"I hope you won't hold this against me. Yes," the Slave Trader said with a vicious grin. "Ah, you should actually be thanking me…"
The light from the Magic Circle flared even brighter, blinding Shirou. He could see nothing but a bright light, and the only thing he heard was the Slave Trader's voice.
"…After all, what good is a slave when they can't understand their master's words?"
Pain!
Shirou heard a distant scream and numbly realized that it was his own. He could no longer hear the chanting of the masked men and he could barely hear his own screams past the vast, piercing lance that pierced his mind, that then twisted viciously and set his brain on fire.
This, this is what all those people back in the cages have been subjected to? Being locked up and branded like animals, being denied food and care, only to be tortured at the behest of some vile Slave Trader? And for what purpose? There was nothing that could justify this torture.
Shirou didn't know how long he stood in the Magic Circle, completely immobile as his brain was force fed knowledge (language) in the most unbearable way possible, but the moment that it ended, he collapsed like a puppet with his strings cut. His body made an awful thumping noise as it met the bare stone of the floor. His tail twitched weakly.
"It seems he survived. Yes," the Slave Trader's words pierced his rapidly fading mind.
The only thing that kept him conscious to this point was a bone deep rage at the injustice, as well as a sense of resolve.
He would free all those slaves and he would ruin this man. Even if it was the last thing he did. Otherwise, he could not call himself a Hero of Justice. He would set all those slaves free one day, every single one of them, and he would make sure the Slave Trader paid for his crimes. He swore it to himself moments before he blacked out and darkness took him.
Six days.
It had taken six days to recover from the ritual. He'd woken up a couple of hours later in his cage, mind ablaze with knowledge that his brain was still trying to assimilate. He'd also woken up to a killer headache and fever, the worst he had ever experienced. It was so bad that he hadn't even been able to go to sleep on the first day, the pain keeping him awake in spite of his exhaustion.
In other words, it sucked. Hard.
Even through the pain, he had struggled to comprehend the language – High Melromarcian dialect, his brain had supplied – and practiced speaking it. Not so much to learn, but in an effort to ignore the pain. It hadn't really worked, but, on the plus side, he'd made a lot of progress on learning to speak the language. By the end of the fourth day, he'd been able to hold a halting conversation with the girl in the cage beside his, whose name he learned was Raphtalia. Soon, he was speaking fluently, something that was only possible thanks to the ritual and his constant practice.
He'd been rambling to Raphtalia the entire time, trying to get the girl who had clearly given up on life to smile a little. Escape, and rescuing the other slaves, was impossible until he had recovered, but at least he could try and keep the spirit's up of this unfortunate victim. Raphtalia hadn't really smiled, but she had responded to a few of his questions and a light had returned to her eyes, as if interacting with someone was enough to light a spark in her. It wasn't a lot, but it was something.
And now that he had recovered, he could finally begin planning on a way to escape and save his fellow slaves.
Fate, however, had other ideas.
"Right this way, sir," the door leading into the room opened and the Slave Trader stepped through. "Here are some products in your price range. Yes."
A young man came in behind the Slave Trader. He looked about twenty years old, had a slim build, sharp features, and spiky raven hair. He was also quite tall, towering over the squat Slave trader like a giant over a pygmy. The only item of note on his person was a small, silver shield with a bright green jewel set in the center that was fastened to his right arm. And his eyes… Shirou's heart sank a little… they were cold and angry, as if the entire world itself disgusted him.
Naofumi looked over the gathered slaves, the demi-humans, before him, all of them in varying states of health and emotional trauma that would have horrified him in the past, but not anymore. Ever since that woman had betrayed him and his mistreatment after he had been summoned to this world, he found it difficult to feel any emotion other than anger, spite, and apathy.
It hadn't even been a week since he had arrived in this world and the subsequent maltreatment he'd received, but he was already at his wits end. Because of what that woman had done, it was impossible for him to recruit new party members. Those that did offer to join his party were sleazebags that only sought to use him for their own ends. The moment they had what they wanted from him, they would discard him just like that woman had done.
This was a problem. He wasn't like the other three summoned Heroes. As the Hero of The Shield, his Defense was unrivaled, but in return his Attack might as well be non-existent. Without a party member that could cover attacking, he'd never be able to kill the higher Level monsters he needed to kill in order to gain the necessary EXP to grow to a satisfactory Level. He'd been fighting monsters for close to a week now, and the only monsters he'd been able to farm EXP from were Balloons, the weakest monsters in this world he'd encountered so far. Though other monsters hadn't been able to harm him, he hadn't been able to harm them in turn either, making fighting them pointless.