Chapter 270: Not so welcoming “Welcome to Estralia.”

“This carriage is escorting both a Champion and Saint Candidate of Goddess Aurena! You are interfering with church business! You will hand down your weapons now and answer for your threats, or you will face the Goddess of Death on this day, vagabonds!”

After unleashing my [Draconic Aura] on every bandit before us, Elrick drew his sword and jumped off from the coachman's spot. Putting himself in front of Asaka, he was going through the whole holy knight stuff with the robbers. Intimidating them by announcing our status and then telling them to surrender before it escalated.

I mean, sure, he was doing it by the book, but didn’t I already make a number of them wet themselves? Their spirits were broken before I needed to even lift my finger. I found it a bit redundant, but I had no reason to stop him. It meant I had to speak less!

“W-We— Hey, stand the fuck up! You want to get offed here!?” one of them shouted through his wailings, picking up his spear with a cracked iron head.

“Y-Yeah, stand up already! Stand—!” another cried out in despair, only for his voice to be drowned out by multiple painful shrieks, coming from those who sullied their tattered pants.

“Giiiiiiiieraaaaaaaaak!”

“Noo— Iiiiierrrrrrckkkkkkk!”

Wait, what?

They cried and shouted as they forced their bodies up with tortured movements. They looked like they were in pure agony. “What is going on?” I wondered, but I then remembered I saw their slave tattoos light up just seconds before it happened. Like a warning, followed by this terrible punishment.

“The master is nearby!” Elrick shouted out loud. “Slaves! Tell us where your master is and your punishment will be lighter!”

Hey, come on, if they are slaves, you should give them even more leeway. It’s not like that can do anything with that damn slave tattoo on them.

I knew Elrick was from one of the Folschreck Empire’s vassal kingdoms, so his mindset on slaves and so on was completely different from my own, but I still couldn’t help but find what he said unfair. Were slaves guilty if they were forced into doing a crime?

Just from that one stunt with Gael to rescue the orphan kids from Hamil, I learned that slave marks were binding and forced the slave to do whatever their masters wanted. They couldn’t object nor could they harm them. Sure, the runic tattoos could give them benefits like more Strength or whatever, but if you were to forcibly break them, you could cripple a person’s mana paths for good. Deadly for mages.

“Shit! Fuck! GeeAARRRRRRGH!”

And without much warning, the mass of slave bandits rushed at us with tear- and snot-covered faces, pointing their weapons forward in hopeful desperation. They had no choice. They were following orders despite their fears and reluctance. They knew if they continued, they would die. I could see the terror in these men’s eyes so clearly.

I could wipe them out right this instant.

[“Don’t kill them.”]

As such, I could also attempt to save them.

[““By our tails, Princess!””]

[“We do! Master!”]

[““Yes, Alpha’s Master!””]

“Got it, Hestia.”

“W-Wait, Lady Hestia?!”

With this single order, everybody aside from Elrick moved to immobilize the slaves. Beth and Shay unleashed a frost breath that froze the very ground, causing most of the front runners to slip or slow down considerably from the freezing cold. The virigresses followed up by shooting out [Dark Tendrils] to pull them all towards the garms, allowing the latter to bind them up in mana treads.

The bandits in the back, those who avoided the frozen battleground, didn’t dare come any closer. Instead, they took out slings and began throwing stones and any other hard objects they could find on the ground. Pretty primitive weapon, but getting a stone slung at you at a considerable speed was no joke, especially if it landed on your head while you weren't wearing a helmet.

“Come out and do something for your rent!”

As the projectiles flew at us, Asaka pulled out her second catalyst and four will-o'-wisps shot out from it before constructing a large black translucent dome around us, perfectly blocking all of the stones. It reminded me a bit of my [Sanctuary] spell, which I hadn’t used in a while.

However, unlike my spell, Asaka’s shield could be turned off at any time. The moment the shield turned off, the twins shot out their scales and blasts of snow at our assailants, binding them onto trees once the snow froze.

