The first healing session lasted until the sun came up once again, but Kayn was only able to reattach her left leg tendons. These attachments were thicker so they took more time to mend, not to mention the process of pulling the muscles back together without causing Kinzie too much pain was not easy.
Kayn wanted to rest and Kinzie needed food after the first session, so it was time to take a break. Kayn had some meat from a D-rank rune beast in his bag, so he cooked it into a stew. He was glad that he had paid attention to his mother's cooking for the last few years that he was at home.
Since Kinzie couldn't feed herself, Kayn ended up feeding her the stew, even taking care to blow on it since it was a bit hot. Kinzie noticing the care that Kayn was putting into healing her and feeding her, and it made her blush a little but it was so subtle that Kayn didn't notice.
After they had finished eating, Kayn still needed to rest for a while since his mana was only around halfway recovered. It normally took him an hour or two of doing nothing for his mana to recover from halfway to full.
He still hadn't figured out a good way recover his mana like the novels he had read where the main characters could breathe or meditate to get mana back, but nothing he tried worked, so he just had to wait and keep experimenting.
Standing up Kayn turned to Kinzie and opened his mouth, "I'm going to go out and give some food to the slaves that are still in the encampment. I'd like to also bring them out of the camp in the case someone comes to check on the situation."
While Kayn wasn't a saint, he did want to save innocent people when he had the opportunity. However, he wasn't going to risk his life, or Kinzie's for that matter, for these random people. This was a world where strength and power were king.
The amount of money someone had only mattered if you had the power to keep it. To Kayn, only his family or those close to him deserved his protection, and luckily for Kinzie, she met that criterion now that Kayn had a chance to really think about everything.
He wasn't proud of himself for thinking about abandoning her if she decided not to keep his secret, and if he was honest with himself, the thought was still there in the back of his mind. Kinzie could always change her mind later on, but Kayn didn't think she would. He could only place his hope in the trust and friendship they had built, even if he didn't deserve it himself for how he had thought.
Kayn stepped out of the cave after receiving a nod of acknowledgement from Kinzie who just wanted to fall asleep after the painful and itchy procedure. He left behind the majority of his belongings, including his money, by hiding them behind a natural rock formation in the cave and then replaced his makeshift cave door after exiting in order to let Kinzie feel a sense of security.
…
The encampment had an eerie silence to it as Kayn walked through the front entrance. Thinking back to how he found Kinzie and the situation she was in made him think of the goblin cave.
'I'm tired of this world's disgusting tendencies with women. What's with all the "bad guys" just wanting to defile them all the time, damn. Whatever, these scum all got what they deserved, though I wish I could have been more conscious of what I was doing as I would have made them all suffer more.' Kayn sneered, but realized belatedly how violent he was starting to sound.
Kayn first returned to the building where he had committed the slaughter and looked around for anything he could salvage. All of the dead bodies' armors were in bad shape, but he was able to find a leather chest armor and shirt that fit him as well as a hood and lower face mask covering of sorts. They were all simple items though, so he wasn't going to waste his mana or brain power by Analyzing them.
Kayn envied all the main character's he had read about because of their ability to take all their loot away with them since they always seemed to get some dimensional storage device early on or had an inventory.
However, Kayn knew it was unlikely he would get one anytime soon, or ever for that matter. His father had one, but that came from the Obsidian Void Dragon treasury. Meaning they had maybe a couple in total, and now the others were all lost since his mother didn't have one as well. The one his father had would probably go to his sister later on.
What he was happy about and that he could take though, was the money! His family wasn't poor, but Kayn wanted to be self-sufficient and not rely on his parents' money. This was instilled in him during his life on Earth. His father may have been a doctor, but Kayn was never handed anything in his life and had to work for what he had.
Luckily, these slavers and bandits had a small chest that was hidden inside the leader's room and contained multiple gold coins as well as silver and copper.
'Selling slaves must be a lucrative business.' Kayn thought to himself as he looked at all the money he now had. 'They must have set up here by the forest in the off chance they can catch an elf. Even a half elf would go for a few gold according to books I've skimmed here. I'm surprised that the leader was going to keep Kinzie for himself.'
Kayn then entered into the second room in the building that beforehand had a few people on the beds when he passed by it a day ago. Inside the room were two women, who looked like they were a bit dehydrated and malnourished, chained to rings that were attached to the wall.
Kayn used his sword to cut the chains in half causing both women to fall to the floor, which woke both of them up and they quickly cowered against the wall in front of Kayn.
