I Shall Survive Using Potions! Volume 2

by Funa

  ...I know I’m over twenty, but I don’t wanna hear any snide remarks about that!

  By the way, I’d dedicated the day I arrived in this world as my “fifteenth birthday.” I make sure to celebrate it every year...by myself. People would ask how old I was if I invited them, so I kept my birthday a secret.

  Putting that aside for now, I should probably figure out what to do about this. While this place was a bit on the small side, it was was split into two separate rooms. At the bottom of the stairs was a room with a fairly large table, about five or six chairs, a shelf, and several wooden boxes spread out everywhere. Half of the room we were in was this holding cell made up of a lattice of sturdy wooden bars, while the other half had a small table and a single chair. Beside me and the group of kidnapped girls, the only other person in this room was a guy acting as a lookout. He was currently spacing out in a chair outside our cell.

  Before I could start thinking about what to do next...

  “Ow... Sniff...“

  It looked like they’d been pretty rough with the girl who was probably about five or six years old when they captured her, seeing as she was holding her left shoulder in pain. She was practically a kid. I couldn’t just ignore a cute girl in pain! Oh, but that didn’t mean I thought it was okay to ignore girls who weren’t cute! I’m serious here, come on!

  Anyway...

  “Eek!”

  I slipped a hand into the collar of the girl’s shirt and began rubbing her shoulder...while creating a healing potion in the palm of my hand. I placed my other free hand on top of her clothes and made a flicking motion toward the guy sitting outside the cell.

  “Pain, pain, go away!”

  “Agh!” The man let out a scream of pain.

  “Go away!”

  “Ow?!”

  “Go awaaay!”

  “ARGHHH?!” The man jumped up from his chair, face flushed, and screamed at me. “Wh-What the hell did you just do?!”

  Hehe, looks like that surprised him. I only sprinkled a bit of potion on his body that caused an excruciating amount of pain, is all.

  “Who, me? I didn’t do anything, honest. This girl looks like she’s in pain, so I thought I’d say a little magic charm to try and take her mind off it. See, just like this: Pain, pain, go away!”

  “GAH?! S-Stop that! If you don’t, then...” The man gripped the hilt of his sword.

  “There’s also one called ‘sword, sword, go away’ as well,” I said, a smile on my face. “That one makes anyone who tries brandishing a sword have it thrust back into them instead...painfully.”

  “A-Ahhhhhh!”

  Oh, he ran away...

  “It doesn’t hurt anymore...”

  The girl looked up at me blankly before breaking out into a big smile.

  Yup, I’d say a smile is one of the best looks a girl can wear.

  “What’s going on in here?!” the apparent leader of the kidnappers shouted as he burst into the room. He wasn’t one of the four people who nabbed me; it looked like he’d been waiting here on standby instead. He was someone in his early thirties, and actually looked to be a relatively normal person.

  Well, that’s not too strange, I figured. I’d heard only the underlings for yakuza and gangs tried to act tough and pick fights, but the higher-ranking members actually look pretty normal. Outside of work, they generally acted like ordinary people as well. It wasn’t like they were going to go around staring daggers at their wife’s or daughter’s friends, even if they were gangsters. They just happened to have a bit of a harsher look in their eyes... Actually, let’s just stop talking about people with harsh looks in their eyes. It’s not like I’m one to talk.

  ...Damn it.

  The leader guy was the only one to come into the room. The lookout from before was probably too scared to come back, I’d imagined.

  “Huh? Nothing’s going on, really. The man sitting there was sleeping when he suddenly jumped up and ran out of the room.”

  I balled up my hands and brought them in front of my mouth as I said that. It was the most cutesy, innocent, childlike pose I could think of, and I’d always wanted to try doing it at least once—when no one I knew was around, of course. I didn’t even want to think of how much they’d make fun of me if they saw this. Probably that it “totally doesn’t suit me” or “it’s creeping me out” or something.

  ...Shut up, me!

  “That damn idiot, sleeping on the job...” the leader angrily muttered to himself before heading back into the other room.

  Yup, that’s the way. You guys go on and start fighting in the other room.

  “Is anyone else hurt?”

  The two other girls besides the one I still had in my arms shook their heads.

  “You don’t have to worry about a thing. Help will be here soon enough.”

  “It will...?” a girl around ten years old looked up to me and asked.

  “Yup. All we have to do is sit back and wait. Hey, do you wanna play a game? The rules are super easy, so you should be able to get them right away!”

  It’d be pretty easy to call for help if I really felt like it. If I made another huge explosion like I did during the war with Aligot, or created a pillar of golden clouds, Roland and Francette should catch on right away. But it was still a little early to be resorting to those. The main culprits hadn’t shown their faces yet, after all: the ringleaders pulling the strings and controlling the group kidnapping cute girls. (Note that I’m absolutely remembering to keep the word “cute” in there.)

