"Who do you think you are you filthy bastard!? I want this one handcuffed and gagged and keep him separated from the rest of them!" shouted Giselbert. He was already delayed by half a day because of that moldy wheel breaking down before they even left the town. He had to deliver his wares in two days and these slaves trying to escape just stole him even more time. "Now!" the wolf demi-human, who was causing the uproar earlier, shouted and right after the ropes tying the wrists of the other wolf-humans together loosened. They probably untied them earlier and were just waiting for the signal so they could all break free at the same time to maximize their chances of escape.

After the signal, most of them instantly ran away and dispersed in all directions.
"Don't stand around GET THEM! I should've invested my money in some steel handcuffs and not you useless pricks!" The merchant shouted at his employees and bodyguards which began chasing after the escapees after a brief moment of confusion.

"Quick this way!" Munk said waving his arm in a motion forward while waiting for his wife carrying his son to catch up leading them deeper into the forest. "Honey my feet they hurt. I can't run that fast." "It's alright let me carry Luan, it'll take some weight off you, but we need to get away quick! If they find us they will separate me from the rest of you." The demi-human mother quickly handed over the son to his husband as they ran further into the forest.

"Papa I'm scared I don't want to be separated from you" the little demi-human boy cried on his dad's shoulder. "We will be fine, no worries just try to keep quiet so they can't find us!". Suddenly his nose picked up a scent. It was the scent of one of his people, they must be hiding nearby so he quickly decided to go after them. The scent got stronger and after turning behind a small bush into a more clear spruce wood area he saw something he didn't expect. It wasn't one of the slaves he escaped with but another wolf-human. In fact, it was a little girl around the age of his son, maybe one or two years older wearing the same bland slave clothing as all other slaves do. She seemed lost and a bit confused. A weird thing about her, that he noticed right away is, that she had a small owl resting on her shoulder. Munk slowed down and started to move carefully trying to keep the girl calm and not scare her any further. What was she doing alone in the forest? Was she also one of the slaves? How come he never saw her then? Does she live in the forest? More questions were stacking up in his head as he was inspecting the little girl.

"Everything is alright, stay calm. Are you one of us?" he asked trying to solve the mystery around the girl. After further inspecting her, he realized that she was actually really pretty, especially for a slave girl. If he knew that other people were reading his thoughts at that moment he would've probably also pointed out, that he's not a lolicon but then again he might not have really cared as he was running for his life.

The girl just shook her head at his question so he tried the most simple way of finding out who she is by asking "Who are you?". The girl now responded with an unexpected harmonic voice and said: "I'm Mala, I ran away yesterday, and now I'm hiding in the forest."

"I'm Luan!" His son burst out on his shoulder covering his mouth and looking away ashamed right after, he also seemed to try to cover up that he cried all of a sudden.

"Alright then Mala, we will stay with you, currently there are slave traders chasing us but we will stay hidden, no worries." Munk's wife said. "Okay, thank you for staying with me," Mala said with a cute smile with perfectly arranged white teeth and two small fangs.

"How did you survive out here all on your own the whole night? There are a lot of monsters up at that time, even the slave traders camp got attacked tonight."

"I'm just pretty good at hide 'n seek," she said with an uncaring tone. Munk simply concluded from that confusing answer that she hid from the monsters. "And besides that, I wasn't entirely alone, I still had Gerald with me!" she said while petting the small owl on its head. Munk and his wife exchanged confused glances and decided to not ask any further questions regarding the weird girl.

