Damian was afraid for his life.

He was one of the two slaves serving as assistants for the bandits’ alchemist. Old man Massim had sabotaged a batch of healing potions in an attempt to kill bandits and escape. In a sense he had succeeded, he was free from life now.

For four days, he and the other Human slave had tried their best in producing what Karim wanted. But they were far from proficient enough and had only wasted ingredients. Damian knew if things didn’t change soon they were going to pay for it. They were only assistants, they could clean the laboratory, prepare some basic ingredients, and do some cataloging. They were not able to brew efficient potions.

The two of them had the Alchemy Skill, but under level ten, and none had the Alchemist Class. Damian was a Cook and a Gardener and Silvia, while also having the Cook Class, had her second Class slot as a Slave. As a low-level Cook and having some experience handling herbs as a Gardener he had been chosen for the job instead of working in the kitchen. It was already staffed with more competent slaves. And he was taking care of the few plants growing in the lab.

On her side, Silvia looked quite pleased with the current situation. But Damian was wary of her. The young and shy girl had the Slave Class. It meant that she had Skills to force her to obey her master and to reward her when doing so. Damian had seen more than one person having their personality warped because of this.

The Gardener was certain that she was working there for more than the obvious reasons. She was a low-level Cook, like him, and had ugly burn marks on her arms. The scars went from her fingertips up to her elbow, like some kind of twisted long gloves, making her unfit for most sexual services or for worthy sale. She had been tasked to make sure the alchemy lab stayed clean.

She was actually doing her job while humming a cheerful tone. Damian thought she was mainly there to report on what was happening in the lab to Karim, or, if not him directly, to his favorite slave, Sarah.

Damian was interrupted in his brooming by the sudden opening of the door. He quickly went to stand near a wall, as he had been trained to, and waited to see what was happening. Three people walked in. The first was Sarah, as her habit, she was wearing very revealing clothing. Damian noticed that her entrance brought a smile on Silvia’s face. She was closely followed by a tall and furred man and a bandit wearing a guard insignia.

Damian’s attention was mostly on the scantily dressed woman, but he tried to study the unknown man. As previously stated he was tall, he had to duck the door frame as he was almost two meters tall. His skin was completely covered in fur, having never seen a bear or a Beorn before Damian thought the man looked like a dog, but he clearly was not a Gnoll. So what was he? And what was that plant he was holding?

Obviously he wasn’t a bandit, he was wearing a slave collar, but he had no manacles on his wrists or ankles and despite being quite skinny for a man his size he didn’t seem malnourished. Was he a new acquisition? Would he replace Damian or Silvia in the lab or reinforce them? A simple man in addition would not allow them to produce any of the potions asked for at the quality required.

“Silvia dear, and… Damian?” Sarah started, looking at him while asking for confirmation on his name. He nodded. “This is Mikhaïl, he will be the new alchemist and your boss. Master has high expectations for him so be sure to serve him better than Massim.”

“Yes!” The two lower-class slaves answered at the same time but with different tones of voice.

“The quotas are the same as before. There will be no punishment if this week's batch isn’t perfect as your new boss needs time to familiarize himself with the lab and you two, and it is already Sienday,” she then turned to the new alchemist and resumed talking. “Those are the assistants of your predecessor, they’re yours now. Silvia is a sweetheart and Damian is boring as can be. I’ll let you get to know each others now. Toodles!”

Damian looked at Sarah joyfully leaving the room with the guard in tow. A new alchemist? So soon? How good could he be? If Damian was the sort to gamble he would not have put his money on the strange man, he would probably fucked things up and earn them a lashing or more.

“So, tell me what are your qualifications,” asked the furred man in a strange accent that Damian couldn’t place.

“Our qualifications, Sir?” Asked Silvia.

“Yes, any Skills and Classes relevant to alchemy or herbalism or that can be of any use. And their levels too, of course,” the tall man answered walking to the central bench and putting his plant on it. He then examined the other plants on the bench, Damian saw he recognized them, maybe he would not be as incompetent as he thought.

“I’m a level seven Cook and level fifteen Slave! I have the Alchemy Skill at level eight and Burn resistance at eleven, and Acid resistance at nine. Is it useful?” Silvia gave information on herself without hesitation.

“The Cook Class is not really what I would have liked, but it’s a good starting point. Those General Skills are nice to have for an alchemist. I don’t know the Slave Class, however,” Mikhaïl said, examining the place.

“It gives me Skills to help my Master or anyone higher than me. And it makes me feel good when I obey orders from people who can order me,” came the cheerful answer of the slave girl.

“I suppose I am allowed to do it for your Skill to work as I am your superior here, right?” Asked the alchemist with an inquisitive brow.

“Yes!” Silvia exclaimed. Damian had rarely seen her acting with such energy to serve, did she leveled or got a new Slave Skill? He didn’t know her Class levels.

“Good, I’ll make sure you got the Alchemist Class,” the man said to the visible joy of the girl. “And you?” He added, turning to Damian.

“Level nine Cook and seventeen Gardener, Sir. Alchemy Skill at level fifteen. I’m the one taking care of the plants here. Nothing more of note,” he answered gesturing at the lab’s few plants.

