SSD 5.03 - The Fourth Kind

Hey, this chapter is actually here on time. Strange that.

Enjoy.

Under the heavens, there are more cruelties instituted by man, than enshrined in nature’s continuous war with itself. For man, with no thought of gain or advantage, will exercise petty tyrannies over their fellows, and revel in his insignificant power, delighted that it should shine slightly brighter than the dull embered spark of their neighbor.

-Elkaf Jega, philosopher and moralist, Kartaf Region, 515 IC

==Caden==

Watching Zidaun imitate an exotic green, purple, and brown fish was a delight.

It would have been a risk, before… but Zidaun was, without a doubt, a slave.

All my joy from the moment was sucked away with that thought.

I hadn’t wanted to leave anything to chance. I was ignorant and had someone who knew more; not taking advantage to learn would be idiotic. So I asked about slavery. I knew it existed, or had existed, in some form simply because I knew the word in both the two new languages.

Would have been happier if they didn’t have that word at all.

Slavery came in a few different forms here. There was the traditional definition, where ownership was enforced by the state, and, according to Zidaun, this was the most common. Despite that, it still wasn’t common, which had been a relief to here. Apparently it had been practiced much more heavily a few hundred years ago, but a series of slave revolts had destabilized various countries. The slave revolts were rarely successful on their own, but they didn’t need to be, all they needed to do was make the country vulnerable to their enemies and alliances would form naturally from there.

The threat of wide scale unrest and possible overthrow was enough to start reform in various countries. The news of reform elsewhere had agitated existing slave populations in other countries and the reforms had spread, if only for fear of the reformed countries invading with a highly motivated army of liberated slaves, who would be happy to liberate another country, and incidentally adding territory for their rulers.

Nowadays, slavery was a punishment, and usually closer to indentured servitude. It also never applied to any children, eliminating hereditary issues. Only truly terrible, but usually non-violent, crimes would have someone enslaved for life. Zidaun had told me of the one example he was aware of, a merchant who had defrauded others out of many thousands of golds, and had no hope to ever repay those he cheated.

Seems fair. If you steal enough, then you can never repay it, so your life becomes entirely dedicated to that repayment. It is just, though it begs the question of mercy, and what happens if they truly repent. Well… I suppose if they truly repented, then they would want to serve those they hurt, so it would be about the same.

The less common forms, were supposed to be system enforced. The System, had no slave classes, and that had apparently been a topic of fierce debate among priests, clerics, and various religious scholars. For a long time, the debate had argued back and forth, with one side arguing that the Gods didn’t mandate everything, but that slavery was a natural condition, that the lesser should serve and the greater be served, while the other side had pointed out that determining who deserved to serve who was a much more nuanced argument, and the fact that the system never created a slave class, or even a slaver class, was evidence that the Gods did not approve. The fact that, rarely, The System did have types of enforced slavery, even if it didn’t call it that, was further evidence they used to argue their point. If slavery was supposed to exist, then The System should enforce it, but it didn’t.

That argument was now considered to have been won by the latter, with the global disbanding of most slavery.

The second form of slavery was, arguably, not slavery at all, it just had enough similarities to get lumped together. It was a life-debt. They could only form when someone saved another from death, without any connection to them or thought of reward, even if just from the person after they were saved. Even thoughts of leveraging the gratitude of the one healed, completely failed to work. And it wasn’t like the person saved had to obey the one who saved them, they simply had to follow the same same morals. There was a connection forged from the act, but it wasn’t one of true control.

The exact reason for this connection, and why it existed, had been as heavily debated as any other idiosyncrasy of The System, but Zidaun didn’t know the details. He knew the common belief, however, which was simply that, having saved someone selflessly, the person saved couldn’t violate the morals of the one who saved them, because that would put things into the world that ran contrary to the selfless act.

People had, apparently, tried to create life debts artificially in a thousand different ways. Ordering a subordinate to heal someone was enough for the act to no longer be selfless. Trying to arrange for someone to be saved, could, under certain conditions, result in life debts, but never to the person orchestrating it. And, if you were arranging for the kind of selfless people that healed with no thought of getting anything in return, then leveraging that for any kind of gain was practically impossible.

Wonder if they would get the equivalent of my Dread Salvation title though?

If so, that might have explained why people tried so hard. However, Zidaun knew of no public continued attempts, the practice generally considered both immoral and a heretical attempt to manipulate the system.

It would be easier to get that kind of title with normal deception, anyway. Does that still count as heretical, if The System rewards you for your manipulation? Of course, you are mainly trying to manipulate others in that case, so whatever.

The third form of slavery, was enforced by The System, and by ritual. It had to be entered into completely willingly. There could be no coercion. This was still rare, because the people willing to enter into that kind of oath were generally the kind of people you didn’t need it from. Still, some specialized body guards who were loyal to a single house would take on these kind of oaths.

These were what I had asked about most directly, because I wanted to know how that worked and if there was a way to tell. And there was.

Obviously, there was the most simple way. Orders, meant as orders, had to be obeyed. There was nuance to such, reflecting both intent and interpretation. A slave ordered to fetch breakfast and then return could still come back to report that the kitchen had had a fire and breakfast would not forthcoming. They weren’t required to run to somewhere else and steal or buy a breakfast before they could return. They also couldn’t go against the spirit of the orders and leave the house to obtain breakfast far away in the first place.

