ground in pain, Ruleh smiled with satisfaction.
She forced herself back to her feet and scrambled to cower in a nearby corner. Not one of the other slaves dared step forward.
Only once Ruleh's figure had gone did the slaves all breathe again.
"Father, a sand spirit arrow tower on that oasis has been repaired."
When Ruleh climbed to the second floor of the wooden building and found his father, the true master of this oasis, Zalimu, he reported it immediately.
A faint look of smug satisfaction appeared on Zalimu's deeply lined face, and he spoke.
"I knew it. That cunning old merchant must have left his little bastard something useful."
"Source stones, Father?" Ruleh jumped in eagerly, hoping to earn some praise.
In his thinking, if Lin En had managed to restore a sand spirit arrow tower, source stones were the only explanation but Zalimu didn't answer immediately. He fell into a brief silence.
Just as Ruleh began to fear his father was about to call him an idiot, and his gaze turned anxious, the voice in the room finally came again.
"There may be source stones, but there's certainly something else as well. A treasure map, or something of that sort."
"Did his heart well have any source stones put into it?"
Zalimu's brow creased slightly as he pressed Ruleh for an answer.
The question caught Ruleh off guard. His chest tightened and a cold sweat broke at his brow.
He cast his mind back over what he had seen, and answered with some uncertainty.
"No... no, Father. It still looks like the desert over there. Not a trace of green anywhere."
Hearing that, Zalimu relaxed, the furrow in his brow giving way to ease.
"That worthless trader's son is as good as dead. If that old man left him any source stones, it was probably just barely enough to restore one sand spirit arrow tower."
"Otherwise he'd have put the stones into the heart well, at least to get himself some water to drink."
"And one sand spirit arrow tower will never hold against the blood moon."
Zalimu's eyes narrowed, looking quite pleased with his own reasoning, and even more pleased that Lin En's death was all but confirmed.
"Father, you are truly wise."
Ruleh was quick to offer the compliment but Zalimu seemed not to register it at all, as though he hadn't heard a word, and continued turning things over in his mind.
After a short silence, he looked back at Ruleh.
"No need to go and check tomorrow. With one sand spirit arrow tower up, an ordinary night won't be enough to finish him off anymore."
"I'm going to the inner city. I'll be back the day after tomorrow."
"You stay and manage the oasis. Have the slaves dig a sand wall twice as wide and twice as tall as what we normally put up for the blood moon."
Zalimu issued his instructions.
Ruleh nodded quickly, and a quiet smile crossed his face the moment his father wasn't looking.
Once Father left, the oasis would be his kingdom.
He thought back to the last time his father had gone away, and just how much fun he'd had.
He was already itching to grab a whip and wade into the cluster of slaves, to flog the female slaves to his heart's content.
Zalimu, meanwhile, paid no attention to Ruleh. He was pulling on his expensive wool coat, expression thoughtful.
As a slaveowner of generations, with his family rooted in the inner city, Zalimu had always been well-connected and well-informed.
A few days ago, he had noticed that the lords of the inner city district were stockpiling grain.
That was almost always a sign that danger was coming.
The outer city's oases were the primary source of food production.
Stockpiling grain usually meant one of two things: either the sovereign was short of mine-slaves and preparing to go to war with another city-state, or the oases of the outer city were about to suffer widespread disaster, which would mean this blood moon might be something out of the ordinary.
Perhaps the astrologers of the inner city had said something.
He needed to find out.
Still, even if the blood moon nights were going to be worse than usual, it wasn't anything insurmountable.
Zalimu thought to himself, at worst he'd buy a few more slaves to use as sacrificial fodder, or make whatever other preparations were needed. He would find a way through it.
[NEXT CHAPTER]