Transferring Ownership

Alice dragged the assassin's corpses to the basement; all of them had died due to poisoned teeth. That was a safety measure so they wouldn't spill anything, a contract forced upon them by who hired them.

As they finished throwing them down there, Alice and Liam headed to the bath where they threw their bloodied clothes. "We've just washed out clothes." He sighed.

"For real, and we have the quest tomorrow, I won't hate time to wash them." She took a deep breath, "We might need to postpone the investigation."

Liam stared at her, "No, we'll finish the quest." He then smiled, "But, you've quickly gotten used to this." Alice had taken her pajamas out and remained in her underwear, standing there beside him.

"Yeah…it can't be helped, but you're fine." She giggled, "If you wanted to do something bad to me, you would've already done it." You can try, but I have the strength to defend myself. She didn't consider Liam to be strong enough to overpower her, and she had started feeling a bit comfortable around him due to the two times he saved her, wait, it's three times now.

"We're both half naked after all," He smiled as they went upstairs to get something to wear. They passed by Alice's room first and she pulled a long robe to cover herself. After that they finally headed to Liam's room where Alice gasped, seeing the walls scratched and blood splattered everywhere.

"Yeah, I got attacked in my sleep, but I did win." He smiled and walked toward his cloth chest and opened it. A half-naked girl tied with a robe and a shirt plugging her mouth was screaming. "HMMM! HMM!! HMMMM!"

"Oi! What's that?" Alice gasped.

"Don't worry about her." He pushed her to the side and pulled some of his clothes from beneath her. As he was wearing clothes, Alice finally noticed the collar on the girl's neck. She was enslaved by someone.

The way Liam tied her and plugged her mouth was all designed to prevent her from harming herself. He seems to have already figured out that since she's enslaved, she couldn't consent to the poison tooth contract. But they could order her to end her life when losing by biting her tongue or something like that.

After wearing his clothes, Liam lifted the girl up and threw her on the bed. "Well then, what should we do with you?" He asked with a smile.

"She's enslaved. The collar would snap her neck if we tried to free her without preparation." Alice stared at Liam. He nodded, but in reality, he didn't want to free the girl from her enslavement, it wouldn't serve him any good to do so.

"You're right." Liam looked at Alice. "We can't free her, but we can do something else." He grabbed the girl's collar. It was a thing ring of metal infused with eldritch magic that seeps to the spine at the neck and takes control of everything below that point while affecting the brain itself by forcing the release of hormones.

"Those collars were first created to control monsters, a tool for tamers until a mad wizard took the experiment to the mortal races." Liam smiled, "Within the magic formula inscribed on the inner side of the ring the owner's name is encoded there."

"Bring me a small mirror and a candle, I need to see what's written there to modify it." He stood and stared at Alice with a grin. "I'll get something ready, you hurry up."

As Alice ran to bring a mirror from her room Liam went to the kitchen and brought a shiv and a ceramic pot filled with coal. As Alice arrived she found him heating the shiv in the burning coal with magic.

"What are you going to do?" She gasped.

"Simple. I'll read the inscriptions written on the inner side of the collar then use this to modify and overwrite them. Trying to figure out a way to free her would take days, but I can change the owner to myself. That would make it easier to free her later." He stared at the girl with an evil grin.

The girl growled and rolled on the bed.

"Don't move. This thing is red hot. One wrong move you'll get hurt." Liam smiled at the girl as he pushed the shiv into the coal and turned toward her.

"Alice, hold her in place. I need to first read the inscription inside to make sure this will work. Don't worry. Use all the force you want, step on her head if you must. The collar would try to make her escape." He then looked at the girl. "You'll have to put up with this for now."

Alice held her in place as Liam checked the inscriptions and decoded them. It took him almost an hour. "Where did you learn to do this?" Alice asked. No ordinary man should know how to do this.

"I was once caught and enslaved by bandits in the past. We quickly got rescued by some adventurers and their wizard was able to free us like this." Liam liked it as easily as he breathed. Slave contracts were a common tool he used to force people to speak instead of torturing them. There wasn't a single prisoner that he caught that didn't get enslaved and squeezed dry out of information.

