Adrien stayed low in the brush and let Absolute Mana Sense spread through the camp properly. The first thing he did was count.
Forty.
Thirty-six scattered between the tents, two near the cages, one sitting beside the largest fire and another inside the bigger tent at the back. Most were awake, though several had the lazy mana signatures of people who had been sitting around long enough to stop expecting trouble.
’Forty. Great.’
He could probably kill a few before anyone understood what was happening. The other thirty-something were the problem.
Adrien shifted behind the trunk beside him and started paying attention to everything else instead.
There were chains stacked beside one tent. Collars hanging from a wooden rack. Two wagons with barred sides stood further back, both empty, and there were far too many cages for this to be something they had put together recently. These people had been here for a while, months judging by the paths worn into the ground between the tents.
’Slavers.’
Slavery was illegal inside the human kingdom. Apparently that had done an excellent job of stopping it.
Adrien’s attention moved toward the perimeter. Absolute Mana Sense kept catching small concentrations of mana at regular intervals, all of them weak enough that he had ignored them at first.
Now he focused, and found eight points surrounding the camp.
He moved slightly until he could see one through the brush. A small metal burner sat between two stones, and inside it a cone of black resin gave off a thin stream of grey smoke. The mana came from that.
Adrien watched it for several seconds. Nothing crossed the line around the camp. The forest behind him was packed with creatures, yet the ground ahead had been empty for hundreds of paces.
’So that’s what’s doing it.’ His eyes narrowed. ’Interesting.’
Interesting stopped being the right word once he followed the thought through. If the thing kept monsters away, they had to go somewhere else, and these people had carved a safe hole into the middle of their territory and apparently kept it running for months.
Downhill from here sat Greymoor. The wolves. The creatures that had nearly gutted Garrick and the dead.
Adrien stared at the little burner for a long moment.
’You have got to be fucking kidding me.’
Voices came from the nearest fire, so he moved closer without leaving the trees and crouched behind a thick patch of fern. Three men sat around it. One was cleaning a knife. Another had his boots off and was rubbing at one heel, while the third was eating directly from a small pot.
"I’m telling you, we’re too close to Clairmont land."
The man with the knife snorted. "You’ve been saying that for two months."
"Because we’ve been here for two months."
"And?"
"And maybe I’d rather not have a noble family like the Clairmonts finding out we’re dragging people through their forest."
The man eating from the pot laughed.
"What noble family?"
That got a grin from the other two.
"The Clairmonts are finished," he continued. "Their lord got his head taken off, half their people left, and nobody’s coming this far up the mountain to check on anything."
"Yeah, but it’s still their land."
"Only on a map."
The man with the knife tested the edge against his thumb. "That’s why the boss picked this place. Close enough to the border to find elves, far enough from anything useful that nobody comes looking. Best place we’ve had in years."
Adrien’s jaw tightened, so all of this was deliberate.
Maybe they had no idea what their little safe zone was doing to everything around it. Maybe they did. At the moment, he wasn’t feeling charitable enough to care.
"What about the elves?" the third man asked. "We moving them with the next group?"
"If the girl wakes up properly."
"She worth that much?"
"More than the humans."
The man with the knife gave him a look. "Elves always are. You know what rich bastards pay for them. Especially the pretty ones."
"Thought selling them was illegal."
"So is what we’re doing."
That got another laugh. Adrien did not join in.
He backed away from the conversation and circled until he had a clearer angle on the cages. The young elven woman was still sitting beside the smaller girl, and even from here Adrien could tell she was watching everything happening around her despite looking exhausted.
The blond elf had moved closer to the bars. The little girl stayed between them, protected. Nobody had told them to arrange themselves that way. They simply had.
Adrien filed that away, and his attention moved to the human cages.
The older man who had served Alaric was awake now, sitting against the metal with his head lowered. Adrien still could not drag the name out of the memories he had inherited, but the face was certain. That was another problem for later.
Ariane was the problem now.
She sat with one knee raised, her back against the bars. There was dried blood along her sleeve and a bruise darkening one side of her face, but she was awake. Alive.
Adrien felt something in his shoulders loosen, and started counting again.
Forty people. Eight burners around the perimeter. Two guards beside the cages. Most of the others relaxed because they believed nothing dangerous could reach them here.
Adrien looked down at Umbral Root in his hand. He had a Four-Star domain, a Frost spell he had driven to its mastery cap, and a core he still had not managed to empty.
And forty people who had put his younger sister in a cage.
’I’ve never actually killed a human before, even in my other life.’ Adrien settled deeper into the brush and started planning. ’Well I suppose there’s a first time for everything.’
...
AN: Add the novel to collections and send (power stones and golden tickets) support if like it ;)