The two were soon back at the hut, with brand new jingling charms hanging from their clothing.

Ato plopped down onto his bed and let out a long sigh. The entire day, he felt as if he had been in a daze, and that feeling had intensified even more after the ritual they had undergone. Ato began to wonder if his life was truly under his control. Did the being that brought him here—if there even was one—have higher plans for him? How could he even tell what it wanted? What if his life was just some horrible prelude to a story of tragedy?

Those thoughts kept floating in his head, distracting him from the prospect of sleep.

Eventually, he sat up. He was going to cultivate.

He got into position and set about absorbing the wisps of Kra into his body. There was clearly a noticeable increase in the rate of Kra absorption, yet he also appeared to have increased his storage capacity. So, it would be much harder to advance to the next stage.

Wait a minute. Kweku had a better technique, right?

Ato assumed that the disparity between technique quality was due to the elemental nature of Kweku's own. His having the earth element probably meant that Kweku's close proximity to the ground aided in his cultivation speed.

But if that was the case, why did he use the basic technique in the beginning, only to switch once he broke through?

Ato felt the heat reach its peak and, sensing no signs of a breakthrough, stopped both the session and his train of thought.

Now, how will I kill that thing?

The thoughts of killing the dwarf-like creature were still fresh in his mind; he wouldn't let the little bastard go until he had wrung its neck like a sponge. To that effect, Ato felt he would need some new skills, besides the ones he already had.

Before that, however, he needed to find out where exactly the thing came from.

Ato rose from his bed, and grabbed his machete. He left the hut soon after and, taking a long look at the moon, set out for the farm.

***

The soft rays of moonlight gently caressed the large stalks of maize, casting their silvery glow upon the golden heads. The cool night breeze swept through the air, causing the fields to wave and ripple as if they were alive.

The darkness held a strange power over the minds of the Akan people, and on nights like these, barely anyone was still awake.

Good. This served his purposes quite well.

Ato ventured into the fields, walking steadily in a straight line. His destination was clear: the large wall that surrounded the slave compound.

He had thought long and hard about how the creature had been able to get into the slave compound. The only possible answer was that it either went through or over the wall. The former would be much easier to locate than the latter.

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He soon arrived at the red clay walls, which were about 3 meters in height and topped with sharp metal shards.

I don't think any sane creature would climb over that.

He looked around, his eyes scanning for any signs of an entrance.

And there it was, smack dab in the middle of a clearing. It looked as if someone had bitten a chunk of rock out of the wall. The hole was quite small by human standards, only being about the size of the average adult male.

Luckily for him, Ato was not the size of an adult male. He was quite small, in fact.

He slid through the opening in the wall and out of the compound, and as his feet touched the ground, he realized how easy it would be for him to simply run away from the compound, from his future warrior life.

But he wouldn't. After all, he had a mission.

He also didn't want to be hunted down like a dog.

A crude pathway stretched out through the bushes and into the dark forest up ahead. Creeping vines slithered all about the ground, making for some quite uneven terrain. The high-pitched chirping of crickets and croaking of frogs grew in volume as he walked down the winding path.

The young man entered the forest and was immediately swallowed by its tenebrous darkness.

There was a magical quality to the air of the forest, an eerie one, so to speak. The trees were twisted and malformed, their gargantuan trunks forming warped faces and devilish grins. The shadows they cast were infinitely blacker and almost alive. The sparse moonlight shining through the thick canopy served only to accentuate this feeling.

Ato held out his machete in front of him, resisting the urge to cover his ears. After his breakthrough, whatever phenomenon had augmented his senses seemed to have increased its intensity. He could hear the sounds of things moving about, slithering on the ground, or swinging through the trees. He was feeling sensations someone of his level should never perceive.

Luckily for him, the road he was on was just about ending, and at said end...

Was an encampment.

It was large, crude, and smelled of blood and fecal material. Its denizens weren't much to write home about either: Short, grey, dirty. They looked like the drunk, wife abusing versions of the seven dwarfs from Snow-White.

That was even considering that there were females among them.

Ato could easily spot his tatget, both from the scars on his head ant the fact that he was half an inch taller than most of the creatures surrounding them.

The creatures were dancing in a circle, seemingly celebrating a festival of sorts.

Brief openings in the circular formation allowed him to see what was going on in the center.

"Hurk-!"

Bile rose up in his throat as Ato witnessed the happening of the center.

Dancing in the center of the circle were 3 to 5 creatures, and each on wore a mask made of human skin, which still had blood dripping from its corners.

The dwarfs were feasting lavishly upon the de-skinned corpses of thier prey, their jaws opened wide to encompass the sheer scale of meat they were consuming. One of them dived into an open wound in the belly of a relatively large human body, soon re-emerging with a blood-soaked face and a fresh beating heart resting between its teeth.

It was a horribly macabre festivity, which brought to light the sheer negligence of the higher ups. To allow a clear brech of defences was a danger not only to the slaves, but to the people within the territory of the General.

Yet if that was the case, why did the creatures not venture past the slave compounds?

The answer to that question soon became quite apparent.

The dwarfs were well aware of their boundaries, and had the intellingence to discern which members of society were valued and which weren't. The managers of the slave compounds, or maybe even the General himself, were also aware of this, and so weren't going to waste time on a problem which, to them, had already solved itself.

How despicable...

Ato let out a dark chuckle, filled with mirth at the sheer scale of what was happening. If he was disilusioned before, then this took it to an all new height.

The young man slowly crept away, vowing to return later. He couldn't let such a blatant threat to his life keep existing, but he lacked the necessary resources to end them himself.

So he'd just have to find them.

All in due time...