Akira sat behind the wooden booth that he had rented for one silver. It only took a few hours of waiting before he was able to sell more than half of the junk he had been accumulating.
He received a decent amount of gold for all the items sold, which would have just taken up space in his bag if not sold.
Now that most of the better items had been bought by adventures and low tier mercenaries, he hadn’t made many other sales for over an hour. Varbu bored from sitting around and doing nothing had left to go back to the inn and wait for him to return.
Most of his time was spent trying to get people to notice his booth most ignored him and continued to inspect the other merchant’s Items.
Akira had grown tired of trying to attract people after an hour of no success and just sat quietly behind the wooden booth and watched the large crowd of various different humans and people of different demon races walk by.
When it was near closing time for the trading bazaar just an hour past dinner time Akira packed up his remaining items and left.
While walking down the darkening night streets an idea popped into his head that he wanted to test out.
He hid in an alleyway for a few seconds before stepping out in his werewolf form and began walking down the street as if nothing had changed.
Many people both humans and demon race looked at him with stunned faces. Akira began to smile thinking everyone was in awe of how cool he looked.
But in fact, the smile only caused his already fierce looking face to turn even more sinister. They were not in awe of his fierce looking appearance they were puzzled at what a lone werewolf was doing in their town.
As Akira walked away multiple quiet conversations broke out.
“Hey what’s a lone werewolf doing here in a no-name town like this?”
“I heard that the only werewolf’s that travel alone have either been banished from their clan or they have a perverted view on life and are shunned by everyone.”
“Is that true?”
“It is! I heard it from my friends, cousins, father who knew a sailor, who was friends with a soldier that knew a werewolf clan from the last war.”
“I see so he’s either a pervert or a criminal.”
Akira with his good hearing was able to hear it all and was a little embarrassed now. He decided to escape into another alley where he reverted back to his human form and returned to the [Rear-end Inn].
***
The next morning after a decent sleep Akira went back to the trading bazaar alone with a new sign he had made advertising his ability to repair minor things on armor and swords that did not need require a forge.
He picked the same stall he had rented the day before. After hanging the sign above the stall he set out the items left over from yesterday and pulled out his repair tools.
Akira spent most of the morning doing minor repairs and selling a few items.
He gained a small amount of XP from the repairs he made which only made a small dent in the amount needed for the next level. Creating things from scratch seemed to give far larger amounts of XP.
When it was almost nearing the busy dinner time a suspicious figure wearing a sackcloth robe with the hood up hiding their face appeared. They were nervously looking around them as if they were in danger. As they walked closer Akira could hear the person sniff the air a few times as if following a scent.
Apparently, they found what they were looking for and turned towards Akira’s direction and started to walk quickly to where he stood.
The short person who was maybe at the most 5 feet tall, stopped in front of his stall not saying anything only sniffing the air a few more times.
Before Akira could ask them if he could help them with something, the suspicious person threw off their hood revealing a young female child like face which had two furry ears twitching in agitation on top of her head.
“Please help me! I’ve been kidnapped by slavers and just managed to escape!” said the young girl looking at Akira with pleading watery eyes ready to burst out in streams of tears.
“Guards! She’s over there!” shouted an older males voice causing the young girl to jump in fright.
It was too late to escape in mere seconds a group of men along with the city guard surrounded her.
Akira stood by speechless as everything happened so quickly.
“I am so sorry to have to bother you like this,” said the same voice that had shouted earlier.
Akira turned to see the old man who was talking.
“Here’s a few gold for causing you troubles,” said one of the old man’s subordinates tossing three gold coins onto the wooden stand.
They quickly left with the guards helping to firmly escort the recaptured slave.
Akira stood there in silence as it was hard to process all that had just happened.
He wanted to help the young girl but after seeing such a large force of guards he knew that if he had done anything against the slavers will or attacked the guards he could kiss goodbye his time in the city and would be chased out by the guards and most likely a bounty put on his head.
He could not afford to anger any more people than he already had. His life was hectic enough as it was already.
Akira picked up the gold and the rest of his unsold items and packed everything back up before returning to the inn where Varbu was waiting.
***
“…and that is what happened. So what should we do?” asked Akira.
“First of all, I am glad you didn’t do something like attack the guards…”
Akira interrupted him, “You should know that I’m not that stupid.”
“What about when we were in Vussia you did some pretty dumb things,” said Varbu.
“Those were mistakes because I misjudged her! What about your honor code and stuff you’re always talking about.”
“We Orcs do not go out looking to make people slaves. A true warrior defeats invading enemies during war and captures them alive to force them to pay a ransom or work for their freedom. It is beyond dishonorable during peacetime to hunt down those weaker than yourself and force them to serve you.”
“So you agree we should help her?”
“Yes and no.”
“What?”
“We can do nothing to the slavers while they are still inside the city otherwise we risk the whole city guard attacking us. Let’s wait until they leave the city then we can figure out what to do. Don’t think of making this a habit we can’t free every slave we see or we will bring the anger of many cities down upon us.”
Akira hopped that nothing bad happened while they waited for the slavers to leave the city.
After deciding on what to do both Akira packed their small amount of belongings and left the inn to snoop around and find the slave group that the young girl was captured by.
