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When Avan awoke, he felt much better than the day before. His severe headache had given way to a slight, but still annoying, throbbing. Most likely my blood pumping... he moaned slightly, and grabbed his head, only to see the curious bracelet on his left arm in front of his eyes again.
When he saw it this time, he finally noticed the many small runes that seemed to be burned into the extremely hard material of unknown origin. Probably of magical nature. Surely no blacksmith would have burned them in...
He had already spent minutes the day before scratching the bars with the bracelet, much to the annoyance of the other slaves and his guards, and indeed the material on his left wrist seemed stronger and much harder than the iron or steel bars that surrounded him in his new home. Avan estimated, however, that he could not saw his way through the bars with it, since it was so slow that anyone, no matter how stupid, would have noticed it soon enough, and they would probably reach their destination before then, if he was to believe the conversations of the guards.
Avan had also picked up the name of the organization. Or at least the branch name that this slave ring from the kingdom of Haipu had. They called themselves The Raptures. And another little thing he had heard in whispers, which seemed much more important to Avan, since this seemed to be only a small branch of the organization behind it.
Blight, if I remember correctly... And the big guy who had taken me out so quickly was apparently one of the Blight hands, as their inner circle apparently called themselves.
As he lay there watching the sun rise on the horizon, one of the black hooded guards came by and without comment threw two small and long since dried up loaves of bread through the bars, and with a long hose filled up the wooden notch in the corner of the wagon, which with a kind of tar could hold the water until the wagon ran over a pothole or other obstacle on the way and spilled it all.
Avan had learned this quickly when the old woman, who introduced herself as Annabelle, had explained it to him. And without water, no one wanted to sit out in the open sun with no coverings at all.
The guards had all kept their distance from his wagon, much to the positive surprise of Anna, as she had whispered to him the day before. Before he had been thrown into her wagon, she had had two loud and rough guys as fellow prisoners, but they had gotten on the guards' nerves shortly before reaching the city, Cyntha, so that they had taken them out without further ado and put them in a special wagon at the very front of the convoy. A special wagon, for especially heavy slaves.
But the guards seemed to have great respect and fear for Avan, and he himself estimated that only the leaders of the caravan could really be dangerous to him, but in a fraction of a second, as he remembered the slap.
Fortunately, he had calmed down a bit, because the fact that he could somehow sense his fox friend Yue somewhere in his dungeon sphere of influence had calmed his nerves extremely. Nevertheless, he threw evil promises in the form of a broad and devilish grin at every guard who passed by his wagon on patrol.
He turned his head slightly to the woman lying next to him and grinned at her when she noticed his movement. Anna was also an early riser and, like himself, could not temples well in this situation. Before he wished her a good morning, however, he noticed a small thing, and he listened inside himself, but could not detect anything out of the ordinary. Just as Avan was about to let it go again, however, he noticed something that made him stumble.
Inside himself there was a yawning emptiness and he could not access anything from his own mana circuit. But a small, barely perceptible amount of celestial mana had latched onto his wounds from the outside and seemed to resemble his Akkalon's touch to a tee, except for the fact that the threads seemed to come from the outside instead of the inside.
Grinning inwardly, Avan laboriously followed the threads until they split into several nanometer-sized threads not three meters around him and then disappeared.
They must not have counted on someone like me when they designed this mana shackle. Can I control my dungeon without my own soul core? There's not much to do anyway....
Satisfied that he had found a possible solution to problems yet to come, he turned again to the old lady, who had been watching him with raised eyebrows.
"Hmm... Good morning, Anna!" He overplayed his strange behavior and grinned at her with his best smile. "What a wonderful day, don't you think? How about I buy you a round of fresh, clear water? What do you say?"
Anna blinked at first, apparently having been in thought as well, and then grinned merrily with a mischievous glint in her eye. "Oho, a young man with manners." She grinned and with a groan rose from her reclining position to follow Avan's outstretched playfully generous arm toward the water trough and take a few sips. When she stopped at half of the water, Avan gestured for her to drink more. "Drink a little more, Anna. I haven't been here as long as you, and I'm younger. I can take it." He smiled and winked at her, continuing the playful good morning banter between the two.
