“You know what will happen to you if you even think about touching us, right?”

The slave hunter boss was trying to intimidate me. The scumbag probably thought he would get off easy, and he certainly didn’t think he was in danger of dying or anything. Surely we wouldn’t do anything that would endanger the queen’s position, right?

“Relax. I’m going to let you all live, just like you want.”

The underlings all showed visible signs of relief when they heard that. The boss, on the other hand, seemed perplexed. I guess he wasn’t as dumb as he looked.

“Slave trader, can you make these scumbags my slaves?”

“I can. Yes sir.”

“Surely you don’t intend on turning them into slaves and forcing them to help develop the territory or protect it from other slave hunters, do you?” Eclair suddenly chimed in.

Did Eclair really think I would do something so lax? Then again, it wasn’t a bad idea. I could use the slave curse to set harsh restrictions that would kill them if they disobeyed orders. But there was a fatal flaw in that plan.

“And just let them wait for a chance to have someone they know remove the curse? I’m not that dumb.”

Several of the slave hunters must have been thinking about doing exactly that, because they had been grinning slyly, but now they were looking confused.

“The reason I’m making them my slaves is to force them into my party and to make the next part of my plan easier.”

“Wh . . . what are you going to do?” Rishia asked, looking at me nervously.

Rishia was here? She had just kind of faded into the background for a while there.

“I’m going to take them to Zeltoble. And then I’m going to sell them. As slaves, of course.”

“Wha—”

Eclair was at a loss for words. Raphtalia sighed in dismay. That’s right. What we needed right now was a huge sum of money so that we could go all in and win big at the coliseum. Every little bit counted.

Of course, if we sold the slave hunters off as slaves, there would likely be some Melromarc nobility ready to rescue them by buying them back. There was even a risk of them getting away before that, if we weren’t careful. The slave hunters probably knew that, because they still didn’t look too worried. They probably figured that they wouldn’t fetch a very good price anyway. But I wasn’t going to let them off that easy.

“Slave trader. Do you happen to have any relatives in Siltvelt?”

“Of course. Yes sir.”

“Good. In that case, I want to sell these scumbags to those relatives. Let’s see . . . Tell them that they’re being offered by the Shield Hero and that they’re the slave hunters that captured the demi-human slaves originally from the Seaetto territory.”