Sugar Rush (6)

“Kept you waiting, boss?! Took me a while to clear out some real rotten scum!”

With Scott’s boisterous voice, a group of figures emerged. Undead poured in through the sugarcane fields near the clubhouse.

The adventurers were startled as the undead, armed with harvesting sickles and various farming tools, charged forth. They couldn’t even deal with one Messenger Clan member, and now undead?!

“Eek?!”

They were the plantation owners already injured by the blunderbuss grenades. While blood sorcerers had been treating their wounds, in hindsight, they should’ve just risked the pain and ran while the injuries were still manageable.

“…Ah.”

Now even the plantation owners realized there was no way to resolve this situation.

This man—he had come into the clubhouse alone on purpose, despite having prepared a force. Was it to persuade the plantation owners? Then maybe there was still room for negotiation.

“W-wait a moment.”

“Ah, got it. Got it.”

“We surrender!”

“You’ve impressed us. Truly. You’re a remarkable warrior!”

“D-do you want money? How much would be enough?”

The plantation owners looked at Azadine in a panic as he approached. But Azadine only scoffed at them.

“Now you want to negotiate? But if I let you go now, won’t you just hire some S-rank adventurers next time or throw waves of private soldiers at me?”

“N-no, of course not.”

“We’ll negotiate. Truth is, we’ve been thinking that playing soldier with mercenaries is meaningless.”

“Even if you gather a mob before a dragon, won’t they all just scatter with one roar? No matter how many chickens you bring, they can’t take down a dragon!”

Only now did the plantation owners realize that Azadine had deliberately spared them despite not being under any magic spell. It had all been to showcase his strength and set the stage for smooth negotiations.

But how arrogant was that? Hiding his allies, deliberately handing over the plantation owners to the adventurers only to take them back later.

Still, arrogance was a privilege of the strong. And Azadine was every bit the kind of man who deserved that privilege.

Once the plantation owners and adventurers were completely overwhelmed, Azadine smiled.

“Hm. Seems you’re finally in the mood to listen. It’s always sad when people turn to violence. We have language—why not use that to understand one another instead of barbaric methods? Words can solve things, you know.”

Though Azadine spoke with sarcasm, the plantation owners nodded as if his words were gospel.

“Y-yes. I-I completely agree!”

“We made a mistake. A very big one.”

But Azadine feigned contemplation.

“But come to think of it, abolishing slavery isn’t a simple thing, is it? Even if you say you’ll abolish it, slavery’s been illegal under both the Emperor’s laws and the Eight Kingdoms’ laws, yet it still continued underground. You think something like that can be uprooted in a day? It takes steady, consistent will to enact real change. Don’t you think?”

“Y-yes, of course.”

“You really think we’d revert everything in three days like some kind of joke?”

“We’re men of high status, I’ll have you know. We don’t make hollow promises.”

“Don’t underestimate the Bell Hoda Sugar Industry Guild. We’re people of honor.”

The plantation owners thumped their chests, claiming their honor. But Azadine ignored them and gestured to the figures in bird masks.

“Second Division… sir.”

“Summoned and present. Apologies for the delay.”

They bowed to Azadine—these were the subordinates of the local Messenger Clan division, summoned by Azadine through his authority as Second Division Commander.

“Glad you came. I called on short notice, and you still showed up quickly. Aren’t we a little too ghostlike, even for our clan? Hahaha.”

Joking, Azadine pointed at the plantation owners.

“These folks, in the course of running their farm, have been rounding up people and matching them to jobs. That’s a pretty impressive skill, don’t you think?”

“Uh…?”

“And I’m sure they also know how to make some very tasty sugar, right?”

“Y-yes… most likely.”

The Messenger Clan servants, unsure of Azadine’s intent, replied cautiously.

‘What’s he plotting?’

‘We used to mock him as “Azadine of Disgrace,” but now he’s a Division Commander…’

‘Is he setting us up?’

The Messenger Clan members who had grudges against Azadine couldn’t help but stay alert to his every word and gesture. All they could do was play along and wait to hear more.

“Our clan welcomes anyone willing to teach us, right?”

When Azadine asked this, the Messenger Clan servants nodded, finally understanding and letting out a breath of relief.

“Yes, that’s correct. Exactly right.”

“If someone has a skill we need, we recruit them and have them put it to use for our clan.”

“Or have them teach us that skill.”

“Some people do refuse, but with a little persuasion, they always end up gladly joining our clan.”

Everything they said could easily be applied to the human hunters of Bell Hoda.

Just as Bell Hoda’s sugarcane plantations kidnapped people for labor, the Messenger Clan’s servants kidnapped people with useful skills.

The plantation owners weren’t fools. They could read between the lines.

