I Became A Married Man in Another World
Chapter 3
003 Arriving at the Village
Aside from the iron shackles around their ankles, each of the slaves wore a wooden plaque around their neck. They were small—about two fingers wide and one finger long.
The captain looked at the wooden plaque around the neck of the slave at the front of the line and leafed through a bundle of papers.
Kim Joo-hwan looked at the wooden plaque hanging from the neck of the man sharing his carriage.
34.
Familiar Arabic numerals were written in black. Even if the letters were different, the numbers were the same shape.
The bundle of papers the captain held seemed to be personal records or ownership documents for the slaves in the carriage.
When the captain pulled out a sheet of paper, a soldier roughly shoved the slave toward him. The slave nearly collapsed but managed to straighten up before the captain.
The captain asked the Village Chief something, then wrote characters on the paper with a thin, charcoal-like stick.
He held the paper out, and a soldier grabbed the slave’s arm, stretching it over the paper before slicing a finger with a small knife. Blood dripped onto the page.
“!”
Kim Joo-hwan’s eyes widened as he watched.
Suddenly, the paper began to glow faintly. At the same time, a faint light emanated from the back of the slave’s hand.
‘Wait, is that magic?’
At the very least, this place was not Earth. If magic existed, it had to be another world.
The slave, whose hand was still glowing, was shoved away by a soldier and stumbled toward the Village Chief.
After that, a new slave was brought before the captain. They matched the wooden plaque to the paperwork and recorded something.
Then, they dripped the slave’s blood onto the paper.
Just like the person before, a faint light burst from both the slave’s hand and the paper.
Several slaves went through this process until only two remained.
As before, a slave shoved by a soldier stood before the paper.
However, that slave seemed to be literate. He stared at the paper, his face turning pale with panic as he spoke.
“## #####.”
The slave shook his head, pointing at the paper with his finger. He seemed to be arguing that what was written on the paper didn’t match his situation.
But it seemed no one had any intention of listening to him. The captain barked something harshly and slapped the slave across the cheek.
The slave was knocked to the ground, and the soldier standing nearby kicked him in the stomach.
Despite his screams of agony, the slave continued to plead. Whatever was written on that paper must have been an incredibly harsh condition.
As the slave continued to show signs of resistance, the captain, overcome with rage, drew his sword.
The soldier pinned the slave down. The slave screamed, and the Village Chief shouted something in alarm.
Ignoring them, the captain brought his sword down, severing the slave’s arm, and smeared the blood onto the paper. Amidst the slave’s horrific screams, a faint light rose from the paper and the back of the slave’s hand.
Once the light faded, the soldier roughly hauled the collapsed slave up and threw him toward the group standing with the Village Chief.
The Village Chief gestured toward the carriage, pleading for something. He was likely asking for another person to replace the man whose arm had been severed. But when the captain roared at him, the Village Chief shut his mouth, unable to say another word.
Kim Joo-hwan pulled himself back into the carriage, away from the bars. My God, he muttered inwardly.
He knew they didn’t care if people died in the carriages. But to cut off a man’s arm without even blinking…
Kim Joo-hwan watched the slave wailing in pain. Blood sprayed like water from a torn hose. Yet, no one attempted to stop the bleeding or treat him. They likely assumed that with his already weakened body, he would die soon anyway with his arm severed.
They stayed in the village that evening, and the next morning, the carriages and soldiers set off again.
After traveling the desolate road for several days, they reached a similar village.
The same thing happened there.
The people served wine and food, and the soldiers pulled a few slaves from the carriages to perform some kind of magical contract.
When a coin purse was handed to the captain, the number of slaves left behind increased. In villages that didn’t provide a purse, they sometimes left only three or four.
However, unlike the first time, the soldiers simply pulled a few slaves from the carriage and handed them over.
Choosing slaves like the first Village Chief had done only happened once more after that.
Juhwan guessed that the amount of money offered by those two villages must have been exceptionally high.
As time passed, the number of slaves in the carriage dwindled until only about ten remained in Kim Joo-hwan’s carriage. The other carriages were nearly empty.
