Kent and Tori walked into the town.
Normally, at this hour, smoke from dinner fires would be curling from every chimney.
Today, however, only the tavern was lit.
The massive wooden manor had been reduced to a ruined, snow-covered mound, with only a few charred pillars hinting at its former grandeur.
The grocer’s door had been smashed in, the interior pitch black.
The owner lay dead in the doorway, a young boy—likely his son—beside him.
Half the boy’s head was missing, his tiny, pale body stark against the white snow.
Further down, several other homes had been violently breached.
Their male occupants lay naked and dead amidst ransacked rooms, the walls stained with large, dark-purple splatters of dried blood.
Kent’s face turned ashen.
He had anticipated a gruesome scene, but witnessing it firsthand was entirely different.
A quick inspection revealed only the corpses of men and elderly women.
The young women and girls were nowhere to be seen—it didn’t take a genius to figure out where they were.
“Sins decreed by heaven can be forgiven, but the sins you bring upon yourselves leave no room for survival!” Kent muttered, his voice cold as he slowly approached the tavern.
Barking laughter and the sharp, terrified screams of women spilled from inside.
Kent’s expression remained rigid, but his mind flashed back to the Great Patriotic War from his previous world decades ago—a conflict that had claimed tens of millions of lives in a nation of only four hundred million.
Flashes of mass graves, tiny skeletons, and pale skulls flooded his vision.
His blood boiled; his head felt like it was going to split open.
Yet, his footsteps remained terrifyingly steady.
“Tori.
Stand guard outside.
I will handle the people inside myself.” Kent’s voice sounded as if it drifted from a distant horizon, but its absolute authority left no room for argument.
The words chilled Tori to the bone, freezing his very soul.
He swallowed whatever he had intended to say, bowed deeply, and took his post outside.
He didn’t quite understand what had come over the boy, but he knew one thing for certain: those bandits were about to suffer.
No one could withstand a mage’s unbridled wrath.
Through the crack in the tavern doors, Kent could clearly see the interior illuminated by massive tallow candles.
About thirty bandits sat around, gorging on large hunks of meat and chugging bowls of ale, while a massive fire roared in the hearth.
Surrounding them were over a dozen naked women, ranging from teenagers to women in their thirties.
Their bodies were covered in dark bruises.
They were being forced to serve the outlaws, crying out in pain whenever a bandit roughly grabbed them, which only elicited uproarious laughter from the men.
“Haha!
Once we sell these bitches elsewhere, we’ll have another fortune in our pockets!
The bosses have it best, though.
They’re probably having a nice, intimate chat with that noble girl right about now!” a bandit yelled, groping a twenty-something woman in his lap before taking a huge swig of ale.
A short bandit, holding a numb, traumatized young girl in his arms, took a bite of meat and laughed.
“Yeah!
An intimate chat in bed, I bet!
She’s a noble, after all!
Even if her dad’s just a knight, noble blood is noble blood!”
“Haha, brothers!
We’ve eaten and drank our fill.
Isn’t it time we get some rest?
Hahaha!” another shouted.
Bang!
“I’m here to send you to hell to rest.”
The tavern doors slammed open, letting in a blast of freezing wind and a chillingly grim voice.
“Brothers!
Grab your weapons!” The bandits shoved the women aside and scrambled for their blades, only to see a slender, youthful figure step through the doorway.
“Haha, where did this little fledgling come from?
Hey, Big Bear, your favorite type is here—arghhh!” Before the mocking bandit could finish his sentence, his weapon-bearing arm detached from his shoulder.
It took him a full moment to realize what had just happened.
Seeing the abused women snapped Kent’s mind into absolute, cold clarity.
He wasn’t just here to kill; he was here to rescue.
Initially, he thought he might need to use deception to get close, but these fools had essentially served themselves up on a silver platter by shoving their hostages away into the corners.
Kent couldn’t believe their incompetence—they didn’t even know how to use human shields.
