Chapter 307: Mukouda Bought Slaves (1)
Translated by Zzonkedd
Edited by Gumihou and Onionpi
Please read this at kitchennovel dot com
From the comments in some spoiler forums, I understand that a lot of readers choose to drop this novel because:
Mukouda bought slaves!!! Aaahhhh!!! Unethical! Evil!
If you are uncomfortable with the issue of slavery, that’s fine. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Thank you for journeying with us thus far.
I have said all I wanted to about the issue of slavery back in Chapter 305 and will not repeat myself.
Please enjoy this chapter.
There were nine people in front of me.
Nine people from two families.
[9] And neither have a single woman of marriageable age…
Looks like I really don’t have luck with love…
Haaahh….
[9] Because I came from modern Japan where ‘maids’ are either cute chibi manga characters or cute café maids in a frilly black and white costumes, I can’t shake the image of maid = cute from my mind.
[9] “It’s fine if they don’t want to give ‘special services’ but can’t I at least buy a cute eye candy? Eye candy!!”
[9] Radoslav-san looked a little taken aback. However, he soon collected himself and said evenly, “It’s not that we don’t have cute female slaves. However, the cute ones would not wish to do the work stipulated by Mukouda-sama.”
[9] “Didn’t I say I don’t need special services?!”
[9] “Also,” continued Radoslav-san in a patient tone. “Attractive slaves, regardless of their species or gender, are in high demand. For the first three months of their stay with us, their demands are prioritized. Generally, the ones that fit into Mukouda-sama’s definition of cute would have already been sold.”
[9] “Gununu,”
[9] “Moreover, good looking slaves would prefer to be bought by either nobles or merchants. While the wages of a slave are on the lower side, nobles and merchants are the ones who pay the highest. This is important for slaves who wish to buy their contract back and live as a free person as soon as possible. If you meet a generous master or mistress who likes you, they could gift small but expensive trinkets too.” [5]
[9] “In other words, they wouldn’t want to work for an Adventurer?” I knew I should have become a merchant instead. Ahh, but nearly all of my money came from Adventuring, or more specifically, my familiars’ efforts… Still, “It’s not like I plan to be stingy.”
[9] “Mukouda-sama is an S Ranker, right? An S Ranker’s status is not inferior to a noble or even a rich merchant. However, the image of Adventurers being violent tends to colour a slave’s point of view…”
[9] “… …” is it too late to switch jobs now?
[9] I sighed, finally giving up on my cute maid dream.
Fine.
Whatever.
However, since I’m already here, I might as well take a look at the slave families recommended by Radoslav-san. I still need to hire help and it would be awkward to explain to Lambert-san why I left this place empty-handed after he had taken the trouble to write a letter of introduction for me.
This brings us to the current situation.
“These are the Tony and the Alban family,” said Radoslav as the two sets of families were led in.
First, the Tony family.
This family of four consists of the father Tony-san (33), the mother Aiya-san (30), the son Costi-kun (13) and the daughter Celia-chan (9).
The Tony family had sold themselves into slavery due to debt. Aiya-san got sick and the family fell into debt paying for recovery magic and potions to cure Aiya-san.
Aiya-san, the source of the debt, is currently in a recovery state. Perhaps she could not regain full health because she knew the reason the entire family was enslaved was due to her sickness. Though Aiya-san was standing quietly with her family, her complexion did not look good.
[4] “Tony is good at gardening, his son, Costi is also trained by Tony to a certain extent. I understand you need gardeners for your property? Aiya, the wife, used to work at a cafeteria before she fell ill, so she has good cooking ability. She can also handle household chores and Celia is quite capable as well since she’s the one who took care of the family when Aiya was sick.”
Up next was the Alban family.
The family of five consists of the father Alban-san (30), the mother Teresa-san (28), the oldest son Oliver-kun (10), the second son Erik-kun (8) and the only daughter, Lotte-chan (5).
[4] “The Albans used to work as farmers. They were forced into slavery due to two consecutive years of poor harvest. Alban specializes in growing fruits, so he could take care of orchards and vegetable yards as well as other miscellaneous gardening jobs. His two sons could assist too. Teresa would, of course, handle household chores. She also has some butchering ability and could dismantle small monsters. Lotte is, well, a small child.”
[6] Radoslav-san’s explanation was concise and, while not particularly sympathetic, gave me all the necessary information I needed.
Looking at these two families, I finally understood why Lambert-san told me to purchase whole families together. [9] If they were to split up, where would the children go? Especially little ones like Lotte.
