Testing My Luck in the New World

Volume 1 - Chapter 26a

"That bastard!"

"Alex?"

With our chance to finally end this bullshit parade stolen from us, Yua and I were headed back to our room at the Lazy Cat Inn. With those thuggish bastards unwilling to even let us wait in the building, we had nowhere else to go to waste a few hours. So, I figured we could just wait at the inn. I doubted it would help, but it was better than nothing.

Yua easily kept pace with me, but she clearly didn't understand why I was so mad.

"There's still plenty of time left before the day is done. He'll head back eventually. We can just complete the contract later."

"Don't you get it? Yua, Alphonse ran off somewhere because today was the last day. Not only did he not expect us to gather enough money to pay him, he even ran off to make sure we couldn't even if we did. That way, ownership of your contract would automatically revert back to him."

If the contract that I so stupidly agreed to without any negotiation held the stipulation that I actually had to hand him the gold to complete the transaction, then all he needed to do to force me to break my part of the agreement was make it so I couldn't physically hand him the coin. It was just another dirty trick he came up with after seeing that I was fool enough to challenge someone with decades more experience than I had. He must have been planning all of this from the start.

No wonder why he laughed. Not only should it have been impossible for us to make that kind of coin so fast, he even had a contingency in wait just in case we did.

"That's horrible!" Yua cried, grabbing my sleeve as if to protest the truth of my conclusion.

"Yea, it is..."

I was so God damn close!

We had the money. We had more than enough money, and that bastard pulls this cheap trick. Yua and I were so close! So! God! Damn! Close!

I stopped in the middle of the street, clenching my fists hard enough to dig my nails into my palms, hoping the pain could stem the tears threatening to build up from the hateful mixture of anger and sadness. I was of half a mind to run out into the crowd, yell his name at the top of my lungs and punch the first person looking even remotely similar to him in the face. But Yua, sensing this, rushed to my side and took my forearm into her hands and gave it a light, hopeful squeeze.

"Maybe... Maybe he really did just go out for a little while. Maybe he'll be back later."

Of course, that was possible. But seeing as how he forced this screwed up contract on me in the first place, I doubted that he wasn't up to something.

He must have figured out that we found in the dungeon worth something. Figured out the real reason why we were at the auction house yesterday and went into hiding. Hell, Bradley said he wouldn't give out any personal information about his customers, but he was quick to mention Lord Barrily traded in slaves when I asked. And I was just a random nobody to him. He no doubt would have spilled the beans to Alphonse, a valued partner and one of the most prolific merchants in the city. He found out about the ring, discovered its potential value and skipped town just in case, so he could come back with two new slaves waiting for him to sell.

Yua, still trying to comfort me even as I explained this, shook her head.

"You can't just assume that."

"When you lived in the DeGrave building, did you ever see him leave to run errands or something? Did he ever leave for anything other than business?"