Chapter 25: Taming Slaves

Gavin took a spare blanket from his horse and tossed it to Vic. "You sleep first. I'll keep watch for the first half of the night. When it's time for the second half, I'll wake you."

"As you command." Vic treated Gavin's division of labor entirely as an order. He took the blanket, curled up into a ball not far from Gavin, and fell silent.

As for Gavin, he certainly wouldn't be idle; he continued to use the self-hypnosis of a Psion to excavate treasures from his memories.

In terms of the sheer volume of information contained within memories, a Legendary Warrior was no match for Zhang You. This was because the society Zhang You belonged to was in the midst of an information explosion; the amount of information he ingested daily was staggering, much of it being passively absorbed without him even realizing it—roadside billboards, pop-up ads, accidental news feeds, and so on.

Of Gavin's current Intelligence attribute of eighteen, four points originated from Zhang You's previous life.

According to the Weave's method of assessing Intelligence, an average person sits around ten; those with a bit of formal education generally reach eleven or twelve, and those with an elite education reach thirteen or fourteen.

On Earth, completing high school could be considered an elite education in Faerûn, and even then, most elite educations wouldn't quite measure up because Earth's systems were more structured and covered a wider breadth of knowledge—though this referred only to the quantity of knowledge, as the fundamental differences between the two worlds meant their scholarly pursuits naturally differed.

However, in terms of "purity" or value, the Legendary Warrior's knowledge was higher. Some pieces of information were extremely useful for future plans, especially those tied to specific points in time.

Gavin had to dig them all out, bit by bit, to serve his plans.

As the memory excavation progressed, Gavin's destination became crystal clear—the Rock Lands of the Kingdom of Cormyr. He would go there to dig up his first pot of gold.

With frequent use, Gavin's self-hypnosis became increasingly proficient. He had integrated memory excavation with a trance state; while not perfect, he could basically control it at will, entering and exiting the state in an instant.

In other words, even while sleeping, Gavin remained fully aware of his surroundings within a dozen meters and could wake up at any moment.

He could have let Vic keep watch, but Gavin woke him on schedule anyway, assigning him a four-hour watch before dawn.

Whether one called Gavin paranoid or merely cautious, he operated on the principle that it is better to be safe than sorry. He would give Vic as much trust as possible, but he would still maintain necessary precautions.

The goblin sorcerer on watch was dutiful to a fault, sitting motionless just five steps away from Gavin from start to finish, without even a single yawn.

He didn't even think to make use of the time to prepare a breakfast.

Although Vic had been a slave, his status as a sorcerer made him a special kind of slave; at the very least, he had never performed the menial chores of an ordinary goblin.

In his trance state, Gavin couldn't help but sigh. It seemed there was much to teach and improve regarding Vic. Fortunately, he hadn't expected Vic to join the team in the first place and had prepared in advance. Using a long staff, he pushed the extinguished campfire to the side while instructing Vic on basic survival common sense and what he would need to do during his future watches.

Currently, aside from his spellcasting ability, Vic was like a blank sheet of paper; if Gavin didn't tell him what to do, he wouldn't think of it himself.

The only advantage was that he was obedient. If told to do something, he did it; if told to learn something, he learned it. Even if he did it poorly or couldn't learn it immediately, it didn't matter. As long as he was willing to work and learn, Gavin could carve a flower out of a piece of rotten wood, provided he was willing to spend the effort.

Moreover, Vic wasn't rotten wood; he was a clever person lacking specific knowledge.

Put simply, there were no fools among spellcasters, whether they were sorcerers relying on Charisma or clerics synchronizing with the Weave through Wisdom. The Weave merely provided them with the relevant knowledge for spellcasting; to truly master it, they had to rely on their own exploration and study.

Take Gavin, for example. He had been a Psion for several days, yet aside from a *Mind Blast* he could cast even before his class change, he couldn't cast any other psionic spells at all. His main focus over the past few days had been on the *Book of Military Strategy* and the deep excavation of the Legendary Warrior's memories; he hadn't had time to practice the psionic abilities passed down to him by the Weave.

As they spoke, Gavin cleared away a layer of earth about a palm's thickness deep beneath the campfire, revealing a steaming treasure: three lumps of earth, each larger than a human head.

Under Vic's bewildered gaze, Gavin cracked open the earth, and an immediate aroma filled the air.

These earth lumps were stuffed with various foods, all thoroughly cooked by the overnight campfire.

One was a large wild rabbit, crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, weighing seven or eight pounds; inside its hollowed-out belly sat a small, fat chicken, also weighing three or four pounds.

Another lump contained seven or eight fist-sized potatoes, while the last contained three or four thick, arm-sized root vegetables, all roasted until soft.

This was the traveling rations Gavin had prepared for himself for today's journey—all authentic wild game. He had hunted them while traveling yesterday; with the Legendary Warrior's adventuring experience, Gavin's wilderness survival skills were maxed out.

Due to the prevalence of monsters and constant warfare, all living creatures were confined to their respective settlements, including most monster tribes. Much of the land in Faerûn remained undeveloped and ruled by nature. The saying "hitting a roe deer with a stick and scooping up fish with a ladle, or a pheasant flying straight into the cooking pot" was not an exaggeration at all. As long as one possessed basic survival skills, it wasn't difficult to survive—provided one wasn't hunted as prey by other monsters.

Vic's eyes went wide—not out of shock at Gavin's extraordinary cooking skills, but out of hunger. He didn't possess Gavin's survival skills; since escaping the caravan, he had been eating sporadically, mostly raw food. He had only huddled near the fire last night, and Gavin hadn't left any food for him. His stomach was still empty.

"Eat!" Gavin tore the small chicken in half and pushed it toward Vic along with the potatoes and root vegetables.

*Whoosh!*

Gavin felt a dark shadow flash before his eyes, and the food vanished, pulled into Vic's arms, regardless of the fact that the small chicken was still dripping with grease.

"Wait," Gavin called out to him.

"This is mine! Mine!" At this moment, a hint of ferocity appeared on Vic's face.

Vic's reaction did not surprise Gavin. Back in the caravan, he had been very obedient most of the time, but whenever food appeared, he became like this. This was a common trait among most slaves.

All slave owners used hunger as a means of control, keeping their slaves constantly on the edge of starvation. Over time, this would trigger a primal instinct to protect food; when it came to eating, they would often become unrecognizable to kin and friends, and only the whip could make them recoil.

The reason Vic hadn't directly snatched it just now wasn't due to moral restraint, but rather a fear of being beaten.

In the caravan, Gavin had only viewed Vic as a passerby and naturally didn't care about such things. Now that he intended to treat him as an important future partner, he couldn't allow him to continue this way. He prepared to reform him step by step: "I am not taking the food back. When you receive a gift from someone, you should say thank you. As long as you say thank you, this food is yours."

"Thank you!" Vic said without hesitation.

He had done far worse things for a bite to eat, let alone saying a single word.

"Alright, you can eat now." Gavin knew that his task of reforming Vic would be a long and arduous journey.