Chapter 58 Problematic: Leo POV

• A heavy sort of silence fell over the room. It seems our problem is much larger than just our area. It made me wonder how far they’d gotten with their influence. Was it the entire country or just the western half? How intricate had it become? Also, the biggest question of why, though I had a few guesses. Money, of course, is at the top. The development of technology that could control someone without the need for any sort of arcane art would be quite profitable. Slavery of any sort was outlawed and all information, any inkling of arcane methodology at all, had been destroyed. Better yet erased. The highest-ranked priestess along with the most skilled and practiced witches had used a form of eradication-type arcane energy that had banned its existence from or world about 30 or so years ago. It cost half of them their lives, but it worked, for the most part.
• All information regarding arcane enslavement methodologies and theories, which was the most effective and widespread form, disappeared. Anyone that had been enslaved through the use of any arcane arts was immediately freed. Not to say that the issue of slavery as a whole was completely fixed, but in the grand scheme of things, it was easier to free someone from physical and chemical shackles rather than nearly indestructible, unbending arcane ones. It’d truly helped for the most part, and it had lessened the area of effect for the slave trade as a whole. What had once been countrywide and spanned overseas had become a smaller network of cities. Now it seems the slave trade was trying to revive itself, and in a much more dangerous way.
• To my understanding, from a mixture of my dad and history classes, the drawback of arcane enslavement was that it gave no actual control to the person, in terms of thoughts and most actions. In other words, it wasn’t all-encompassing. Under arcane enslavement, the victim would have their natural abilities heavily restricted if not negated completely. They would be incapable of attacking or injuring their binded owner, either. There would also be a sort of invisible tether that connected them to their binded owner as well. If they got too far, they would feel a sort of backlash and then be teleported to the close proximity of their binded owner. There were also extra things added on at times, such as the forcible removal of the binding could lead to a quick, but excruciating, death or things similar. With all that being said, the bindings didn’t control the victims’ perception, emotions, or thoughts. They wouldn’t start to love their master or listen to them with unquestioning obedience. At the end of the day, they were still themselves, just weakened and captured.