On the other hand, what if he were on the verge of death and his comrades were dying of starvation? If there was nothing else to eat and he was going to die anyway, then maybe he’d think it was okay for them to eat him. He might even wish they would. But regardless of Manato’s wishes, would his comrades eat him? It would take an awful lot to convince them to, wouldn’t it?
But if someone wasn’t his comrade, could he eat them? If they were a total stranger, could he look at them as food?
He’d come across human corpses when he was hungry before. There had been dead bodies along the roadside in every town he’d ever been in other than Tsunomiya. They’d been swarming with flies and other bugs, and had been picked at by crows, dogs, and pigs. Living as a hunter, he had eaten birds, mountain dogs, and boars, which were similar to pigs, as well as snakes and some bugs. If those beasts and bugs ate humans, then it was fine for a human to eat humans too.
Or that should have been the case, but Manato felt like he couldn’t eat a human. He didn’t understand the reason; he just knew that humans couldn’t eat humans. It was probably wrong.
Manato reached out and tugged on Haru’s cloak. “Are goblins...human?” he asked in a small voice.
There was a short pause before Haru answered. “I killed a lot of goblins here in Damuro back in the day. They had their own language and culture, and they resembled humans in some ways. But we never treated them as humans. They engaged in cannibalism. I guess I’ll just say this without worrying about being misunderstood—we looked down on the goblins as an inferior race, ugly, and not as smart as us humans.”
“Are you for real?” Yori interjected. “Goblins may be smaller than us, but they’re quicker than humans and have more stamina too. They’re not dumb either. Their tradition of eating their own kind is about mourning the dead. The goblins of the Red Continent still carry on with the practice, but those who crossed over to the United Kingdom stopped doing it in order to coexist with the other races. There are a lot of goblin dragon tamers. It’s a dangerous job, and they deserve respect for it. In fact, Yori and Riyo’s master in dragon taming was a goblin.”
“I see... So there are goblins on the Red Continent. And south of the Tenryu Mountains as well.” Haru let out a sigh before continuing. “It’s not that surprising to me that they’ve become your allies. There were goblins who built a kingdom in the New City of Damuro, and they had relations with the other races.”
“How could those thralls use them as livestock like that?” Yori said, hanging her head and biting her lip. She was pissed now. Or rather, she’d been mad this whole time. “It’s unthinkable. Why would they do such a—”
Riyo gently touched her sister’s arm, making Yori pause and look up.
The cage cart had come back into view through the open gate. It had gone down into the lower level, and then had come back up again.
The slave soldier that had previously been sitting on top of the cart as the two orcs had pulled it was nowhere to be seen.
The cage had been empty on the way in. Now, though, it was completely full. There were a large number of creatures riding inside it. No, it would have been better to say that they had been loaded into it.
They were tiny, maybe about the size of human children, with thin arms and legs, and chests that were narrow and not very thick. Their ribs poked out, but their bellies were swollen. They had large heads relative to their size, though it might have only looked like that because they were so thin. Their skin was green, similar to the orcs, but it had a yellowy tinge to it. But unlike the orcs, who were dressed in tough-looking clothing, these guys weren’t wearing anything. They were naked.
“The goblins,” Yori moaned.
Some of the goblins were sitting, while others were standing. Those who had enough space to sit were doing so, while those without were forced to stand. The goblins standing toward the outside held on to the bars, while those who couldn’t reach the cage leaned against other goblins. The cage cart was shaky, so they’d have collapsed without support. It looked horribly cramped, and Manato wouldn’t have been surprised to see them pushing against one another, but maybe none of them had the energy for that. They all looked weak.
The cage cart passed through the gate, with the slave soldier walking behind it, carrying something in its hands. What was that? It wasn’t small. No, it was actually pretty big, maybe the size of an arm, and it was bent in the middle.
The orcs moved away from the cart and began closing the gate. Meanwhile, the slave soldier walked up to the side of the cart at a leisurely speed while bringing the thing it was holding closer to its face. What was it doing? What was that thing?