After Gerald had led him to the traders' camp in the forest he initially thought that this would be the perfect cliché-moment for a superhero entrance, a suppressed minority, a person in power only caring about money, brutal punishments for people who resist. Simply the perfect villain to be defeated by the hero however he deemed that approach boring as it was just so generic, there wasn't any spice to it. That's the reason why Shota didn't intervene with their revolt or with them being chased and brutally punished by the traders and their bodyguards. "I have to do something though, that merchant really seems like a jerk... Gerald, go shit on his seat inside the caravan!" Right after that Gerald took off to fulfill his honorable duty. While Gerald was on his way to leave his present, Shota decided to turn invisible and inspect their camp. He was really fascinated by their level of technology and their way of living. If he'd have to say a time he would say this whole world took place around the 14th century. He was thinking about what to do next as he was floating through the camp and inspecting things that caught his interest while ignoring the slaves were brutally dragged on their tails and ears next to him. A part of him was really getting frustrated at how inhumane his mind became. He always got distracted at things that he would've never prioritized over morally wrong things in his old life. He knows that it's wrong but when actually acting the way he would as a human he feels really bored and it just seems like he is missing out on actual opportunities and trying to fight these thoughts and his remodeled personally just caused him to end up in a temporary identity crisis that simply ended with him finally disregarding his human thoughts and for some time even completely forgetting about them. It feels weird to him but also right. He's got his new identity while still remembering his old one and he can't really identify which each one of them. He finally came up with a plan on what to do next as he arrived back at the branch from which he was watching the camp. Gerald was also coming back to him and he really had to chuckle seeing the owl flying towards him while knowing exactly what he just did. He opened his inventory and got out some bits of high-quality meat from Yggdrasil that gave you some decent, but for him useless, buffs and, judging by Gerald's reaction also tasted high-quality. After quickly glancing at the slaves again he decided to disguise into something that would be the most helpless seeming one of them. He landed somewhere relatively close to the alpha demi-human that started the revolt earlier, dispelled his invisibility and cast [Perfect Illusion] on himself. After a short cast-time, he turned into the little slave girl he envisioned. With such a high tier of illusion magic, it should be impossible to see through his disguise and he could even feel his new body while still being able to control his old one too. He could still use his tail and move it but could also move his illusionary legs, he could move the visible as well as the hidden parts of his body equally easily. "Nice that's cool!"

…

After meeting Munk and his family it started to become a bit awkwardly silent and their kid was constantly staring at him for some reason which made the whole thing a bit uncomfortable.'I know you guys just want to live but I kinda don't want to live in the forest with you for the rest of my time, I have to do this' Shota thought to himself as he cast [Silent Triplet Magic: Block sense] numbing their strong hearing and smelling skills while at the same time leading bodyguards to their location by making them chase after an illusion Shota created and programmed to come right at them. They were still hiding behind the bushes while Munk was taking care of his wife's sore feet with a special but bland-looking piece of cloth that Shota gave him. He told Munk to keep it as it might help him in a dire situation. A bit confused he accepted it probably thinking that Mala was making stuff up with her child's mind to calm him down.

He/She was sitting around and playing with Gerald a bit while Luan was still staring at him.' Did he see through my disguise? Probably not, he seems to be fascinated by Gerald or something. He didn't come over to talk to me. He seems intimidated...' Shota decided to smile at him to ease the situation a bit which made Luan blush.

And because Shota is a typical fantasy novel protagonist he won't realize that the little Luan has a crush on his girl form. He, instead of picking up on the really obvious hints will simply be confused and ignore that weird reaction because protagonists are always shitty at picking up on hints. While the author was writing about how he will make the protagonist an idiot for his convenience the guards approached their hiding place and slowly started to surround them after seeing that there were more slaves that didn't notice them yet. While they were surrounding them Shota simply continued to play with Gerald while being fully aware of their presence. His tail inspected all of his surroundings and its vision made him see everything clearly while from their perspective they just saw a cute innocent girl playing with an owl. They counted down from three and quickly ambushed them. Munk screamed surprised and confused but shortly after he was knocked out by a low-quality sword-hilt while the others got tackled and dragged away. Shota didn't even bother to put up a fight as one of the merchant's employees just bear-hugged him from behind and carried him away. His goal was complete - Become a slave and obtain information while being taken to a town. Just then he realized how nice the feeling is to not be bound by any time limits, he feels immortal, he could waste years doing nothing and not feel like he wasted a minute. The value of time dropped to zero and it was probably one of the greatest realizations to make in his existence.

'These guys smell horrible' Shota thought while being carried to the camp. 'I wonder what this world will be like, maybe there is a Demon Lord I have to defeat, or maybe we all live encircled by giant walls! I wonder if they even know what magic is...'. In the game, he usually assisted when it came to information collection because of his extraordinary skills and adaptability. However using these now might reveal his strength in the long run and that seems pretty boring to him besides wasting resources on the next best bodyguard wouldn't be the smartest approach, he would probably do that on their leader or the merchant later to get the most intel. In the meantime, he could just ask them nicely to find out some things.

"Where will you take us?" "Shut up you demi-human scum! Making us run through the forest just because of you bastards. I'm not in the mood to talk!" 'Well, he did have a point.' Shota thought while being a little bit frustrated at how hard they were making this. A part of his mind came up with killing all of them in one sweep to demonstrate his true power while another part just told him to simply manifest a big pile of dogshit and making him step into it. He decided to ignore both of them even though the last idea seemed really tempting. 'This new mind is also quite genius, huh?'

Soon they arrived in the camp where most of the slaves were already tied together, covered in bruises from their punishment. It is quite obvious that they couldn't run very far due to the sore feet they had from walking a whole day without shoes.

