The use of a missile, and a very heavy hooked net, made the taming process for the Lizardman far... Far easier than it had any right to be. And I was reminded as the bipedal lizard that looked alot like an Argonian from Skyrim, had a blue ring of light fill her eyes. Those tools and strategies were what separated humanity from monsters and animals.
If Tina and I had walked into the quarry and straight towards the lizardmen trio. They would have without a doubt torn me apart. I wasn't sure how Tina would have done with her Blood Fury Spear skill, but it would have probably been a tight fight.
Either way, I had successfully given the lizardman the domestic violence equivalent of the talk no jutsu so I was able to send the hooked net into my inventory and then send her into the tamed monster section of my fusion space while Tina and I got to work collecting some of the discarded monster stones.
"Jake, before we get too invested into this, let's at least see what happens should you fuse these empty monster stones into something. To make sure they still give a magical effect." Tina advised and I hummed before snapping my fingers and I put a blanket inside my fusion space along side the piles of the dead magic stones we had been collecting.
After a brief moment in which the piles of monster stones fused into the blanket, I looked at the blanket with my inspection glasses. [Rechargable heating and cooling blanket of weighted doom!] [The empty magic stones allows the blanket to store large amounts of mana and once activated the blanket will smother whoever the blanket is laid upon with sweltering heat not unlike the flames of a forge, the icy embrace of an ice dragon's breath. And the weight of a thousand beasts pressing down upon you.]
My lips twitched as I read the description of this fucking blanket and after a bit more testing as I fused more of the empty monster stones into other things I learned how it worked. Basically instead of running off my own internal mana like when I fused full fresh monster stones into an object or weapon. Empty monster stones when fused would give a battery-like aspect to the items that required me to fill their energy storage before fully using them.
Both had their pluses and minus's but in reality, with a bit of testing I realized that I could without issue add the dead monster stones to my already enchanted stuff to give them a sort of internal storage that would store my mana to use their enchantments... Except my mana was leaking out of the enchanted objects instead of being retained.
"Hmm... Maybe using gems to store the mana?" I muttered as I stared at one of the enchanted bolts I had for the oversized crossbow that could now store mana to be used later in its explosion. But with the bolt-enchanted head having something like a hundred units of mana, it was leaking a good five units of the mana every ten or so seconds.
So if I wanted to make my items hold their own stores of mana for long-term storage I needed to find some kind of medium or material that held mana long-term without dissipating it. "Anyway, let's keep collecting the dead monster stones, and once we get plenty we can head back... It stinks of death and despair out here." I muttered at the end as Tina used one of those push brooms to push piles of monster stones towards me while I sat down and just stuck my hands in the piles to send the piles into my fusion spaces storage area.
But as we were collecting the monster stones I heard the sounds of stone crackling as things walked over them, and from around one of the bends of the mining quarry came something surprising.
A one-armed dwarf was dragging a ragged rope that was tied around a knot that had several other ropes that were tied in the knot and on the end of the ropes were a literal dozen ragged-looking women going from young teens and what looked like adults and a couple of younger feminine-looking boys all of different races.
"Oh, you lads are working for your level ups I see!" The dwarf said cheerfully as his eyes locked onto the mangled corpses of the two lizardmen we couldn't do anything with due to them being a surface monsters and thus not having a monster stone.
I looked past the dwarf as Tina stood beside me with her spear at the ready and I saw the utterly dull and dead look in the majority of the girl's eyes and even the two boys eyes. "Yeah, you can say that... Gotta reach level three and make it into our Familia's expeditions into the dungeon." I said confidently as I looked back at the dwarf and the moment I said level three and the way my armor gleaned and Tina's fantasy-like spear that glowed with her slightly touching upon her Blood Fury Spear skill.
The dwarf had realized we weren't anything he could play with as his single hand visibly tightened on the leash he was pulling the women by.
'Wait... Are these people being sold into the Red Light District?' I thought as I remembered how the Orario guards were dead drunk sleeping at the Red Light District exit out of the city.
Sure Orario had banned slavery... But murder and violence weren't illegal with the might makes right method of ruling that Zeus and Hera used, so long as you didn't leave corpses everywhere. So if you were powerful enough, who would dare to question you?
In the brief moment of staring between these women of various races, I couldn't help but think about how similar to they were to Tina and I couldn't help but ask. "How did you get these ladies if you don't mind me asking?" Seeing the man look defensive I held out my hand and said evenly. "I am not looking for trouble... I am just curious, they look utterly broken after all."
The man sighed and visibly relaxed but before he said anything Tina spoke up dully. "They are survivors from roaming monster groups right? Or worse people taken from monster clans who were used as bait or used in any other way." The man grimaced but nodded and I realized how easy these broken people were to sell into a brothel with how mentally shattered they must have been.
'With how broken they are... Do they even count as sentient so I couldn't fuse them? Could I tame a completely broken human being?' I couldn't help but think and that realization that I would think and consider it. Was a stark reminder of how I had changed to fit better into this world.
"Alright, please move on so we can continue our own business and you can do your own." I said holding my hands up to end the conversation and the one-armed dwarf chewed on a thought before gruffly snorting and with a jerk of the rope he dragged the women and couple boys onwards.
A couple of moments later as the dwarf and his entourage moved out of the area I heard Tina speak without any inflection in her voice. "Although a part of me hoped you would give those shattered wretches purpose as you did for myself... I am glad to still be your sole tool."