I could give Zidaun orders, but I hadn’t really wanted to let him even know that he was a slave. If, in fact, he was. I had, at that point, hoped that I was wrong, and that he was simply the product of a zealous society. That kind of indoctrination could mimic the slavish devotion I was seeing.

However, slaves, of this type, were required to act in the best interest of their master, even without orders, and that seemed to fit Zidaun’s behavior. And he had admitted to me that he could not act against me, or against the interests of the other Adar, unless it was for my benefit.

“Okay, then how would that differ from slavery?” I had asked, trying to poke gently at Zidaun’s belief.

“Well, we are just born this way,” he replied, “and The System doesn’t do institutionalized slavery. Plus, there are other things you can do to a slave, and I’ve never heard of them happening with us.”

“Like what?” I asked back.

“Well,” he said, “system slaves can be told what to think and feel, but even though I have been compelled to action, I have never had that happen. You couldn’t order me to forget, for example.”

And that, well… that had been something I could test.

The best slaves, are ones who don’t know they are slaves.

I had ordered Zidaun to believe the sky was purple, with dots of green. And then ordered him to tell me, truthfully, what color the sky was. And he answered what I feared, that it was purple and green. I had corrected the order, removing that belief, and then I watched him forget, not just the order, but everything that led up to it, the conversation about slave’s slipping through his mind like sand.

They aren’t allowed to know.

I was his master, his owner, and it made me feel dirty. It might only extend to him, but I suspected it extended to every Adar that had, in turn, pledged to him, and via him, to me.

I might be able to override that, and part of me was tempted to test it. Except, if I was right, and if Zidaun reacted badly, which he fucking deserved to, then I would have to order him to forget again, and that was an act of cruelty I couldn’t bear.

I asked him a question, to start.

“What would you think, if a human was able to gain control of a dungeon, to merge with it and take control?”

Zidaun’s brow furrowed, “That is impossible.”

“Yes,” I said, then added an order “but if it were, tell me, what you would think.”

Hate doing this.

“It would be an abomination,” he said. “No dungeon should be suborned that way, subjected to a human.”

And, after, I told him the truth, to his increasing amazement, about my story. That I was human, originally, from another world, before I became fused with a dungeon. How I had been held and then escaped, and how I had split between me and Exsan. How my powers had developed and how I had realized that I could use the ambient mana to get around the limitations of my mana generation. How I had delved deeply into my soul, and negotiated with The System and struck a deal.

And, all through the story, I watched his initial emotions be dominated by the power of his slavery. His initial disgust and outrage was visible for only a moment, before it returned to the fervent glow of worshipful eyes and reverent posture. Any emotion, any reaction, that would fall outside of serving me, of helping me, was washed away.

There was, I think, some actual devotion, worship, and awe over some of my feats, but I couldn’t be certain.

And they might just be learned behaviors. That is one of the real dangers. Sure, the conditioning has to activate for out of context problems, like me, or to moderate any conflicting drives, but most of the time they would just learn to sublimate their emotions on their own.

And the only reason I had felt comfortable sharing all of this, this knowledge, this vulnerability, was because Zidaun could not betray me.

Only for a little while. Get everything stable, then I can free him.

It wouldn’t be completely, and that made me feel a bit sick, but it would be as much as I could. I would free him from the illusion, free him from the need to serve me. The only thing I would do was prevent him from acting, deliberately, against my interests. At that point… he could leave the dungeon entirely if he wanted. He could go become, well, whatever he wanted to become.

And if he still wants to serve you, what then?

I decided to ignore the thought.

People will worship you, you know, even without this. New type of dungeon, saving the lives of the peasantry, giving them a better life, its almost guaranteed. Bound to be some priests that think you are some special gift from that god, too. What was his name, Yamosh? No… Yamash? Maybe, still sounds weird.

Strange to have each of the deities as a celestial body, though the fact that they see the black hole eating the sun as the gods having sex in the sky in hilarious.

For the first time in my life, there were some religious texts that I actually wanted to read. If only to hear religious scholars try to talk around the issue of divine sex.

Honestly, I would read anything right now.

The Adar hadn’t brought any books with them, when they gave me offerings. Still need to sort through that. Secrets were their big thing, apparently, so books couldn’t just be transported overland. Most dungeon didn’t care about books, or most knowledge in general, so this was a fairly new situation for them. Even so, they had prepared a solution, a teleportation platform, though I would need to provide the mana crystals to power it. Apparently Zidaun was supposed to impress upon me the importance of secrets and keeping the books safe before they sent them.

Like I didn’t already know secrets were important.

No one, who isn’t bound to keep my secret, is going to find out I used to be human. A dungeon, which are already known to become strong and dangerous, being unusual is interesting and of potentially moderate concern. My motivations are something they think they understand. Sure, I don’t kill as many people, but this kind of design means that many more people will delve here, from all different levels of power. My dungeon is, actually, the logical way for a dungeon to get far more people. If the others were… not smarter since apparently they are still very intelligent, and Exsan seems just as smart as I am, but rather… more involved and curious, they would probably have come up with something similar.

Strongly suspect dungeons not having curiosity is a deliberate choice by The System. Prevents them from developing out of control. Though Zidaun’s stories about a few of the more interesting dungeons does mean some of them branch out a little.

I looked at Zidaun, trying to ignore the gnawing in my stomach.

“So,” I said, “I can definitely level up, and have a lot of points I can spend, what would you recommend I do.”