7 - Ashes
Grabbing a glow stick and leaving the rest to the slaves to play around with and wonder at, Tom walked quietly through the forest until he figured they were far enough away for their conversation to not be overheard.
"So, what do you want to do?"
"... What are you talking about?"
Looking at Tom like he was an absolute idiot, Lisa's opinion of her saviour / kidnapper continued to lower by the second.
"I told you I would help you back to Rover come sunrise, but there's a possibility that some of the town guards on the wall might have seen you using magic so you might not be safe there anymore."
Given that magic seemed to be something exclusive to non-humans, Tom figured there was about a 50% chance that Lisa wouldn't survive there for long, even if they hadn't seen her use magic on top of the wall Tom couldn't rule out that they wouldn't torture her out of spite.
"..."
Not having thought about the possibility that she had been made, Lisa fell silent for about a minute before she kicked Tom's shin with all her might.
"AW! SHIT!"
"And that's why you don't kick with your toe!"
While getting kicked in the shin hurt Tom quite a bit, Lisa arguably hurt herself even more by kicking with the tip of her toes. As Lisa hopped around in pain on a single foot, whatever spell kept her ears and eyes hidden dissipated.
It would seem that however Lisa changed her appearance, it required some amount of effort to do so, and Lisa clearly couldn't keep up her focus when she was in pain.
"I was finally starting to get used to life in Rover and you just have to fucking ruin it!"
"Yeah, but I did also save your life be-"
Instead of responding to Tom's rebuttal with words, Lisa used her other foot to kick Tom's shin again, but this time she didn't use her toes, thus the two of them hobbled around on one leg for about a minute.
"Take me to another city, one where I can find a new place to settle down."
"Yes ma'am."
Returning to the other girls having worked out some of their differences, Tom started working on his other current issues.
INTERFACE_CONFIRMED:_ACTIVE.
CONNECTION_SECURE.5000_POINTS_AVAILABLE.
(I need ammunition, could I please get a 60-round box of 8.75mm API ammunition?)
REQUEST_CONFIRMED:NOW_SEACHING.
STANDBY…
QURREY_COMPLEATE
STATUS:_AVALIBLECOST:_500_POINTSCONFIRM_PURCHASE_Y/N?
(Yes please.)
Sitting down on a fallen tree as the box of ammunition appeared in thin air in front of him, Tom took out the empty magazines he had saved, opened the plastic box of ammunition and started reloading the first magazine by hand in the illumination of a glow stick. While no one spoke up, Lisa and the others nevertheless gathered around to watch Tom reload, as there was nothing else to do in the middle of a dark forest at night. After reloading the two empty magazines, Tom made sure his rifle still had a chambered round, then he inserted a reloaded mag before starting to reload the last one.
"... That's what it shoots?"
No longer able to contain her curiosity, the tan elver spoke up as she looked at the relatively small 8.75mm rounds Tom was inserting into his magazines.
"Yeah, the rear contains explosives that propel the tip out at speed."
Giving a very basic explanation of firearms, Lisa realised that there was something truly strange about Tom, what she had seen of his abilities easily compared to a first-class, veteran adventurer but she had never seen or even heard about the kind of weapons he was using.
"The last slaves I rescued had a way to get in contact with their people, can you guys do something like that?"
Aware that daylight and a possible search party was only getting closer, Tom figured the girls had rested enough and moved to distance themselves as much as possible from Rover.
"Ah, they probably used a fairy ring, there should be one nearby so we can go home using that."
Closing her eyes to focus, the tan elver gathered herself before reopening her eyes which were now glowing. Looking around silently, the tan elver closed her eyes again as she took a deep breath.
"... There's one nearby, this way."
Falling in line as the tan elver guided the group, Tom kept an eye on the surroundings until they eventually reached a clearing in the forest where a ring of benign looking mushrooms were growing in an almost perfect circle.
"It is time to say goodbye. Tom, let the Hunt bless you, we are forever in your debt."