"I'm not here to hurt you, don't worry and get dressed up." Kayn stated as he threw the both of them some clothing that he found previously. They weren't exactly clean or all in one piece, but it was better than the nothing they had on currently.
"As you wish, Master." Both women said in unison as they moved to pick up the clothing with blank looks. It was as if the previous fear and trepidation they had completely vanished.
Kayn stopped and blinked at the two for a few seconds 'Master?'. Kayn decided to take a good look at the women again only to notice the peculiar collars around their necks.
These collars looked a bit different to the one that Kinzie had on previously before he removed it. While hers functioned more as a restraint and was ornamental, these two women's collars looked special as they had engravings going all the way around.
'Right, Lydia and father had talked about the children that had collars back during the abduction incident. They didn't tell me anything other than the fact they were slave collars though. I'll examine it first before deciding what to do.'
Kayn approached the women who were now dressed in the clothing scraps and reached his hand out to examine one of the collars around their necks. Kayn ran his mana through the item, but nothing seemed to happen. However, he learned that he wasn't going to discover anything about it, as he had no knowledge about enchanting items or examining enchanted items. Analyze also wasn't much help either.
[Slave Collar (Uncommon): Can be used to enslave beasts, monsters, and humanoid beings.]
'Guess I'll have to research about enchanting when I return back to town. Maybe I'll go home for a while, I'm sure Mom would want to spend some time with me. Plus, Lydia should be there, so I can talk to her about my new spells and healing methods.'
Kayn was exhausted, not to mention he hadn't been home for almost a year and a half now. He missed his family, and a break from the constant grind would be good for him. Making up his mind for the next steps of his journey, he asked the two women to follow him in a kind manner rather than commanding tone. To his surprise they looked hesitant to follow him.
'Hmm, the collars must work on a commandment basis and the individuals still have a certain amount of free will when it comes to anything besides a command.'
Even if he wasn't exactly comfortable with it, in order to be in an out of the camp quickly, Kayn just decided to use commands to get the women to follow him.
He moved into the first of two medium buildings only to discover it was just a large prison. There was one long hallway lined with cells on either side throughout the entire building. Inside each cell were multiple people of varying races, but mostly various demon races and a few beastkin. Most of these people looked younger, but there was no one below their late teens from what Kayn could tell.
Since all of them had slave collars as well, Kayn apologized, but used commands to have them all follow him to outside of the building and towards the second medium building.
He left the group of slaves outside before entering, not expecting much difference from the first building. Surprisingly though, this one contained larger cells where various rune beasts of D-class and below were kept, with the exception of one C-class rune beast.
Kayn just decided he would release all of the beasts because killing them was pointless to him. He would release them only after the slaves were safely out of the camp though to ensure that none of them would be killed by his actions. Nonetheless, he noticed one cell at the back that looked empty as it was unnaturally dark inside the back of the building, even to his eyes.
Upon approaching the last cell, he could make out a figure that was sitting on its knees with their eyes closed. Looking closer, Kayn noticed that it was an elderly person, and not just a person, it had to be a pure-blooded elf! An elderly male elf was just sitting in the back of the cell seemingly not paying attention to the events around him.
However, Kayn did notice one other peculiarity, the old elf didn't have a slave collar. Kayn wasn't about to risk opening the cell only to be attacked by the old man.
"Hey old man, you alive back there? Why haven't you escaped this place yet? You don't have a slave collar, so what's stopping you? I doubt these bars are strong enough to hold you back, and I'm not releasing you unless I can ensure my safety." Kayn stated bluntly while waiting for any change in the old elf.
"Mind your manners with your elders, young man." The old elf opened his eyes to look at the person calling out to him. "You must be the one who caused all of the noise a day back, are you here to steal all the slaves and sell or keep them for yourself?" The old elf asked as he took a good look at Kayn.
Since he was wearing the garb that the others who had captured him wore and covered his face, he could only assume the person in front of him was up to no good.
"First off, I'm planning on freeing all of them. The collars are a problem I can't solve and I'll need to bring them to town so that the Empire's officials can deal with though. Second, I'll give you your respect once you can prove you have no intention to harm me if I release you. Unlike the others who have a collar on that I can use as a failsafe, you aren't wearing one. Plus, you still haven't said why you haven't escaped."
Kayn could tell this was going to be a long conversation, and just because someone was locked up in a slave camp didn't mean Kayn would trust them enough to free them without certain insurances. It was time to figure out who the old man was before releasing him.