CH 1

Chapter 1: A grimy monster’s market

Translator: yuzu

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“Forty-five shards1 for whole thighs! Brains for twenty-five shards!”　

“Fifteen shards for intestines! Ten shards for the heart, kidney, and lung apiece! Fresh human meat, freshly slaughtered and fresh for sale! Come by, come see, customer satisfaction guaranteed!2”

…

Disturbing merchant slogans echoed endlessly in her ears. Luya3 sat numbly in a cage that had a disgusting fishy odor, her eyes full of despair at her impending death.

The last thing she remembered was working overtime from morning to dusk4, when she had a heart attack on the way home from work and lost consciousness. When she woke up again, she found herself in this filthy otherworld market brimming with monsters, locked inside a cage that stank horrendously of meat, urine, and feces.

The owner of this stall was a pig-headed humanoid creature. He was holding a butcher’s knife and chopping up bones while shouting meat for sale.

The pig butcher was waiting for the vampire who had purchased and reserved her blood to show up, then he would slaughter her. Luya didn’t dare think about where the pile of meat on the butcher’s stall had come from. Perhaps before she had transmigrated into the body of this pitiful girl, another human victim had been butchered, chopped up, and sold.

Maybe if she died, she would transmigrate back to Earth, so she hoped it wouldn’t be too painful when she was killed. Luya shrank back into the corner of the cage, immersed in her thoughts. She had automatically gained the memories of this body’s original owner when she had transmigrated into this world. It had taken her a long time to digest the new information — this universe was one where magic and science coexisted. The setting was somewhat similar to the online games she had played before transmigrating.

She hadn’t become anyone special. She was merely an orphanage girl who lived in a small city in the Asdra Empire. As a village girl who had never gone to school, she didn’t know much about the world. Her life was very impoverished, and she was often bullied by a blond orphan girl named Lianna. That blond girl was convinced that her parents were aristocrats, and she always dreamed that they would one day pick her up in a luxury car to bring her to Gladia, the imperial capital.

But Lianna’s dream was never realized. One day without warning, the clear skies suddenly darkened, and a blood-red eye appeared in the sky. Soon after, countless flaming rocks rained on their city, and endless monsters streamed out of each fallen meteorite.

The day that the “Demonic World Eye5” opened, the era of mankind ended.

Aside from the imperial capital Gladia and several major prospering cities, which were protected by barriers, other smaller cities and towns were utterly destroyed. The nobility and the rich were the first to get a chance to survive. The airships headed towards the imperial capital could not accommodate so many passengers, and it was hard to acquire a ticket. In order to save herself, Lianna stole the ticket money that the orphanage headmistress had prepared for five children, bribed some soldiers, bought a ticket for five times the regular price, and ran away alone.

Luya’s original self had no choice but to flee with the other refugees. Over time, aside from the imperial capital, the barriers of the major cities were unable to withstand the attacks of increasingly powerful monsters, and several cities fell. Today, the imperial capital is overcrowded, and they no longer accept refugees. It will soon become the final refuge for mankind.

Her original self was unable to enter Gladia, so she tagged along with a group of wandering mercenaries who were struggling to survive in this monster-infested world. Three years later, there were rumors that the Empire’s crown prince Zeros Aguiros Gaiaste was planning to lead a counteroffensive, using the Empire’s newly invented high-tech weapons to fight the monsters and retake the human world.

Not long after hearing the news, the original girl’s mercenary group was ambushed by monsters. A majority of their members died, and others fled. She fell into the hands of the monsters, and ended up as fresh human meat for sale in this market.

Not even tragedy web novels were as miserable as this…

Even though she liked watching apocalypse and zombie movies for fun, that certainly didn’t mean she actually wanted to live in this kind of world in person… Well, there weren’t actually zombies here, but it wasn’t that much better. In either case, she was going to be eaten…

Luya buried her head in her knees. When people enter despair, they become numb to their senses. Moreover, she didn’t have the courage to look at those freakish monsters in this grotesque market — they were terrifying creatures that were worse than those in horror movies. They all spoke the human language, and they argued over her sticker price like they were haggling for vegetables at a farmer’s market.

