Kayn was pleasantly surprised to discover he could see extremely well in the dark. It was as if the cave he was in was lit up by the sun when in fact it was extremely dark.
Kayn attributed his newfound ability to the recent evolution of his body. He hadn't experienced it in the previous days mainly because he would always stop moving when it turned dark to set up a camp and lit a fire.
As Kayn made his way through the cavern, the only reason he knew he was going the right way was due to the trail of somewhat fresh blood and the stench. Kayn soon began to hear the sound of screaming and cries of agony and sorrow. He had a hint as to what was going on, but his mind refused to believe it.
Despite the situation that the people who were screaming were in, Kayn did not move faster as he wanted to keep his presence hidden to remain undiscovered to launch a sneak attack. His life was the priority and even if he wanted to save these people, he wouldn't give his life for theirs.
Kayn could finally see some light coming from around a corner in the cavern, but the noises were also getting louder. The crying and screaming matched with the sound of flesh hitting against flesh. A frown began to form on his face, and when he poked his head around the corner his eyes began to tremble with horror and rage.
In front of him were several goblins surrounding three women, no maybe he would say two women and one teen. The youngest couldn't even be called an adult in his opinion, but she was about to be treated the same none the less.
Kayn couldn't contain his rage. He knew monsters didn't think like the races of the world, but defiling a child was way past his bottom line. He couldn't stand rape in general, but the fact that this young girl was about to experience this, if it had been him, he would rather be dead.
His eyes stopped trembling as a calm set in, but at the same time his rage exploded and the circles around his eyes expanded around his pupils, causing the bright red of his eyes to slowly become engulfed in black.
He unsheathed his swords and utilizing the fusion of lightning into his body, he launched across the cavern floor. His first targets were the goblins surrounding the younger girl. Even if she had already experienced such a horrifying thing, the best he could do was to end her torture first, hoping that it hadn't happened yet.
Kayn swung his swords in a wide arc that decapitated three of the goblins before they could realize what was happening.
Goblins weren't that strong individually, but their strength came from the numbers they would use to ambush prey and the poisons they utilized. Adventurers could quickly get overwhelmed when they were alone against goblins, even if they were high D-rank or even low C-rank adventurers.
Kayn understood this and wanted to act as swiftly as he could in order to control the goblins' movements with his binding spells. However, when he shot his eyes to his next targets, he noticed that all the goblins in this cavern room were trembling in fear and were doing their best to back away from him.
'Is this my Dragon Aura?' Kayn thought to himself as the memories of the fear he could see in the group of three at Clementine's party surfaced.
Without wasting more time, and since his targets were trembling back in fear, he shot bolts of lightning from his fingers to the center of each goblin's head. Even if they were able to start running at the last moment, they were no match for the bolt of electricity that shot cleanly through each of their skulls.
Kayn sheathed his swords after cleaning them of blood and first approached the young girl who seemed to have passed out with her eyes wide open with an expression of sheer terror. While Kayn couldn't erase these poor women's memories or trauma, the least he could do is to heal their wounds to the best of his ability.
The young girl wasn't heavily wounded and only had a few bruises and cuts on her body. After Kayn healed her, he pulled a blanket out of his bag and placed it over her. Luckily, it appeared that she wasn't touched in that way yet.
Kayn moved onto the next oldest who was probably closer to 20, but she wasn't as lucky as her sister. Kayn assumed that these three were a family that were traveling together when they were ambushed.
The second daughter was in worse shape, having bruises all over her arms, legs, face, neck, buttocks, if you could think of it there were probably at least a couple of bruises there. On top of that she had several bite marks all over that were bleeding and she had even lost a couple of teeth.
Kayn knew he could regrow her teeth if he had enough time, but since he wanted to stabilize all three and have enough mana to finish the goblins in the cavern, he couldn't spend his mana like that currently.
There was no way just this small number of goblins were able to ambush the group he saw earlier. There were several people who had armor that were dead near the carriage, he was certain there had to be several more goblins around.
Kayn also assumed that there were women who were fighters, but he didn't see any of their bodies around the area, so he could only assume they were brought back as well. He didn't find any in this small alcove, so his search had to continue.
After he finished stabilizing the other daughter and covered her, he moved to what he assumed was the mother. They all had similar black hair, slightly red skin, small tails, and similar facial features.
The mother's condition was the worst, it was clear she had fought back with all she could. But while both daughters had lost consciousness, the mother was still aware of what was happening and was now simply crying.