Stopping to glance at Lisa, the tan elver didn't get any chances to say anything to her as Tom stepped partially in between the two.
"... Goodbye you two, until we meet again."
Walking towards the centre of the clearing along with the other freed slaves, the tan elver gradually faded from view before disappearing entirely.
OBJECTIVE_STACK_PRIMARY_UPDATED:
FIX THE WORLD. STATUS:_0.000000000213%_COMPLETE.
500_POINTS_AWADED.
NEW_ACCOUNT_BALANCE=5000_POINTS.
NO_SECONDARY_OBJECTIVE(S)_IN_STACK.
END_OF_REPORT.
"Well that's neat."
Returning to bickering to himself like the old man he was, Tom forgot that there still was a very displeased barmaid standing next to him.
"... I'm cold. Do something about it fast."
"Yes ma'am. Right away ma'am."
-
"This is a fucking mess…"
Standing in the ashes of a mansion which belonged to a certain merchant of great renown, a knight didn't really worry about the ashes staining his plate armour, instead he was focused on the burnt out corpses of the merchant and his departed guard captain.
"Well said commander."
"Shut up James."
"Yes sir."
Getting back to his investigation after dealing with a slightly problematic subordinate, the knight crouched down to closely examine the departed guard captain.
"Have you ever seen this kind of damage James?"
Glancing at the departed captain's plate armour now covered in sod and partially disfigured, the commander's eyes were immediately pulled towards the series of tightly grouped holes in the platemail around his heart.
"... No sir, it looks like someone hit him with a blast of crossbow bolts…"
Doing his work for once as he realised the seriousness of the situation, James crouched down next to his commander before turning the corpse around to look for bolts, instead he found something else.
While the entrance wounds were pretty uniform and even, the exit wounds punched in the armour were of differing sizes and shapes, some were small and circular while others were almost twice the size and oblong.
"Bolts wouldn't create that kind of exit damage to plate armour, even if it was fired from an enchanted crossbow at point blank range."
"That's not the only unusual thing about this picture."
Getting back on his feet, the commander didn't bother wiping off the ash staining his knees as he walked through the burnt out master bedroom. Taking care not to step on a place where the fire had weakened the floor, the knight arrived at a hole in the ground which seemed to have been made with some kind of advanced fire spell before he spoke up.
"Marcie! Did you find it!?"
After a bit of a delay, a female voice spoke up from a few floors below the master bedroom, shouting up through the hole which had been created straight through sturdy reinforcements.
"Sir! The safe is down here at ground level, at least what remains of it as it is nothing but a slag of metal now! It seems like somebody tossed the entire thing into an adamantite forge!"
(So this might be what started the fire, at least in this building…)
Falling into deep thought, the commander got back on his knees and looked to where the door to the mansion would be located, but now that two thirds of the building had collapsed due to the fire it gave him a clear view to the auxiliary building which was nothing but smoking rubble now.
"Good work Marcie! Start interrogating the surviving staff!"
"Yes sir!"
Receiving a response from Marcie, the commander turned to James.
"Let's head to the wall while Marcie talks to the staff, we're on the clock."
"Sir."
A quick ride to the western gate of Rover later, the commander and James found themselves up on the wall where a number of guardsmen corpses laid covered by white sheets, now discoloured by blood.
"Start with the ones on that side, I'll look at these ones."
"Sir."
After delegating work to his subordinate, the commander glanced at the city guardsmen standing a short distance away talking and glancing at him, if it wasn't for the commander's direct order the guards would have already started burying their fallen. Getting to work himself, the commander walked over to the closest sheet covered corpse and crouched down before lifting the sheet to take a closer look.
(... These wounds are excessive…)
To put it bluntly; the guard's face was mostly gone, only the lower part of the yaw was somewhat intact while the rest of the poor sod's head had painted the surrounding brickwork.
"Sir, I've examined the corpses… There isn't much left of them, it's like they were hit in the face by a ballista."
"Yeah, same with these…"
Finding he couldn't learn anything else from the victims, the knight commander stood back up and looked around at the carnage as another of his subordinates arrived.