When they reached slave market they slowly went to each tent of the slave owners to see if they were the same people he had seen before, but they had no luck in finding the girl or the slavers.
“Ah, it’s you that seller in the bazaar. What brings you here?” asked a male voice behind him.
Akira turned around to see a large muscular guard standing behind him.
“I was looking for the slavers from earlier,” said Akira not going into any more detail than necessary.
“Ah, I see that escapee caught your eye, didn’t she? It’s to bad the slavers you are looking for leftover half an hour ago due to not wanting to burden us guards with having to repeatedly round up slaves that keep trying to escape from them. That was the 6th one today. They sure are crappy slave merchants to not properly train their slaves before bringing them into a city.”
Seeing Akira’s mood change. Another guard off to the side of the first spoke up, “If you hurry you might be able to catch them they said they would be heading to the next city. Hopefully, their troubles will be settled by then.”
“Thanks for the information,” said Akira turning around and leaving the slave market with Varbu.
Before leaving the city of Jabooty they made sure they had enough supplies to get them to the next stop with some extra in case of any unforeseen problems.
The roads only had a few travelers since it was dinner time where almost everyone was either eating, selling their goods, or shopping at the bazaars. Everyone they did see were all walking towards the city.
Akira could tell from the deep ruts in the hard sandy road that a caravan with a heavy load was heading south on the main road. He guessed it was the slavers with their metal cages and slaves.
They followed the trail at a quick walk only stopping when the tracks swerved off onto a smaller side trail.
“Why’d they take this road?” asked Akira out loud not expecting an answer.
Varbu shrugged. How could he know?
It didn’t take them long to hear sounds coming from up ahead of them after walking down the small road for several minutes.
“Ahhhhhhhh!”
The sound that reached their ears was what sounded like the cries of a dying man who was being tortured to death by the cruelest of ways, it made Akira’s skin crawl.
Akira and Varbu both readied their weapons and ran forward. Numerous other cries of dying pain reached their ears before they were able to see where the sound was coming from.
What they saw horrified them. Numerous large wooden stakes taller than even Varbu had been hammered into the sandy ground. Each stake had a glistening red liquid covering it dripping onto the ground below.
At the bottom of each stake sat the limp body of a slave that had been impaled and slid down from the top to the bottom killing the slave slowly. Man, woman, child, human, demon there were many already dead.
Enraged at the sight Akira transformed into his werewolf form and let out a howl at the rising desert moon.
Nox leaped out of Akira’s shadow when he used his skill to summon him. Nox did not say anything and just followed Akira.
The slavers and their guards hearing the chilling howl from Akira and the war cry that Varbu was shouting rushed out of their tents to see what was causing all the noise.
The trio was upon them before they could think of anything other than defending themselves.
Akira used his skill [Howl] which made it so the weak merchant slavers were easily cut down. But the guards and slavers that went out and raided for people to sell, were no slouches when it came to fighting and were able to barely fend them off.
Although they had the numerical superiority their enemies were too strong for them, one by one they were being killed.
Their heads were being caved in by the large Orc and his club. Their throats being ripped open and their limbs torn off by the terrifying large dark wolf. They were constantly being sliced into pieces by a werewolf’s special skills.
The head guard wondered who they had angered to cause them to send such demons their way.
The fighting lasted for less than ten minutes when half of the guards had been killed the majority of the ones left tried to escaped but were hindered by Akira who used his skill [Shadow chains] to stop the fastest runners from escaping. Nox pounced on the frantic guards biting their unprotected leg muscles crippling them allowing Akira and Varbu to deal the finishing moves.
After the fighting died down Akira bent over breathing hard, sweat dripping down from his face.
He tore off the shirt of one of the enemies he had killed and wiped his armor, sword, and shield cleaning of any blood that covered them.
Nox sulkily sauntered over to Akira and without another word jumped back into Akira’s shadow as if he was ignoring Akira for what he had to experience back in the dungeon.
Varbu walked over to Akira and tossed him a set of keys he had found on one of the dead bodies.
“We’ll have to take care of the bodies,” said Varbu looking at the dead guards and slavers.
“We can burn them before we leave no use in wasting our energy digging graves for each of them,” said Akira.
“What about the dead slaves?”
Akira paused as he thought, “Them as well. The desert is not a place to bury the dead as animals and monsters will just dig up the graves and eat them. They don’t deserve that.”
They walked to the cages and began fiddling with the keys. Most of the slaves who had seen the two brutally kill the slavers backed away from the doors on the cages trying to become invisible.
Akira ignored their reactions as he unlocked each cage one by one. He didn’t care if they stayed in their cage or ran away. He continued his search for the young girl that had asked for his help earlier.
When he reached the last cage he finally found the person he had been looking for.
Her sackcloth clothes were ripped with a little blood staining her back where a whip had hit her multiple times.
The girl seeing Akira who was still in his werewolf form began to cry for some unknown reason. Thinking he had scared her he reverted back into his human form and unlocked the cage opening the door.
He silently waited for her to stop crying.
When the last of the tears fell Akira crouched down and looked her in the eyes before saying, “Hello my name is Akira. I didn’t get to ask you earlier but what is your name?”
Sniffing the young feline girl wiped her nose on her sackcloth sleeve before speaking.
“Mileena.”
