Chapter 11

Third person's POV:

A group of 20 bandits ran to the slave holding house to search for the source of the underground explosion and also to take a look at their "goods".

"Hey, something is blocking the door!", a bandit tried to open the door but failed due to Vigor's metal barrier.

"Move to the second passage!"

The group made their way to a tunnel as they rushed down from the stairs. The moment they reached a diverged path way , a small orb shaped object flew to them and landed in the middle of the group. Right after landing, it instantaneously exploded and emitted a gray cloud of smoke, temporarily disabling the bandits' vision inside its wide obscure area.

" *COUGH* *COUGH* *COUGH* *COUGH*", the bandits coughing heavily as a result of accidentally inhaling the smoke.

From the same direction where the smoke bomb came from, the Tormentor spear launched at a slave trader's mouth and pierced through his back head.

Upon the group being shock at their comrade's death happened in a blink of an eye, several throwing knives darted at two members' throats and faces.

"AAAAAAARRGH!"

"UAAARGH!"

Both of them let out terrifying cries as purple poison patterns began to spread on their wounds.

Vigor intercepted and slammed the floor with his hand to conjure numerous earth spikes to stab from it, impaling 6 none-mages and 1 mage from their anuses and extending through their mouths. The others managed to survive, some dodged the spell in time, but they were struggling to move because of the spikes blocking their path. The team's formation was broken.

The first bandit to actively assault Vigor swung his long sword covered with wind magic horizontally while other two attacked Vigor with a boulder fist and an axe.

With an inhuman speed and a flick of his hands, Vigor shot the boulder fist mage and the axe wielder with his poisoned knives, aiming at their eyes. Then he dodged the incoming wind sword by ducking under it and staked the bandit swordsman's feet with two knives simultaneously.

"ARGH!", they screamed in agony caused by the poison.

'A conjurer...', Vigor noticed a conjurer mage, who managed to sneak out of the spike field and stood from a safe distance to prepare a projectile attack. Regardless of not seeing anything due to the smoke, the conjurer still aimed his staff at where his team was based on the screams he heard.

Without hesitation, Vigor broke the swordsman's arm by holding tight his forearm and bicep simultaneously whilst delivering a hard knee to his elbow, making him drop his sword. Vigor caught the sword and severed his legs with a single swing that disconnected the thighs with the knees.

Before the swordsman could scream, Vigor stabbed the sword through his throat.

"Fire ball!", the conjurer shouted out loud and released his spell towards Vigor, dissipating the smoke cloud on its flying route.

The fire ball made contact, but what it hit wasn't Vigor. Instead it was the dead swordsman, who now was nothing but a burning corpse that was used by Vigor as a meat shield.

Throwing the bloody corpse filled with burning smell aside , Vigor sprang at the panic conjurer and finished him off with a sword thrust to the mouth and peeled his lower jaw out of his mouth. Blood spilled out like a broken water pipe, the conjurer fell down like a lifeless doll as the last thing he saw was Vigor taking his magic staff and walking to the last 6 people in the smoke.

The enemy's spear approached Vigor's body but got caught by his freehand right away. As a result, the spearman got kicked in the liver by a roundhouse kick from Vigor and kneeled down hugging his abdomen with broken ribs. Vigor broke the spear's head and threw it at a bandit's head who tried jumping at him with a short sword from behind.

Shoving the magic staff into the spearman's mouth, Vigor ignited the fire detonation spell, thus making the man's skull explode. Blood,bone fragments and brain fluid splashed all over Vigor, dying his armor a gory red, pink color of human's flesh.

Vigor's eyes fixated on one slave trader who was fleeing back to the staircase while the other three stood the ground to buy their comrade some time.

With a snap of his fingers, Tormentor flew back at Vigor's hand to help him cut through the three of them like carving a cake.

The last bandit stepped his foot on the stair with an attempt to inform the rest of the camp, only to have his leg pricked by a poisoned knife thrown by Vigor. He collapsed and held his leg as the poison ate down his flesh.

Vigor locked him up in a choke hold and snapped his neck in one stiff motion.

Then, he picked up his corpse as he injected explosive fire mana into the broken neck bandit's core and pulled out more smoke grenades along with his bow and arrows.

