I slowly sat down at our usual table at the Cock-a-doodle-doo Rooster after greeting both twins.

  “How did the confession job go?” asked Cora teasingly.

  I sighed. “It went well. Here is the signed missive.”

  She chuckled. “I still have a bunch more if you are interested.”

  I shook my head vehemently. “No thanks. Do you have something real?”

  She became serious as she answered. “Yes, I have a request from the captain of the guard!”

  I also became serious; a request from him meant one thing. “Slavers!” spoke Juliet before I could.

  “Yes, exactly. A group of assholes is attacking small villages to the west of here. They are taking young men and women and selling them as illegal slaves. The sickest part of it is that the request came to the captain of the guard from the Slavers' Guild! According to them, ‘fake cheap merchandise is circulating around the city originating from western villages...’ I will spare you from the rest of the Slavers' Guild report!”

  “At least they reported it!” I tried to find at least some silver lining.

  “At least!” repeated Juliet.

  “Give me the job! I will handle them!”

  She nodded and started tapping on her tablet. The moment she did, Juliet’s voice sounded in right away. “Do you have anything to sell?”

  I nodded, and we quickly handled the selling of the random loot I was carrying. Soon I had a missive for the new job, a map depicting their location, and wishes of good luck from the twins. We chatted for a little while and then I stood up to leave.

  I didn’t even take a proper step before I bumped into a man. Average looking, dressed in well-fitting, heavily worn black clothes similar to mine, just visibly cheaper and not enchanted. As we bumped into each other, my papers—the missive and map I'd been too distracted to stow yet—scattered across the floor. Before I could do anything, the man crouched, started gathering the papers on the ground, and apologized with a very well-practiced smile.

  “My sincerest apologies! I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going!”

  “It’s fine, no worries,” I spoke as I grabbed the papers and went to leave the restaurant.

  As I went, Alrune spoke inside of my head. “He was lying! Not sure what his deal was, but the part about not paying attention was bullshit!”

  I quickly turned back to see the person once more, but he was nowhere to be found.

  “What the fuck?” I mumbled, exiting the restaurant. “First the weird feeling of being followed. Now this. Something fishy’s going on!”

  “Be careful! Don’t use my materialization unless you one hundred percent have to, Vic! We don’t know what is going on and we don’t want to get caught weakened!”

  “Exactly my thinking!”

  I quickly left the city via the western gate, feeling eyes on me most of the time but not being able to pinpoint the person looking. As I got out of the city and rented a horse, the feeling vanished and I finally relaxed. I quickly rode towards the point marked on the map. Several hours away from the city, deep inside the forest. There were multiple small villages around the forest; these were the targets of the raids.

  I rode to the border of the forest and tied my horse to a tree near the forest edge, making sure it was not visible from the road, then I proceeded carefully towards the marked location. This time the location was not exact; it was more like ‘somewhere around here’ in the forest. So it took me several hours before I found the camp. And by the time I found it, it was already late in the night.

  It was surprisingly large and well-protected. There was a huge wooden rampart around their camp, made out of long wooden trunks tied and nailed together. It was about four meters tall and had a guard about every four to five meters holding a torch. Every fifteen minutes, the guards made a signal chain, signaling to each other all around the base that all was good.

  The ground was stripped bare for fifty meters around the rampart, covered by dry leaves, small dry branches, and tree bark. Watch-fires dotted the field, casting enough light to ensure that even the smallest movement in the shadows would be caught. The fires were enclosed by a series of stones placed on deliberately cleaned-out parts of the messy clearing. At the base of the fires, one could see a bunch of hot embers everywhere, suggesting the fires had been going for a while.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  It was clear these guys were no amateurs; they looked both well-funded and trained. I walked around the base, sticking to the shadow of the forest, making sure there was no spot to slip through. There was not; the watch-fires were spread evenly all around the base.

  I retreated and sat on a broken tree trunk, thinking how to infiltrate the base without threatening the lives of the hostages. That was when it happened. An animal— like an ugly cross between a rat and a squirrel—landed in my lap and squealed, trying to escape.

  The moment I saw it, I quickly grabbed it by its tail and smiled. I got an idea. I quickly pulled a torch and some cord from my inventory and went to work. I used a cord to tie a torch to the tail of the ugly thing. Then I walked to the border of the forest. And with all my might, I threw the thing towards the nearest watch-fire, hoping the torch would catch fire.

  The moment it landed in the embers, the torch ignited. The creature bolted in panic, dragging fire across the dry leaves and bark. I headed the other way around, towards the distant wall of the base, hoping the guards would gather there to resolve the fire.