“Kill him!
Kill him!” The bandits charged en masse.
Instead of fireballs, Kent used Wind Blades.
Most of the bandits were half-naked; some hadn’t even pulled their pants up.
This was the perfect scenario for the highly penetrating wind magic.
A rapid barrage of pale-green crescent blades shot from Kent’s hands.
Arms and legs were severed with sickening ease, the blades continuing their lethal trajectory.
Those struck in the chest or abdomen died instantly; some were decapitated outright.
In less than three seconds, over twenty charging bandits were down, most writhing and howling in pools of their own blood.
The men in the back froze, paralyzed with terror.
Their weapons trembled in their hands, and several lost control of their bladders.
They couldn’t fathom that the slaughter before them was the work of a seemingly underage boy.
The arrogant brute from earlier now had a gaping, bleeding hole in his chest, missing a leg and half his skull.
The short bandit who liked young girls had been decapitated, his body taking another step before collapsing.
The skinny bandit who liked boys was screaming on the floor.
Gut-wrenching shrieks echoed in the crisp night air.
The floor was slick with gore and scattered limbs.
“You all deserve to die.
And when you die, you will burn in hell,” Kent snarled, his eyes bloodshot.
Hearing the screams, Tori rushed in, only to shudder violently at the carnage.
“Tori, get the women out of here.
Have them put on their clothes, and we’ll take them to Harry City,” Kent ordered, not taking his eyes off the survivors.
“What about them?” Tori asked, his own eyes red.
The town steward, Holman, had died in his home along with his wife and son, and his daughter and daughter-in-law were among these captives.
Even though Tori despised Holman personally, they had been colleagues.
“Get them out first.
I’ll deal with the rest.”
Just as Kent spoke, a surviving bandit lunged desperately toward the women in a bid for a hostage.
Boom!
A fireball slammed into his chest, blasting a bowl-sized hole through him.
He collapsed, dead before he hit the floor.
Tori hurried over to the terrified women, finding their clothes behind the bar.
As they dressed with trembling hands, the remaining dozen bandits slumped to the floor, not daring to even look at Kent.
The pale-green Wind Blades had been hard to spot in the bright light, but the unmistakable fireball confirmed their worst nightmare: they had provoked a mage.
A few began to openly sob.
Soon, all the women were escorted outside.
“Remember this in your next life: evil deeds are always punished; it’s only a matter of time,” Kent whispered to the trembling survivors.
A rapid succession of fireballs ended it.
Looking at the shattered skulls of the bandits, Kent’s stomach violently revolted.
“Bleurgh!” He vomited, but having eaten little, only acidic bile came up.
He grabbed a bowl of ale and downed it.
It tasted like watered-down beer from Earth, but the cold liquid settled his stomach and cleared his head.
Heading upstairs, Kent found several more women bound in the two small rooms—clearly reserved for the bandit leaders.
He also discovered a heavy wooden chest containing the bandits’ payment and their recent plunder: nearly four thousand gold coins, weighing hundreds of pounds.
“Niu Niu, time to loot,” Kent said mentally after failing to lift the chest.
“Where?
Where?!” Niu Niu instantly materialized before him, startling him.
“Gold coins!
Wow, so many!
Oh, and jewelry!
We’re rich, we’re rich!” Niu Niu’s eyes sparkled with starry delight, completely ignoring Kent’s reaction.
She quickly gathered up the bundles of jewelry and some fine furs.
Before Kent could blink, the items vanished.
“Spatial magic?” Kent finally reacted, asking tentatively.
Niu Niu looked extremely pleased, blinking her large, beautiful eyes.
“Didn’t you know pets can teleport to their masters?
And that we have a pet space?” She was partially lying to protect her true identity, though her use of a spatial pocket was technically true.
“Can you carry more?” Kent pointed at the luxurious fur bedding; he desperately missed sleeping in a soft bed.
