“Master!” Aoife jolted upright, her breath coming in ragged gasps as she took in the cool air around her. Her wide eyes darted towards the oak walls that surrounded her.
Aoife wondered as she slowly calmed her beating heart.
The room was unfamiliar—the walls in front of where she lay were lined with empty shelves, and above her, a rope net hung loosely across the ceiling. Confusion settled deep in her chest as she scanned the space.
She shifted slightly to her right, attempting to get a better view—only for her body to suddenly topple onto the soft mattress beneath her.
“W-what?” she muttered, her left hand running across the bare fabric.
Slowly, she pushed herself upright, letting her legs dangle over the edge of the mattress. Her breath came unevenly as her wide eyes took in her surroundings, uncertainty curling in her gut.
Looking down at her right bicep she saw that her right cybernetic had officially given out on her, creating a wave of guilt and fear that washed over her as she imagined the punishment she’d face from not only Master Laer but the handservant head.
She was expected to keep her equipment lasting until the very end of the mission, and now they hadn’t even gone down further than twelve of the 267 floors that resided within the temple, and she’d already broken her CA-LC100D-T721. She could still use her lance, however, a good portion of her skills would be useless without her shield.
Nevertheless, she still had her lance, which was enough to take care of the stragglers, but she would have to give up her role as one of the frontal vanguards and swap to take a more fitting role for her current situation.
Aoife rose from the mattress and stepped onto the oak floor, the steel tips of her boots clicking softly with each step. She made her way toward the closed door at the end of the room, her gaze flicking to the right as she moved.
Against the log wall stood a long wooden desk, singed and stained. Three potions rested atop it, their glass surfaces catching the dim light that came from the small reinforced glass window above. Beside them lay a metal sheet, an arrow etched into its surface pointing directly at the potions with USL script seared under the arrow. What they said, she knew not. Why would a slave like her be expected to read when she was but a shield for her Master?
Aoife was very confused now, when she’d woken up she was no longer in the Temple of the Handlers where she remembered last, she lay atop a mattress softer than any she’d ever touched and was woken in a room far above her own station. She was probably back at Master Laer’s city, where he ruled over, and was most definitely being scrutinized by a mental mage of sorts to test her loyalty.
But for what reason? She’d never displayed any kind of…
“Oh,” Aoife muttered, looking down at her cracked cybernetic threaded skin across her chest that was embedded with the shape of a fist.
Memories surged forward—rushing through the temple floors, her Master at her side, as a swarm of mid-level D-Grades flooded into the twelfth floor from the floors below, from a particularly bad tremor that shook the temple. The front-liners, also slaves, were ordered by Master Laer to hold the line to buy him time to escape.
They were dead, she heard as such when Master Lear complained about their uselessness as they rushed through the ninth floor.
She’d also remembered the fight she had with the man who’d killed her Master and how he claimed she was no longer a slave.
“Master Archie,” she muttered, staring at the closed door in front of her and back at the potions on the desk. Was this all a test? To see what she would do if her Master was killed in front of her and if she would avenge them?
Aoife realized.
But that thought only brought even more questions; what would she do now? Would Master Archie still help her find what she wanted to do? Would he even help her even after she’d burdened Master Archie with so much already?
Countless thoughts swirled in Aoife’s mind, so much so that she didn’t realize she had reached the closed door until her fingers wrapped around the handle. Where the sudden clang of metal jolted her from her thoughts, snapping her back to the present and jerking her hand away from the door handle, silencing the clangs of metal she’d heard.
Aoife wondered as her eyes zeroed in on the iron handle of the door in front of her. What could have ma-
She shouted internally; eyes wide at the thought before her left arm shot to the handle and pulled it open, rushing out of the cabin she woke up in and toward the sound of metal clanging, her left arm shifting into a slightly sparking lance.
Archie hammered away at a Cold Iron plate, shaping it into a curved form with angled edges along the back. Most of the plates were already finished, along with two additional saw blades he’d already attached onto his bike.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
In order for his bike to work on the sand, he needed to do two major things; properly plate the bottom and open crevasses of the bike and touch up the sawblade wheels so that it wouldn’t sink into the sand when he’d accelerate.
His solution? Creating sand tires out of metal and praying to Bralmir that it would work.
Just as Archie raised his hammer slightly above his shoulder, a sudden blur shot out of his tent, skidding across the cool desert sand. Lance in hand, Aoife stared at him with wide eyes before frantically scanning her surroundings, searching for something.
Archie blinked at her blankly, trying to process why she had suddenly burst from the tent in a panic with her lance fully deployed.
“Uh… are you okay?” he asked.
Aoife’s head snapped back to him, her gaze shifting between his face, the forge, and the molten-red metal plate resting on the anvil. She took in the hammer clutched in his hand, confusion evident in her wide, owlish stare before a red sheen of blush covered her face.
Slowly, Aoife’s lance retracted into her left cybernetic arm with an audible click. The moment the sound echoed, her embarrassment vanished, replaced with a blank expression as her posture snapped to rigid attention as she dropped her gaze to the ground.