“This female human is way too thin, just a few pounds of meat? She can’t even be used as a toothpick.”

A creature with a leopard head stared at Luya’s thin body and looked her over. Drool fell to the ground, and he licked his lips. “As for me, I don’t like skin and internal organs.”

“You can sell me the skin. I’m looking for a maiden’s skin to make a new leather bag.”

A skeleton with a voice like an old woman also examined Luya in the cage, her eyes brimming with desire.

Luya shuddered. T-They want to skin her? That hurts too much… can’t they choose something quick and painless? What kind of nightmarish world was this? And why the hell did she end up here?

“There was a vampire who already reserved this merchandise, and they wanted the human’s blood. When it comes to the evening banquet, they’ll send some servants with tools to draw her blood, and then she’ll be slaughtered after she’s drained.”

The pig butcher snorted. “Those vampires are gourmets. The human population has been in steep decline since the beginning of the Dark Age. Thankfully, the female we caught this time wasn’t contaminated with miasma. That’s a rare and valuable thing. Her blood is worth a whole magic stone. If she’s reaped ahead of time, it will affect the taste, and the vampires definitely won’t be happy.”

“After being sucked dry by vampires, the skin loses its elasticity. It’s only good for being fried and sold to goblins.”

The skeleton hag screeched in dissatisfaction, like a shrieking broken record. It made the pig butcher irritable. However, she didn’t want to spend two magic stones to purchase the whole girl, so she spat on the pig butcher’s stall and walked away cursing.

“I want to buy some blood-stained fresh meat, so please ask the vampires to save me some.”

The leopard-face squatted in front of the pig butcher’s stall, and a purring growl rumbled in his throat. He appeared to be very patient.

Luya’s stomach churned as she listened to them bargain over her like she was livestock. Of course, this thin and feeble body hadn’t eaten anything in a long time. The pig butcher seemed confident that he would be able to sell her before dinner, so he didn’t bother giving her food. Currently, she was hungry, thirsty, and weak to the point of exhaustion. She wasn’t sure that she would survive until nightfall. Perhaps if she died sooner, she wouldn’t have to suffer through all the pain.

Even so, her strong desire to live drove her to lift her hand. She weakly asked the pig butcher, “Please, can you give me some water? Clean water…”

“What? You want water? No way.”

The pig butcher hmphed. He had sold many humans from this stall, and she certainly wasn’t the first one to beg for water.

His teacher who had trained him in this line of work had once told him to never listen to any human’s requests. The reason was because humans were scheming and untrustworthy. If you listened to them, it was easy to fall into their traps. They would try nearly anything to trick you to obtain a chance to escape.

He still remembered when he was first starting out in his career, there was a young caged human who claimed he was the third prince of the Empire. He was willing to send a hundred living people, deliver countless treasures, and even the precious Red Crystal, so long as his life was spared.

The pig butcher simply ignored him, and promptly chopped off his head on the cutting board. Since that human was very handsome, a necromancer bought his skull as a souvenir, which ended up producing a lot of profit.

Since then, he was able to smoothly stay in the human meat business for so many years because he never listened to anything the humans said.

Faced with the pig butcher’s uncaring indifference, Luya cried a little on the inside. She knew that these monsters didn’t care about anything other than profit, and he would ignore her as long as she wasn’t dead before her sale.

If she wanted to achieve her desired outcome, she had to strike where her opponent cared most.

Luya was terribly thirsty and parched. She licked her dry and chapped lips, and conjured up some bait: “If you give me some water, you can dilute the concentration of my blood. When the vampire comes, they’ll be able to draw an even greater volume, and you can sell me for more magic stones.”

“…”

The pig butcher paused for a moment. He pondered whether there was any trick to Luya’s words. It was just drinking some water, so what danger was there? But then he remembered his teacher’s instructions. Don’t talk to humans. Don’t respond to humans. Absolutely don’t do what they say! The pig butcher shook his head and banged the cage threateningly with his meat cleaver, “No demands from human livestock!6”

The pig-headed monster seemed totally crazy — there was no way to communicate!