  I’d imagine this group who was kidnapping cute girls wasn’t just made up of these five guys. They may be the ones actually carrying out the kidnappings, but I figured they wouldn’t be enough to handle transporting the kidnapped girls, finding a buyer to sell them to, or getting a hold of people to help smuggle them out of Selinas. No matter if you were a merchant, someone in power, or an evil organization, you had to have someone backing you from behind the scenes. That was just the standard for how these things played out, no doubt about it!

  “Wh-What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” the man who ran into the cell screamed when he saw us playing games. It wasn’t the leader or the lookout from before, but a different guy this time.

  Then there was us, playing a game of Reversi, that game that was pretty similar to Othello. I’d made the board and black and white pieces myself.

  “This? I’ve had it the whole time, actually,” I said, pointing toward the leather bag on the floor.

  “Huh?” the man’s eyes were wide open as he stared at the bag in a daze.

  A few moments passed...

  “You... You did?”

  “You bet I did.”

  The man didn’t look too satisfied with my answer as he sat himself down back in his chair. I even went through the trouble of making the board so obviously big that it clearly wouldn’t have been able to fit in my bag, yet he didn’t notice at all.

  Wow... Are you for real right now?

  Then, a little while later...

  “...What in the world are you eating?”

  “Well, as you can see, we’ve got some bread, extra-large meat skewers, and grape juice.”

  “Where did you get that from?!”

  “From this bag...”

  “LIKE HELL THAT’D ALL FIT IN THERE!!!”

  The four of us in the cage were all holding bread and huge meat skewers in both hands with big cups of grape juice by our feet. There was no way that would all fit into the tiny bag I had—not normally, anyway.

  “It fits just fine. Everyone, put your skewers and cups in here when you’re done, okay?”

  “““All right!”””

  Four sets of cups and skewers were being put away into the impossibly small bag.

  “Th-That ain’t right! There’s no way that can all fit in there!” the man screamed, running out of the room with bloodshot eyes, just like the first guy had done.

  I bet he’s going to go call the leader again...

  He
was the only one with the key, and the lookouts couldn’t open the cell themselves. It was a pretty good way of dealing with stupid lookouts who could get tricked, or thought about laying their grubby hands on the goods. They did need to go to the leader every time if anything happened, though.

  “Again with this crap?! What is it this time?!”

  The leader and the lookout from before came back together.

  “Th-These guys have some kinda freaky bag in there...”

  “Where?”

  “U-Uh...”

  We were the only things inside the cell, of course. There was no bag, no juice—nothing.

  “...”

  “Are you being serious?! Are you all just screwing with me?!” the leader bellowed. He wasn’t referring to us, of course, but the second guy who’d been on lookout duty. “Do you all just go calling for me whenever you have a bad dream, is that it?! More than that, why the hell are you sleeping on the job in the first place?! They may be kids, but what the hell do you think it means to be on lookout, huh?!”

  It was like he was disciplining a new employee or something. I wondered if he was going to make the guy go scream in front of people about how worthless he was at this job... Oof, I didn’t even wanna think about it.

  But putting that aside...

  “Hey, girls. You got any games or meat skewers in there?”

  The four of us shook our heads.

  ...Uh-oh, looks like the eight-year-old has some sauce on her cheeks from the skewers...

  “You. Come with me.”

  The leader took the lookout by the ear and dragged him into the other room. It seemed they luckily didn’t notice the sauce.

  “All right, girls, I’m gonna explain what our next plan is while they’re gone!”

  “““Okay!”””

  “...Sheesh, the hell was that all about...” the third lookout muttered to himself as he came into the room. He was some guy who looked like he was in his early twenties. “My shift wasn’t supposed to be until tomorrow... I should’ve just gone out drinking when I had the chance, dammit.”

  “Um, what happened to the other people?”

  “They’re getting an earful from the boss right now. They’ve gotta all be idiots for making that much of a fuss over a few hallucinations, I’m telling ya.”

  Huh, this guy was much friendlier than the other two. Maybe he liked talking, or maybe he just liked kids...though I didn’t think he’d be doing this work if it was the latter. I mean, it was true he could just happen to be doing this on the side to make ends meet or something.

  Regardless, I can’t let this chance to get some info go to waste!

  “Um... What’s going to happen to us now?” I asked, making sure my voice was as uneasy-sounding as possible. I did that same cutesy pose as earlier, too, for good measure. If I didn’t do it now, I’d never know when I’d get the chance to do it again, so I made sure to do it as much as I could now!

  “W-Well, let’s see... No one’s gonna hurt you anymore, and your life isn’t in any danger, so you don’t have to worry about any of that. You’ll never have to worry about going hungry, and you might even get to live a pretty good life, too. I mean, you might end up having to do, like, maid work or something, but they won’t be making you do heavy labor or anything. If you get them to take care of you, you might get to live your life as if you were, I dunno, the fourth-born daughter in a lower-class noble family or something. Man, I’m getting jealous...”

  Yeah, considering his line of work would get him hanged if he was caught, I bet he really would envy that kinda life.

  He said that like he meant it from the very bottom of his heart. But what he was describing was pretty much, you know...being a slave. A sex slave by the sound of it. Pretty much as worse a crime as it got. It was already a crime when they kidnapped us, but outside of forced slavery, all other forms of enslavement were illegal in this country, whether that was buying, selling, or using slaves.