[9] It would be better for them to be slaves to a smaller household and take less money if it means they could stay together. However, who would pay money for a family that has people who could not work like Lotte or just recovering from sickness like Aiya-san?
[6] They would be desperate to stay together, especially to take care of those who could not or could barely work…
Speaking of desperate. [5]
“I will work hard! So, please, buy us!”
Augh! Those imploring eyes.
The one who called out just now was Costi-kun, who bowed his head. Spurred by his brother, Celia-chan also cried out, “Uncle, please!”
Then, the next thing I knew, Tony-san was calling, “Please, take our family. We will work hard together,” and bowed.
The mother is bowing too.
“Uncle, we will also work hard! So, don’t let our family break apart! Please!” this time, the cry came from the other side of the room. Five people, including little Lotte who probably didn’t know anything, were bowing at me.
Erik-kun has tears dripping down his face and Lotte was saying ‘Please, please!’
“… …” urgh, you guys sure know how to hit my weak spots. [5]
How do they know I’m vulnerable to little kids!?
“… Radoslav-san, I’ll take both families.”
“Thank you for your patronage,” [3] Radoslav-san has a big smile on his face.
The next thing I knew, the Tony and Alban families were crying again. This time, out of relief and happiness. [6] I guess that’s better than them crying out of desperation. Also, it’s not like I can’t afford it, moreover, I do need to get trusted people to help me…
After much crying and thank yous, the two families allowed themselves to be led out of the room to register their contracts with me.
For the Tony family of four, the price is 500 gold, the Alban family of five cost me 510 gold. [9] I wonder if the extra 10 gold is for little Lotte.
[4] “Isn’t this kind of cheap for human lives?”
[7] Radoslav said, “It might be a trifling amount to you but for commoners like the Tony and Alban families, it is a tremendous amount. Moreover, if one takes into consideration the interest rate of debts and the time taken to save up this kind of money, they would have had to pay twice the amount back to the owners. For most people, it will be decades before they could be considered free people again.”
Thanks to my familiars, these amounts that ‘takes decades to pay back’ are just numbers to me.
This is the reality of families who had sold themselves into slavery. If it takes decades to pay back, it’s better to be sold as a family into a single household. That way, they could still be together even as slaves.
Anyway, since I’ve bought them, I should be responsible for them.
I didn’t manage to get my cute maid but that’s probably part of my fate…
Let’s forget about that sad business and focus on the future instead. I have high expectations for everyone. You are all together now thanks to me, so I hope you all work well with each other and produce great results in the future!
…….
Let’s keep thinking that way.
Tohoho…
[Gumihou: I can almost see Mukouda laughing and crying at the same time…]
[1] Structural Change: Combine 2 paragraphs
[2] Structural Change: Combine 3 paragraphs
[3] Structural Change: Combine paragraph & dialogue
[4] Structural Change: Change passive sentence to dialogue
[5] Delete Repetitive or Pointless Information
[6] Additional Information for Aesthetic Purpose
[7] Add Dialogue Tag
[8] Creative Licence Taken
[9] Mukouda is weirdly insistent on wanting cute maids. Gumi decided to address this matter in his mind and draw reference to the modern Japanese culture for reference. Filling in the blanks of why he’s the way he is, so to speak.
Also, instead of leaving it as a monologue in Mukouda’s mind, develop it into a dialogue with proper reactions from a fanatic otaku vs a pro trying to work.
In short, Mukouda is currently drawing on his inner Elland-san.
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I’m quite disappointed with Mukouda here. Tsk. I felt like giving him an upper cut with his insistence of getting a sex slave.
And dropping the series, to each of their own, some folks may be triggered by it.
It came out of the left field, I was shocked by it too,
Why would anyone stop reading a fantastic novel being brilliantly translated because it adresses a touchy subject? When i read the title i was like “Whaaaaat? That is so NOT something Mukouda would do!” But when the system is explained it makes perfect sense, his skills are a sensitive subject so the use of contracted slaves was a great way for the author to deal with it. I was expecting some kind of secrecy contract without using the word “slave” but it is a fantasy world…
Anyway, thanks for the chapters! Hope you all had a great time during the holidays OuO
They must have MTL’d it, lol.
A lot of details are lost if you do that.
Hope you have a good holiday too!
Yup… he even ties in corp slaves and debt slaves. Which honestly are still massive on Earth. The slaver is the one who went all perv, trying to suss out Mukouda’s motives. Plenty o Snowflakes :p
I, for one, really really enjoy Radoslav’s very professional attitude. I wish we could see more of him…
Also, as an aside, the sex worker industry in Japan is relatively clean (with exceptions, naturally) but what is interesting to me is that there is little to no stigma to marrying a former sex worker. Japan’s history also reflects this, with high ranking courtesans (oiran) marrying into merchant families or even noble families.