The girl in the cage frightfully withdrew. Some other monsters in the market appeared conflicted. Although they would also buy a cut of human meat from time to time, they seemed unhappy with this kind of behavior. It was animal abuse.

A mother beastperson with a child passed by and looked at Luya in the cage. Her child immediately started crying: “Mommy, that little human is so pitiful! I don’t want to see it killed!”

“That’s livestock, honey. If you don’t eat it, some other monster will gobble it up.”

“Then can we buy it? I want to raise a pet human!”

“No, no. Your father and your uncle will be angry. They’ll torture the livestock, then tear it up and eat it… and besides we don’t have than many magic stones.”

The mother beastperson struggled to quiet down her child in exasperation, but the child was unforgiving. It continued to cry that it didn’t want to eat humans, so the beastwoman helplessly turned to the pig butcher: “It’s going to die anyways, so can’t you give it some water?”

The pig butcher snorted a few times and ignored the beastwoman. He slammed his meat cleaver into the bloody cutting board with a “bam!” The beastwoman didn’t want to cause any more trouble, so she dragged her crying and struggling child away.

Despite hearing some frightening things from the beastpeople, Luyu discovered something a little unexpected.

In this monster-infested post-apocalyptic world, there were some intelligent monsters. They seemed to have developed human-like social norms and a capacity for sympathy. However, to them, humans weren’t any different from domestic animals.

Of course, if she had been taken home by the beastwoman, she would have been tortured and torn apart. She obviously preferred a painless death right here. This world was simply too miserable. There was nowhere to escape, and it would only take a split second to die. She wasn’t sure if she had the willpower to keep living.

Thinking of this, Luya huddled up again. Her body was tiny and shriveled, and she didn’t have much strength. There wasn’t any hope of escaping this place.

She closed her eyes, and quietly waited for her inevitable death in the cage.

Then, she heard an enormous creature breathing. Heavy steps slowly approached from afar. The leopard beast who was waiting in front of the butcher’s stall instinctively sensed some kind of danger, and vanished in a blink of the eye. The grimy and boisterous monster’s market abruptly went silent. Every monster looked at the huge creature very nervously.

Those heavy footsteps stopped in front of the pig butcher’s stall.

Luya gulped reflexively. Even if she was afraid, there was nowhere to run. She nervously opened her eyes and slowly lifted her head. She was faced with enormous vertical pupils of a brilliant amber color, brimming with magnificence.

It was staring straight at her.

Author’s notes:

The plot begins! Please leave comments! Although, actually I’ve been in Thailand the past few days, so these chapters were pre-published in advance.

Let’s first introduce this world:

In a magitech universe, the world’s main continent is divided in two halves.

The half where the heroine is located is called the Asdra Empire. Its technology level is fairly high, and their tech tree is based entirely in dark science.

The other half of the continent is Grande, a religious kingdom that believes in the God of Light. This involves spoilers, so I won’t go into any details. Will write about this later.

After the apocalypse, the heroine was captured when she was running from her ransacked city. Everyone was fleeing to the imperial capital, because there is a barrier there… There are scientists at the capital, and there would probably be soldiers sent to exterminate monsters or launch a campaign to retake their territory.

Presently, the capital is overcrowded, and they are no longer accepting refugees.

The background is probably something like this~

As the heroine grows, this is actually a relaxing sandbox crafting story~ There isn’t any tragedy/abuse, so don’t be afraid to jump in~

Translator’s notes:

Hiyo! Despite how the first chapter starts off, this story really isn’t angsty/dark at all. Most of the crafting stuff starts on the third chapter, so give this story a bit to see if you like it~

This story reminds me a lot of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede. Other than that, the author had said they were inspired by Final Fantasy XIV while writing this novel.

The dragon is the ML, but the romance is veryyy slow~