Late at night.
Above the night sky, stars formed a river, and the full moon hung high.
Moonlight covered the earth.
Everywhere the eye could see was coated in silver frost.
At a port.
The sea breeze blew, and thick smoke soared into the sky.
The ruins of buildings burned down by raging flames flickered with dim firelight everywhere.
A gigantic-masted ship was moored inside the port.
On the deck, cage after cage had been piled up.
Each cage held a group of people.
Some of them wore expressions of terror, some were at a loss, and some burned with rage.
Around the cages stood hundreds of fully armed sailors with cold expressions.
They looked toward the gangplank, where more cages were still being carried onto the deck.
"This haul isn't bad at all. Once this is over, we can take a break for a while."
One of the sailors muttered under his breath.
They looked at the people in the cages with gloomy expressions as if they were already a pile of Beli.
Nowadays.
The slave-trading environment, suppressed by Maud's thunderous methods, was enduring a bitter winter.
Over the past six months or so, countless slave-hunting crews had died with grievances unavenged.
The small slave-hunting crews that lived off the crumbs beneath the big players naturally weren't doing any better.
Those who dared to sell slaves openly would basically disappear within a short time.
But precisely because of that—
Risking their lives to continue this business brought in even greater profits than before.
"It's all that damned Baccar D. Maud's fault... If not for him, we wouldn't have to be scared out of our wits every time we made a deal."
A heavily jowled man spat toward a slave inside one of the cages.
Apparently, that still wasn't enough