Liam sighed, "Well, that was a tough one." Unlike the slave collars he knew, those were different. Magical arts seem to have developed a lot in the time he was dead. A thousand years of mortal's advancement, yet he just figured it out in an hour. Instead of using the caster's name as a binder, they are using their magical imprint to better lock the collar.

"Now girl." Liam picked the shiv, "It's time for the real thing."

She started struggling harder. "Liam, I can barely keep her in place. At this rate, she'll get injured, and I do sense genuine fear and distress coming from her."

"The collar is the reason for that. It manipulates hormones in the body to force the target to feel emotions when it's useful. Now it's making her feel fear, anger, anxiety, and embarrassment, anything that would prompt her to resist this procedure more." He approached the girl and sat beside her head, staring directly at her eyes.

"I'm talking to you in there, woman. Don't let the collar tell you what to do, resist those emotions." He smiled, "Do you hate me? Do you fear me? I bet you'll jump out of a mountain cliff to distance yourself from us now. But I ask for a conscious decision from you."

Liam patted her forehead, "Relax, do the opposite of what the collar makes you feel. Find the courage to face terror and shame, be a human, they always prevail."

As the girl's eyes stared at him, tens of negative emotions burned in her head. She knew that Liam and Alice were trying to help, but she couldn't help but see Liam as a monster. The collar's hold on her brain was far deeper than any other slave had experienced, since she was the hero's little sister, those who chained her have taken extra precautions to make sure she's never freed.

But as the hero's sister, her fate had also shifted several times. Out of all the negative emotions forced out by the collar, they suddenly backfired. Fear turned into admiration and hatred into love, the collar started getting overwhelmed by the shift inside her head.

Stockholm syndrome started kicking in, and Liam could pick up on the calmness slowly appearing in her eyes.

"Alice, it's our chance. Hold her body still and make sure she doesn't move." They two started working.

All of this trouble since neither Liam nor Alice has a spell to put people to sleep. Some had suggested waiting for the slave to fall asleep to do this, but the collar would keep them awake until they died in this kind of situation.

After several minutes, Liam finally sighed, he had successfully transferred the girl's ownership to himself. "You two, it's over." He sat on the ground and took a deep breath. The girl immediately pulled the bed cover around her half-naked body as Alice loosened the ropes binding her.

"Who are you two?" She asked, half crying.

"Alice and here is Liam. We're B-rank adventurers." Alice replied, looking at Liam, "You look away. The transfer procedure is over." She growled at him.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm looking away." He sighed.

"But why did you even half strip her like this? You could've removed her weapons in a better way." She pointed at him.

"She's an assassin, don't you know how many weapons they hide on their bodies?" He growled while looking away.

"Please, stop…" The girl stared at Alice. "It's already over. I'd like to pretend this never happened."

"No, I need to give this idiot a lesson." Alice growled.

Liam took a deep breath, "Sorry, girl. What was your name again?"

"Melany, Melany Ombreta…" She replied, looking down… "You were Alice…right, please let him be. It was my fault, not his."

"Why are you defending him?" Alice growled.

"Alice…" Liam sighed, "You don't seem to know how many or where assassins keep their weapons so leave at this."

Alice looked at Melany…. "I've had several knives on my torso, between my chest and on my back. Even now, I have several sealed poison capsules in my stomach with weapons as well. I've also had a poisoned and locked knife…." She paused…. mumbling the last words.

"What did you say?" Alice gasped. "I didn't hear it well."

"I had to take that out before she stabs herself from the inside out and die." Liam stood, "As you're my slave now I can give your orders. The first one is to physically and emotionally free." He smiled as the collar's basic functions stopped working.

She looked at her hands, feeling strangely light. "I can move well."

"It'll take a lot of time and resources to fully break the collar, so for now I want you to help us with a quest." He looked at her with a grin and two glowing red eyes.