And just like that, the skirmish was over and our aggressors were unable to continue fighting. The garms and virigress went on to capture the rest while the twins bowed and asked if they did a good job. I praised them for a job well done.

“L-Lady Hestia, it isn’t over yet!” Elrick announced, so I turned my head around and tilted it. “The master! Slavery is part of the Divine System and allows the slave master and any co-master to issue commands to them. However, these can only come into effect if the master is close by! We need to arrest them as well!”

Guess I should have expected somebody like Elrick to know this much about slavery. But, being part of the Divine System? Wow. I don’t know of any slavery god, so this system was probably made by the Divine System itself. It’s adaptable enough to do so.

“Don’t worry about it,” I waved Elrick’s concern off, causing him to look at me baffled. “I already know where they are.”

Elrick’s [Detection Sensor], or his hearing really, wasn’t good enough to detect a few onlookers from afar. I might not be as good as Saori, but detecting some unskilled rats was still perfectly within my limits.

I snapped my head to the side and cast [Terra Wall] deep into the woods. A giant wall of solid stone appeared behind a boulder, followed by the panicked screams of two men. Even if I didn’t have [Detection Sensor], I could fully trust in my hearing.

Now, if I had Tasianna’s mastery of [Aerokinesis], I could probably create a vacuum and suck them towards us, but I didn’t. Dragons couldn’t control their scales outside the range of their [Draconic Aura], so using that to pull the slave owners over was out of the window too; not like I was good enough to do that just yet anyways. However, what I did have were my flames.

Unheilige Engel.

Wings of purple obsidian flew towards the flustered bandit leaders, grabbing them around their shoulders. As they tried to free themselves, the wings turned into their slime form, wrapping them into a cocoon. Levitating them over us, I couldn’t stop myself from glaring daggers at the real perpetrators.

“One warning, if you bite into that slime or consume any of it, you won’t get a quick death. It will be painful. If you try to kill yourself with some poison inside your teeth, I can and will heal it up to drag you back from the fangs of death.”

After the Job [Incandescent Blaze] was maxed out, I bought the mutation skill [Flames of Purification], which then merged into my [White Flames]. It allowed me to purify most toxins, which included my own [Corrosive Fire], so dying to escape interrogation wouldn’t work on me ever again.

“So, why did you send all your slaves to attack us, huh? Simple banditry? No, that would be stupid. You can see our garms clearly and there are two priestesses with white robes riding the wagon. There is also a holy knight with us. Even the most idiotic bandit wouldn’t be crazy enough to try to rob something like that,” I questioned the two men. As I was about to release their mouths from the slime binding them, Elrick quickly interjected.

“Lady Hestia, please be careful! All the commands given can be either through speech or on a panel through their party bracelet. Even if the slaves are asleep, the slave master can still order them around.”

“Huh? Seriously?! That is deranged as hell. At least allow them to sleep!” I protested on how badly slaves were being treated but quickly returned to the subject at hand.

From Elrick’s explanation, the slavers could cause the slaves to experience that excruciating pain from before again. Even if they couldn’t break through Saori’s mana threads if they woke up, I found it inhumane to make them feel such agony in their current state.

Of course, one option was to ignore them and just interrogate the slavers. Easy peasy. But, that would kinda go against what I stood for. Eshe would just shake her head if I were to do that.

The woman who saved a bunch of kids from slavers and was punished by her own church because of the consequences it brought upon the village who wanted to sell them off. The woman who wanted to save not only the orphans but also all the slaves Hamil had at his auction. And in both cases, she did not regret it one bit.

I’ll get my answers one way or another, but what’s important was the method I got them with.

“Asaka-san. Sir Elrick. Please, get the others to take care of the slaves. I’ll have some professionals speak with these two.”

If the problem was that they had to be around them to issue the commands, then I had the perfect way to get around this. [Room], of course. The subspace might be linked to Peolynca’s reality, but stuff like party bracelets or outside mana links wouldn’t connect from the outside to the inside.

The slave commands were distance-based, so it had to be done through mana. The connection between the owner’s mana with the slave tattoo. Not a hard deduction, but so easy to break apart.

