The Dialectic of Master and Slave - Chapter 2
When they arrived, the son was already unconscious and collapsed. While the old man raged to call for the family physician and priest, his eyes rolled back, Jaha looked around the surroundings.
On the table lay the food the son had been eating. On the plate, a creature similar to a live octopus was still writhing.
The airway is blocked by a foreign object.
Jaha decided to take a gamble. She judged that since she would become a s*x slave anyway if things stayed as they were, it was better to try even if she failed. After forcefully pushing away the old man who was holding his son and wailing, Jaha opened his mouth to look inside. Part of the octopus-like creature was visible.
While other slaves shouted and tried to pull Jaha away, the old man, either sensing something or grasping at straws, ordered them to stop.
Jaha tried to remove the octopus-like creature by putting her fingers in his mouth, but although it was visible, it wasn’t within reach.
Already unconscious, cardiac arrest wasn’t far off. He would certainly die before the doctor arrived. She had to solve this somehow.
In that moment, what flashed through Jaha’s mind was osmosis. Octopuses and snails shrink dramatically when salt is sprinkled on them. This is because water leaves their bodies due to osmosis.
Jumping up and going to the table, Jaha tasted something that looked like salt among the spices. It was salty. Quickly returning, she scooped up salt with a spoon, put it in the child’s throat, and watched the progress.
After confirming that the octopus-like creature was shrinking, she applied strong pressure to the abdomen, and the foreign object shot out of the child’s mouth.
Though the airway was secured, she couldn’t guarantee life or death since he was still unconscious. Jaha immediately laid the child down again and frantically performed CPR.
It wasn’t from humanitarian love or moral conscience that she couldn’t let a young child die.
She didn’t want to become a s*x slave. If he died now, all her efforts so far would be for nothing.
Live.
Please live.
As she compressed his chest with all her weight and might, the old man’s son opened his eyes with a cough. Jaha watched exhaustedly as the old man made a great fuss and embraced his son, then lost consciousness.
When she opened her eyes, everything had changed.
Without any other explanation, the old man assigned her a writing teacher. Though not knowing why, Jaha learned this world’s writing system, even cutting into her sleeping time. Since she wasn’t given other work, she could devote all her waking hours to study.
In a month, Jaha became able to use the language well enough for daily life without major problems. Then the old man assigned her an etiquette teacher to learn this world’s history, culture, and basic common sense.
That’s when she learned that this world was completely different from where she had originally lived.
In this world, similar to pre-modern Europe with one empire and numerous small countries, magic existed unlike Earth. Instead, science was underdeveloped, making the overall quality of life worse than even Europe of that time. Unlike science, magic couldn’t be commercialized.
It was truly a world where an extremely small privileged class monopolized all wealth, knowledge, and power. A rigid class society where the gap between haves and have-nots was even wider than in monarchical Europe.
Dropped into such a world, Jaha had become a slave at the very bottom of the class system.
The power held by this world’s emperor made Louis XIV’s grand nickname of the Sun King seem laughable. The imperial family of this world inherently possessed great magical power, and the emperor was the most powerful magician among them.
Who would dare defy an absolute monarch with overwhelming power?
Especially this generation’s emperor, who was considered a possessor of magical power that might appear once in 1,000 years, was treated almost as a living demigod. How powerful must he be for rumors to spread that there was nothing he couldn’t do except reviving the dead? Though there must be exaggerations mixed in to consolidate power, it was clear he possessed formidable strength.
It was a nightmarish world for Jaha. Coming from a democratic society, her aversion to the class system went without saying, and magic, a power whose fundamentals were unknown, made her uncomfortable. Such abilities are only entertaining in novels and become frightening when real.
When some people even avoid traveling to America because of guns, this was a world where beings with even greater destructive power roamed freely while wielding absolute authority.
She wanted to escape this strange and dangerous world and return to Earth as soon as possible. She had to go back to her family who must be anxiously waiting.