"Victor, what have you learned?"
"Sir, in the middle of the night a group of people somehow made it up onto the wall and when the guards moved to arrest them they were attacked by some unknown magic. Unable to deal with the attackers, the city guards failed to apprehend them while suffering heavy casualties before they escaped out of Rover and disappeared into the night."
"Hmm."
Getting updated on the situation by his subordinate, the commander started walking around the scene of carnage in silence. Seeing their superior act the same way as he always did, James and Victor started silently following him as the commander walked to the middle between the two groups of corpses.
"This one was the first one to fall, yes?"
Pointing to the single corpse lying near him, Victor quickly confirmed the commander's suspicion.
"Yes sir, the assailants ascended the wall here, killed that guard first then occupied this section of the wall for a few minutes before escaping. Again glancing to both sides and looking at the two groups of corpses at both sides of him, the commander raised his hands as if he was holding an invisible crossbow before peering down its imaginary sights, turning to both sides and walking around before he stepped on something.
"Hm?"
Crouching down, the commander picked up some sort of small metal vial made out of an unknown metal which seemed to be bronze. Immediately the metal trinket stood out because of how smooth it was, there was also no visible deformities from casting or forging either inside or outside it, and when he brought it close to his nose, the commander realised it had a very strange smell.
"... Any idea what this is?"
"No idea sir."
"Likewise, I've never seen something like that, sir."
Showing the vial to his subordinates, the commander realised that there were more of these strange trinkets littering the area.
"... It seems like there's some sort of writing on the bottom of them, but I've no idea what it means, it is not a language I've ever seen before… They could be runes, but I sense no magic coming from them at all."
With even his unit's expert on enchantments unable to figure out what the metal vials were, the commander found himself at a loss as his sixth sense told him they were somehow important to figuring out what had happened.
While the commander was lost in thoughts, Marcie arrived at the wall, landing her mount next to the group of spectating city guards she made her way over to the commander carrying a piece of platemail covered in sod along with something else.
"Sir! One of the maids found something I thought you needed to see immediately… Wait, they're here too?"
Opening her hand, Marcie revealed a metal vial like the ones the commander had found on the wall, except hers were covered in sod and were obviously from the merchant's mansion which had burned down.
"Yeah, whatever they are, we've found quite a few of these. Why do you have that with you?"
Pointing at the sod-covered and punctured platemail, the commander reminded Marcie of what she needed to show.
"Right! While I was trying to figure out what this was, it hit me; the surviving staff at the mansion all reported hearing a series of loud sounds from the master bedroom before fire broke out in the main building and an unknown male human escaped."
"You're not getting to the point."
"Yeah, right! Look at this!"
Taking her metal vial, Marcie placed it into one of the holes in the burnt plate-mail, finding the thin end of them almost perfectly fit in each and every one of the entrance holes.
"I know this sounds crazy, but I think these are powder charges for some sort of ultra miniaturised cannon!"
"... There's no wa-"
"Shut up James."
Needing quiet to think, the commander shushed his subordinate as he took another look at his surroundings while muttering.
"Given the force required to do that much damage…"
No longer giving the corpses any amount of attention, the commander pulled out his invisible crossbow again and aimed it while looking around, then he found what he was looking for.
"There!"
Leaving his confused subordinates behind, the commander ran over to a rampart on the inner side of the wall where he had spotted a tiny, circular hole in the stone which sort of fit the metal vial's perfectly like the sod-covered platemail.
"... Marcie get this rampart apart, use a pickaxe if you have to, I want to see if there's anything inside that hole."
"Sir, right away."
"James, relay my orders to the local lord; we need forces so he needs to mobilise them, I don't care if I get adventures or knights, they just need to have some amount of experience in tracking."
"Sir!"
Rapidly relaying orders, the commander was left with just Victor as he quieted his tone a bit.
"Victor, contact his highness immediately, tell him we might need reinforcements. There's a possibility that the Ivory trade federation is involved in this."
"Sir, yes sir."