“The RV?” Asaka questioned when I opened the door, before realizing what I was planning. “Oh! Yeah, that is a good idea. Perfect place to have some alone time with those idiots. Muraina will probably make them squeal.”

““???!!!””

The prisoners relaxed after Elrick explained to me how slave tattoos worked, probably since my reaction to it was typical “goodie-two-shoes.” They only panicked when both Asaka and I were entirely okay with the torture part. Two white-robed priestesses giving their okays? Well, your hostages were worthless now.

Even if I hadn’t intended to bluff my way through.

“Mhmmk! Mghk! Uguuuuuuuuuuuuh!” However, as I was about to bring them into the RV, one of them suddenly began making a lot of noises, struggling even wilder than normal.

Did he bite his tongue?

I didn’t stuff their mouths with the slime so they didn’t accidentally swallow it, leaving it possible to bite your tongue in this situation. I honestly was a bit sick of spies and bandits biting their tongues off so I threw a ball of white flames right in the man’s face and controlled it to patch up his wound.

His eyes widened in horror once the flames dissipated, probably realizing that I wouldn’t let him die so easily. The other made the same futile attempt. I was beginning to get sick of these two men at this point. After healing him up with my white flames, I let out an annoyed sigh, to which Asaka told me to “ganbare!” “Hang in there,” in English.

Are you seriously throwing all the responsibilities on me here?!

I shook my head in exasperation but continued anyway. But, once again, things couldn’t be that easy.

“Mggrk! Grak!”

“UUuuurgh?! Noooo-argkkkk!”

Spontaneous screams of anguish.

“Giiiieearrrrrrrierk! GRAAAA!”

“Uhhh! Guufueck! Kruuuuuh!”

Turned in the next seconds into blood-curdling howls.

[“Master!”] Rajah’s voice rang in my mind as I turned around, only to see all the 34 slaves we captured spasming simultaneously. I instinctively shot out my white flames at them, believing they had some sort of wound, only to continue hearing their tormented cries.

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““Mhmmmkg!?””

And they weren’t the only ones. Even the two slave masters started making weird movements. Their eyes blew up like those of a fish and their skin began to redden and oozed out blackened pus and blood.

“Shit!” I cursed as I undid the slime cocoon, realizing once they were free that something was protruding from their chests. Something round.

““Grrrraaaaaaargkjkkkkk!””

[““Princess!””]

But what made me stare at the men instead of reacting to their sudden lunge was the fact black slime burst out from their chest, where I saw the shattered pieces of a catalyst. There, on their now exposed chest, I saw a bright blue glowing runic tattoo.

A slave mark.

““Grrraaaa— Griiarck!””

With their winged arms covered in sharp ice, Beth and Shay defended me by helping the two men perform mitosis from their stomachs. Disemboweled and now lying in two pieces on the ground, I noticed the black slime moving towards their wound. It reminded me of the onnikai and the chimeric monsters Davison and Hamil used.

[“Princess, are you okay?!”] Shay asked me, so I reassured him everything was alright, only for Asaka to call out to me to turn around.

“Grruruaaaack!”

I let the white flames vanish, however, something inside me told me I shouldn’t have. After all, what I saw there were 34… men tied up in mana threads squirming and screeching out like monsters.

They had red skin, along with black pus and blood seeping from their skins causing their faces to look like that of a demon. Their chests bloated up and I could see black slime moving around. On a scale of ten of how morbid this all looked, I would rate this 100.

… Mana Eyes!

I felt a small headache as the world around me was dyed in blue. I darted my head around, inspecting the surrounding forest for any signs of mana. After I couldn’t, I activated the skill’s ability to see mana trails, where I saw all of them combining into a singular line.

Without telling anybody what was up, I flapped my wings and shot in pursuit of whoever was at the end of this line. I captured the wrong people. Those two men weren’t slavers, they were slaves themselves! The real master tricked me!

Verdammt!

But even after following this mana trail to its end, all I found was nothing but a small puddle of blood with flesh and bones in it. I deactivated [Mana Eyes] and focused on finding any clues, only to find pieces of a brain and some crushed eyes and teeth.

