Slave Harem in the Labyrinth of the Other World (LN)

With my Bonus Skills, the speed of accumulating Magic Energy in Magic Crystals is approximately sixty-four times faster. Even though it is pretty darn useful, I do not have all that many occasions to be actively using it since there is a multitude of other Bonus Skills that I have to distribute my Bonus Points towards if I want our trips through the Labyrinths to be as relatively easy as they have been up until now, but purposefully downgrading to using Crystal Acceleration x8, x16 or x32 would be counterproductive, since now that I had a taste of how useful Crystal Acceleration x64 can be, there is no wa for me to be using its inferior versions.

Just before we headed out through the Warp portal back in our house in Quratar, I had a little talk with Roxanne to confirm how the selling of the Magic Crystals worked:

Will we be able to sell Magic Crystals at the Adventurers Guild?

Yes, we should be able to sell them there without any problems in particular. In fact, I think most of the Guilds will accept them for purchase.

Roxanne gave me an answer, confirming my initial suspicions. Now that I know that we can sell Magic Crystals in practically every major Guild, it means that we have six locations where I can sell my items to avoid attracting any unnecessary attention: Adventurers Guild in Vale, Explorers Guild in Vale, Adventurers Guild in Quratar, Explorers Guild in Quratar, Adventurers Guild in Imperial City and Explorers Guild in Imperial City. From now, if we alternate our shopping trips between all those places, none of them should be able to add two and two together, or at least I hope so.

However, there is always a possibility that even while selling things in bulk, the people working at the reception stalls might get suspicious about the increase form ten gold coins to thirteen gold coins anyway, so perhaps it would be better to stop using my Thirty Percent Discount Bonus Skill whenever I am going to be selling Magic Crystals, which would allow to avoid all those trouble whatsoever?

I placed the Yellow Magic Crystal in the tray before me along with the rest of the items we obtained from slaying the monsters in the Labyrinth, placing them is such a way so that they would cover the Magic Crystal as much as possible.

Those are all the items you wish to sell, or is there going to be anything else?

That is going to be it, thank you very much.

The female clerk took the tray with her and then disappeared into a room in the back where she will proceed to count all of the coins she will be supposed to give me. If I said that I am not looking for the result of that counting of hers with nervous anticipation, then I would be straight up lying. I it going to take the same amount of time as usual? Or maybe it will take a bit longer because she will have to double check if she counted everything correctly?

Sorry for the wait, sir. Here is the money for the items you have sold.

Now, lemme just count the gold ones real quick myself: one, two, three, four, five , six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen. . . all right, thirteen gold coins in total! And with that, I think it would be best for us to go and leave the Adventurers Guild as quickly as possible.

The receptionist lady did not look as if she noticed anything suspicious about the entire transaction, but you can never be too sure, and I am not going to be overstaying my welcome if I can help it, so I quickly grabbed all of the coins from the counter and placed them in the Item Box, and the silver and copper ones into my drawstring bag and promptly proceeded to walk out of the Guild building.

Okay then, now that thats done, shall we go to the Slave Merchants place?

Yes, master. Let us be on our way.

This transaction that we just did also show me one thing: it would seem that the people working behind the reception counters do not pay that much of an attention to the processes other than accepting the items from the clients and counting of the money they need to pay them for them. If they were conducting a more thorough checks, then someone would definitely noticed that something with my transaction was out of the ordinary and checking everything out would have taken way longer that it actually did, which was not all that longer from the usual waiting time. Who knows, maybe it is the adopted policy of the Guilds to not dwell on the money from items brought in by Adventurers and Explorers too much? You know, maybe that is actually for the better. If anyone started snooping around me and investigated how much money I am earning and what are my living conditions, that would be quite a problem (TL Note: You mean like the IRS?) so I am perfectly fine with them if they want to be lax about it. You will not see me encouraging them to be taking a more proactive approach to it, oh no, not in a million years.

When we left the Adventurers Guild, we found ourselves walking through the streets of Vale for the first time in a while, but I cannot say that much has changed about this place during our absence. Or maybe some things did change, but it is just that I did not notice them due to how we would always Warp straight to the Labyrinth without ever taking the time to make a detour around the city?

Arriving at the Slave Merchants shop, we knocked on the front door and were greeted by usual servant of. . . huh? Wait, what was the name of the owner of this shop? Because I seem to have forgotten it just now. Well anyways, the servant came to greet us, just like all the other times I have been here.

Yes, how may I help you?

He asked.

We would like to see the owner. Go and tell him that Michio came.

Michio-sama, right? Understood. Please, follow me.

He opened the door for us and took us to the usual guest room, where we were told to wait for the owner to arrive in a moment. Huh? This room again? Could it be that they think that I came to return Roxanne because I am dissatisfied with her? Well, in that case, I guess I have to do everything to show him that this is not the case.

Roxanne, you go ahead and sit down as well.

Is that really all right?

Yes, it is totally fine.

Having Roxanne sit right next to me is the least I can do to openly show that I am not treating her in a disrespectful manner that would make the owner think I came here to return her. *Scoff* Me, returning Roxanne? That is the richest joke I have heard recently.

Good heavens, if it is not Michio-sama? It is a pleasure meeting with you today.

Likewise.

The stores owner came into the room after a few minutes of waiting, and as soon as he opened the door, I used Identify to check what his name was. Alan. Oh yeah, his name was Alan the Slave Merchant! Now I remember! Man, it is such a nice and simple name, how could I have ever forget it?

Sorry for showing up unannounced, Alan-san

I stood up and greeted him politely, but Roxanne only did the same after a brief delay where she looked at me with a slight confusion written on her face, which I found somewhat strange. For all I know, she should have been taught proper etiquette in this establishment, but to omit something so important as standing up and bowing to the person that you are meeting with. . . no, wait, it might not be that at all. Perhaps. . . perhaps she has been taught that as a slave all she would ever have to do would be to obediently stand behind her master without uttering as much as a single word. Yeah, that has to be it. It is not that this part of the etiquette teaching has been purposefully ignored, but rather that neither Alan-san or the personnel of this shop ever thought that she will find herself in a situation where that would be required of her. Looks like having her sit down might have resulted in the reverse of what I originally intended, and only ended up needlessly embarrassing her. God damn it!