Meanwhile, on the surface above where Vigor's massacre took place, a large battalion of slave traders were regrouping, some of them helped each other to extinguish the fire on the ruined gate, some were carrying the bodies of whom died in the explosion.

Vigor walked back to the entrance of the wooden fort which was blocked by his metal spell as he sensed many individuals were gathering around, trying to destroy it.

'So the group I just killed must have entered via another path…Welp, can't let them get to the slaves so I have to go all out. Most of them are just black and red cores anyway.', Vigor thought to himself as he dispelled the barrier to directly confront the army of slave traders.

Then he kicked the door open to see all of his enemies staring at him in surprise.

Without even saying a word, he threw the corpse towards them and snapped his fingers.

*BOOOM*!

The spell killed off many slave traders before they could react. Next were multiple smoke bombs thrown by Vigor and formed a giant smoke screen covering the area. Knocking the arrows into his bow's string, Vigor detected the enemies via feeling their mana cores instead of using his eyes and sent them to hell one by one while they couldn't see where he was as they began to yell in chaos with each of slave trader fell down.

In the main building of the barracks, a scarred bandit was informing the current outside situation to his boss, who appeared with gray hair, bony jawline, hollow cheeks, and beady eyes. He wore a maroon, hooded robe, and carried a metal staff, signifying that he was a conjurer.

"The camp, the main building,the stable and the wall are clear sir."

"Then what about the slaves Billy?", the leader asked in a commanding tone.

"A team has been in the tunnel for a while but still not returned yet sir.", Billy replied.

"Idiots! Send more men down there, who or whatever caused those explosions, kill on sight! If you let any of the "goods" die, I will have your worthless dead brain head on the pike, understand?!!", the leader barked.

"Roger that!", the bandit rushed through the door.

"Apologize for the quarrel, where were we, Lord Wykes?", the leader said, eyes returning back at the communication scroll.

"Yes, our transaction, Sebastian. Apparently, it seems that your delivery doesn't meet up the expectation of not just mine but also many other houses in terms of both quality and quantity.", Otis Vayhur Wykes, the head of house Wykes spoke through the scroll.

"My utmost apology my lord, I'm trying my very best. We have been expanding our range to Elshire Forest. The income of "elven goods" is going to become copious with this scale of ours."

"As promising as it sounds, I don't believe that a few nameless elven villages are sufficient. As far as I've seen in the last auction, the number of slaves ran out before I was even able to finish my drink, and many houses were unpleasant about it. I believe that significant adjustments are required for your venture to increase its deficient productivity, right now.", Otis emphasized the urgency of the need for slaves from high Sapin nobles.

"Then, what do you suggest, my lord?" Sebastian asked with utmost respect.

"Ashber Town, it merely got any attention left from king Glayder. It doesn't have that many mages,not the strong ones at least, most of the dwellers there are farmers and fishers, nothing but a poor low graded town after all. But its geographical location is the real value, being closer to Elenoir than your current base. Occupy this town, enslave its people and broaden your operation.", Otis analyzed his plan with a voice filled with ambition.

"But my lord, how come can you know for sure that the king won't keep his eyes on Ashber?"

"His majesty is putting his full focus on a matter about the possible existence of another continent."

"What?! A whole different continent??! How come I have never heard of that?!!", Sebastian bewildered.

"It's confidential, a royal guard like you is not in need of this information. The less you know, the better. And don't even think about asking the King himself when you're close to him. Now about Ashber Town, have I made myself clear?"

"Y-yes my lord, I'll follow your advice."

Otis Vayhur nodded and without a word, he closed the communication scroll and Sebastian did the same.

All of sudden, Sebastian heard a rumbling crackling sound of lightning strike occurring outside combined with the agonizing yells of his soldiers.

"What in the bloody hell is going on?!", Sebastian reached his staff, a sense of discomfort kicked in him.

He looked through the window to get a view on the battle. At his surprise, the whole area was being covered in a cloud of gray smoke, disabling him from observing the situation. The screams of terror coming from his men were heard clearly by him as well.

"All of you, come with me!", Sebastian ordered the remaining bandits in his office room who were orange core mages, the most powerful troops of his.

"SIR! SIR!", Billy bashed the door to get in with a terror look on his face.