Seriously? This is how we start the trip? Fucking hell…

This was the end of the trail. Was this the remains of the master? Then, who killed them? I searched around me but I couldn’t find anything even with my skills activated. Whoever killed him disappeared just like that. Even the remains didn’t leave anything important behind outside of a sword.

With no other choice, I clicked my tongue and picked the sword up. Maybe there would be a way to sniff out the owner of this weapon? I dunno. It was better than to go back empty-handed.

Once I made it back, I heard a girl screaming out. When I came closer, I noticed Elrick's sword completely soaked in dark red blood from killing a few of the slaves. Some of the liquid seemed to have squirted onto his face, but he seemed almost unperturbed by it.

On the other hand, Asaka was standing before him, protecting the remaining slaves with her four garm spirits, all while shouting out insults and other curse words at him. “You fucking murderer!” and “They could have been saved!” she kept saying, but Elrick didn’t react. He just continued staring at the remaining slaves.

“Hestia-san!” Once she noticed me, Asaka shouted at me. “I’m sorry! I tried to stop Elrick from killing them but I was too late! Please, stop him!”

Sarasa and Quatre stood behind Asaka, acting as bodyguards for her. I guess, even if Saori didn’t like Asaka, she still wanted to keep her safe. The garms would have never protected Asaka if Saori hadn’t given them an order to do so.

“Sir Elrick. Stand down. Now!” I ordered him.

“Champion Hestia, these are foul abominations and a stain to the God—”

“I will not repeat myself!”

Beth, Shay, and the virigresses began to move. They glared at Elrick to do as I ordered him to.

“… I was rude.” He bowed and moved out from the river of blood he created, wiping the red liquid from his sword with a napkin before putting it back into his pockets. I thought it would just dirty his clothes, but I wasn’t in the mood to question him on that right now.

I walked up to him and activated [Draconic Aura] and [Royal Presence]. “I would like to remind you that you are currently in my company. You are a guest in Aurora. I don’t know how you ‘Knights of Aurena’ conduct yourselves, but while you are here with us, don’t try to throw around your religious beliefs.”

“Lady Hestia, as a fellow follower of Aurena, I must ask that you see my point of view. These men were suffering and transformed into something abominable. They were unholy. All I did was end their misery so they don’t further stain their soul. As a Champion, you should have done the same instead of running off.”

[““Human!””] Beth and Shay wanted to attack him for disrespecting me, but I stopped them.

“I know what I have to do as a Champion, thank you very much. Don’t try to enforce what you believe I should do onto me, Sir Elrick. My first goal is to help out those in need and then enforce justice on those deserving of it.” I then turned over to Asaka trying to help out the slaves, only to frown as she noticed all of them had already died. “I’ll give you this, my priorities were in the wrong order this time due to my outburst. Instead of trying to find the real slave master because of my pride, I should have helped these men out.”

“… I apologize, Lady Hestia. I spoke out inappropriately.”

I knew from the state of how they looked that my healing magic wouldn’t have helped. If their chest had burst out just like the two men I captured with [Unheilige Engel], then healing wouldn’t have helped. It accelerated healing, it didn’t regrow lost organs or limbs. For that, I needed 10000 followers first.

I told Elrick that ‘cause I knew my pride had affected me a bit. Considering I just learned how to meditate into the first stage of Kramps’ training, I should do my best to remember to use it more often.

I called out Saori, Tasianna, Ellaine, and Grimnir and told them everything that happened outside, and that I needed their help burying the dead slaves. The students also came out, curious what happened and told me I shouldn’t be shy about calling them out either.

Maybe I had been trying to protect them from the gruesome sight, so I quickly reprimanded myself. Yes, I should rely more on Aurora as my crutch. I knew that. However, the same could be said about the students. They were now my allies so I shouldn’t hide them away from the more hideous parts of Peolynca. It was hard to let go of old habits, so I should remember to better myself, always. Never stagnate. Never become a sloth.

“I only found this sword at the end of the mana trail.”