“A Gardener? Excellent!” Damian’s new boss beamed at the news. “See that plant?” He asked while pointing at the potted plant he had brought with him.

“Yes,” the Gardener answered warily, he stepped closer to the plant to examine it.

“This Grass is more important than the two of you. It’ll be your responsibility to keep it well and to help it grow.” Damian turned to look at the man’s face, worried by his words. “If you fail, I’ll personally make you drink the worst poison I can come up with. You’ll die slowly and with excruciating pain. Before the end, you’ll remember the worst days of your life with nostalgia. You’ll wish for it to end, but I’ll keep you alive and suffering as long as I can. And believe me, I can do it for a long time.”

Damian shuddered and took three steps back before bumping against the wall terrorized by the mad look on the man’s face and the tone of his voice. The only thing more frightening was the snicker of mockery coming from Silvia as she looked pleased with the situation.

What would happen to Damian in this place of madness?

---

Akim was damned.

He had joined a caravan for security in number, as was the custom for traveling through the desert. But unfortunately, the merchants leading the convoy had cut too much on the budget for security.

Blood Sand bandits had raided them and he had been captured. Along with most of the passengers and caravan’s crew.

Three weeks later, while he was still trying to come to terms with his new life as a slave, a Beorn had been brought in the slaves’ den. And Sarah, a slave fiercely loyal to the bandit’s leader, had come to trick him into revealing his story. She had done the same to Akim and the other people captured with him so he knew what she was up to.

But Akim was too scared to act and try to stop what was happening. He had seen what happened to rebellious slaves and had himself taken a few lashes.

He tried to console the man after the devilish woman’s departure, but he had mistaken it for mockery and reacted badly.

Later, Sarah and an escort had taken the Beorn away and he had not come back to sleep with the slave majority. Akim thought the furred man was dead.

The day after that, two bandit guards had come to fetch Akim and had led him to a place he assumed was some kind of alchemy laboratory. He saw two slaves he didn’t know there.

A scrawny man looking around with fear in his eyes and jumping at any sound, he was cleaning a work table and often checking on a potted plant. Akim had a bad feeling about that.

The second slave was a young woman with ugly scars on her forearms. She was cheerfully cleaning an empty table in the middle of the room. Said table had restraints fixed on it, as if to hold someone. Akim’s bad feeling only worsened.

When the female slave saw Akim and his guards entered she rushed to a door at the room’s back. “Sir! Sir! They’re here!” She announced through the door.

A few tumbling sounds came through before Akim saw Mikhaïl barge into the lab, his eyes quickly scanned the place and locked on the guarded slave. Akim’s feelings about the situation kept on degrading.

“Great! Please gentlemen, would you help us to tie this man to the table here?” The Beorn asked the guards and moved to act on his words.

Three minutes later, Akim was tightly bound to the table and his heart was pounding like a racing horse in his chest. The two guards who had escorted him were gone and he was now alone with the three other slaves. Mikhaïl was still wearing a slave collar, but the way the bandits and the other slaves were acting around him indicated to Akim that he was now of a rather high rank. He probably had made a deal with the bandits’ boss, Karim. Nothing there to alleviate Akim’s worries.

“Silvia, Damian, come over here,” the furred man said and the two cleaning slaves obeyed. Akim could only look at them from his lying position on the table, he couldn’t even speak a cloth in his mouth.

“See, to be a good alchemist, you need to understand how a body works and for that there is no better way than to examine a living one,” the tall man said to the other two slaves. Akim’s heart found the strength to accelerate. “But fortunately for our friend here I won’t show it to you right now. First will need to brew a few healing potions, you always need to have some healing potions in your lab. And, as we are limited to one free test subject by month, we’ll have to make them last.” At first, Akim was released, but then he understood what it meant and he fainted.

---

Silvia was happy.

The new alchemist was very kind to her. He gave her orders that she could obey and derive pleasure from, he also congratulated her when she did well. He was also teaching her! It meant she would be even more useful to her masters, and that was good.

Her scars were preventing her from reaching a high price based on looks, so she would become a valuable crafter and produce efficient goods for Master Karim and Lady Sarah.

Right now Sir Mikhaïl was explaining how to mix plants together to make a healing potion. It was a complicated process necessitating several steps to be rightly concluded. She committed everything to memory, how to cut the plants, at which point it was good to add them to the pot, the temperature of the water. It was difficult as there were so many ways to fail.

Of course, each failed step would not necessarily remove the healing powers of the potions, but it would lessen their quality. Her previous boss had not been interested in teaching her, or Damian, and only tried to convince her to help him sabotage the work and escape. She’d bet that if Damian wasn’t such a scaredy-cat he would have been on board with the old alchemist scheme.

She was glad she had denounced the treachery to Lady Sarah. Sir Mikhaïl was the best master alchemist she could have hoped to assist. Simply following his instructions and explanations on how to prepare the ingredients he needed had already allowed her to level her Alchemy Skill.

Sir Mikhaïl had congratulated her the most for this particular event, she was so glad!