But before he could say anything to Sebastian, Tormentor was launched at great speed and pierced through his ribcage,pinning him on the floor.

Behind the wooden doors, Vigor spontaneously walked in, to the surprise of everyone whilst pulling out Tormentor from the corpse and slapping an incoming fire ball from Sebastian out of his face like smacking a fly.

"Wh-What?! Men, kill that bastard!!! Kill him now!!!", Sebastian commanded.

5 augmenters lunged at Vigor with their swords and shields while the conjurers and Sebastian prepared for their incarnation.

"Scorching Slit.", Vigor swung his spear and a flame arc bisected 4 augmenters, disconnecting their upper body from their hips and legs. Their internal organs and blood spilled on the floor.

Then, he thrusted the spear through the other augmenter's mouth to his eye socket so hard that the spear's shaft went through the eye socket and got stuck in it as he tried to pull it out.

"Water Cannon!", a conjurer shot a stream of high pressure water aimed at Vigor.

'Free smoke bomb.' Vigor regarded the water spell as a convenience rather than an actual threat as he ran out of smoke bombs earlier while decapitating the axe wielder with a slash of wind claw on his left hand. In a quick motion, Vigor unplugged the magic staff section from Tormentor and used it to launch a fire ball back at the water cannon.

Two spells of antipodal elements made contact with each other. As a result, creating a cloud of steam engulfing the room, blinding everyone except Vigor as he didn't need to rely solely on his vision to detect his enemies.

Sebastian randomly sent as many fire spells as he could at the smoke screen but failed to hit anything.

"Fuck! Where is he?!!!", Sebastian swore in fear after witnessing the mad armored man just murdered his men like mowing down wheat on the field. His head was filled with questions. How? How did his slave trader base end up compromised? He had been working very carefully to keep this business an absolute secret , no one in the royal family and even his own noble family would have known.

From the steam, came a flying axe spinning towards the water conjurer, squelching his skull and pushing him to fall back behind the table. Inside the steam, Vigor jerked his spear out of the corpse's face so hard that it ended up in prying half of the skull. Then he willed an amount of fire mana inside the corpse's mana core and threw it over Sebastian and an earth mage as he dashed away from the smoke to approach them.

Seeing the corpse, Sebastian squealed like a girl and fell to the floor while the earth conjurer standing beside him summoned numerous rock boulders and shot at the steam.

"You must be the earth mage who built that shit hole of a tunnel.", Vigor appeared on the table with a flask of wine in his hand and drank it in the middle of a fight.

The earth conjurer quickly formed rock shields around him and several sharp stones ready to shoot at Vigor. However, Vigor pulled out an "uno reverse" by using the magic staff to control his own earth spells against him as Vigor's manipulation on earth mana was significantly stronger due to him being a solid yellow core.

"Uuurgh!!"

The sharp stones suddenly stabbed the conjurer instead of attacking Vigor and the rock shields wrapped him like a cocoon, disabling him from any actions.

Vigor snapped his fingers and detonated the corpse instantly, blasting the conjurer completely as his body splattered into hundreds of small bloody red flesh pieces mixed with bones sticking on the walls, the floor and the ceiling of the room.

On the other hand Sebastian got knocked back and burnt heavily, being further from the explosion, but he wasn't dead..yet.

"AAAARRGHHH!!!"

Sebastian cried in desperation. Dread filled his mind and piss soiled his pants. He crawled to his staff with a last futile resistance. But the moment he reached his staff, he saw an armored boot stepping on it which belonged to no one else but Vigor.

"AAAHH! Fir-fir-fir...fire"

"Um hmm, go on.", Vigor taunted.

"Fir-fir-- Fire Spark----AAAAAAARGH!"

Not letting Sebastian's spell to form, Vigor cleaved his arm with a swing of spear.

"PLEASE, SHOW MERCY! SHOW MERCY, I BESEECH YOU!!!"

Vigor stomped on his left arm, breaking his bone in the process and also cut it off as well.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!!!"

Vigor formed a metal gauntlet on his right fist and swung full force at Sebastian's head continuously, punching him repeatedly to a pulp, his face was constantly deformed completely to a grisly shape that cannot be described by words. Until Vigor's fist punctured through Sebastian's crushed skull, he grabbed ahold of his brain, pulled it out of the head and squeezed it into a smashed pile of slime and fluid on his hand.

