Randall: I'm suffering here, and you won't even let me complain!
He had just smashed through ten waves of waterspouts and was almost completely spent.
Yet before he could catch his breath, the Hail Squad arrived!
New World: Die, you bastard!
Some of the hailstones were the size of human heads, others the size of millstones.
Plummeting from high above, they looked exactly like a meteor shower crashing into the sea.
The waterspouts had already drained Randall dry. He really had no energy left to deal with the hail.
If he covered one side, he left the other exposed.
His poor boat soon became a collection of wooden fragments drifting across the sea.
Before a hailstone over a meter in diameter struck his head and knocked him unconscious, Randall's last thought was:
New World, you've made an enemy today!
An unknown amount of time later, Randall abruptly opened his eyes.
He found himself in a dim, rather cramped space.
There were a lot of people.
Some looked ashen, some utterly despondent, and others terrified.
There were humans, merfolk, and Fish-Men.
Without exception, however, their wrists were all cuffed.
Around their necks were identical metal collars.
Randall frowned and instinctively tried to move.
Only then did he discover that his own wrists were cuffed too.
He shook his slightly dazed head.
He also felt cold metal against his neck.
Come to think of it, hadn't a hailstone knocked me out?
What was going on now?
I'd been rescued, but not quite?
Wasn't this a slave collar?
The kind that could explode at any moment.
Supposedly, once you wore one, you could only spend the rest of your life as a slave.
So the people who "rescued" me were Slave Traders?
And the people around him were slaves.
Randall shook his head.