  And I was right. Just several seconds after the creature landed, screeched, and started putting the whole side of the clearing on fire, the torches on the rampart started converging towards that side. Soon they ran out of the gate and started dealing with the issue.

  Only a few guards remained on the rampart. I found a spot with the biggest gap between the torches and quickly used my body enhancement to charge towards the wall, climb it up, jump over, and then lose myself in the base itself. The whole thing took just a few seconds.

  Now inside, I surveyed the base. I could see several well-built wooden houses and a large metallic cage in the middle of the base. The large metallic cage had several more fires around it, making it perfectly visible from the entire base. Inside the cage were about twelve young men and women, trying to get some sleep despite being chained.

  Before I did anything, I needed to be sure the hostages in that cage were all the hostages in the base. The base had four large buildings: one of them looked like a storehouse, one like a stable, and the last two like some kind of barracks. Outside of these, I could see three smaller buildings. Two of them looked rather common and insignificant, but there was one building here that was different.

  It looked like a very nice log house, complete with glass windows. Considering it was the only building with glass in the whole base, I headed straight to that house.

  I approached the house, making sure to stay out of sight and in the shadow. It was not that hard; the only light inside was in the middle of the base, and this house was positioned in a way to not be lit by it—most likely on purpose to ensure the good night's sleep of the person inside.

  I approached the door and tried to open it carefully. To my luck, the door opened. Considering that this was most likely the boss of the whole group and considering how much security he had around the base, his overconfidence was understandable.

  I slipped inside and closed the door behind me. Once there, I started to slowly look for the master of the house. Using just the little moonlight that shone in from outside, I could see that I was in a room that was a combination of a kitchen, living room, and a hallway. The room had three doors outside of the exit. Two in the furthest corners of the room and one in the middle. I headed for the one in the middle and carefully opened it. Looking inside, I saw that it was a bedroom; I could even hear a man snoring on the king-sized bed.

  I patiently approached the bed, praying I wouldn't find something disgusting there and wouldn't blow up half the fucking forest from anger. I stood above the bed and calmed down. There was a single man sleeping in the middle, snoring like his life depended on it.

  He looked to be a little taller than me, rather burly and unkempt looking. I got on the bed, sneaked right next to the sleeping slaver, unsheathed my blade and readied it in one hand while I readied the other just above the person’s head. Then I proceeded to raise my knee above him and drop it with all my weight on his crotch.

  The man woke up right away, unable to make any loud sounds thanks to his intense pain. I used one hand and grabbed his hair, dragging and pinning him to the bed, and pressed the blade of my sword on his neck as I moved my knee to his chest, pressing it firmly around the solar plexus. Not too strongly, but firmly enough for him to feel. I spoke just a single word.

  “Silence!”

  The man froze, not making a sound.

  “I will be asking questions. If you answer nicely, without screaming or lying, I won’t cut your balls off! Understood?”

  The man nodded.

  “Perfect! It’s nice talking to smart people! First: Are the hostages anywhere else outside of the central cage?”

  The man shook his head.

  “Good. Is there somebody in the camp, who is not in the cage in the middle, that is not a piece of shit like you and your cronies? Something like a cook you forced to be here, a cleaning lady, anybody?”

  The man shook his head again.

  “Perfect! Now, next question! Do you keep books?”

  The man nodded and slowly pointed to the nearby table.

  “Inside of that table?”

  The man nodded.

  “I can see that you are well-funded and trained. Do you have a backing in the city?”

  The man nodded again. I smiled.

  “Now this is interesting. Any proof of that?”

  The man just pointed back to the same table.

  “Very cooperative! I like you; you will get to keep your balls.”

  The man smiled and relaxed. The moment I saw hope in his eyes, I sliced his neck.

  “I hate slavers!” I whispered, leaving the bed.

  “Understandable!” spoke Alrune in my head, her voice calm.

  I quickly checked out the table and found not only the trading book, depicting to whom and for how much the people were sold, but also a funding book—depicting who hired them, how much they were paid, and how the rewards were split. I put both of the books into my inventory. I grabbed the gold and everything of value, like weapons and armor from the room, and went to have a look at the other two rooms. One of them ended up being a restroom, the second a bathroom.

  With this done, I left the house and, using the shadows, got as close to the holding cage in the middle as I could. When I reached the point where I could no longer use the shadows, I closed the distance with my body enhancement. I jumped up on the holding cage, stood in the middle, and made a show.

  “It’s reaping time. Stand and fight, or stay down forever.”