Late at night, the streets of Mist Oasis were exceptionally quiet.
Every household had lit a tallow candle outside their door in accordance with tradition.
This was meant to light the Prophet's way home.
Yet the Nurha Labor Market on the outskirts remained noisy and bustling.
A pointed tower stood in the middle of the market, with an enormous white crystal hanging above it.
Its gentle glow illuminated more than half the market.
It was also covered by a lampshade made of black iron sheets.
Enthusiastic cries of vendors mixed with the crisp clinking of iron shackles.
This was the largest labor market in all of Mist Oasis.
Although its name contained the word "labor," what was actually conducted here was slave trading.
There was nothing particularly unusual about that in itself, since nearly all seven Kingdoms permitted slave merchants to conduct business.
It was simply that slave trading in the other Kingdoms was not carried out so openly.
Most nations normally prohibited the sale of their own people.
But there was no stopping those destitute wretches who would rather sell themselves.
The Lords assigned to various territories were much the same.
So long as no one brazenly kidnapped people from their own lands to sell, they would not interfere with the normal activities of slave merchants.
This showed that slave trading itself was not considered an evil in this world.
At most, it was merely a somewhat undignified line of business.
Even so, the combined scale of slave trading across all the other nations did not amount to even a tenth of that in the Sarranid Sultanate.
Here, nearly every oasis had a thriving labor market.
Slaves of every age waited to be chosen like livestock.
Here, slaves were also called "living Denars."
Large numbers of estate owners and