“Don’t worry, Raphtalia. I’ll get your friends back, no matter what.”

“Mr. Naofumi . . .”

Raphtalia’s expression transformed into one of relief upon hearing my words. I knew this kind of behavior didn’t really fit my image, but I had plenty of reason to do this for Raphtalia.

“That said, the prices of the slaves have skyrocketed, and we don’t have enough money to buy them right now. I can’t say I like the thought of doing this, but we’ll just have to buy Raphtalia’s friends with money earned by fighting in the coliseum. I’m sorry it has to be dirty money, but it’s the only way.”

Raphtalia nodded decisively. And so it was settled—we would use the slave trader’s connections to take up the gauntlet and fight in the vicious coliseum.

Chapter Eleven: Slave Hunters

Chapter Eleven: Slave Hunters

Before anything else, we needed to get the money for the wager. When it came to betting, the more money you could wager, the better. Also, if they figured out that I was the Shield Hero, the amount we could make would plummet. That said, I had to get the capital we would need to wager to win it all in one stroke . . .

I considered raising money by offering express transportation to Melromarc using my portal. That was one way to make money in an online game that I had played once. A one-way trip between Melromarc and Zeltoble took two weeks, so there were sure to be people who would jump on the chance to be able to make that same trip instantaneously.

The problem was pricing. Even if people were willing to spend more, you’d probably be lucky to charge somewhere between one and five gold pieces for the fare. Generating positive word of mouth would also be important for getting customers. Smuggling could end up being a problem, but that could be solved by working with whoever was responsible for inspections in Melromarc. Still, making money doing something like that would draw far too much attention. Another issue was only being able to send six people each hour. I wanted to avoid going that route, if possible.

We returned to the slave trader’s underground market. I shook my head slowly at a worried-looking Rishia.

“What’s up?”

“Fehh . . .”

“Relax, Rishia. I don’t plan on making you fight.”

“Hmm . . .”

I wasn’t sure if it was just poor air circulation or what, but Filo seemed to be less energetic than usual.

“Even if we tried making money by placing some of the stuff we got from Kizuna’s world on the black market, doing so in an efficient manner would take time.”