After gathering a great deal of dead monster stones into the inventory side of the fusion ability, Tina and I started heading back towards Orario.
But as we were making our way past a trash pile I coughed as a sharp crunch rang out and I looked down to see a bolt or small arrow had dented my scale mail just below my throat.
Wordlessly I took out my River's of Blood sword and and I slashed in the direction the bolt had come from and screams rang out as the solid blood-like construct tore through scrap wood and metal buildings that lined the area like they were nothing.
"Behind!" Tina yelled and I whirled around as her spear smashed into another Pallum or Dwarves spear with their diminutive size but and although Tina had the advantage, it was clear that her opponent was a level two or a powerful level one.
Trusting my instincts I tilted my head to the side and another bolt skated just past my face and I shouted. "Going!" I dashed forward with my peak level one speed and thankfully my specialized boots kept their grip as I sprinted across the mud to jump atop one of the decrepit slum-like houses.
Atop the house was a pallum woman with a somewhat childish looking face but utterly gaunt with starvation and her eyes were filled with vicious hate as she lifted her already reloaded crossbow and without hesitation pulled the trigger but seeing the crossbow aiming at my face naught but five meters away, instead of dodging I summoned a metal tower shield in front of my body and as I heard the loud dinging noise of the bolt colliding I sent the shield back as I dashed forth.
And before the pallum could get another bolt off, I slashed down with the Rivers of Blood katana carving the Pallum in half with the supernaturally sharp sword that seemingly drank and combusted her blood from within.
As the pallum's body fell, cut in half from shoulder to waist I turned and saw no other archers on the other nearby rooftops. So I dashed off the roof back down into Tina's fight only to see her double tapping the now very dead dwarf or pallum male by shoving her spear through both of his eye sockets to scramble the brain.
Then my lips twitched seeing Tina bend over and begin patting his pockets and pulling out a coin pouch along with an utterly trash murky healing potion that was more likely to give me cancer or something.
Tina looked up and saw me already close and she asked nonchalantly. "Did you already loot the other one?" Even as she asked, she still was looking around for any more assassins or more like street rats that wanted to harvest our lives.
I took a breath and even as I put on my helmet. In case there was more archers, I still replied blandly. "No... I very much doubt she has a hundred Valis to her name Tina."
And my pint-sized short-stack sociopath had the gal to simply shrug as she said with some scolding in her damned voice. "Jake, you cannot turn away a single Valis as that one Valis may be the difference between you getting a meal or not."
In response, I just sighed and with one hand picked Tina up by her back armor plate and carried her with me as I replied flatly. "I don't want it anyway." Honestly, I was more worried that the street rat had hidden a poisoned needle or something in her coin pouch than like how dirty the coins were.
Thankfully other than that one jumping, we only had to kill a couple of Almiraj or rabbit monsters before we made our way back into the relative safety of Orario.
But as we entered Orario on the south side and naturally had to walk through the Entertainment District, we saw something... Very interesting.
Standing in a small crowd listlessly was the crowd of women but without the boys that, that one-handed dwarf was leading into Orario to sell to the brothels inside the Red Light District.
"Whats going on here?" I muttered and Tina wordlessly followed me as I checked around the group and I blinked seeing the girls were actually standing around the dwarf who was dead as a doornail with another homeless man dead next to his corpse with the same dagger I saw strapped to the dwarves side buried in the center of his chest.
Tina pinched my sleeve and said bluntly. "Goddess Hephaestus will be angry if you bring more broken toys home."
I took a breath and seeing the women just dully staring at the corpses I decided to try something and for the next minute, with Tina's help pushed the women deeper into the alleyway out of view of the uncaring gazes of the men and women who were buying and selling flesh on the main street.
Once we pushed the ladies into a dead end outside of the view of everyone Tina asked curiously. "Jake, I know you aren't going to... Use them sexually and if you wanted to kill them, we wouldn't have pushed them over here and done this hassle. Wanna tell me what you are planning?"
I didn't reply and for a moment I stared at the dull-eyed women who hadn't resisted our pushing and corraling to get them to this position. "Can any of you even speak?" I asked the crowd and there was no response.
A couple of them blinked at being spoken towards. But there was light in their eyes at being spoken to, of their minds coming to an answer or any other reaction.
A sigh rang out and Tina stepped over to a rather voluptuous human woman and her hand snapped forward with a cracking noise as her hand slapped one of the hanging breasts that were above her head. But even with that adventurer-enhanced strength that would have obviously hurt... Fucking greatly I imagine as none of these women had a falna.
The woman only flinched but didn't retreat, if anything she almost leaned forward towards Tina who said dully in her typical voice when she shed any pretense of having any emotions. "Jake, they are broken. Gods and Goddesses have seen people like these and called them walking meatsuits... Their very souls broke down due to their suffering and melted within themselves as they couldn't escape their mortal bodies to go back to Tenkai to be reborn in a better life."
Tina looked back to me and raised an eyebrow as she held up a knife as she asked with some curiosity. "Did you want to see if their corpses could be fused into something with how no one is here now like Tsubaki or killing someone in the dungeon?"
I grimaced at her question as although yes I did have the thought... But unless I actually killed someone for attacking me, I wouldn't just start harvesting lives for no such reason.
Tina patiently waited for me to come to an answer and it was. Scary how utterly apathetic she was to other people's lives besides my own and even then... But I spoke with my voice steady. "So far my fusion ability has been able to fuse tamed monsters and non-living materials... They clearly don't have a soul as you already claimed gods of death have remarked, so can I fuse them into one another to make the best version of themself?"
"Or would leaving them here, to be used in a brothel, or die of exposure be better?" I finished quietly and Tina was silent for a long moment. She had no answer besides a simple. "Do what you want Jake. I won't judge you in the slightest either way."