SPEAKS

Finally I arrive at this merchant's warehouses, the place reeks of fear, pain and despair, when I arrive at the village there are ten girls about my age, they are all in a corner; They gnaw on a bone while on a table near a bed like my master's there is a feast of meat and bread and jugs of wine waiting to be consumed; I want to hug them but now is not the time to do so, I know what they went through, I know what awaits them; The bones at the entrance tell me, they would be devoured when the fat man got tired of them, but now I am in charge so I order them to eat but they don't move. They don't want to do it, they are terrified; They fear that I will attack them or that the hunters will eliminate them, I know that there is one hunter left even if the interface does not tell me; I know, he must be guarding the warehouse where he keeps the wineskins or where he keeps the food, I turn around and I can hear the girls breathe a sigh of relief, I better get out before I kick them.

The rest of the camp is in incredible disarray, compared to where I was trained here everything seems like chaos. I find the grocery store and it's surprising how empty it is; It doesn't seem like anything longer than ten days is planned; There are weapons but nothing I can use, the reinforced gauntlets they gave me have withstood the weather and abuse, they help me have a better impact and prevent me from damaging my wrists... nothing else I need.

There is a very large construction (public pool), apparently people came here to have fun, but it is a simple building with high windows from which water vapor emanates... and death. I run towards the site and can see that there are scratch marks on the door; I lift the lower part of one of the gate leaves, as I enter I am suffocated by the smell of blood and the darkness, but my eye lights up and I see everything in red, there is probably more red than there should be. In the pool there are about twenty wineskins... Swimming! They move wearily with their long, thin hands, on the shore I see the rest of them; There are many dead, almost twice as many as are still swimming on the edge is the last one; He is a very big hunter, his hands are calmly tearing apart a waterskin that has come to the shore to rest, I see him tearing the meat for the pleasure of doing it while he watches the rest, they look tired and they do not stop howling, very quietly; The interface informs me that it can translate what they are saying, so I wait.

While he translates his screams I prepare myself: I take a pair of hands and check them; The wineskins that arrive to the village go with their arms tied and their mouths without tongues, so I have never seen them "naturally", the nails are long and pointed, a clear liquid comes out of them... "concentrated of toxins", I interrupts the interface to warn me. I ask him if it's lethal and he tells me no, so I grab three arms and put myself on guard. Whenever I have a weapon, hand and leg in front, you can only show one side of your body, don't give away anything that can be cut and I take it one step at a time.

I know I've won this, he's too absorbed in waiting for his next victim, the viscera help me slide calmly, the translation is ready; Apparently, while his owner was away, this hunter came in and consumed one or another wineskin and since the merchant never checked them when he entered for any to exchange with the villages, he always had more food than the rest. When they heard the fight this hunter snuck away. and he plans to eat all of them when they discover him. He knows he is strong because he has already defeated all the hunters I killed, so he is not afraid of anything happening to him. Of the arms I grabbed, one already has rigor mortis, well, it is already stiff, the other two are still soft.

At five meters I have a sure shot; I open my shaft more and throw my arm like a rod, my nails dig into his right eye and that's when he sees me; He moves very fast and has already torn off my improvised spear, but now I run towards him so that his weight does not overwhelm me; He tries to crush me but I already jumped to the side and the soft arm unleashed him like a whip, cutting the other eye; He howls a lot but he doesn't stop him from reaching me with one of his arms and he throws me on my back; He is strong but I felt worse blows, so I get up and go around him; He's still trying to get the blood out of his left eye, the one that only suffered a cut on the eyelid, but he gives me enough time and I use the last arm to wrap around his neck and pull, I rest my heels on his shoulder blades and pull. I almost hear the moans that sound like a support, but he has more strength, I know it, he takes the arm with one hand and pulls it, I know that when he sees that he can't get rid of me so he will try to crush the arm, and I gain momentum and jump as much as the length of my arm allows me to unload my knees on his ribs, when I took the air out of him his strength went away; He falls to the floor and I can finish strangling him, I don't know if he's bleeding and I don't care; As soon as his chest stops breathing, I release the ends of his arm.

When I recover; The interface tells me that there is still a solar-powered lighting switch, the thousands of LEDs turn on and give me a more colorful view of a slatted pool where the wineskins eat and drink "slightly contaminated" water, everyone has reached the opposite bank and they howl a little quieter, they thank me and only ask me to explain to them where their brothers went; If they knew they were drinking them they might not help me so I tell them that the merchant killed them to eat, they respond saying that it is fine, as long as they have served some purpose it is fine, so I ask them to wait and rest in what I think what do with them.

In the cabin the girls still do not move; A freckled girl points at me and says: Master? I think my fury scares her away and she returns to the others; I know it's not their fault but they remind me my old self and that thought drives me crazy; But since they won't have anyone else to tell them what to do, I'll do it. I order them to swallow and I throw the food from the table to the floor, they pounce and devour as it should be at the table; It's going to be a slow process but you won't experience what I did.

At night all the children climb on me, there are no kisses or caresses; They search my genitals hoping to find a male member that I don't have, they don't comment on anything, they just search with fear; I can see with the infrared that they were beaten and that there are boys and girls mixed up, as they see that I don't scold them and they don't find anything, they fall asleep on my chest and my stomach, two remain hugging in front of the bed... the bastard made sure to be well protected against night attacks, the weakest or physically damaged stay in a corner; They sleep intertwined sharing their heat. I want to cry but I know I shouldn't, I don't want to traumatize them more.

The early morning surprises me with an infernal noise, the children tell me that the supplier is coming, so I look out carefully and see a tracked truck coming at a high speed towards here, the interface warns me to stay still because it reacts to movement. It's a huge black vehicle, more than thirty square meters and it has weapons on the back, on the sides and in front, I stand with my medallion and the dead man's, I hold them up... a metallic voice asks to identify me: "I am Paulina and I defeated the local merchant; I'm the owner of their exchange territories; I have an official identification and I will know how to do my job. The noises inside the machine continue for a while, then the voice tells me that it recognizes me as the successor and that it will proceed to unload the vitaminizers (?), in the pool; they brought ten more waterskins with a lot of the liquid that was where they were swimming, then a warbot came down, it looked like the ones I fought almost at the end of my training, but it looked more lethal because it had supporting weapons, paper and more paper sprouted from its chest. There came a map of my territory and through the cartography I learned, I found the whereabouts of someone I really want to see.