After we were done, I handed Saori the sword I found.

“I see… I don’t know if it will help but I’ll hand it over to Muraina or Gael. Maybe they can get some answers. Oh yeah, I also found these broken emblems on the two men you thought were slavers.”

The emblems were round and made out of copper with a weird snake surrounding a potion vial. It looked a bit like the symbol for medicine on Earth, just a bit more sketchy.

“… The supposed master probably caused all of this. Very similar to what Davison did and the monsters released in Griffonpeak. I still have no idea what they were trying to do with attacking us. They have to know about us, right?”

Saori shrugged.

“Maybe they are trying to frame the organization behind this emblem?” Ellaine interjected. “If they incur our anger, whatever mastermind behind this attack will benefit if we did their dirty work. It sounds like what a criminal would do. Although, I have absolutely no idea why they would stuff a human body with a catalyst. How did they even do this?”

“Humans…” Tasianna murmured as she walked up. “These are the same experiments Davison performed on the onnikais like Kiiro. Now, these alchemists are performing them on their kin. This is disgusting. Purely nauseating. Is this really what alchemy is supposed to be?”

Tasianna clenched her hands into fists. A fire was flaring up in this ice mage’s eyes.

Estralia will in for a wild ride, huh?

After four more days, we reached the capital of Estralia — Gleisvale.

“Kroza, did you really have to kill that thing?”

In the depths of a forest, two female elves were sitting on chairs made from solidified shadows, watching as a muscular gray-skinned elf walked up to them while carrying a giant warhammer in one hand and the decapitated head of a man in the other.

The tall, well-built woman replied, “Self-defense. The fool tried to attack me. His death will affect nobody.”

“Oh, is that what you believe?” A beautiful elf with perfect skin spoke in a haughty manner fitting for the noble apparel she wore. “You are not who decides if our action had any effect on our world or not, dear sister. I have no wish to get myself in trouble again. After all, I do wish to return here whenever I can.”

“Enough, Vivi,” the woman sitting next to the rose-skinned elf interjected herself, speaking in a slow and unenergetic manner. “Arguing now is such a bore. Come, Kroza, come nearer. At the very least, we could learn what is actually going on.”

The muscular elf nodded and obeyed diligently, laying the corpse of the decapitated man on the ground. The woman who gave that order reached her pale-like-a-ghost hand out and the soul of the man was extracted from his body, now floating in her hand.

Pulling down the hood of her black robes, the face of a sickly elf was revealed. Still, despite her pale constitution, her cheeks were filled and her body showed no signs of malnutrition or weakness. This was simply how she looked.

“I see…” she mumbled with the soul in her hand. “Oh, so you wanted to sneak those humans and beastmen into their carriage? Hmm? For your faction and leader? I see. I see. So those are your wishes? Your dreams? I am sorry that you weren’t able to fulfill them. I apologize. Life is hard but you endured well enough. Allow me to grant you a peaceful rest, do you want it? Yes? I understand…”

She raised her other hand and touched the soul with one finger, causing mana to flow through it. In this single second, the process was over.

“May you be reincarnated into a better life,” she wished the soul well before sending it off. “They are close by. Should we follow them in the shadows for now?”

“Hmph, we came here because of your wish, elder sister. Of course, we would do well to continue as such. I, too, am very curious about the person Step-sister found so appealing. The person you and Mother chose is also very interesting. However, I do wonder why one of my bloodlings is around this area? Well, regardless. How about you, Kroza?”

The tallest of the three women nodded. Compared to her two sisters, this elf was dressed like a warrior. Metal and leather covered her body with the parts of fallen foes, hiding the proud scars she had underneath them.

It contrasted well with the revealing red dress the rose-skinned elf had. Noble, but at the same time, seductive. Compared to her two sisters, this elf was not dressed for travel. However, in her mind, appearances came before practicality, unlike the muscular sister.

“I see.” Both fair-skinned elves stood up from their chairs, leaving them behind to melt back into the shadows. “Then, shall we go?”

These three were dark elves. The very first of their kind.

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