Conan was now being taken to a slave farm by the person who had bought him. Slave traders were responsible for buying or raising children and training them in various skills, such as combat to protect their owners, education to become literate, or making them submissive so they could be sold as toys.
There were several cases where these slave traders would pose as orphanages, selling their children to people in high positions as servants or guards, or to merchants.
"Where are they taking me?" Conan wondered, walking down the hallway and looking at the many rooms, hearing some silent cries.
When he reached the end of the hallway, the man who had brought him there pushed him inside. Conan fell to the floor, and when he looked up, he could see several children and teenagers lined up in front of him, all with a total absence of sparkle in their eyes, looking resigned to their fate.
"Did you bring another one? Well, at least this one looks healthy, except for his eye..." said a woman standing in front of all the rows of children. Staring at Conan, she said, "The last one you brought was useless, and we had to get rid of him. Anyway, hold him down," said the woman.
And at her command, several teenagers grabbed Conan, who was distracted, and immobilized him.
"What!? What are you doing!?" Conan shouted, trying to escape, but it was in vain.
Out of the corner of his good eye, he could see the woman approaching with something in her hands.
"Is that... a collar?" he thought as he watched the woman walking without showing any emotion.
Without hesitation, the woman put the slave collar on Conan, activating the runes inside it. And in order to mark him forever, the runes began to overheat, burning Conan's skin and marking it.
As soon as the runes began to overheat, Conan's skin burned, causing him to cry and kick in a desperate attempt to escape. But both his screams and movements were ignored and suppressed by the teenagers holding him down. Conan was now unconscious from the pain, his neck dripping blood and giving off a strong smell of burnt flesh.
"Take him away. As soon as he wakes up, we'll start educating him," said the woman, watching as the teenagers carried away the unconscious child's body.
<<<>>>
After a few hours, Conan woke up in a moldy room on a dirty bed. Although he tried to look around, it was impossible due to the burns, which caused him excruciating pain.
"Looks like you're awake," said a voice from the doorway, one of the teenagers who had dragged him into the room.
"It's him!" Conan thought when he saw him, but he only ended up falling off the bed and screaming in pain as the collar moved.
"Stop crying and start getting used to this," said the stranger, grabbing him by his clothes and dragging him away against his will.
As he was dragged away, Conan kicked and screamed in an attempt to break free, but it was impossible. He was taken to a room where the same woman who had put the collar on him hours earlier was waiting.
"Seeing how lively you are, I guess your neck is fine," she said, approaching him and removing Conan's collar.
Feeling the metal separate from his burned flesh, the boy couldn't help but scream, shaking his head and revealing his neck marked with scars and the word "slave."
"Help! Someone save me!" he screamed in his head, due to the pain in his vocal cords.
Soon his eyes filled with tears as he smelled his own burned flesh. But the woman did not flinch as she grabbed him by the hair and pushed him to the ground.
"You'd better be quiet if you don't want things to get worse for you," she said to Conan in a threatening and cold tone of voice.
However, this only served to worsen his condition and make him cry even harder, to which the woman responded by hitting him hard, knocking him unconscious in an instant.
"Take him away and don't feed him for two days. That way we'll start his education," she ordered the teenager standing in front of the door.
"Yes, ma'am," he said dryly, picking up the unconscious boy and carrying him away. "You'd better behave yourself or you'll end up dead," he thought, leaving the room.
Conan now found himself in a large hall, being forced to train with other boys and girls of the same or older age. Although calling it training made no sense, as he was beaten up by the others, either because he was weak from not eating for two days or because he had no combat experience.
His sparring partner struck him hard in the stomach with a wooden sword, knocking him to the floor, where he clutched his body and cried out in pain.
"Come on, get up! Or do you want to go another two days without eating?" asked one of the men in charge of supervising the area.
Conan's body tensed at the man's threat, trying to get up quickly, leaning his body on his own wooden sword.
"I'm... up," he said, breathing heavily and letting the tears fall from his face.
"Very well, then continue!" he said, raising his hand as a signal to continue.
The other boy, hearing the man's words, immediately attacked Conan, striking him in the face with his sword and knocking him to the ground again.
"I'm sorry, but it's you or me," he apologized in his head, watching Conan fall unconscious with blood dripping from his nose.
Seeing Conan unconscious, the man sighed and lifted him up by the collar of his clothes, looking at all the other slaves and alerting them.
"Training is over!" he shouted, watching everyone leave the room and carrying Conan away.
He left him in the room where he had first awakened, without bothering to stop the child's bleeding.
After a few minutes, Conan woke up, wiping his nose and looking around at the other children and teenagers in their different beds. Each room held 10-15 people.
"Looks like I won't be eating anything," he thought, looking at the others with bread and potatoes in their hands.
Seeing this, his stomach growled with hunger, causing him a sharp pain. In an attempt to dispel his hunger, Conan decided to sleep, ignoring everything around him as a way to ignore the hunger he felt.