“Eek?!”

“N-no way!”

“You’re going to enslave us?! Are you insane?! If you do that…”

“If I do that, I think your heirs will be very open to persuasion. Unless they help abolish slavery, their fathers will be coming back to them.”

“……”

“And besides, once you all experience slavery—ah, pardon, I meant ‘labor enthusiasm through coercion’—you might gain some perspective on life.”

“Th-that’s insane. You think our children would like something like that?”

“Then you think they’d hate it? Confident that you’ve been such good parents, are you? Bet you’ve had multiple wives and a bunch of kids, all while indulging in your pleasures.”

“……”

Azadine’s words struck their most vulnerable spot with brutal precision. It was like ramming a tree branch up someone’s nose and smashing it with a giant mallet.

“Well then, let’s give these fine gentlemen a chance to experience the enlightenment brought by ‘motivated labor under duress.’ As the saying goes, ‘Better to struggle while young.’”

“Ugh! We’re not exactly young anymore!”

“But then again, maybe now—when you think you’re old—is actually the youngest you’ll ever be for the rest of your life? And they say learning never ends. A whole lifetime isn’t enough to truly understand life.”

“……”

The plantation owners despaired at Azadine’s deliberate nonsense. This bastard really was planning to take them as slaves.

They had captured and enslaved countless people themselves, exploiting them without pay or guilt. But the thought of becoming slaves themselves now filled them with terror.

“Take them.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’ll escort them.”

The Messenger Clan servants in masks followed Azadine’s order and seized the plantation owners.

“N-no! Let go, you bastards!”

“What the hell are you doing!? Stop them!”

“We paid you so much! Useless fools!”

“If there aren’t enough of you, call the private soldiers—the plantation’s guards!”

“If you save us now—or just save me—I’ll pay you my weight in gold! I mean it! Aaaah!”

The adventurers simply watched in silence.

They hadn’t stood a chance when Azadine fought alone. And now, with undead forces and the Messenger Clan joining in, there was no hope of victory.

‘He had troops hidden nearby from the beginning, didn’t he?’

‘He fought alone just to crush our morale…’

‘And to send a warning to the heirs of these plantation owners. If he’d just quietly kidnapped them and tried to negotiate afterward, would their heirs have listened?’

The adventurers realized that Azadine had deliberately staged the battle to make a statement and fell silent.

“Aaagh! You bastards!”

“This is too much! We weren’t born to be slaves!”

“To become slaves now?! I’m going to die! I’ll have a heart attack!”

The plantation owners, unable to accept their fate, struggled, but the Messenger Clan servants gagged them and silenced their cries.

The plantation owners of the Bell Hoda sugarcane estates now had to step forward into a brand-new life.

“I didn’t expect… things to end up like this when I filed the petition.”

Randa Banema sighed heavily as she sat in the guild office.

Unlike the clubhouse, the guild office was a proper stone building.

While the clubhouse was a private space built for the plantation owners to indulge and compete in decadence, this guild office served official business.

“But to think I’d become the Guildmaster.”

Randa Banema was still stunned. Just two days ago, her enterprise had been on the verge of total collapse. She had felt utterly trapped, suffering in an inescapable bind.

But then…

This outsider had solved the issue effortlessly and made her the Guildmaster of Bell Hoda. The position, once held by Salco, now belonged to Randa.

“Congratulations on your promotion.”

Azadine offered his congratulations while chewing on a stick of sugarcane.

“Wow, this is really sweet. Totally different from the ones that float in from the river—this is fresh, no bug bites or anything.”

“You ate river-drift sugarcane? That’s stuff only beggars eat.”

“……”

“I-I mean, in Bell Hoda, of course.”

“So, in other words, even beggars in Bell Hoda know the taste of sugarcane. That’s impressive. Hm. Anyway, forget the sugarcane talk—how was the petition? Satisfied?”

“Rather than satisfied… is this really okay?”

Azadine had kidnapped the plantation owners of Bell Hoda by force.

Of course, if you said “kidnapped” in front of Azadine, he’d blow up and ramble about “employment placement” or “rehabilitation programs” or some other nonsense to deny it.

“Well, I suppose I should say I’m satisfied with the petition? It’s not the outcome I hoped for, but if I had to choose between this and ruin… then obviously, I prefer this. I can’t deny your efforts.”

“Hm. That sounds like you’re not that satisfied. If you had to rate your satisfaction on a scale from 1 to 10, what would it be?”

“I recognize your effort and skill. If the scale goes to 10, I’d give it 11.”

“Haha, that much?”

Azadine looked pleased with the generous rating.

“But if you’re going to go past the max, you might as well make it 110,000.”

“I wasn’t that satisfied.”

Randa Banema drew a firm line.