With the latest events I felt that our mission was splitting into two different paths. We can take advantage of the latest wave of chaos to fully investigate the targets, or we can go after the missing group of slaves.
The slaves may have run away or be rescued by someone who wants to see the slave's revolt in the kingdom, there are countless ways for the slaves to have disappeared, but the chances of investigating the whereabouts of the slaves will end up taking us in the cultist direction is very high.
Obviously, I wasn't the only one to realize this, Raven and Mia, who were discussing what they should do now that the situation in the city has changed, ended up agreeing to a very dangerous and risky plan. Raven decided to split the team into two smaller units so she could go investigate the missing slaves and keep an eye on the two targets, according to her, searching the office or the logistics shed are no longer priorities.
Watching the targets cannot be stopped because of the high chance they will be contacted by their masters to take advantage of the chaos, but the slaves' disappearance is a very good opportunity to find the cultists or help the slaves that have run away.
Even though we can't harm Mirue's realm directly, we can still take advantage of a loophole to help the slaves. The Little Flame might even protest if we try to help the slaves as that would be against the mission's goals, but as the cultists are focused on getting slaves, we can easily use the escaped slaves as 'bait' to attract the cultists.
But that can only happen if the slaves no longer become the property of the cultists, so the longer it takes to find the slaves, the less chance we'll find them before the cultists do if they aren't already responsible for their disappearance.
Obviously, I'm not on the team that will continue to watch the two targets from afar, as the team's tracker I have to retrace the missing slaves. It didn't take us even an hour to leave the city and reach the place where the slaves disappeared, but unfortunately, we had to stay far away from the place.
An army team from the kingdom of Mirue and a group of slave hunters were investigating the place where obviously there is a battle. It seems that the guards who escorted the slaves ended up suffering a lot, from afar I can see many signs of destruction.
Me, Mia and Little Flame were covered by a layer of shadows created by Raven, under the shadows of the trees that were several meters from the road where the two groups try to find out what happened to the slaves.
During the hours we had to wait under the shade of the trees I was able to analyze both the groups and the place of the fight. Unfortunately, the amount of information I got about the attackers is small, the distance between our group and the attack site is very large.
Even with my eyes being enhanced by the aura art and the fact that my core is close to reaching the final stage gray core limit, I still have to resort to a magic tool to more accurately see the physical characteristics of the two groups.
It sucks that my energy vision can't be used at the same time as this mana binoculars, my vision is all blue because of the mana in the magic tool's lens.
Sometimes seeing so many colors is not very useful. The identity between the two groups is very easy to identify, the men and women of the army wear standardized and very clean armor, while the slave hunters not only have non-standard equipment, they are all men and look much more savage and crueler.
As far as I know slave hunting groups tend to be pretty violent and a horrible bunch of people, and I'm not saying this because they hunt slaves but because most groups in this profession abuse runaway slaves. It is a silent agreement between the slavers and the slave hunters, an escaped slave must be disciplined before he returns to his owner, the pack of a slave returning like a half-dead piece of garbage and a vision that diminishes the fantasy or dream. of freedom for all slaves who witness this scene.
Few groups can have a level of professionalism that I can respect, I am not against using violence or even torture, but reports on how these slave hunting groups show that many of them take advantage of slaves in ways I cannot agree. It may be a random line, but I wouldn't abuse someone in a sexual way. I condemn that kind of practice.
The combat power of both groups is not that great, Raven alone would damage both teams easily. Only four warriors and two green core mages the rest of the groups have gray cores, it seems they are not taking the disappearance of a group of slaves very seriously.
They probably think it's just a few slaves that were motivated by the uprising that's going on in the region or a group of traders is screwing the other, I don't think even one of them came close to thinking about the word cultists, a group with thirty gray core warrior slaves it's not very important to them. The sun was already starting to disappear behind the horizon line when the two groups left the attack site.
It seems they couldn't find the trail of the missing slaves, the two groups spent almost two hours investigating the place and when they left, they headed towards the city. It's either that or they think the slaves fled towards a slave town where to a huge slave camp made by the kingdom's army, I can't say hiding a slave in mine from thousands of other slaves is a good idea, but I still doubt it. that this has happened.
Upon arriving at the crash site, I could see that the two groups did a good job of messing up the whole place, it looks like the two units did a marching exercise on top of any evidence or traces. Aside from the rest of broken wood and a few pieces of metal that probably came from chains being broken, I can only see the ground with fire marks.
Any other evidence must have been taken by the slave hunters, but it's good to know that fire element warriors or mages in the group that attacked the slavers, using my eyes to look for the attackers' trail, but taking away the fire element I already expected find I found something that left me very confused.
Because the light element is scattered throughout the environment here, not that cultist couldn't have a light element user, but I expected to find a trace of the shadow element, death, life, or another more common element like fire but the light element wasn't the same. that expected.
There's a pretty good amount of it mostly inside the chains, but on closer inspection of the distorted metal links of what's left of the chains I find that they weren't simply broken or melted. More than one of the links appears to have a part of them turned to ash, but no melting marks on the rest of the link or any particles of the fire element.
The element of light can do many things and heat is one of them, but I don't remember reading that the element of light can turn metal to ash or melt metal without using heat. I look for the trace of the light element since it seems to be the strongest and most unusual elemental energy used during the attack, I have a better chance of finding the trace of energy left by the person responsible for that elemental energy.
But when I went around the perimeter of the attack, I didn't find any kind of trail, it seems that whoever attacked the slavers are not idiots, in their group there is someone very skilled in hiding tracks so I had to expand the search area.
When I returned to the rest of the group with some rather bad news, I found Raven kneeling on the floor playing with several metal links in her hand.
"Wolf, these chains were destroyed by the light element. Did you notice anything different or unusual about them?"
"They don't just form broken or melted, the broken ends on some links are crumbling instead of having melt marks. I don't know what kind of elemental energy can do this, but I'm pretty sure it was made by the light element."
"I noticed that too, but I wanted to be sure. It looks like we have a really big problem on our hands right now."
"What is the problem with this element of light?"
"This light element is known as the light of destruction and an evil god is the most common source of this type of elemental energy, but the problem is that the apostles of that god would not be interested in slaves."
"Couldn't they be helping other types of cultists?"
"No, the followers of the god of destruction Saelanor, he is an elf god with extreme opinions about everything. All of his followers are elves and they hate every other race, they basically hold that they are the only race of living beings that have the right to live others are pests that are destroying nature and must be destroyed by the light of their god."
"A god like that doesn't collaborate with other gods, his followers are a bunch of extremist freaks who wouldn't work with other living beings. They can barely stand other elves who aren't followers of Saelanor, that kind of person shouldn't be here, let alone rescuing slaves."
"Couldn't slaves be elves?"
"No, most of them should be human and the rest should be from some tribe of beast folk, there shouldn't be even an elf among them and even if there were the elf would be killed for being contaminated by unclean beings."
"What we do?"
"We continue on their trail. Did you find the trail?"
"Not exactly, among them there was someone capable of hiding their tracks, but I still found some signs that they went east."
"So, we head east for more clues. Lead the way, Wolf, we have to find these slaves so we can discover the source of the light of destruction."