The Dialectic of Master and Slave - Chapter 135

Volumes 1-4 + Side Stories of DMS are available uncensored on ko-fi! ※ This work contains depictions of coercive relationships, explicit language, and other graphic content. Reader discretion is advised.

“At the very least, you could’ve asked before just—”

“My apologies. I thought smooth communication should come first.”

She had grumbled without expecting him to understand, so when he replied, Jaha jolted in surprise.

“Huh—how do you know Korean…?”

No—it wasn’t Korean. Jaha flinched at the unfamiliar language flowing from her own lips.

She’d forgotten the German she’d barely learned as a second language the moment she entered college, and the English she’d crammed until her head throbbed for job applications vanished after she got hired. The only language Jaha could speak was Korean. Yet suddenly, as if her tongue had been greased, alien words tumbled out—how could she not be startled?

“What the—how is this happening?”

“It’s the ring’s effect. Don’t be alarmed. It’s a magical artifact enchanted with translation magic.”

At his reply, Jaha’s eyes widened.

She’d vaguely assumed this must be another world—nothing like this could exist on 21st-century Earth—but what?

“Magic?”

“Yes. If you look closely, the words you hear won’t match the movement of my lips.”

When she repeated the question in disbelief, the man answered kindly. Studying him carefully, she realized he was right: like a dubbed movie, his speech and lip movements didn’t align. She knew nothing about their language, and their words were being converted into Korean for her.

Finally grasping the situation, Jaha fell silent.

Seriously, who puts on a translation ring like it’s a marriage proposal…? Kneeling on one knee, gazing up with honey-dripping eyes? Perfect for misunderstandings.

Flustered, she fiddled with the ring on her finger and forced herself to focus. Her safety wasn’t even guaranteed yet—this was no time for pointless thoughts.

“Thank you sir. It was frustrating before, but thanks to this, we can communicate properly now.”

Before probing further, she made sure to express gratitude first.

Thank you/I was wrong. If you can just say these two things properly, you’ve succeeded at half of social life. It was a fact she’d learned through years of experience.

Next, she corrected her awkward posture and straightened her back. She wasn’t hoping to look elegant. At least she didn’t want to appear servile.

By her estimate, this was a class-based society. Whether judging by his attire or the reactions of those around him, the man before her was clearly “high-ranking nobility.”

She couldn’t appear too lowly, but she also couldn’t get on this man’s bad side. In that case, there was only one answer. She had to suck up to him with the determination to become one with sycophancy itself, without outright groveling. Just like during a job interview.

Pride? She’d thrown that away a hundred times over during her working life. She’d already worked hard at sucking up on Earth just to make a living—what reason was there she couldn’t do it here?

Moreover, unlike her pot-bellied, balding workplace bosses, this opponent possessed looks that seemed like they’d improve her eyesight and extend her lifespan just by looking at him.

‘Come at me, pretty boy. I’ll suck up to you with everything I’ve got.’

Jaha had prepared herself completely and was about to speak with a determined expression.

“Did you cross the sea?”

The man looked at Jaha with his luminous blue eyes and asked the question first.

“Huh? Yes.”

Actually, it seemed like she’d crossed dimensions rather than the sea, but Jaha just went along with it. If the fact that she came from another world was discovered, she could be exploited politically or religiously, or in the worst case, become a test subject for human experimentation. In this world, Jaha was no different from an extraterrestrial life form.

“How did you know I came from there?”

Jaha subtly probed him. She needed to understand this man’s criteria for judgment so she could act accordingly and play along.

“Since you couldn’t understand the Imperial language, I thought as much.”

From that answer alone, Jaha gauged the status of the country, this Empire. Didn’t this mean that everyone living in this land spoke the Empire’s language? That was something even America hadn’t achieved.

It had been so long since she graduated school that she’d forgotten most of world history, but she could at least be certain that this world’s ‘Empire’ was a superpower that far surpassed even the Roman Empire at its peak. No matter how prosperous Rome had been, the entire world had never been covered in Latin. In that case, the power held by the Empire’s nobles would also far exceed that of any nobles who had ever existed on Earth.

If this man was an Imperial noble, she absolutely could not fall out of his favor.

“Where is this place? Is this the Empire?”

“That’s right. The eastern region, to be specific.”

In that instant, like a lie, a low, deep voice pierced through Jaha’s tense mind and hit her ears. She’d been so overwhelmed by his gorgeous appearance that she hadn’t properly registered it before, but it had that kind of intonation—refined yet intelligent, somewhat languid yet filled with solid confidence.