"These were the last ones we could find Mr. Giselbert" "Alright then that means only two escaped. The loss will be taken from your payment!" The leader of the bodyguard group, a bigger and more experienced looking man, seemed like he wanted to protest but simply took the punishment.

"Now give this cunt a proper punishment, but make sure you don't damage him too much!" he said while pointing at Munk, his son sobbing while being handcuffed with ropes. Meanwhile, Shota was just looking around not really caring about the whole situation until something made him smile. It was Gerald, he could see him far away through the trees coming towards them. The owl came closer and landed on his shoulder. The slaves around him seemed pretty confused at the sight of a little girl petting an owl. They started asking Mala/Shota questions about where he came from. In the background, Giselbert was shouting at one of his employees and saying something about wiping his seat and washing his pants, however, no one really cared because they were all fascinated by the new girl and entranced by her comforting voice. Shota didn't really understand what fascinated them about him but after taking a closer look(which was pretty easy with his supervision) he saw that he still stood out quite a bit from the others. His hands were still very soft and clean, there was some dirt on his skin but no actual wounds or bruises. Even the younger slaves already had their hands covered in bruises from working and carrying heavy things. He answered their questions about her past with simple lies or avoided them to not seem any more suspicious. From them, he found out that they were inside a country called the Baharuth Kingdom in which slave trade was pretty common and that they were on their way to a town called Dreiklingen. Usually, they would be sold as slaves to do physical labor or please their owners in other ways. While he was talking to the other slaves he noticed that Luan was still sobbing.
'Must be tough for him to be separated from his dad in such a situation' he thought as he walked over to him. "No worries, the cloth I gave your dad was a magical one, it will help him!" he said trying to calm him down. Luan looked up to her with big eyes "But magical items are very expensive!" 'Ah shit, so magic is an actual thing in this world.' "Hehe umm, you know it's a different kind of magic, it's like a ... lucky charm!" The truth is, the cloth simply has a programmed illusion enchantment on it that will release a strong scent when waved a few times. He used the same scent while taming the wolf-beast that seemed to have the highest intelligence(and didn't get murdered by him) he encountered earlier. It's training made the beast recognize the person with the same smell as its owner and subjugate itself to him. If Munk manages to figure out how it work the beast might make it in time to help him. "Thank you, Mala!" Luan said while giving him a hug with his short kid arms. Shota saw the hug coming, everyone's movements seemed very slow to him. Even though all of this he was still surprised and caught off-guard by the little boys' hug. It reminded him a bit of his nephew he sadly didn't see very often. "It's fine, but now you need to rest a bit, the caravan will travel further in the morning. You need to be fit." There was no way Luan could've seen the tail with the glowing eye facing him as he was hugging Mala. [Sleep] Shota mumbled as his tail started to glow in a weak blue hue and he felt Luan getting a bit heavier on his shoulders. He quickly put the sleeping boy on the ground making sure he will rest in a comfortable position next to his mom. "The morning can come." he mumbled to himself in an optimistic tone as he slowly started putting all the slaves to sleep, until- "Get that filthy bird!" Giselbert shouted pointing at Gerald who was casually eating some meat from a dinner plate and threw his dinner knife at him. [Distort Reality] Shota cast in time, shifting the flight path and the very position of the knife making it miss the owl. After seeing the knife land next to it, the owl quickly flew away to safety. 'You better be grateful that I'm not in the mood to go John Wick mode right now!' Shota said to himself while being visibly pissed.[Silent: Scare] This tier 1 spell simply induced a weaker version of the fear effect on the target for a brief moment, but it was enough to make the chubby merchant fall of his chair. To bystanders, it simply looked like he jumped because of the owl taking off and judging by their reaction it was an amusing sight. "Haha, I'll make you regret even thinking about hurting my owl!" [Silent: Dream] He said in a dramatic tone as he cast his next spell to torture the poor man even further.

...

Later this night Giselbert had a really horrifying nightmare about a giant owl pecking at him and after burying him alive under a giant pile of birdshit which made him feel more exhausted than before. The slaves, however, seemed unnaturally well-rested, considering that they don't even have beds. There also was that annoying incident the same night with a wolf beast appearing in the camp taking down two of his employees and freeing one of the slaves. Giselbert didn't know that this major annoyance was just the beginning of many more weird occurrences that were about to unfold...

AN: Thank you all for taking the time to read my story, I'm sorry it took that long for me to just write the third part, I hope that won't become the normal wait time for a new chapter. Please let me know what you think about this chapter. I hope it wasn't boring. Thank you all again for reading!