Not to say that other cultures don’t have noblemen marrying courtesans as concubines etc, but the stigma of being a ‘former prostitute’ has relatively low impact with most people. Courtesans could also be married in as a proper ‘wife’.
Most of the West is very prudish. Let’s face it, the ‘new world’ was founded by all the prudes that couldn’t handle Europe and fled
To the point where our sex worker industry isn’t very clean, as it’s ‘underground’
Escorts however, are more focused on social and various skill refinement that rarely include intercourse. I had one in Macao, as I was in need of someone to spend the night out with, knew the city and could help translate. Honorable profession imho
@kefrayba, it’s hard for me to accept why people shout out about dropping any story with the mention of slaves. Heck, they should stop breathing air because air supports continued slavery! WIthout air, there would be no slavery! Therefore, let air be removed from the planet. <— This seems facetious, but it is similar to the hysterical "Virtue Signalling" those anti-slavery people do. Virtue Signalling is a big thing for active social media users and twitter posters looking to increase their follower count.
.
Those Virtue Signallers are also lazy virtue signallers. If they have to do their thing, they should go attack the Uighur slave labor and genocide supporters. Ohh, all of a sudden many of the virtue signallers fall silent because the CCP has a 50-cent Army in their ministry of information and will attempt to attack and downgrade the more vocal virtue signallers. So, are these virtue signallers sincere when they clearly ignore one of the most obvious ongoing slavery and genocide events in a land that is 43% the size of the USA (including alaska). As soon as there is genuine pushback that can harm their social media standing, a huge number of virtue signallers become silent.
Your kind of rant also didn’t effect anything more than the people you criticized did. And you really assume a lot about what those people did or didn’t do.
The first one third of this is painful and cringe to read. I can’t imagine how painful it was for the translators and editors to try to make it more palettable. One thing that I can say is, after Mukoda finish setting things up for the slaves, they rarely came up again. At least for long while that I read up the raw with google translate until the point that I stop.
And I would like to add that the writer really did specify slave contract to suit what Mukoda is looking for. Which is basically labors who can’t spill his secret. The writer specifically said that slaves cannot divaluge their masters’ secrets even after their contract was complete. This also help the slaves to not be hunted afterward for those secrets. While the slaves in this WN/LN is rather more humane than in many other WN/LN. I wish the writers would be more creative and rely on tropes so much. But then… these are often amature writers.
Yeah, and I think the author is expanding his skills and trying stuff out lately. I’ve found myself accidentally stepping into flashback scenes only after my feet are wet. I’ll have to edit it so that it flows more smoothly.
There’s no real *Trust* when magical contracts are used. It is enforced magical loyalty similar to a slavery contract. Since slaves can rebel, but these magical contracts do not, they go BEYOND SLAVERY. The magical contracts are often both mind control and personality modification since the MC can be lazy and specify the person uses their best judgement to always work in the MC’s favor. The authors of these are careful not to mention slavery even though what they impose is stronger than slavery. At least slaves can rebel.
At least the writer mentions ‘slavery’ outright and explained it via proper contractual relationship etc.
With all due respect, almost all the Japanese Isekai WNs are all mentioned of slaves one way or the other.
Thanks for the treat.
Ah, true
True, Mukoda has a problem inside, similar to Elland. I guess he didn’t get to enjoy any eye candy recently, maybe only that elf lady was the only one. Can’t help but feel that Mukoda should be looking for a long living race (so far in this world only elves are mentioned to live long lives), since he’s got the blessing from the creator god.
Thanks for the second chapter this week! Awesome translation! May God bless you!
I think he’s not thinking about his lifespan much. Or rather, he was thinking with his other head
I won’t drop it because of this, but its a commonly used trope from the authors lazy wish to avoid creating trusted developed characters. A guild or union with a magical employement contract could fill the same void without the savior complex that these mc’s often have.
It also doesn’t look great when viewed by someone who understands japans historic treatment of its prisoners.
Hmm, that’s true.
I haven’t encountered too many slave related novels yet but I like the fact that MC is not buying slaves to ‘save’ them. He just doesn’t want to work too hard, damnit!
To be fair, repackaging hundred of soaps and shampoos are very hard and tedious works for one person. Since he also have to prepare and cook large amount of food for his familairs. 😀