Niu Niu gave him a confused look, nodded, and waved her little hand.
The bedding vanished.
Kent then packed a large bundle of women’s clothing, strapped it to his back, and let Niu Niu perch on his shoulder.
Little gold-digger, Kent chuckled inwardly.
As he walked back downstairs, his stomach churned again, but he fought it down.
Niu Niu seemed completely unbothered—different species, different reactions, much like a human walking into a slaughterhouse without batting an eye.
Outside the town, Kent realized that putting a group of traumatized women on unbroken horses was a terrible idea.
“Chuck, go find horse harnesses.
Tori, find some long wooden poles—five or six meters—and some planks…”
With Alice and Delis helping, Chuck and Tori managed to build two rudimentary horse-drawn sleds.
Night had completely fallen.
They padded the sleds with soft hay and salvaged bedding.
The women were sobbing openly.
Kent knew they couldn’t linger; the bandits on the mountain had bows, perhaps even crossbows.
The dead would have to be buried later; survival came first.
“Tori, take the lead.
I’ll take the rear.
Hurry!” Kent pulled some of the reluctant, paralyzed women onto the sleds—Tori even had to physically knock a few out to get them moving.
The convoy rushed toward Harry City.
Tori drove the front sled with about ten women.
Chuck drove the rear sled, which carried Kent, Delis, and Alice, with Niu Niu on Kent’s shoulder and the magic wolf trailing far behind.
The sleds were rough wooden frames lashed over long poles acting as runners, crowded but functional.
Squashed between Delis and Alice, Kent closed his eyes, only to see vivid flashes of the bloody tavern.
He felt incredibly nauseous.
“Kent…
the first time killing someone is always like this,” Delis whispered in his ear, noticing his distress.
Kent clenched his jaw, unable to speak.
Seeing his pale face, Delis bit her lip, grabbed his hand, and pressed it against her chest, snuggling closer without another word.
Startled by the sudden intimacy, Kent quickly pulled his hand away.
Under the snowy moonlight, he saw her eyes glistening with unshed tears.
“My hand is freezing.
I don’t want to make you cold,” Kent quickly explained, speaking his true thoughts.
He then wrapped his arm around her shoulders to show he wasn’t rejecting her comfort.
“Mhm.” The brief distraction helped settle Kent’s nausea.
What he didn’t see was Alice observing their little exchange.
Feeling left out, Alice immediately snuggled in and hugged his other side tightly.
Kent felt a surge of masculine pride.
My charm is off the charts, he thought, though the underlying grim reality of how cheap human life was in this world lingered heavily.
For the horses, a journey of a few dozen miles took merely an hour.
Gazing at the towering fifteen-meter-high city walls, Kent was reminded of the region’s proximity to the frontlines.
The Resh Duchy was sandwiched between the Imperial Capital Province and the Harry Duchy, which bordered the Blood Fortress on the Orc frontier.
The Blood Fortress sat at the intersection of mountains and plains.
Every winter, the Lum River froze, creating a natural ice bridge that Orcs used to raid the Alliance Empire.
However, since the fortress’s construction, only scattered stragglers ever slipped through; large-scale invasions were halted.
The fortress also bordered the Dark Empire and the Light Empire’s Tear of Angels Fortress.
Historically, the Dark Empire once poisoned the Quinn River, intending to strike the Light Empire, but accidentally killed hundreds of thousands of Alliance citizens.
In a fury, the Alliance Empire dispatched its elite 3,000-strong Alliance Knights and 300-strong Mage Battalion, conquering three major Dark Empire cities in three days, withdrawing only after massive reparations were paid.
“Open the gates!
Open the gates!
We have an emergency!” Tori shouted toward the drawn drawbridge over the moat.
“The City Lord’s orders!
The gates do not open at night for anyone!” a guard shouted back from the high walls.
“Open your blind dog eyes!
I am from the Mage Guild!” Kent roared, instantly blasting a fireball high against the stone wall.