Hiro awoke in a room with Paulus, Aarav, and a new knight that was Hope with Hiro before the attack from the jellyfish. Hiro lifted his sore body and looked around the room.
Hearing the bed next to him creak, Paulus awoke to see Hiro sitting up in the bed next to him. "You alright, Thunder Knight?"
Hiro channeled his mana and checked over his body. Hiro nodded to Paulus because his mouth was dry. Seeing that, Paulus sat up and handed him a glass of water.
Hiro drank the water and asked, "Where the hell are, we?" Hiro was frustrated and still weak from the events on the boat.
"We are in the Divine Kingdom in the north. The winged humans control it."
"This doesn't look like a prison cell." Hiro easily resolved that the winged humans probably intervened and that is why they survived the attack, but he couldn't understand why they were still alive and not imprisoned.
Seeing Hiro's confused look, Paulus understood it. "They don't treat us earthlings as equals, but they do not treat us as slaves. They build this kingdom solely for us earthlings to live within."
"So, you mean they have rescued other humans."
"Yes. The human population is even larger than in the Renegades."
Hiro had to take a minute to digest this information. He always thought that all the races were evil invaders. He himself had killed several mermanians, beastmen, and draconians.
Hiro's and Paulus' talking woke Aarav and the other guy up. Aarav smiled upon seeing Hiro finally awake.
"So, what are they doing with us here?"
"The Angel Corps interrogated us, and after learning about the Renegades, they released us."
"You told them about the Renegades!?!" Hiro felt like they betrayed his family.
Aarav seeing Hiro upset interjected, "We didn't tell them any secrets or their locations. They did ask for us to set up negotiations with them. They would like for us to ally together."
Something just didn't feel right to Hiro. He thought he needed to change the topic, so he asked, "What do they have us do from day to day?"
"The humans here take care of each other. You can do odd jobs for food, join the Angel Corps, or join Storm Sect," Paulus replied.
"Storm Sect?" asked Hiro.
"Yeah. They are a group of warriors who cultivate at this school of sorts. They teach all that join basic wind, lightning, and light laws of mana. They have several manuals on those laws. Others who are proficient in other laws normally join Angel Corps to get training manuals."
"A school and a military force..." pondered Hiro. "What do the Angel Corps do?"
"They travel with this kingdom's ruler Paziel and act as his army," Aarav said. Since he was the friendliest with new people, he obtained the most information on the situation. "They also guard the kingdom's outer wall. The Storm Sect assist if any beast ever breaches the wall."
The thing that didn't make sense to Hiro was why they were doing this. What did the winged humans get from all this? Was it a more massive army? Was it to indeed allow us to build our own strength? Something just didn't feel right to Hiro.
Paulus knew what Hiro was thinking. He felt it was weird too how the winged humans just gave them this new area to flourish.
The other guy in the room finally spoke up, "Thunder Knight, all of us want to thank you for keeping us alive until now." The man stood straight up and saluted him.
Hiro shook his head. They were his men, of course, he would protect them. "It's fine. Tell the rest of the men that I am well."
"Aye, Aye." The man performed an about-face and left the room.
Hiro looked back over to Aarav and asked, "Where is Lucy by the way? Did you guys find that troublemaker?"
Aarav shook his head and looked down. "Lucy left with a beast-woman named Shadow to find him."
"You left her with a beastman?" Hiro slammed his fist onto the nightstand shattering the glass he emptied.
"Hiro. The beastman was a friend of Leo. We were all getting close when we received your distress call."
Hiro took a deep breath. He shook his head. No matter how he saw it being friends with alien races was asking for trouble. "So, we have no idea how the Admiral's daughter is, and we were abducted. Great...We are failures to the Renegades."
"Hiro, we can leave any time we want." Aarav said as a matter of fact.
"What? Then why are we still here?" Hiro asked.
"We were waiting for you to awake, and the men truly like this place," Paulus replied. He also wanted to leave, but the men were finally relaxed. Some even found suitable cultivation techniques to learn martial arts and laws.
"It doesn't matter. We pledged ourselves to the Renegades." Lightning started to spark around Hiro. This happened from time to time when Hiro got severely angry.
"Hiro, they have trained earthlings to our level. There is a lot of them. More than us Renegade Knights would ever hope to have. Just the Core Builders at the Storm Sect outnumber us."
"They have that many trained in the same laws as I do." Hiro was flabbergasted.
"We already sent a message to the renegades to come to get us. Until then I figured we could strengthen ourselves." Paulus told Hiro. "This place is like a holy ground for you. I think you should learn from them."
Hiro thought for a second. This place would help him along a lot.
"Hiro, there is also a Japanese woman in the Strom Sect very interested in meeting you."
Hiro was surprised someone from his homeland was here also. "Fine, take me to this Sect and let me decide for myself."
The other two smiled, and Aarav said, "Follow me."