Being a prisoner, soon to be a slave, for saints wasn’t actually that bad. At least treatment was better than how it had been after leaving Dashire behind. Kaden was happy to not have to fight for his life all the time and the food was… acceptable. That would change at the mines, though.
He had already inspected his chains long time ago. They didn’t seem enchanted, but metal was strong enough that at his level there was no chance of breaking it.
As the wagons were passing through a checkpoint, there was a sudden stop.
“Halt”, said the guard to the soldiers leading wagons. “These people are prisoners from Sacronan?”
“Correct”, replied the leader. “Is there a problem? I need to get them to mines as soon as possible.”
“New orders”. The guard pulled out a scroll and gave it to the wagon leader.
“Huh”, muttered the wagon leader as he read the orders. “East? Thats dangerous area filled with beasts. Whatever, its orders. At least its relatively close.” He turned around and shouted commands and then they continued on their way towards east, instead of going straight north as they had been so far.
Kaden frowned and wasn’t sure what to make of this sudden change. He had listened and got the general idea. This was good thing. Slaving at mine was certain death – slow one. It was no good so whatever option came up should easily be better. You can only go up once you hit the bottom.
The saint soldiers seemed happy. Their job of moving slaves around wasn’t their favorite. Kaden found out that they would reach their destination by evening.
As day passed, Kaden realized one annoyance. Another forest. One filled with beasts. Not to mention, as far as he knew, this forest was enormous. It covered most of the continent. It can’t be helped, Kaden figured he had lived most of his live not that far from edges of human dominated areas, away from large population centers. Still, due to human empires nearby and other human populated areas, very few truly powerful beasts lived in there.
Eventually by evening the wagons reached a campsite with lots of soldiers in it. It was not an army, but relatively large group. About hundred soldiers total and some people who were not soldiers, more like craftsmen.
“I need more beast cores, captain!” Shouted a man with very expensive looking clothes. What clashed slightly with rest of his clothing was a belt with all sorts of tools and trinkets. Additionally he had some kind of book carrier along with the belt. “I was assured by military that I would have them! Do you understand what is at stake here?! Your pathetic lives will be worth nothing, if we fail!”
“I assure you, Lord Angis, more will be provided soon”, replied the captain who seemed somethat annoyed that he had to deal with Angis. “The construction of the formation is well underway. You are worrying over nothing. Large amount will be brought with supplies later. Additionally we have plans to gather fresh ones from the beasts inhabiting this area.”
“Soon? Later?” Angis’s voice was getting louder. “Do you not realize we have possibly less than a day to complete our task! Possibly few hours!”
“Then you should be at the construction site overseeing it. Your materials will be delivered to you!” The captain rubbed his forehead as if he had a headache. In fact, he probably did have a headache. Really bad one.
“FOOL!” Angis shouted in anger. “I have already constructed it entirely. Those supportive formations do not require my attention. What requires my attention is that I’m lacking beast cores to power it up! You are hindering my work with your incompetence!! You cretins must provide me more cores within hours or I will report your failure to high command! I will not have my reputation stained for this!”
Kaden and rest of the prisoners were dragged past the arguing pair. He couldn’t really make out what was happening. Saints were constructing some kind of formation? Something was coming?
The prisoners were eventually dropped off with a team of soldiers that had some unusual gear with them. They had weapons that were very clearly not made to fight people, at least not efficiently. Also traps and many cotraptions Kaden couldn’t really tell what they were.
“Ah, new baits?” Said one of the higher ranked soldiers.
“Shit.” Kaden cursed in his mind.
“I’ll leave these prisoners to you lieutenant Vidi”, said the wagon leader. He then saluted and left.
The prisoners were quickly arranged in a line.
“We are in a rush so I’ll keep this short”, Vidi said calmly. “You people have been given chance to atone for your sins against the true gods and the Great Saint Empire. You will help us with a great task. Probably greatest thing to ever happen in your lives!”
Vidi seemed quite determined. The project they were doing seemed very important. Kaden knew that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. They would concentrate elsewhere and perhaps he would have chance to run away. He didn’t have any sign attached to him saying “I’m not from Saint Empire!” so, if he could find his way back to civilization from the wilderness, he would likely live pretty well.
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The problem was that word “bait”.
Baits don’t usually have a good end.
“To do this task, all you people need is some new… jewelry”, Vidi continued and motioned some soldiers bring out some boxes. Within the boxes there were what looked like collars made out of metal.
The prisoners looked somewhat scared at that point. Slaves would usually get collars, but Kaden was pretty sure these specific collars were not ordinary, if slave collars at all. He had never seen any, but why would Vidi say anything about it, if it wasn’t anything unusual.
A collar was placed on all prisoner’s necks.
“All right, lets move out”, Vidi said to his team and everyone followed him. “We will enter a bit deeper and start our plan.”
Once again, Kaden was being dragged along with some soldiers against his wishes. This time trip was shorter and was crossed quickly. In less than an hour Vidi raised his hand and stopped.
“This is far enough”, Vidi said and looked around. “Set up traps and killing formations”. Then he looked at the prisoners and waved a piece of crystal at them. Kaden realized it was a carved piece of a beast core. The collar on his neck hummed and he could feel like it was pulsing every few breaths.