Throwing the digusting thing that was once a human's brain away. Vigor cleaned himself and his armor with wind spells, but they weren't as effective as cleaning with water.

Vigor Kinsteel's POV:

After eliminating all threats in this barracks, I checked on the papers and documents in Sebastian's office. A little bit off trail compared to the original timeline, Sebastian was Glayder's royal guard dog until he got dismissed after his encounter with Arthur in the Auction House, then he turned into a slave trader many years later. I grabbed everything valuable that will be necessary for my upcoming "negotiation" of my plan.

After making sure I didn't miss out on anything, I called out my customer: the old merchant Marcus through communication scrolls to signal for his wagons to enter the barracks.

______________________________

Because of the poor ventilation and sanitation, the smell soon got into my nasal passage.

"First the dead bodies, now the stench! Oh the lords in heaven!", Marcus squeezed his nose in disgust.

"You should wait outside Mr Marcus."

"I would be delighted to do so!", he replied genuinely.

In front of my sight, numerous iron cells containing slaves coming from all 3 races: humans, elves and dwarves. They were just like the elf girl earlier, mostly naked with barely any clothes to cover themself, having health's condition below average, and curling up in the corners whilst being horrified by my appearance.

" I mean no harm to all of you,", I stopped mid sentence before showing my adventurer's card towards them.

Several whispers of realization could be heard from the cells of humans and dwarves.

"The Adventurer Guild of Xyrus sent me. I have got rid of those slave traders who snatched the right of freedom from you. So, you're welcome."

I half lied with a friendly manner as I cut all the cells' doors with a single wind arc which I condensed its mana and range into a safe extent so that it wouldn't hurt the slaves.

The iron bar doors fell down, making a loud metal sound which startled some of them. The humans and the dwarves being acknowledged of Adventurer Guild, got out of the cells right away and expressed their utmost gratitude.

One by one, I broke the chains and collars being held on them before guiding the crowd to follow Marcus and his employees he brought along with to aid the process of transporting all the slaves back to the Guild.

On the other hand, the elves froze in their position as they didn't move an inch.

"Lead them to your wagons first and call the Guild to send men to demolish this barracks."

Yesterday when I proposed a change in the contract, Marcus would repay me by helping me destroy this slave trading organization instead of money. And I found out that he had a great distaste for slave traders(..quite obviously) and a sympathy for the slaves as he wanted to free them too.

"It will be done. But what exactly are you going to do with the elves, adventurer Drinkard?", Marcus whispered.

We discussed that he and his men will take the humans and dwarves while I handled the elves. He did grow suspicious of me, but I convinced him that I wouldn't do any harm to them or sell them.

"I'm going to take them to Zestier."

"What?! My dear customer, with all due respect, are you out of your mind?!!", Marcus with a confused face.

"It's my problem, not yours. Just remember to tell the Guild Leader, Kaspian Bladeheart that I was responsible for this, but do it in private with him."

"Haizz, very well.", Marcus reluctantly accepted.

"By the way, for the wagon.", I took out a bag of several gold coins.

"Wait… no no no, I can't take this. I promised to repay you for the save back on the mountain right?", Marcus stuttered.

"Yes, but that's only for the escorting contract. Your wagon is otherwise.", I placed it in his hand.

"If you insist then this old man can't deny you haha. It was…bizarre yet pleasure to be in business with you, Adventurer Drinkard. Hope your future roads will be favorable.", The humble merchant sent me his regards.

I nodded as my goodbye to him before switching my glance back at the elves as Marcus left.

Seeing that they were still insisting on refusing their freedom to come on a silver platter, I took out a giant bag of clothes from my dimensional ring.

"So…as some of you may have eavesdropped from my conversation…I'm going to "return" you people back to your kingdom's capital. Clothes here. Wear them please.", I said with a monotone voice without any hostility.

"Why should we believe a word out of you?", an old male elf with a lot of wrinkles spoke tirely first as if he used the last breath of his to do so.

