Even after crossing the border between realms more than once, the trip to Mirue's realm was a new experience and the cause of it was not the presence of the Little Flame who has been as communicative as a mute person.
After the meeting at the underground base several days ago she didn't speak a word to the entire team, even when she prayed. She was silent and she prayed a lot, the dogmas imposed by the goddess Helena are not the strictest among the gods, but I'm still surprised to see the priestess of the team praying at least five times a day, and that's just the moments that I see.
When I asked Mia, she told me that I believe the priestess is praying most of the day, but since we're on the road, she doesn't get down on her knees like she does when she prays before going to sleep or eating. The goddess Helena didn't require so many prayers as she is a goddess who rewards her devotees' good deeds much more than praying for the little things like I see Little Flame doing during the trip.
Giving thanks for the food should be a short prayer, but I see her spending nearly two minutes just praying. This seems a bit forced, but from the faces of my companions it's not that unusual, I feel like the priestess really is putting together an image of a religious fanatic for a few reasons, probably she wants to make it very clear that she was not going to allow us to violate the mission rules .
During the crossing we didn't have to hide our existence only from the patrols of Mirue's kingdom, we had to pass through the border avoiding detection from both sides. That alone made the crossing very different from normal, but the part that surprised me the most was the way we crossed the borders.
The barrier was not opened by me or Mia, but by Little Flame, she took out a golden cru that contained a red liquid running through it. The opening through the barriers of both realms was quite different from the normal, normally a hole is created in the barriers, but the cru created a door.
The energy fluctuation was negligible, I could barely perceive the energy fluctuation with my eyes. From the lack of surprise on Raven's face I think temples have the ability to cross the borders of realms without a problem.
And it makes me nervous, the kingdom not having the power to face a temple is normal, but having the key to the kingdom represents a huge chasm between positions. It is as if the temples did not even recognize the authority of the kingdom.
During the rest of the way the atmosphere of the team was cool and calm, without conversations and few stops thanks to that it didn't take us long to reach our destination despite our long and tortuous route to the city of Canos. For a slave town I am surprised by its ordinary appearance, poor and huge, the image I had of the city was completely wrong.
The fields around the open city are huge, with several military and commercial camps scattered around the center of the city where the structures are made of rustic stone. There is not even a building with noble characteristics or simply that shows wealth in this city. Towers, houses, buildings and other structures are all made of rustic yellowish stone.
The area covered by people here is huge, but when I think that they are 'training' large numbers of slaves at once to serve in the army it makes sense to have so many training camps or refugee camps.
The quality of these camps is pretty low and I doubt they chose this type of arrangement because they wanted to get their new soldiers used to the atmosphere and protocols of a military campaign, kingdom army camps are better than this huddle of refugees with guns.
Slaves are really treated like garbage, even though they are being used as soldiers in their kingdom's army.
Upon approaching the border the group split into two smaller groups being led by Raven and Mia. A smaller group will attract less attention as it would be very difficult for our group to disguise itself as a buyer, dividing into smaller groups we can pretend to be the advanced group of a caravan.
It is very rare for a small group to come to a town like Canos to buy slaves as the quality of slaves here has only gone down since the war started. It makes no sense for anyone to buy some low quality slaves here, so we can only pretend to be a group interested in buying or selling a few dozen slaves.
Both leaders have counterfeit emblems of trade groups that use smaller groups to make purchases before the caravan checks in for slaves. They do this to avoid drawing too much attention to their operations, with too many eyes watching Canos now.
Following Raven in the first group that would enter the city of Canos I had a very different view as I started down the hill near the city, using my eyes the city and camps around the city looked like the night sky, full of stars.
The predominant population here are gray core people, even in the capital of the kingdom where a large number of people who have gray, green and orange cores I still see many black core people, but in the current Canos I don't see black cores or better I can't see them this far because of the countless gray cores.
This isn't weird or unexpected as slaves taken to war must possess a gray core to be strong enough to kill weak soldiers quickly and serve as suicide troops to drown weaker warriors.
A green core fighter can usually kill a few gray core fighters without much trouble, but when being drowned in a few dozen gray core fighters in mine from a huge battle they would usually die.
It seems that Mirue's kingdom intends to wear down the army by using large numbers of gray core warriors, it's a simple strategy, but it's not easy to maintain. If it were so easy not to rely on dark core warriors to bulk up an army, there wouldn't be one of them in any army.
During the decision I tried to see how many stronger warriors and mages I could see in the city, but through the sea of gray stars, I was only able to see some green, yellow and red colors in the center of the city where the fewest people. In mine slaves it's basically impossible to see anything other than gray at this distance.
When we arrived at the city gate we passed by several camps and the only thing I could notice is that slaves are really treated like garbage, even slaves who should be having some types of protection since they have to be healthy and nourished to be able to fight in good conditions in war, they are treated worse than animals normally are.
The smell that dominates the surroundings of the city is enough to scare away any kind of animal or magic beast, the cities have never been clean in my opinion, but Canos is really trying hard to be dirty. Shit, garbage and corpses are being transported to be burned at a ridiculously slow rate or there are so many of them that the slaves are not able to clean them up.
We passed three piles of corpses on our way into town, this is wasteful in a lot of different ways. Necromancers must hate this sight, so much material being treated like garbage to be incinerated.
On second thought, I should commend all this effort to cleanse the dead, it seems that those in charge of the city have not neglected their duty to hinder the cultists. The dead piled up in public places should be good bait for desperate cultists.
"Keep calm, we are slave traders. This view is normal."
With that different order, I look at the rest of the group to find that Little Flame and Taric are abnormal. The aura of both of them is flowing quickly through their body, it seems that they are uncomfortable with this sight, which surprises me a lot.
Little Flame was chosen by her temple, they should know about what happens in Canos. Why would they send someone who looks like he wants to set fire to the slavers? As far as I know the goddess Helena is pretty neutral on the slave issue, but if it hadn't been for Raven's interference these two idiots might have blown our cover.
Passing the guards on the proton who didn't give us a second glance or the trade documents Raven used to prove our identity, Little Flame continued to have a steady stream of aura in her glass as she was getting ready to go into battle.
It seems that the biggest risk for this mission to go wrong is not the fact that someone on the team might break the rules and do something to interfere with the war, but the Little Flame starts attacking slavers because it's so angry without even looking at its flow. aura I can feel your posture is very tense.
Does she hate what's going on in this town that much? Or more reasons for his unusual behavior?