I moved to the cavern as the last shadows were being chased away by the daylight. I sent Sekka back to our hotel room with three quick distinct blinks. It was a necessary waste of mana. The chaos we just caused would prevent them from tracking us past the first blink. I stood in the cavern among the slaves as my mana began to regenerate.
I'd emptied my stores of food, and would need to replenish them before we did this again. Thankfully bread, and vegetables were pretty cheap. Ethan would be glad to see me when I came to grab some more from him. This was the main problem with an operation from this big was the amount of time I was away from Sekka. The chances that someone would notice that Sekka's slave was missing were pretty low as long as I was gone less then half a day.
Luckily the death of the city lord gave me a bigger window to be missing than normal. The longer I was away the more likely someone was to notice that I was missing. I started drawing in the mana around me. Filtering out the poison in the air as I did. Allowing my core to fill quickly for about half an hour as the slaves all looked at me with a mix of fear, and confusion.
I managed to fill my core about a third.
"I have enough mana to heal the sickest of you," I looked over the closely packed group of four hundred in the room around me, "Bring forward the sickest twenty."
I scanned through room as no one moved. Since they weren't going to come to me I decided to go to them instead. The first one I moved to was a small fairy like half elf. Her wings were damaged, and she was scantily dressed. Looking at her made me glad that I had gotten the slaves from the brothel as well.
I guess I really shouldn't have been surprised that the ruler of the city owned the brothel, and had a secret tunnel leading to the brothel that allowed him to enter without being seen. It seemed as if he kept most of the woman from the brothel in one of the rooms beneath his palace. If I got the chance I would go back, and set that whole place on fire. She was pale, and obviously ill, but I didn't sense any damage to her body. I checked her core next.
There was the sickness. Her core was completely coated in impurities, and was allowing very little mana in or out. I could test my theory about the poison element being able to cleanse impurities. My hand went to her stomach over the general position of her core. She was startled by the sudden physical contact.
"Your core is heavily poisoned," I spoke using the universal language so everyone could understand, "This cure will only be temporary if it works. Would you like me to proceed?"
A small wink of hope flickered in her eyes.
"Please," she gripped my arm seductively.
Probably out of habit.
"I would rather you not do that," I lowered her arm with my free hand, "This will be painful. On the count of three."
She nodded nervously.
"One, two," I drew all the impurities out of her core at once.
Treating it as if it were venom being drawn from a wound. She screamed in agony, but I gripped her shoulder tightly so she couldn't move away. The smell of the impurities made me want to gag. It was more potent then rotting corpse. I was kind of surprised by that.
I had a full handful of goo that felt almost like rotten hair. I burned it to get rid of the stench. Gently allowing the young half elf to fall to the ground with the same grip that didn't allow her to escape me before. She was breathing heavily, and looked severely weakened, but her core was now accepting mana. Her complexion was becoming a more rosy slowly.
I smirked behind my mask. It looked like it was working. Magical creatures couldn't survive without mana. Origin species could make their own. Others could not.
As a normal magical creature continued to bring in incompatible mana their core slowly clogged up with the poisons in the mana. Their cores could only filter out the impurities they were prepared to filter out. Classic pregnancy, and eggs absorbed mana differently. That made me wonder if there was a possibility of other dragons being out there, but that was a problem for another time. They would probably have changed to fit their environment.
The world might not consider them true dragons. Again this was a problem for a later time. I moved on to the next most injured. This slave was just legitimate wounds from a nasty beating. It took me only a few seconds to heal him completely.
I moved on to the next. Sometime curing them one by one. Sometimes I would draw out the impurities. Other times I would simply heal them. Once I was done I opened the portal to the compound we took over in our initial assault.
Their expressions turned even more confused as they stepped out into the light of a new day without any of the shackles they'd once had. The hope on their faces as they realized that there were full blown elves wearing slave collars just outside the portal, and many humans as well as a small number of freed slaves. The slaves were helping mainly because they weren't used to having nothing to do. The portal we'd built at the center of the courtyard was still in good working condition. That meant that the slaves were being moved to our base on earth at a slow, but regular pace.
Otherwise there would be more wear on the gateway. Ethan jumped off the wall, and landed near me. He grabbed me up in a tight hug a little too energetic for my mood. I just kind of allowed him to do it as I was filled with his joy. We hadn't seen each other in a few months.