Kayn stood before the crying woman who didn't look like she could move at all and began to heal what he could while placing a lesser healing pill in her mouth, placing his waterskin to her lips so she could swallow it.
"I'm sorry I can't heal you fully, but I can stabilize you before continuing through the cavern. Both of your daughters have been stabilized in terms of wounds, but their mental wounds will probably last a lifetime. I will leave the three of you here and come back after I have cleared the cave." Kayn said in a solemn voice as he healed the woman.
She was in a horrible state. He wounds matched her second daughters, but on top of that she was also missing her right arm which Kayn thought was the one that the goblins outside had been eating. In a normal situation, Kayn would have been able to reattach her arm, but the state it was in when he saw it, plus the amount of time that had passed since the separation, it just wasn't possible for the current him.
Kayn finished stabilizing the women, then moved all three of them to a corner of the alcove that was hidden from the view of the main path and huddled them together so the mother could hold both of her daughters.
After covering them with his spare blankets, he told the mother he was leaving and to stay quiet. Before Kayn could fully leave the mother's line of sight, he heard her whisper thank you in between her quiet sobbing.
Kayn moved swiftly through the cavern this time as he didn't want to waste more time. His rage had calmed a bit, but his eyes were still furious and he felt the need to vent his anger on more goblins.
He utilized the dark and shadow elements to hide his presence as best as he could while he moved through the cavern simultaneously eliminating the goblins as he came upon them. It wasn't hard for Kayn to discover where the goblins were, they would always have torches or a fire lit where they resided.
Kayn came upon more disgusting scenes and saved two more women, spending the time to heal their wounds and bring them back to the first alcove on both occasions. But what disgusted Kayn the most is that the goblin's lust didn't stop at the living, they were even defiling the corpses of women that ended up dying to their wounds.
One of the women that he saved had been tied up and still had strength in her body to fight back. She picked up a weapon they found on their way back and stated she would do her best to defend the other four women until he came back.
Kayn discovered while healing her that she had an almost peak 2nd stage core. She was probably in her thirties, but she should have been a formidable fighter against the goblins, especially as a member of a group.
Kayn had killed over 65 goblins already, so he could only imagine the small group of mages and warriors having dozens of goblins to fight each. However, even the large number of goblins shouldn't have been able to kill all of those skilled fighters and mages, especially if they had a few peak 2nd stage magic swordsman or mages.
This led Kayn to the conclusion that the goblins were most likely being commanded by a goblin chieftain. Chieftains were said to have the strength and durability to fight back against peak 2nd stage cores and on rare occasions fight against newly evolved 3rd stage mages. They were classified as a C-class monster due to this fact.
The stronger woman had even warned Kayn of a bigger goblin in armor, and that he shouldn't take it lightly, so this confirmed his suspicion.
Kayn arrived at the end of the cavern and noticed a crudely made tent with light coming from the inside. After scrutinizing over his best options, he decided to try and lure the goblins out of the tent if there were any in it before killing them.
He could just use his spells to destroy the tent in its entirety, but since things had been going fairly easy for him and there was a chance a captured woman or more was inside, he didn't want to kill them too.
Kayn created a few noises with rocks and then hid in the darkness beside the tent to wait for the goblins to come out of it. Only two came out of the flapped entrance with one having an armor on that looked like it had belonged to a child in the past. He quickly dispatched both goblins using earth to root them in place and his swords to decapitate them.
'Well, that was easier than I expected it to be, I figured the goblin in charge would be more of a pain to fight.'
Kayn placed his left hand inside the tent flap and began to move it to the side as he started to duck in order to enter into the tent, but just as his head was about to fully cross the boundary, he felt the hairs on his neck stand up and immediately withdrew his head.
Unfortunately for Kayn, even if he was able to move his head back, he couldn't take his hand back in time and when he looked down, he noticed a clean cut where his hand should have been.
As Kayn looked up while staggering back, he noticed the tent flap opening again and standing in front of him was a green skinned behemoth that was at least two meters (6'6") tall and had muscles to rival the world's strongest men back on earth.
It was wearing a few pieces of armor and had a massive sword in its right hand, while in its left hand was Kayn's severed hand. Staring at Kayn with disdain, the goblin threw Kayn's entire hand into its mouth before chewing it, echoing the sound of crunching bones throughout the cavern.
Kayn's eyes trembled in rage and a small amount of fear as it finally occurred to him what the creature in front of him was.
'Shit, it's a Hobgoblin leader. That means that it's a B-class monster at minimum.'