Albert continued to tell the story of Faith. "I tried my best to make sure that Faith entered a good home. There was a beastman couple that lost their child recently and it seemed that they wanted to raise Faith as their own child." Albert sighed.
"It turns out that they sold her to a noble that tried to buy slaves from me before. The man was notoriously evil to his slaves so he was blacklisted by all of the reputable slave traders. I only found out about her being sold to him later when the man died and she came back into my custody." Gren could see that Jasmine was metaphorically on the edge of her seat from the corners of his eye; after all, she was still standing.
"In the end she came back a different person. She was drugged, beaten, and even had her limbs removed. I've never seen anything crueler than that in my entire life. Now there's nobody that wants to buy her." Jasmine was crying and talking about how cruel it was but Gren had already heard what happened to other slaves so he wasn't going to fall for the sob story.
Perhaps the story was true but Albert likely had ulterior motives for telling Gren. To Albert, someone like Faith was a money pit. He can't let her die or it'll hurt the company's reputation and he didn't like paying to keep her alive. Of course he'd want to pawn her off to a seemingly rich sucker like Gren. Still, Gren had to pretend like he fell for it since he had promised the shape shifter earlier. "You don't have to worry, we will take care of her."
Albert smiled. "Excellent." Albert was adding up the numbers but it was taking him a while. Gren had already calculated the final price for all of the demihumans on the list besides Tahloh that was bought earlier by him. "Okay, the total for all 65 demihumans is 172 gold coins and 7 silver coins. The special cages are three gold coins each. How will you be paying?"
Gren forgot about the cages. He pulled out nine black iron coins(worth 180 gold) and laid them on the table. "In that case your change is... let's say 2 gold coins. You've been a good customer so I can get rid of the seven silver coins." Albert handed over the gold coins to Gren. Instead of pocketing them, Gren gave them to Jasmine to carry. "Now, it'll take a while for the paperwork to be filled out. Do you want to look at some of the human slaves? They might not be as strong as the demihumans but if you want good mercenaries we do have a few strong women. We even have a female magician in stock."
Gren wasn't really interested in buying more slaves. He already had to think about how he was going to shelter all of these women. However, a magician would be useful since he didn't know how to use magic yet. "Sure. However, I'm only going to look at the women."
"Dani, please bring them to the place where the human women are kept. I'll get the paperwork done in the meantime." Gren stood up and grabbed Jasmine's hand before following the attendant, Dani, through a different passage.
The room they arrived at looked much nicer than the area with demihuman slaves. There was carpeting and the slaves had simple clothes on. While the slaves were still in cages there was furniture and they even had a half wall to give them privacy when using the bathroom. There were other customers looking around and some even had kids with them. It was odd to think this but Gren thought that it felt a lot like a supermarket.
Dani spoke to the two of them. "This is just the entrance. All conversations must remain family friendly." Gren looked around and realized why things were so different compared to the demihuman area. There were signs saying that children weren't allowed beyond a certain point on the doors.
Gren had time to waste so he looked around. Written in front of their cages were descriptions of what they specialized in and some information about them. Most of them had cooking, cleaning, or raising children listed which didn't interest Gren but one of them had it listed that they were good at taking care of injured patients. Her name was Yun according to her information. "Excuse me, Yun?"
The woman was currently laying down with the top of her head facing Gren when she heard her name. "Yes?" She slid closer to Gren so her head was now hanging over the edge of the bed and she looked to see who was calling her. She didn't seem like she wanted to be bought like some of the other girls in this room.
"It says here that you're good at taking care of injured patients. Can you tell me your experience with patients so far?" Gren needed someone to take care of Faith and if Annie still had trouble when he picked her up from the healer then she might need a caretaker.
"I assisted a paralyzed girl for over a decade. She is still alive so I seem to have done a good job. Any more questions?" She seemed uninterested.
"Why are you here? I mean why did you become a slave?"
Yun thought for a bit. "She didn't need me anymore. A healer from the capital was hired to fix her condition. The family was cheap with her care but her fiance didn't want to marry someone that was paralyzed. Does that answer your question? Are you done?"
"Almost. I just have one more question to ask you. There are two injured people that I will be responsible for. One is missing a leg while the other has no limbs. Do you want to help me?" Gren thought it'd be better to ask her what she wanted to do.
"I don't really have a choice, do I? I only have experience with taking care of a woman so if either of them are men I don't know if I would be capable of helping." Gren told her that they were both female. "In that case I can help you if you buy me but I'm too expensive according to everyone else. It's up to you."
Gren told Dani that he'd purchase Yun and Dani brought over the manager of this room. Yun's price was six gold coins so Gren pulled out more from his sleeve. Jasmine of course wondered where he kept getting money from but she was an understanding wife and would wait for Gren to tell her.
Yun was let out from her cage and the room manager signed a contract saying that Yun was now owned by Gren. The group of three people that just became a group of four went on through the doors with a sign warning underage people that they weren't allowed, ignoring the fact that Gren appeared to be too young to enter.
The cages in the room down the hall from where they were just at were as bare as the ones in the demihuman area. The women were wearing clothes but they were revealing. "Why is it that the human women wear clothes while the demihuman women are naked?" Gren asked out loud, not really expecting an answer.
"That's because humans pretty much look the same down below. With demihumans you really don't know what they have down there unless you look. The hyena beastman you bought is a good example of what I'm talking about. She seems to have a penis but it's really just a vagina that extends outside the body." Gren was wondering how someone like that could give birth. "It's part of our company policy to be transparent."
Dani brought them over to where the magician woman was. She was shackled to the cage with her arms and legs spread out; her mouth was gagged and there was a rag tied around her eyes. "What is this?"
"There's not much known about magicians so we had to be cautious. This is to prevent her from using magic. A collar could be enhanced with magic to prevent her from casting magic but that would require black iron and those collars are only used for really expensive slaves." Dani was quick to answer as if she expected the question. Gren thought to ask what was the point in having a magician that couldn't cast magic but he had stopped caring and just asked for the price. "She is 15 gold coins."
Gren paid and then the cage was unlocked. However, there were shackles that had to be undone so Dani ran off to get the guard. Gren undid the magician's blindfold and gag. "Welcome to the group. I'm Gren and those two are Jasmine and Yun. What's your name?"
"Am I dead? The angels have come for me. I'm finally free." The magician seemed to be out of it. Gren noticed that her lips were dry and cracked so he suspected that she was dehydrated. He took out the canteen and held it to the magician's lips. She seemed thirsty and wanted to drink it all but Gren could remember that it wasn't good to give lots of water to someone that was dehydrated so he slowly fed her the water.
Gren put the canteen back when he heard Dani and a guard coming in. The magician's shackles were removed but she couldn't hold herself up so Jasmine carried her. Dani was in full business mode and decided to recommend another slave.
"There's one more slave I think you'd be interested in. She used to be one of the best mercenary scouts back when she was still active. They say that she even escorted an entire team of injured mercenaries through an Earth dragon's territory."
Gren was interested but felt there had to be a catch. "Which one of these cages is she in?"
"She's not in a cage. She was injured pretty badly so she's not on display. The room she's in is not far from here. Do you want me to take you there?" It didn't seem like it'd take long so Gren nodded.
The area that Gren was taken to was not as nice as the display rooms. There was cheap bedding and a good number of the slaves here were either injured or looked sick. Dani stopped in front of one of the makeshift beds and it was inhabited by a single-legged woman with a familiar tan skin tone, a familiar scarlet hair color, and a familiar voice. The woman looked up at Gren with her familiar blue eyes. "Grenda?"