"Like I just said, I'm here to free you all–

" "Free" you say? By you mean taking us into your pocket and selling us to other filthy bastards?!", a younger and in a slightly healthier state male elf interrupted me. "

As soon as I was about to give my reasons, another female elf chimed in:

"Our kins have been caged and tortured and humiliated and... *murdered* by you odious humans. Are there any reasons to listen to your lies? Only to get the same cruel fate bestowed upon us?!"

"Alright now you are being quite racist. I'm wearing a freakin helm ,ma'am! You don't even know which race I am!", I defended myself.

"So is it better if you're a dwarf? Considering dwarves and humans became allies in the Second War left me no surprise if now dwarves support slave trading as well!", the old elf hissed.

"No way we're going to trust anyone who's not one of us.", and another spat in.

"Go away you monster!"

"We will never accept offers from you !", an elf in possibly mid 20.

And then came even more voices joined the protest against my hospitality and bombarded my ears with their hostile shouts.

"*Sigh*, I don't have time for this shit.", I whispered between the crowd's unpleasant uproar.

For a short-tempered guy like me, especially with strangers, it is occasionally for me to lose my cool. And in this circumstance, I was freed from being worried about my identity as a noble, so I immediately lashed out at them with the mana pressure from my core to shut all of them up.

The elven group fell on their knees, reaching hands to their throats in suffocation.

"Big words spitting from your elves' mouths instead of an appreciation for me. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Comply and cooperate with me or I will just simply put all of you in another cage and transport you to the city. Either way, you have no option to oppose, understand? Wear the fucking clothes.", I threatened them with my spear pointed at them and released my pressure to let them breathe.

Reluctantly, they obeyed my order out of fear and wore the clothes I gave. I asked them:

"Do any of you know the path to Zestier?"

"Why do you want to go to our kingdom's capital?", An elf stared at me.

"I investigated one of those slave traders and conveniently learned that they raided an elven hamlet close to The Grand mountains. It was your village, wasn't it?"

"Y-yes....", not only the elf whom I gave my answer back to, but the whole group had grief etched on their faces, reminiscing about their lost home.

"And you already knew, your home is ruined now with nothing left. What's the better option than to give you to the elven Royalty?.", I unplugged the flask and took a sip of wine.

After a short hesitation, the senile elf who was first to speak up against me stood out from the crowd:

"I know the direction. Let me guide you."

"Elder! Why would you give him the location?! We don't know what evil schemes he has!", the mid 20 elf panicked.

"Our safety comes as my first priority. Unfortunately, it's on his hand right now. If he wanted, we would already be dead but no, he keeps us alive for a reason. Let's set aside our hatred and thirst for vengeance for a moment and we might reclaim our peaceful life ,", The elder explained, making the young elf silent then peeled his eyes at me:

"and I can believe that this man, or dwarf here is not foolish enough to have any ill-intentions in the middle of Zestier and face the royal family's wrath, right?"

"Wise words old man. I did not catch your name.", I stored my liquor back to dimensional ring.

"Ailmer, I'm the village chief, or was.... So I've been to the city a couple times. The path is still clear in my mind, but if you dare lay a finger upon any one of us, I swear to God I shall bite my own tongue before you got your chance to reach Zestier, do we have a deal?", the old elf now known as Ailmer, spoke sharply despite taking his breath heavily. His words were enough to show that every elf was fully putting their faith in him.

I accepted his deal with a nod.

"What should we call you?", Ailmer questioned.

"Drinkard.", I answered bluntly.

"That's your name for real?", visible confusion pasted on Ailmer's face.

"None of your business. By the way, I stumbled on an elven mother and her daughter earlier. Are they your people too?"

"It's Kenia and Cassandra! Are they still alive?!", Ailmer asked, almost screaming.

I did not give him any reply. Instead, I quickly charged to the door first. After a few seconds, I returned with the dead elf mother or… Kenia on my hands which I put on her some proper clothes to cover the hideous aftermath of what those slave traders had done on her body.

Silence engulfed the elves once again as they were all deeply grieving in watery eyes. I handed Kenia to them and they began to burst into sorrowful sobs.

"W-what about Cassandra?", Ailmer said in a shaky voice that I could feel that he was trying so hard holding back his crying.

I stepped outside and brought Cassandra in, who was still in coma after her awakening. Ailmer and everyone else sighed in relief seeing her rhythmic breathing.