After deciding what to do, Tenur went to the local human market, where people could be sold.
That was a place where parents could sell their daughters or sons, where a husband would sell his wife when in need, or someone would sell themselves when in despair.
Usually, women would not sell themselves since prostitution existed in this society and could provide better conditions than slavery, even though the life of a prostitute was not simple.
As for men selling their children or wife, this was not so unusual.
That was a cruel society, where in moments of desperation, people would sell their souls if they could.
When a woman became ill, a child became an unbearable burden; it was not so strange for the patriarch of a house to kill or sell them.
As for selling themselves, this was the typical act of men trying to survive, usually after losing everything they had but not yet being prepared for death.
That was precisely the case for Tenur, and soon, he was standing in front of the human marketplace.
"Please help me find a master for myself... I can't stand living the way I am anymore..." He arrived speaking in a low voice in that place but being objective about his purpose.
An employee of this place that looked like a food market, only with many cages with humans inside instead of food shelves, saw this guy and went to him.
"Are you sure about this? Once locked up in one of those cages, we will only release you if someone buys you." This person, a man with short hair and tanned skin, said as he stood face to face with Tenur.
There was no record of any kind of citizens in this place, and even if there were, it didn't matter. Tenur was a foreigner and could be enslaved even without his own will.
So it would be enough for him to want to sell his freedom for it to be done!
"Senior, I am sure," Tenur said humbly. "I would rather become a slave than starve to death."
"Very well, I will make your registration." That man said before walking toward a bench on the opposite side of the human market entrance.
Tenur promptly followed that person, as he saw well-dressed individuals for that society's standard going from one side of that market to the other, making purchases.
But he didn't pay much attention to that. He just listened to that man answering him.
"Do you have a name?"
"Yes, Tenur Orfeo."
"Forget about it. From now on, you don't have a name.
You will now be called 346, and eventually, you may or may not have your name changed by the person who buys you." That man began to fill in the blanks on a parchment.
In that society, ordinary people had no registration. But every slave had their registration since someone had possession of them.
That made it easier for fugitive hunters to pursue them. Still, it also made it easier to trade slaves in the secondary market.
Someone could buy a slave to carry stones, but when they got older, their master could sell them cheaper to someone in search of, for example, a butler.
Obviously, this worked depending on the skills of each slave. But usually, slaves got additional skills over the years, and the secondary slave market was not ignorable.
Ultimately, just as someone could sell themselves, that same someone could buy their freedom.
That was almost impossible to happen since masters had no obligation to pay for their slaves.
They merely fed them and gave them a place to live because they needed these individuals minimally healthy to make a profit.
But some masters would give gifts to some of their slaves.
In any case, every slave had their identity, and soon Tenur earned his.
"I understand." He said, thinking only of his survival.
"Very well. From now on, you belong to the Caribbean Company." That man finished filling out Tenur's papers. "You will stay here for a few days on display and will be fed once a day and allowed to bathe once a week.
If someone doesn't buy you after two weeks, we will send you to work in the mines, where you will wait for a collective slave auction."
Collective slave auctions were how human markets sold those unwanted individuals from their shelves.
They would gather ten slaves into a group and auction them off all at once.
In these situations, the group of ten slaves worth 100 gold coins, for example, would be auctioned off with a starting bid of 40 coins, with one coin increase for new bids.
That usually gave good discounts to the buyers, who, on the other hand, had to deal with slaves not so interesting to own.
"All right," Tenur said, not caring what could happen.
After hearing the most important thing, this fellow from the cultivation world was soon taken to a cell, where he would eventually eat with the other slaves on display.
Today was no shower day, so he continued as he was.
...
Two days later...
After his first few days as a slave, Tenur had seen many local nobles despising him entirely because of his less-than-athletic physique.
By the standards of this world, Tenur was fatter than nobles!
As a result, he had gotten no interest in himself among the various individuals who had purchased in the human market in those two days.
But he had eaten twice in that period and even bathed this afternoon.
But the bath was nothing grand. Slaves only had the chance to enter tunnels of water, which was not even changed when it was already dark as mud.
Tenur had been one of the last to take a bath, so it was not hard to imagine what his experience had been like...
Anyway, the human market operated between sunrise and sunset.
Just at this start of the day, Tenur was in his cell next to 13 other slaves, waiting for the store to open and more opportunities to be 'retrieved' from there.
"346, do you think you will be lucky today?" A middle-aged man, who Tenur had talked to a few times over the past few days, asked him as he looked at the tattoo on his forehead.
Tenur also looked at the tattoo on that man's forehead, 266, something present in every slave in this state. "I don't know... All I know is that I'm alive and don't have to eat scraps from the garbage."
"But what we have here is not so different from scraps..."
"What the eyes can't see, the heart can't feel, 266." He tried to see the bright side in all of this.
Tenur knew he could find food in the garbage of the same quality as that offered in this place. But he was unlikely to find a full meal.
So even though the quality was practically non-existent, it was already superior to what he could get on the streets.
At the same time, as a slave in the human market, he at least had a place to sleep.
Cities were unsafe places to be at night, with nowhere to go. Because of local freedoms, the crime happened frequently, and it was not uncommon for dead people to appear every week.
Tenur was very attached to life and did not want to die in such a humiliating way. So for him, this situation was already quite positive, considering only his beginning in this world.
Maybe he could have gotten to this earth and been lucky enough to get the grace of a wealthy individual and had a good start. But luck was not for everyone, and now that everything had already happened, thinking about the if was useless.
"You are optimistic, 346... Where do you come from? I've never seen people with appearances similar to yours."
"That's natural. I am from a very distant place called Rinia." He said, having already realized that the people of that world were not even aware of the universe's existence.
So whether or not to speak the name of his homeland would lead to nothing, and he decided to tell the truth.
"Rinia? I've never heard of it. Is it nice there? Why did you leave?"
"I suffered an accident and was sent here..."
"Accident? Hmm, sailing is really complicated..." 266 said, thinking that 346 had somehow reached Noskain by sea.
But while the two captives were talking, the doors of that store were opened, and the first customers of the day arrived there.
"Good luck to you..." 266 said before turning away from 346 to stand quietly in his place.
Slaves who were very active in talking to each other were frowned upon by local nobles. To increase their chances of being sold, these individuals naturally kept silent.
Then it wasn't long before a young man who appeared to be the same age as Tenur stopped before him and saw that light-skinned, overweight individual catching his eye.
"Huh? How can there be such a fat slave?"
...