12

If it weren't for the blood then you'd never know that there was a small massacre here. I found it amusing how many magical beasts moved in groups. It made me wonder how strong the ones that preferred to move alone would be. I shook off the temptation to hunt down some more beasts. I wasn't out here to hunt.

Not tonight anyway. I blinked over to the city wall. Standing atop the guard tower like a ghost in the night. It didn't take me long to figure out where the guard was looking so I had the opportunity to drop down. The shadows swallowed me whole.

I swam through the shadows easily. Exploring the city through the shadows. It didn't take me long to find that there was no noble household in this small town. The slaves were stored together, and there was only about fifteen of them. The only people that were guarding the city were doing so from the top of the walls.

Even if they managed to sense my mana they were unlikely to be able to do anything about my presence here. I stepped out of the shadows into the middle of the room the slaves were kept in. Some of the healthier ones spooked when they saw me. The vast majority of them were too ill to even notice I was there. Most of them were half elves crossed with species I'd never seen before. In this group there was only one human.

He was elderly. I suspected him to be in his late fifties although he looked more like he was eighty or ninety. I crouched down in front of the old man, but he didn't seem to even notice my presence. In fact he was probably the weakest in the group. He was ill.

Near death. It was clear that it had taken some time for the elves to beat him into submission. The network of scars that showed through his scant clothing was evidence of that. He even had deep scarring on his neck. The other slaves watched me warily as I reached for the old man.

He was alone. Separated from the others by a good amount. It was clear that the others didn't want to be anywhere near him. I reached up to get a better idea of his injuries. His hand shot up, and gripped my arm before I could touch him.

His grip was incredibly tight even for me. This guy wasn't your average slave.

"You're a soldier aren't you?" I switched to english.

The look on his face was pure surprise. I could feel my flesh bruising under his tight grasp. This man had a strength enhancement ability. High tier from the feel of it. That meant he was either a natural or he had some really good connections.

I loosened his grip slowly. He allowed me to do so. He probably hadn't heard the human language in some time. His strength told me two things. One that he was still this strong despite being severely weakened, and the other was that he wasn't going to die anytime soon.

If he was as old as I estimated then he would be suspicious of magic users in general, but his strength was not something I was willing to toss away. The old generation tended to be loyal to a fault. A military man of his strength had to have had a good amount of pull back in the day. Someone like that returning from the dead would be a big help if he took our side because I rescued him. Then again his distrust of magic users could have turned into outright hatred by now due to the abuse this man had suffered over the years.

"You want to get out of here?" The question was simple enough, but the implications of that question were far reaching.

A light of suspicion lit in his eyes. I snapped my fingers, and his collar went slack falling free of his neck as it was stored in my spatial storage a moment later.

"I'm getting you out of here for two reasons, and one of them is to hurt the elves," I kept using english to try, and establish some sort of bond with the man.

I lifted my mask slowly so that he could see me properly. The human face that greeted him made him relax. I had to make sure I erased my presence while showing him my unmasked face which was a huge burst in mana that made the eyes of every slave around me shoot up to lock onto me. They probably weren't the only ones that had noticed it either.

"Time to go," I switched the elven so the half elves could understand.

Snapping my fingers to break the enchantment on the collars, and storing them all immediately after I was done talking to the man. The old man was the first to stand. He was clearly suspicious of me, but that wouldn't stop him from taking the opportunity to escape. A portal opened up in the middle of the room. I ushered all the slaves through before following right behind them.

I'd teleported to the grave I'd dug for the corpses of the weird creatures I'd killed earlier. That upped the chances that the elves would discover the corpses, but I really didn't care. They could have the bodies as long as they didn't find where I went next. We moved a hundred yards or so away from where the portal closed before I opened over a dozen false portals. Only one of these portals led to where I wanted them to go, and that one was completely erased from time itself, and therefore impossible to track.

"Go," I waved them through.

All of them rushed through willingly except for the military man.

"Who are you?" he asked in english.

"Does that really matter?" I retorted also in english.

"It does if your tricking us," his expression was like looking at a stone wall.