The door to the room where Ria found the clients had little reinforcement, as though it was just a safe place to keep them out of the way while the guards took care of any threats. What little reinforcement it did have meant little to Kal's steel-covered fist as he punched out the lock. Women shrieked and men cursed as the lock bounced along the floor. Kal used the splintered hole to swing the door open and step inside.
A dozen men milled about, most of them with the women they had purchased. All of the men were topless, but a few wore undergarments, leaving the rest naked. He appeared to have interrupted two men in the back of the room who were double-teaming one of the collared slaves.
"Girls, out!" he ordered. Confused looks on the women wearing collars were replaced by winces of pain before they began bolting past Kal and into the hallway. Those without collars looked worriedly between Kal and their customers before following suit. But not all were able to escape.
"This bitch is mine! I paid good gold for her!" growled a man who refused to let his cat-girl slave leave with the rest. Two more men joined him. None of the three women wore collars.
"You're a prisoner. Whatever you paid means nothing to me," said Kal. "Let her go before I kill you."
He jerked the neko up in front of him like a shield as the other men in the room all cleared the surrounding area. "You can't kill me without killing her firs--"
The man's threat died on his lips as Kal's speed rune lit up bright enough to make the leather sizzle. Faster than any of the men could react, the mage dashed across the room, pushed the girl to the side, and slammed the steel plate across his knuckles into the man's nose. Just as fast, he leapt back to the doorway, leaving the man crumpled on the ground with his face caved in and the girl holding her side from Kal's high-speed shove.
While beckoning the girl over, the mage looked at the other two refusing to let their slaves go. "Are they worth it?" he asked with a pointed glance at the man on the floor, jerking and twitching in his death throes. Their women slipped past him and out the door as he drew a healing spell and pressed it to the shoved girl's chest before letting her join them.
Kal spotted a nearby chair and summoned it to his hand. The cantrip wasn't powerful enough to lift it, and the legs made an impressive racket as they scraped across the floor. The mage sat down and addressed the men.
"You came here to play with toys you could break. No thought was given to the lives these women had, the families they were taken from, or the pain they suffered. You only cared about your own sick lust, and in comparison, their lives were worthless in your eyes.
"Your lives are now equally worthless--"
One of the men pushed to the front of the group. Pushing his chest out, he bellowed, "What--"
"BEFORE," Kal shouted, then continued more softly, "you say another word, understand that the floor outside of this room is littered with bodies of the men paid to protect you, many of them lay there because of me. Then, look at the man on the floor and decide how quickly you want to join him."
You can't do this! I'm the--"
"I don't care," said the mage. "Your status, contacts, none of it means anything to me."
"Kill me, and it will fill this room with poison," said another.
"Again, I don't care. My companions and I are immune to poisons. All you will accomplish is killing the other men in the room because I won't lift a finger to save them."
"You obviously hate us," said an older man in the back. "But you haven't killed us despite showing us you have the power. How do we walk out of here?"
Kal pointed at him and looked at the others. "That man gets it."
"Gets what?" one asked.
"Our freedom comes with a price," another answered.
Kal shook his head. "More than your freedom, your lives. You will take a magically binding oath. Refuse, and you die."
The older man sighed, "Let's hear this oath."
---
The men stood staring at Kal in shock.
"Ten percent of our income?" one said in hushed tones.
"Free all of my slaves?" said another. "That'll ruin me!"
"As I said, I don't care," said Kal.
"But if his business folds because of this oath, then you won't get any money from him," said the older man.
"How many times do I have to say it?" said Kal, irritation seeping into his voice.
"Right, you don't care."
"The only reason you are alive is because you can prove useful to me and my new business. If you all refuse and I end up leaving a room full of corpses behind, that will leave multiple powerful companies in Silvermoon scrambling for new leadership. I have no doubt my own business will do well in the ensuing chaos.
"However, leaving you alive and 'donating' a portion of your income to me seems like a safer, long-term solution. And... you get to live."
"Because the oath will be passed on to our sons when they take over the business," growled the man with all the bluster earlier.
"Or if you sell it. Which is unlikely given the terms," Kal added.
"You will still be taking money from us for generations to come."
"How much is your life worth?" said Kal, with a wave at the corpse on the floor.
"Not enough to leave my family beholden to you for generations," said the man before launching himself toward Kal.
The mage slipped off the chair and into a crouch before bounding to the side. A giant blue hand reached through the unnoticed illusion of darkness cast over the doorway behind Kal and grabbed the man by the head. The man clawed at Ikuno's arm, then began pounding on it with his fists as the oni sidled through the doorway and into the room.
She jerked the man from his feet, leaving him holding onto her arm to take some of his weight off his neck. Like a cat playing with a mouse, she tossed him into the air before placing a hand on his back and slamming the man into the floor. Those in the room winced from his ear-splitting scream as Ikuno's claws sunk into his back.