Sometimes, even before arriving, they would drip the blood of a dying slave onto a contract to activate the magic. In those cases, the corpse and the paper were left behind together once they reached the destination.
Before he knew it, Kim Joo-hwan was wearing clothes and shoes taken from the dead. He had even learned to eat the foul, pig-slop-like food.
One eventually adapts to any situation. He found the human capacity for survival truly remarkable.
*
The surrounding scenery gradually began to change. Forests and trees became more frequent than open fields. The sound of the wheels rolling over the hard ground seemed to grow sharper.
To those inside the carriage, it was freezing everywhere. But judging by the hardness of the ground and the sound, this region seemed even colder. The earth was frozen as hard as ice.
Kim Joo-hwan pulled his layered clothes tight to hide his skin.
However, even with multiple layers, the thin fabric—devoid of any padding—let the wind whistle straight through.
The cold wind sliced against his skin like a blade. It was freezing. His huddled body shook uncontrollably. Having been exposed to the freezing winter wind for days, his body felt so brittle it might shatter at the slightest touch.
The corpses in the carriage had been dragged out along the way, but of the remaining people, two were breathing very faintly. He felt they would die today, or perhaps tomorrow.
‘I wonder how much longer I can hold out.’
His vomiting had mostly stopped, but because the food provided was little better than filth, he suffered from constant diarrhea. If it continued, he would eventually die as well. To die of diarrhea in a place so far away—it wouldn’t even make for a good joke over drinks.
When the high sun began to tilt, the carriage Kim Joo-hwan was in arrived at a small village.
The first thing he saw was a wooden palisade wall, carved like a primitive settlement. The fence, made of long logs lashed together, was broken in several places. it looked as if someone had forcibly destroyed it. In some parts, one could have simply stepped over it.
The villages they had passed through so far were meager, but this place seemed even worse.
The fields spread around were smaller than in other villages, and gaunt, skeletal trees stood here and there near the wooden exterior wall. Though it sat on a plain, aside from the road leading to it, the place felt no different from a mountain village.
In fact, one side of the forest led directly into the mountains.
Perhaps to keep out mountain beasts, another layer of wooden fencing had been erected closer to the mountain side.
The soldiers stood before the wooden gate, pounding on it and shouting, until it creaked open a moment later.
Men ran out in a panic, bowing obsequiously to the soldiers.
The gate seemed to be broken. One side dragged against the ground, refusing to open easily. It took several men working together to heave it wide.
As the slave carriages and soldiers slowly passed through the gate, several women hid behind the dilapidated, broken houses, watching secretly.
When the gaze of a few soldiers turned toward them, the women fled into their homes in terror.
The soldiers grumbled something and spat on the ground. The atmosphere was grim.
A middle-aged man who appeared to be the Village Chief ran out, followed by a much smaller amount of wine and meager food than in other places.
This time, there was no coin purse handed to the captain. It was clear the captain’s mood was worse than ever before.
Among the few remaining slaves, Kim Joo-hwan’s carriage was in the worst condition.
The captain looked toward Kim Joo-hwan with a harsh expression. He barked an order to the soldiers, and the carriage door was immediately flung open.
One slave near the door was pulled out, and three soldiers climbed inside.
The soldiers grabbed the two slaves who looked like they might die at any moment.
The two were dragged out of the carriage unconscious and tossed onto the ground. They lay there limp, unable to even let out a groan.
The gaze of a soldier inside the carriage suddenly fell on Kim Joo-hwan’s ankles. In the process of dragging the other slaves out, the hem of the clothes hiding his ankles had become slightly disarrayed.
For a moment, Juhwan’s breath hitched. The moment had finally come. What would happen? Would he be handed over as a slave like the others?
Or would he simply be killed?
The soldier approached with a surprised expression, pushing aside Kim Joo-hwan’s clothes to check his neck and ankles. Looking flustered, he called out to a nearby soldier.
The soldier who approached and confirmed Kim Joo-hwan’s state ran to the captain and whispered something.
The soldier who had been in the carriage grabbed Kim Joo-hwan by the hair and dragged him out.
‘Don’t resist. Don’t fight back. Endure it!’