Alchemist Massim would have never acted like that with her, only seeing her as a useless weak girl or a mean to his plans.

“It’s ready,” declared the Alchemist. “Now, we need to test it. I have a Skill that tells me that we managed to make a working batch of middle-grade healing potions, a good result with what we’re working with. But you need to test it yourselves to learn.”

“How so, Sir?” Asked the curious young woman.

“It’s easy, you need to cut some living being and use some potion on it. That’s why you always have some living critters in your lab, to test your stuff,” the Beorn explained turning to the slave strapped to the table. She knew Sir Mikhaïl was a Beorn and not a Bearman or something, he had explained it to her earlier, the word was considered an insult for his people.

“Hmmhmhmm!” Made the bound man seeing the Alchemist and his assistants closing in on him.

“Now, each of you, take a knife and stab him in the arm, in the biceps,” the furred man explained, pointing the corresponding muscle on his own arm. “Then you’ll pour a bit of healing potion on the wound. You have three factors to look at in the healing wound to ascertain the potion quality. The speed at which the injury closes, the completion of the healing, and the quality of the cicatricial tissue.”

Silvia executed the orders with almost no hesitation and paid close attention to the way the wound healed. It closed at visible speed, but not in the blink of an eye, she had seen high-grade healing potions do that. There was a visible scar on the hurt man’s arm, they weren’t ugly, nothing like her own scars. She then massaged the scar to feel if the muscle was well healed under the skin, she was lacking experience to really tell, but she didn’t feel anything amiss.

She had to admit to herself that it was kind of unnerving to see the man serving as test subject squirm in pain on the table when they had stabbed him. She also noticed that Damian was far more reluctant to follow those orders and that his face was paler than usual.

It would be easy to make herself the best of the two assistants. She would receive so much praise from Sir Mikhaïl.

“Good work you two, now there is still a final test to do. You need to test the potion on yourselves,” seeing the conflicted expression on the coward Damian, the nice Alchemist added, “of course, you don’t need to stab yourselves the same way. Simply prick the tip of your finger or make a light slash on the back of your arms. It’ll help you make sure of your potions’ quality and also help you improve your Skills.”

This time Silvia executed herself immediately by pricking her left index, she saw the other assistant choose to slash his forearm instead. The two of them immediately poured a bit of potion on their wounds, Silvia concentrated on the feeling but didn’t feel anything particular from other potions she had used.

“Perfect, now look at my arm, I will show you the effect of a Skill I have. It’s called Improve potion use and is a common Skill for Alchemists and Healers,” the Beorn said and deeply slashed his own right arm with his left claws, blood poured out of it on a table and flowed through a drain to a waste bucket. He barely winced doing so.

The two assistants stepped back in shock at the furred man’s action. None of them had thought he would inflict himself such a gruesome injury just to teach them. The high-level Alchemist then applied some drop of potion on his wound and the three lesser slaves saw in amazement the injury disappear at a far greater speed than for the others.

“Improve potion use. A Skill that potion makers and healers use to improve the efficiency of the potion they use. When using your own potions, the effect is improved, more so when you use them on yourself.”

“That’s awesome!” Exclaimed the eager apprentice.

“This is also why you always have some self-made healing potions on hand in your lab. Self-made will be more potent on yourselves. And you’re never completely risk-safe in your lab, so you always have something to heal you. Always. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, Sir!” “Yes,” were the assistants’ answers.

“Good, now I want you two to pour the potion into those vials. We should have enough for ten of them. We’ll keep five in the lab, for emergencies,” Silvia had a feeling her teacher would never think he stressed out enough the importance of having some healing potion at hand in the lab. “The rest, we’ll store on the side to deliver to Karim once the order is complete.”

“Yes, Sir,” said Silvia as Damian and she went to fill the previously washed vials. Up till today, their main job had been cleaning, after all, so the vials were perfectly clean and no impurities would lessen the quality of the potion.

Sir Mikhaïl had insisted on the need to have a clean workplace before starting any preparation, and to clean regularly during the process, and everything used right after the end, and to clean everything every day. That part was the most resembling he had to Massim.

“One last thing,” he said, washing his hands. “You two are responsible for this one,” he pointed at the test subject. “You must make sure he’s fed, cleaned, and that any injury is healed. If you have to use a healing potion to do it, be sure to note it and to replace it the next time you do healing potions.”

“Yes, Sir!”

“Tomorrow we’ll finish the healing potions required and I’ll teach you more about how to properly attend a lab, particularly the inventory and the register.”

“Yes, Sir! Thanks, Sir!”

“Oh, one more last thing. Damian, you did good today, And Silvia, you were excellent. Keep working as you did on your first day and in no time you’ll gain the Alchemist Class,” the master Alchemist said, entrusting the lab to his assistants as he went to eat, the two of them had shown him where it was that working slaves could eat earlier today when taking a break.

Silvia was overjoyed, she had never received so many well-disserved praises in one day and so many simple orders to follow. She had the Slave Class after all, so she gained pleasure by simply following orders, and wasn’t that the best of things?