One of the soldiers’ eyes had stopped upon a white-haired child slave who was wearing a cloth over one eye. The child’s dead-looking eyes weren’t unusual to see among the slaves working at the mine, but perhaps the soldier had been attracted to her white skin that looked as if it hadn’t ever seen the sun.

“Oi, isn’t she too small for that?” his partner questioned.

“It doesn’t matter, right? She won’t even survive until next month anyway. What I do is just going to shorten her already short life by a bit.”

The soldier called out to the white-haired slave who was pushing a cart full of ore, pulled her away and took her away somewhere.

Of course, they were still on duty, but this kind of thing had been occurring for a long time, so Viscount Besser overlooked it as long as the soldiers didn’t do it in front of the new recruits. Naturally, the other soldier overlooked his partner’s actions as well.

However, his partner returned less than twenty minutes later. Thinking it strange, the soldier called out to him.

“Oi, that was unusually quick. What happened to that slave? If she died, did you at least dispose of her body properly?”

Though the slave was a child, the soldier didn’t consider her life precious for a moment. But he knew that it wouldn’t be good to leave her corpse alone. There would be insects everywhere and if there was an outbreak of disease, he would be at danger as well.

As the soldier called out to his partner, his partner moved only his eyeballs to look at him.

“Everything is fine. There is no problem,” replied the soldier’s partner. His face was as expressionless as a doll’s.

TLN*: Parts of this dialogue is in katakana, which I would interpret as stiff/robot-like speech. I can’t really think of a way to convey it in translation, though. I’ll italicize this kind of speech.
“… Oi, are you really alright?”

“I am really alright. I am perfectly normal.”

“No, you’re not looking fine at all. Go and have the priest-dono take a look at you.” The soldier grabbed the shoulder of his partner, who was clearly not behaving normally, and tried to take him to the priest, who also served as a doctor. He called out to another soldier as well. “Hey, this guy’s acting strange. I’m going to take him to the priest-dono and have him checked out,” he said.

The other soldier that he had called out to approached, as if wanting to help out.

“Is everything alright? I shall help out as well.”

“Yeah, thanks. Oi, get a hold of yourself.” Not even looking at the third soldier, the first soldier walked away, looking at the face of his colleague, who was also his friend, with a worried expression.

Seeing the two soldiers return and continue working as if nothing had happened, another soldier called out to them. “Are you alright? You look a bit pale…”

“Yes, we are fine. It is just a lack of sleep.”

“After visiting the priest-dono, we feel better.”

“How about you go and visit the priest-dono too. You will feel brighter.”

“I-I see. I’ll sit out on that one.” The soldier who had called out to the pair stiffened his expression at their eerie behavior as he returned to his post.

A child slave with white hair and skin pushed a cart past him, but it seemed that the soldier was more concerned about the strange behavior of his colleagues.

The empty eyes of several soldiers stared at his back.

『The level of the Mental Encroachment skill has increased!』