The slave soldier’s body was pretty much entirely pitch-black. It looked like it was covered in black scales.
It opened its mouth—or at least that was what Manato thought it did. The slave soldier’s bottom jaw moved down. The inside of its mouth was black too. Then it bit into the thing it was holding.
“The soldier is eating it,” Yori murmured, covering her mouth with one hand.
The thing was about the size of an arm. It was bent at around the point where an elbow would have been on an arm. It was green, with a slight yellow tinge and dark-red spots in some places.
It wasn’t about the size of an arm, that thing was an arm. The slave soldier was eating a goblin’s arm.
The gate to the farm was closed, then barred. The orcs returned to the front of the cart, where they stood side by side. Grabbing the handle in their large hands, the two of them started pulling the cart again. The slave soldier was apparently going to keep walking alongside the cart.
The goblins in the cage were quiet. The slave soldier was right there next to them, munching on the arm of one of their kind. There were goblins looking at it from inside the cage, but they said nothing. They were very still.
“Um...” Manato looked at the cage cart, then at Yori and Riyo. “You’re not going to save those, uh, people?”
“Urgh!” Yori grunted.
Riyo’s eyes widened with surprise and she gulped. Yori put her hand on the hilt of her red sword, and bent her knees.
“No, that’s—” Haru rushed forward, signaling for Yori to stop. “Wait, Yori. Damuro is thrall territory. You can’t underestimate a slave soldier, even if it’s alone. If there were two or three of them, I don’t know if we’d be able to handle them. Besides, even if you do manage to free those goblins from that cage—”
“Haruhiro. Yori understands what you want to say. Yori’s not an idiot.”
“I know you aren’t.”
“Really? You’re assuming that Yori’s gotten so emotional that she’s gonna try to save the goblins without thinking it through. Isn’t that right, Haruhiro? Well, you’re wrong.”
“What...are you thinking of doing?”
“There are multiple goblin farms, right?”
“Probably four in the Old City.”
“We’re gonna destroy them all.”
“What did you just say?”
“It’d be too difficult to save all the goblins trapped inside. But we aren’t going to let those thralls treat them as livestock anymore. Yori can’t accept that, and Yori won’t allow it. First we’ll stop them from being shipped out. Then we’ll destroy the breeding sites. Every last one of them. Riyo.”
When her older sister called her name, the younger sister nodded. If Yori meant to do this, Riyo would help. Of course she would. They might have been sisters, but they weren’t all that similar. They weren’t twins. The two of them had been born about a year and a half apart. And Riyo was much taller than Yori. And they differed in more than just their appearances. Their personalities were almost complete opposites too. But even so, they were surely of one mind on this.
“Haru,” Manato said, placing his hand on Haru’s shoulder. There was nothing funny about the topic they were discussing, but he couldn’t help but laugh a bit.
“Fine...” Haru said, hanging his head. “Just promise me that you’ll back down when you need to. Skullhell has thralls all over Grimgar. I don’t even know how many farms there are elsewhere. This’ll be a far longer battle than you’re imagining.”
“You think Yori will lose her nerve? Not with great-grandma’s and great-grandpa’s blood running through my veins.”
“All right!” Manato said, sticking his hand out, palm down.
“Huh?” Yori cocked her head to the side in confusion, but she placed her hand on top of Manato’s.
Riyo did likewise, though probably only because her big sister had, placing her hand on top of Yori’s.
“What?” Haru said. He didn’t move to join in.
“Mmm!” Manato grunted, gesturing with his chin, and Haru finally placed his hand on top of Riyo’s.
“What’s this supposed to be?” It seemed Yori still didn’t understand.
“Who knows?” Manato said with a laugh. “It’s just something people do. Sort of a ‘let’s give it our all together’ sort of thing?”
“Together...” Riyo said, looking at Yori, then Haru, and then finally Manato. She nodded ever so slightly. “We’ll give it our all. Together.”