Archie’s brow arched even higher as he observed the rapid shift—from panicked and alert to embarrassed in mere seconds, and then to complete emotionlessness the instant her lance fully retracted.
“You okay?” Archie repeated, his eyes tracking Aoife as she slowly approached his smithy.
As she neared, she slowly came to a halt, keeping her eyes trained to the ground. “I apologize for my actions both now and prior, Master Archie. Please punish -” she murmured, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Wait, hold up a second!” Archie interrupted, lowering his raised hammer and placing it atop his anvil before moving around his anvil and walking towards Aoife, who squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for her incoming punishment.
“What’s going on?” he asked, stopping a few meters in front of her, his workshop at his back and now fully focused on Aoife and not on his forging.
Aoife didn’t respond, rather, she kept her eyes squeezed shut, bracing for the punishment she was supposed to receive for her actions.
Archie stared at her for a few more minutes in confusion before everything suddenly clicked. “Woah! Woah!” Archie shouted, pushing out both his palms in front of him. “I’m not going to punish you, I don’t even know why you would even think I would even...”
Archie fell silent as Aoife continued to keep her eyes shut and brace herself for her supposed punishment, seemingly having shut the world off around her to minimize the damage she would have to feel.
Not knowing what else to do—and having only ever dealt with Henry and Daniel his whole life—he resorted to what he always did whenever he needed to apologize for doing something stupid: offering up his sweets.
Pulling out his last piece of honeycomb from his spatial storage, Archie slowly walked up to Aoife, held up his last honeycomb to her nose, and waited. It was common knowledge to anyone who knew Archie that he pretty much sucked at… well speaking in general, preferring to do rather than say.
After a few minutes of silence and Archie not moving, instead patiently waiting for Aoife to come out of her… he wasn’t sure what to call what she was doing…
Archie’s patience was finally met with reward when her nose twitched and her eyes slowly opened to see a giant glob of honeycomb in front of her face. Looking up from the giant glob of honeycomb, she saw Archie nervously scratching the back of his neck.
The silence between them was broken when Archie spoke, “Listen, I don’t know what you went through before and while I know that I’m a pretty dense person, I can put two and two together and can come to the conclusion that your life so far was a rough one, a very rough one.”
He saw her flinch back as he first spoke, but not turtle herself up like before, which was something he needed to address.
“Where I’m from, slavery doesn’t really exist, I mean it does, but it’s very much outlawed in the vast majority of countries on my planet. I grew up in a place where everyone has the freedom to do or say what they want, and I love that freedom more than anything,” Archie said while grabbing one of the many thin steel rods he placed on his table with a mana string and stabbing the giant glob of honeycomb with it.
“And now that you’re free from that Branding Seal, you’re truly free - you can do whatever you want,” Archie said after handing her the giant glob of honeycomb on a stick. “It only hit me a few nights ago, after we got far enough from the temple, just how messed up your situation was. From your perspective, it must have felt like you lost one Master only to gain another.”
He took a step backwards, his voice firm but gentle. “So let me make this clear - I am not your Master, and I never will be. I will never punish you, and I will never lay a hand on you in any way. If you want us to go our separate ways, I’ll leave right now.”
“You are your own Master.”
He had only learned about the Slave Command Seal and the Branding Seal from one of the books he’d received in the Newly Initiated Bundle: 'Major Factions and Pantheons within the Multiverse'. It was there that he discovered just how prevalent slavery was; every major faction practiced it.
And from the way the author casually glossed over the topic, Archie quickly realized that slavery wasn’t just accepted in the Multiverse - it was a fundamental principle, where the strong ruled over the weak.
And to say that it was an eye-opener for him was an understatement.
While he understood that strength was the only thing that mattered within the Multiverse, he never once thought about it in that way. He’d just assumed people would think twice about trying to push him down, not try to enslave him.
“Master Arch…” she muttered, then stopped, her lips trembling as she realized her mistake.
“Just call me by my name, Aoife,” Archie said gently. “You are no one’s slave anymore. You are your own Master.”
Her loose grip around the honeycomb on a stick tightened as she lifted her head to face him and stammered out: “I… I wish to… I wish to learn how to read, I wish to not be a slave any longer, I wish to… to be free to do what I want!”
“Great,” Archie smiled. “Looks like you already achieved two of the three already. And I so happen to have a way to help you out with the third,” he said while taking out his Information Crystal that contained the knowledge of the USL language and held it out to her before remembering that she only had one arm at the moment.
“Sorry about that,” Archie nervously chuckled while awkwardly fidgeting with the crystal in his hands. “I’ll leave it on the table here and you can take it whenever you finish eating.”
After a few more seconds of silence, a chuckle escaped Aoife’s lips before she quickly covered it with her mouth in surprise. But that single chuckle seemed to be the spark that lit the powder keg. “I-I’m… sor-ry.. I can’t seem to...” she muttered in between muffled chuckles that wracked her body and the sobs.
Archie’s eyes widened before a soft smile grew on his face.
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