“Now be good baits”, Vidi said with a grin. “Perhaps you noticed that we are in need of beast cores. Fresh ones are the best, but stronger beasts with better cores are harder to find. Luckily our formation masters crafted those collars you are wearing to solve this problem. Us humans don’t feel anything, but as for beast, they will. It will irritate them, apparently by undeding ringing and like running your nails on a blackboard.”
The prisoners were horrified. Some tried to pull at the collar, but it was useless. Kaden listened calmly.
“Even more intelligent beasts might come out to end it”, Vidi continued. “Hehe, hope you are fast on your legs. Unfortunaly its distance isn’t too long so so you need to attract them and then drag them here to be killed in traps and formations. Oh and I probably don’t have to explain it to you, but to turn off the collar you need my key so running and trying to escape will just keep you attracting more and more beasts and we will not be around to put them down for you. Even, if you escape out of the forest, you are wearing a collar so everyone knows you are a slave. Also, we can see where you are from our devices. So to sum up. Run in there and be a good bait. Perhaps you will live. Now get to it.”
Kaden decided to rush out into the dark forest. It would do no good to try seeing what happens, if he tried to not obey the commands. His only weapon was blood bunny teeth, but if he was lucky he would not need to rely on them.
Suddenly he heard something running towards him. “These collars sure do work...”, Kaden mumbled to himself.
He turned around to run back where he came from. In moments he saw the beast, it was a fox. Too weak to have a core, but Kaden wasn’t about to fight it without a proper weapon. It was clearly stronger than Kaden was.
As Kaden concentrated in escaping and fortifying his strength with mana, he noticed the effects of chaotic mana. It was like a heavy weapon. You use lot of power to get it moving, but it will also waste more power once you want to stop it or change direction. Power was much higher, though. This allowed Kaden to make fast leaps to dodge the quick and agile fox. Yet, each of those leaps hurt. It felt like his muscles were tearing apart.
“I need to concentrate on control!” Kaden decided.
Luckily he had not been far and crashed within the defensive perimeter. The fox was quickly shredded apart by the formations.
“No core?” Said a soldier who came to inspect the corpse. “Don’t come back again until you find at least a dire beast.”
Kaden didn’t say anything and rushed back out. He cursed for a moment. “Are these saints idiots? Why did they bother sending someone like me here. I won’t be able to lure dire beast back.”
After a while Kaden noticed yet another enraged beast coming for him. He didn’t bother to even look and turned to run away from the approaching sound. Still, the pursuer was faster and Kaden saw the beast. A badger!
It was very obviously stronger than him, but still not a dire beast. What to do? He wouldn’t be able to return without a dire beast.
Then Kaden heard sounds from nearby. Probably coming from one of the other slave running. Kaden had a brilliant idea and leaped towards that direction with the badger in tow. Soon he did indeed find another slave running for his life. Kaden ran to him.
The slave had slight surprise as he saw Kaden come at him. He was going to ask what Kaden was doing as Kaden followed him just next to him. Then the badger burst out from the bushes following Kaden who had leaped away from its range just moments before.
As for what had been following the man was a deer of some kind. Even herbivore beasts were dangerous. Many of them had adapted to killing other other beasts and humans and devour their mana one way or another.
Kaden observed the situation to see, if his plan was working. It was hard to tell. Kaden turned to look at the other slave and then delivered a quick kick on his stomach slowing him down.
Kaden himself kept running and looked back. The badger only gave a look towards Kaden, but then decided to target the other slave who was screaming curses at Kaden in terror. Kaden kept running, the collars had a distance. Perhaps he would be far enough from the two beasts by the time they are done killing the other slave and having a meal, with luck even fighting each other.
Soon Kaden heard gurgling screams from behind, but ignored it. He decided to look for more slaves in case he needed to escape from pursuit again.
Along the way he eventually heard some loud noises and screams along with it. Something big was going around killing the prisoners acting as baits. Kaden assumed there were one or more dire beasts that had arrived. It was probably good idea to keep distance. Kaden was very clear that he would perish against a dire beast. He would only be able to dodge it for a short while.
This was likely calculated by the saints. There were enough prisoners to go around that the saint beast hunter team and their formations were enough to for their purposes. The targets just had to be drawn out. It probably wasn’t even necessary to draw the targets to the traps. If they expected to kill dire beasts or stronger, there had to be at least Channel Opening or Formation Stage hunters skulking around. Someone like Kaden might not even notice, if one passed him.
He was certain of his conclusion. After experiencing it, Kaden determined it to be inefficient method, if they only expected some weaklings to drag out dire beasts out of their dens. There had to be something more.
In fact, simply the spilled blood and commotion was enough to bring in the real targets. As Kaden was pondering these matters and trying to find area where there were no beasts in collar distance, he indeed ran into one of these “real targets”.
Kaden suddenly felt like shadow of death was pressing down upon him. Something that exceeded his comprehension was coming. Terror finally filled Kaden.
*Gronnk!*
Something enormous crashed through trees in front of Kaden. It resembled a boar, but was about a size of small house. Its tusks looked crystaline and unusual blueish fur.
“I’m going to die”, Kaden thought.