Two days later, Elena and I were once again heading to the children’s shack outside of town.
It was a bad idea for us to get too involved with them—that was best left to Camille and Ron—but Elena had grown fond of the children and was concerned about their nutritional needs. Succulents in this area were rich in nutrients, and they were enough to fend off starvation, but without meat and grains, one would still be prone to illness. It had been somewhat expensive, but we’d bought thin slices of meat to bring to them, apparently cut from some sort of sheeplike livestock rather than the bugs the poor had to make do with.
As we approached the rocky area, I sensed something.
“Alia!” Elena yelled as she saw Neu, who should have recovered completely by now, collapsed in front of the shack.
“Wait,” I said, holding out a hand and stepping forward to stop her.
The boy wasn’t dead, from what I could see. Aether still flowed through his body, so if he got immediate treatment, he could still be saved. It was urgent, to be sure, but we couldn’t approach.
Three beastmen emerged from inside the shack. Munza members?
“Finally,” said one of them, with fur like that of a black tiger. “You’re the alchemists who treated this runt, right?”
“Where’s Chaco?” I asked.
The two other beastmen each held one of the children, likely wanting to use them as hostages. The children had been frightened into complete silence. Behind me, Elena gasped at their state.
Why did they think we were alchemists? How had they found out about Neu’s illness?
“The girl? We took her back to our place,” the beastman replied. “Be good and do as we say, and we’ll be nice. We have lots of sick kids that could use your potions. That way we can sell them to the Reezan—along with your friend.”
He and his two cohorts laughed.
I looked at them, then the children, feeling something small ignite in my heart. Was this what they wanted?
“Now come with us,” he said. “Quietly—”
“Are you just going to cry?” I asked, loud and clear.
The beastman frowned, puzzled. “What the hell are you talking abo—”
“Are you just going to let them steal from you?” I interrupted.
The dwarven child lifted her head.
“Aren’t you angry?”
The beastman child gritted his teeth.
There it was. The anger.
“Enough! Shut up, woman!” the beastman snapped.
“You want to live? Fight.”
“Gah!”
He hadn’t noticed, had he? The children had stopped crying. They’d decided to fight to protect their family. People like these beastmen underestimated children far too much. Even children could kill, if only they could find their fangs.
The men recoiled in pain as the children bit their arms, and I took advantage of their distraction, pointing a finger at them.
“Pain.”
The two stiffened. “Ngh?!”
Moving smoothly, I thrust my black dagger into the forehead of one, then stabbed my black knife into the back of the other’s skull. I caught the two children before the men collapsed, then gently set them on the ground.
The black tiger beastman was still frozen in place, in shock from the instant kills. “Wha—”
He tried to ready a weapon, but I struck his right wrist with the side of my palm, shattering it, then kicked his right knee in with my heel, crushing the bones.
“Gaaaaaaaaaaah!!!”
As he screamed and rolled in agony, I stepped on his face, using Intimidation and glaring icy daggers down at him to silence him.
“Now ‘be good’ and tell us where we’re going,” I said. “I’ll drag you there.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Lena,” I said. “As a precaution, I want you to take the children and evacuate outside.”
“I will,” Elena replied, her expression serious. She knew what I’d meant by “outside.”
We’d set up a simple base outside of town in case of emergency and stashed some food there, enough to last them a few days.
Elena had healed the injured boy, Neu, with light magic. Now that our rooms at the inn were no longer safe, we were waiting here for him to wake up. When Neu came to and heard Chaco had been taken, he declared he would come along to rescue her.
“No need,” I said.
“B-But...” Neu stammered anxiously. As an older brother figure to the smaller children, he probably felt like he had to help their big sister figure.
He didn’t.
“Your duty is to protect those kids. Don’t throw your life away on the wrong task.”
Neu paused for a moment. He looked at the two smaller children, who were gripping his clothes and fighting back tears—though they’d resisted the kidnappers earlier, they were still anxious. Neu then nodded firmly. “Yeah.”
I watched Elena and Neu leave with the children, then turned toward the other remaining person. “Sorry for the wait.”
“You little...!”
Had he tried to escape? His position had shifted slightly. Even on the ground with his knee and wrist shattered, the striped beastman still growled menacingly when I approached and kicked at me with his good leg. I estimated his combat power to be on the lower end of Rank 3. While his will to fight despite his injuries was admirable, it couldn’t go unanswered.
I kicked his foot, then stomped down on his ankle, breaking it.
“Ngaaaaaaaaaaah!”
“Where did you take Chaco?” I asked, my tone flat but intimidating.
The man’s face contorted with something other than pain. “Y-You...”
“You came here for me, didn’t you? Who told you we’d cured that boy?”
“You’re gonna regret messing with the Munza in— Aaaargh!”
“I didn’t ask about that,” I said as I trampled his ankle, further crushing it.
Likely fearing retaliation from the Munza, the man refused to answer, so I drove my heel into his left knee too for good measure.
“Rrgh... Aaaaaaaargh!”
When he passed out from the intense pain, I just woke him up with more pain. The more fearful he grew of death, the less hostile he seemed.
“St-Stop... I... I don’t know... Our boss just...”
“Someone came here, didn’t they?”
When the only joint of his that remained intact—his left wrist—broke, so did his resolve.
Soon, I had the info I needed. While aware I couldn’t fully trust the striped man’s words, I grabbed him by the collar and began to drag him toward Cutlass anyway.
✦ ✦ ✦
As I approached the town, two figures came running toward me. “Alia!”
Very few people here knew my name, and fewer still walked the road leading to the children’s shack.
“Camille, and...Ron?”
Camille’s hood was down, and though his companion’s wasn’t, the hooded figure had to be Ron. The two approached me, their eyes wide at the sight of the beastman with shattered joints.
“We heard the Munza were out to get Chaco and the others!”
“Is that guy...?”
The pair explained that Munza thugs had attacked them as well, but even defeated, one of the assailants had mockingly hinted at the attack on the kids.
“We saved the others, but they took Chaco,” I said.
“Then I’m going,” Camille said.
“Wait, Camille!” Ron called out. He grabbed his friend’s shoulder before the dark elf could rush out, then lowered his hood and fixed his serious gaze upon me. “Alia, right? Camille told me what you did. Thank you. But...why go to all that trouble for kids you don’t know?”
Ron’s doubts were reasonable. Even I had suspected there might be ulterior motives behind the assistance these two had freely offered the orphans.
“You’re one to talk,” I said.
“You’re right,” he conceded, bowing his head. “Sorry.”
There was no real answer to his question. I could dress it up with pretty words, but the truth was simple: I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t seen what I’d seen. That was all.
“Your companion, Lena. She’s with the children, right? That means they should be relatively safe for now. Listen, we have information. The Munza resent us for disrupting their business, but apparently, the Kiluri are in on it this time.”
“That makes sense. It’s probably related to Lena and me. They must think we used our potions to cure Neu.”
That Kiluri man, Jed—I’d thought him smarter than this, but if he was going to be this greedy instead of just taking the already sizable profits, he was no different from the other thugs in this town. Or perhaps it wasn’t necessarily blind greed but a mix of wanting profits and wanting to come out on top. He might’ve concluded his best move was to take everything for himself—also typical of a resident of this town. Those with power were often cautious, but some fools mistook organizational power for personal power.
It turned out our decision to stay away from the Kiluri-owned inn had been the right one.
“I’m going to go get Chaco back,” I said.
“All right. Then we—”
“No. There’s something I need you to do.”