  “Forced slavery” may have the word “slave” in it, but it’s actually one of the sentences you can receive from a crime. There aren’t any countries here charitable enough to feed criminals for free, so even lesser crimes can earn you the death penalty. That’s still a bit too cruel for even them, though, and a waste of potential human resources as well. That’s why those on death row are either sent to work as forced laborers in mines, or as shock troopers in times of war. Prisoners-turned-shock-troopers would be able to have their sentences reduced the longer they stayed alive and performed well in battle, so it’s better than the fate of the miners, who would slowly waste away until death took them.

  Aside from that, the perpetrators could be sentenced to slavery for life or however long their sentence was. But the fact of the matter was that only criminals could be slaves. Any children born to slaves weren’t guilty of anything, so they could live their lives as relatively normal citizens. It was just that their parents were criminals, that was all. If they committed any sort of crime while still a minor, a thorough investigation was conducted to determine whether their parents or another adult forced them to do it, or if it was something they had to do to survive.

  In short, unless there was some sort of extraneous circumstance, having little girl slaves who were less than ten years old wasn’t only illegal, but a serious felony. Selling, owning, whatever—everyone who was involved in the process was guilty of the same crime. That was why even the slightest leak could spell the end, and if anyone reported them, it could lead to the whole group being wiped out. They wouldn’t be able to pull any of this off if they didn’t have someone backing them from the shadows.

  “Where are we being taken after this?” I asked in a quivering voice.

  The lookout must have figured there was no harm telling us since we wouldn’t be able to do anything about it, because he answered without so much as a second thought.

  “To the estates of some of the local nobles or some well-to-do merchants. The capital is way too risky to even think about, and most of the more powerful aristocrats and big merchants wouldn’t dare take the chance. They can already use their own money or authority to get any young girl they have their eye on, you know. That’s why you’re all going to some less-important aristocrats, or maybe one of the smaller merchants from around here. If I’m being honest, they’re people out in the sticks who can’t go out and nab a girl for themselves, since people would realize something was up.”

  “Oh...”

  Yep, I read you loud and clear.

  So basically, it meant the four of us might all be going to different places. If that were the case, I had to finish this before I left this town...

  “Does that mean we have to stay here until then?”

  “Actually, it looks like we’ll be getting out of here by the time morning comes around.”

  I didn’t know if he was bored, just liked talking, or liked keeping little girls company. He was probably a lolico—I mean, a nice guy who just wanted to calm some scared little girls down. Probably. And since they were about to whisk us away without any chance to talk with anyone outside this cell, he probably thought it was fine to tell me at least that much. We’d figure it out once we arrived at where we were going, anyway.

  “The leader was saying we were supposed to wait until we had one or two more, but it looks like someone out there is really tearing up the town trying to find you. Not to mention the last two guys seem emotionally unstable now, so we’re going to cut it off with just you guys this time.”

  Good, all according to keikaku!

  Oh, “keikaku” means “plan,” by the way.

  I tried getting some sleep since they were probably going to come wake us up early the next morning, but the guard ended up talking to me so much that I couldn’t really get any shut-eye. After asking so many questions, it was only polite on my part to hear him out. That was why I humored him, at least, but it didn’t seem like he was going to stop anytime soon...

  ...Wait, he’s on the night shift,
so he’s not going to sleep in the first place! Like hell I’m gonna put up with this all night!

  He finally let me go after I told him it’d be rough traveling by cart without getting some sleep. And the other three, you ask? They were fast asleep the whole time while leaving me to talk with the lookout!

  Right around daybreak the next day, I woke up after hearing a noise. When I turned to get a better look, I saw the leader and his four men had come into the room. Looked like it was time to get going.

  The leader opened the cell, and the other kidnappers came to tie us up one at a time before shoving a pieces of cloth in our mouths and gagging us. They were being incredibly thorough about this.

  They kept our legs unbound and walked us up the staircase before leading us outside. Of course, I didn’t forget to leave them a little present with my potion-making ability once we made it to the top of the stairs...

  When we left the rundown shack they’d been keeping us in, I could see the silhouette of a wagon coming into view. They forced us into the back, which was when they finally bound our feet.

  There were six empty barrels stacked in there, and...you wanna bet on what happened next? C’mon, I’d be willing to bet you a gold coin on it. Though I figure none of you would place such an obvious bet...

  With two empty barrels and four more filled with a bunch of cute girls, the wagon took off toward the city gates.

  As soon as they put the lid on the barrels, I pulled a knife out of my Item Box. This position was really uncomfortable to stay in, so I cut through the bindings around my ankles first, then through the ones on my wrists. I thought about making something that would melt through the rope, but I didn’t want to end up melting my own body as well, so I went with a knife instead. Even if I nicked myself a little, I’d be fine if I drank a healing potion after.

  It was a simple matter cutting through the rope, especially when I made a potion container I shaped like a vibroknife to do it. It even slashed straight through my hands—and boy did it slash them good.