He clenched his fists, which had reflexively started to rise. He kept his head down. Even if he was destined for a dog’s death, he couldn’t afford to be reckless.
Resisting them would be simple. He might even be able to snatch a spear from the soldier right in front of him and kill one or two. He might be able to run a meter or two.
But if he wanted to live, he couldn’t do that.
There were many soldiers around. A bare-handed Kim Joo-hwan couldn’t hope to brush them all aside and escape. They had horses, too. If he ran, he would surely be caught and killed immediately.
Kim Joo-hwan knelt on the ground as the soldier dragged him.
The soldiers were violent. One soldier kicked him hard in the back. A dull thud echoed as the impact racked his body. His cheek struck the cold earth, turning numb.
“## #### ######!”
While pinning him down, several soldiers shouted at Kim Joo-hwan with menacing expressions. They seemed to be interrogating him, but of course, he couldn’t understand a word.
When the captain stepped forward and gave an order, the soldiers spent a while kicking him or threatening him with the shafts of their spears.
The soldiers’ hard boots crushed his frostbitten skin. It hurt. His insides felt twisted, and blood leaked from his mouth.
Kim Joo-hwan curled into a ball to absorb the impact, repeatedly shouting in Korean that he didn’t understand, that he couldn’t speak their language.
Their kicks and shouts likely contained a fair amount of frustration toward this place.
Women had come out behind the men, but they were older and less attractive than those in other villages.
The food, the money, and the women were all inferior. The village’s reception was poor, leaving both the captain and the soldiers furious.
That pent-up rage was being poured into Kim Joo-hwan, whom they had just discovered. The soldiers’ beating continued for some time. Occasionally, the captain himself would land a kick in Kim Joo-hwan’s stomach. The captain’s violence was particularly painful.
Only after he had endured the violence for a long while did the soldiers’ kicks finally stop.
“#### ###.”
The captain smirked and said something, and the two dying slaves were dragged forward. The soldiers sliced the arms of the two limp men, smearing their blood onto the contracts. A faint light appeared on the paper and the backs of the two unconscious slaves’ hands, lingering for a moment before vanishing.
The Village Chief pleaded with a distressed face. He was likely complaining about being given dying men as slaves. But when the captain shouted and intimidated him, the Village Chief flinched and fell silent.
A total of three slaves were handed over. Two were dying, and the other was a man with severely swollen feet. He likely had frostbite.
And finally, Kim Joo-hwan was handed over to the Village Chief. It was called a transfer, but the people simply hauled him up from where he lay and took him away.
Seeing all the other slaves who had disembarked get back into the carriages, it seemed Kim Joo-hwan had taken the place of several other slaves. He didn’t think one man could replace many, but that seemed to be the captain’s math.
It didn’t seem as though Kim Joo-hwan was given as a slave. The people didn’t put him in chains or brand him.
Naturally, there was no magical contract. He felt a flicker of anxiety, unsure of what capacity he had been handed over in.
The people separated Kim Joo-hwan from the slaves and took him to a different house.
It was a small, humble shack. Inside were a few pieces of crude furniture and a bit of straw in the corner. There were no signs of anyone living there. It was likely a vacant house. The unheated interior was quite cold, but compared to the carriage, it was heaven.
After he had been huddling in the house for a while, a villager brought him a bowl of something like thin, watery wheat porridge.
The person gestured for him to eat the porridge and then left immediately. A clattering sound came from outside the door. It seemed they were bracing the door with something so he couldn’t get out.
It was just a single bowl of watery porridge, lacking even salt, but that evening, he was finally able to eat something decent. It tasted so good it almost brought tears to his eyes.
After devouring it so ravenously he could have chewed the bowl itself, he curled up in the straw in the corner and spent the night.
He tried to stay awake, not knowing what might happen, but he must have fallen asleep at some point.
When he woke briefly, he heard the laughter of soldiers from somewhere. The sound of women crying was mingled with the soldiers’ voices.
“….”
He tried to ignore the sounds and closed his eyes. This was a world where nothing good ever happened. Whether it was this world or the other, it was likely the same for both.
