Bound and Broken: An Isekai Adventure Dark Fantasy (Melas Book 1) V.A. Lewis (feel good books to read .TXT) 📖

Unlike him and the others, I had been treated relatively well because of my status as a ‘premium product’. They had been rough with me, but I did not get any beatings. Which was not a good thing, by the way. Being treated less badly than others did not make it any better; it just made things marginally less bad. And this entire situation sucks.

Theodore seemed to agree with me. "Yes," he said, nodding, before glancing thoughtfully up at the night sky. "I only wish it didn’t have to happen to you."

He looked dejected. As if me being in this situation was somehow worse than him being a slave. I shook my head and smiled softly.

"There’s no need to worry so much about me, Mr Theodore." I rested a hand on the man’s shoulder. "I’ll be fine," I said reassuringly.

It was not a lie; I would be fine, for there was something driving me now. A reason for me to live, after my mom was gone. And it was a simple, perhaps foolish, one.

Revenge.

But I had nothing else to cling on to. This was all I had left. One of the three strangers— possible followers of that jerk god— told me to ‘embrace death’. That I should just roll over and die. If that was his plan for me, then I was going to spit in his face and live, holding onto whatever I possibly could.

Theodore however, did not know the reasoning behind my words, so he misinterpreted it as a form of childlike optimism. "I see…" he trailed off. The middle aged man shook his head, now staring ahead at nothing but darkness. "Maybe you’re right. Perhaps this is all happening for a reason, and there’s no need to worry. Perhaps… the Goddess has a plan for us. A reason for everything that has happened."

I drew my lips to a thin line, but did not respond. How could I? I did not believe in this goddess. I never did, even if my mom seemed convinced she was real.

"May the Goddess illuminate our lives," Theodore uttered quietly to himself.

My ears perked up, hearing the common phrase. The expression used throughout the world by all who believed in the ‘Goddess of Light’. It had various uses, but it was typically said during a prayer or when in agreement with someone else. So trying not to seem like some sort of heathen, I hurriedly repeated the words to him.

Unfortunately however, I struggled to say it without grimacing. The fact that I had never said those words out loud before did not help, and I ended up biting my tongue mid sentence, messing it up.

"Uh, yeah! May the Goddess il— ruminate our lives…"

Theodore seemed to smile at that, as I brought a hand to cover my face in embarrassment.

Oh my God, I can’t believe I did that. The fact that I was a kid did not make me feel better about it, and only embarrassed me further.

But to be honest, I was glad I made that flub. I did not care for the goddess, nor did I believe she was a force of ‘good’. If she was, she never would have let my mom die in the first place. For all it mattered to me, the goddess could have been the same as that jerk god.

If I was going to get through this, I was going to do it with my own abilities.

Days and weeks passed as our caravan continued further into the Free Lands. And while we stopped by a few towns and small cities, it almost seemed as if the slavers were going out of their way to avoid most settlements— only passing through those that were necessary.

It probably had something to do with the legality of bringing in slaves from outside of the Free Lands; the Mancis Company did not have enough contacts in whatever region this was to safely carry out any transactions. This ended up being a good thing for me, since we spent a lot more time on the road, sleeping in the wagons rather than in an enclosed room with guards watching over us. It allowed me to practice my magic.

It was not… any kind of grand spell I was working with. I only knew one spell, and that was the simple levitation spell I used to grab the healing potion from the Inquisitors. It was not too difficult for me to recast that spell despite only having done it once; the feeling was odd— surprisingly different from using a mana tool— but the foundations were still the same.

All I had to do was reach out into the mana in the surroundings, rather than in a mana crystal. It was more complex, since mana crystals tended to be made to accomplish a specific task like creating fire, while this seemed abstract— I had to figure out what I wanted the mana to do instead. I knew I could do a lot more, but I decided against experimentation. It was far too dangerous and if I were caught, it would also lead me down an even worse fate than being a branded slave. So I practiced in secret, and I practiced at night.

I stayed up until I was certain everyone else was asleep, and hiding underneath my thin blanket, I would cast the same simple spell every single night. The light from the magic circle was not the brightest, so I could at least hide it from waking up the others. However, I was not sure what I could do with it; it only gave me an invisible third hand to work with, yet it also had a reach of about a hundred feet. Perhaps with it, I could steal a key?

I had no plan as of yet, but I had to act soon. While pranking guards and slavers by dropping rocks