Chapter 0: The Beginning of Salvation

“100 gold!”

“120 gold!”

“150 gold!”

Look at this chaos~

On the days of slave auctions, the central square is always bustling like this.

Nobles and merchants with some wealth gather, raising their hands high and shouting with veins popping on their necks.

Today, the heat is unusually excessive.

The fervor is at least three times greater than when a top-tier female slave was up for sale not long ago.

“160 gold!”

“200 gold!”

“Two… 200 gold has been offered!”

The fever finally subsides a little at the overwhelming bid of 200 gold.

Both the participants and the spectators of the auction begin to buzz with excitement.

200 gold coins.

If you know that the average price for a high-grade slave is less than 2 gold, you can imagine how precious the current slave on the platform must be.

It’s an enormous amount of money, enough to purchase 100 high-grade slaves or 50 top-tier ones.

A sum so unattainable that ordinary commoners could never hope to earn it in their lifetime.

“Wow! As expected of Count Lubran!”

“Ha, isn’t Count Lubran a shareholder of the Orien Trading Company? Even so, 200 gold is astonishing.

Truly befitting the shareholder of the kingdom’s top trading company!”

“200 gold! I didn’t know Count Lubran was that wealthy!”

Everyone showered Count Lubran, the man who placed the bid, with praise and awe.

I silently swallowed my words.

Although I was participating in the auction, I hadn’t made a single bid yet.

I looked at Lubran.

His lips, twisted into a greedy smirk beneath his long, curled mustache, seemed to boast of his arrogance.

Disgusting pig.

He was notorious for buying slaves, using them mercilessly as sex slaves, and discarding their corpses by the river.

That wretched man was now laughing while staring at the trembling slave on the auction stage.

Disgusted, I averted my gaze, but there was nowhere else to look. I lowered my head.

The woman barely covering her vital areas with rags instead of resplendent armor, and the men around her drooling greedily as they stared—there was no place for my eyes to rest.

“Count Lubran is going to feast tonight, isn’t he?”

“Look at that chest. So firm and luscious.”

“And wasn’t it certified that she’s a virgin? A virgin warrior—rarer than a gold dragon.

He’s in for a real treat tonight.

I’m jealous, so jealous~.”

“That’s why he bid 200 gold. Even if she’s a high treason slave.”

High treason.

The crime that reduced her, the hero who saved this world, to a mere slave overnight.

But I know.

That crime was a fabrication—a conspiracy by the kingdom.

I have no choice but to know.

“200 gold! Is there no higher bid?!”

The auctioneer shouts at the top of his lungs.

He’s signaling that the auction is nearing its end.

Lubran smiles triumphantly, thinking he’s secured the victory.

But soon, that disgusting smile freezes in place.

Because of my bid.

“500 gold.”

500 gold is a fortune big enough to develop a small fiefdom.

But I don’t regret it.

It’s a small price for her.

Emilia—no, Choi Yoonseo—now, I will save her.