The older woman just shook her head in disbelief but gratitude, and took a few more big gulps until barely a third of the water remained. Somewhat ashamed, she looked up as she licked the precious water from her lips and looked over at him. Avan merely nodded at her with a smirk and drank the last of the water, which still tasted disgustingly of dirt and other flavors, but suppressed a gag reflex. After all, I can afford it... Despite my own cut mana, I still feel my dungeon influence feeding me. I don't need much in the day to survive... But she does, and visibly she has some catching up to do when I think of her previous cellmates.
After Avan had drunk his share of the water, and only a damp film remained in the cavity, he took his share of the dirty and dust-dry bread and broke it in two without comment, in order to give Anna another half of it as well.
Just as she was about to refuse, gesticulating vehemently, he pressed it into her hands without comment and in a no-nonsense manner. "Take it. No comment. I don't need that much. And to be honest, your former fellow slaves seem to have taken more for themselves than they were entitled to. Am I right?"
Not waiting for an answer, he leaned against the metal bars in his back, cooled by the night, and chewed on the dry piece of bread. His spit was barely enough to soften the dry piece of nondescript bread in his mouth to swallow, but somehow Avan finally managed.
What I wouldn't give to have access to my dungeon inventory... Avan dreamed to himself as he effortlessly swallowed the sandy and dirty bread in his mouth and finished his meager meal. Maybe if I use the time well, I can get to my dungeon skills despite my own mana lock...
He stretched a few times, since standing in this barely one meter high prison cell on wheels was not really possible, and did a few stretching exercises, much to the amusement of the slaves in front of them in the other wagon.
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"Look at this guy! Think he's something better, or some kind of warrior. Let's wait and see what he'll do when he gets his face kicked in and lies bleeding in the dirt of the arenas!" Laughed the three loud guys in the wagon in front of them.
Avan ignored the loudmouthed men and looked around again in the sunlight of the new day.
In front of them in the wagons were apparently the slaves who had belonged to the caravan before, while the inmates who had started from Avan's wagon were all from the new raid in Cyntha, and more than half of them consisted of various beastmen and women.
The prisoners behind them in the convoy were probably a family with a young son, the father and his mother, who had already waved at him timidly yesterday, apparently because they knew him from Cyntha from somewhere. In contrast to the loud men in the front cell, the other prisoners behind them had mostly said nothing.
Each wagon was pulled by a single horse, apparently bred for heavy draft work, judging by their build and the exaggerated muscles in their legs. Definitely abnormal. Such a thing would have been feasible on Earth only with some surgical intervention, and in addition some expensive drugs. But if these are not magically genetically modified horses, I don't know. he speculated inwardly to his renewed observation of the draft horses.
So the days passed, monotonously and without much happening in their part of the caravan, only interrupted from time to time by tumult further ahead and further back in the convoy.
Avan used the time to regain his meditation and to stretch his senses for his dungeon skills, but so far without much success. He could sense the presence of his dungeon, and the abilities lurking behind it, but beyond that there was no way for him to access it.
What he had managed to do, however, was to strengthen the suction of his celestial mana so that instead of a few drops over several hours, a small permanent nano-thick thread was permanently attached to himself, which further reduced his thirst and hunger pangs and accelerated his regeneration even more.
Sighing, and because another loud commotion disturbed his concentration, this time near him, he opened his eyes and looked around for the cause of the disturbance.
It was already evening, and all the slaves, as they had been expressly called since day one, had already received their rations for the evening. The commotion seemed to come from behind him, and when Avan turned around, he saw one of two not-so-masked and drunken guards grab the man's wife in the wagon and drag her out of the wagon, while the other had knocked the man down, leaving a frightened boy cowering in the corner with huge eyes widened in terror.
The woman screamed and sobbed, but could do nothing against the stronger man, who tried to drag her in Avan's direction toward the various tents on the left side of the caravan, from which loud voices and sounds of a great celebration were coming.
Avan, already hard and calculating, watched as the man came closer and closer, dragging his crying prey behind him.
Anna immediately sensed that Avan was planning something, and cautiously moved back to the right end of the two-by-two-meter wagon to watch Avan with calm and a look of approval in her eyes.
Just as the guard was about to stumble past his wagon in a heavily inebriated state, either from the influence of alcohol or from having forgotten what had happened to Dunkin two weeks earlier, Avan reached through the bars in a flash and had the surprised guard by the throat. The guard cried out and quickly only gasped as Avan also cut off the air tube with his grip, while the crying woman collapsed on the floor and quickly crawled backwards away.
Already the man's crony came running in his grip, apparently preoccupied enough with the woman's husband, and shouted for him to let go of the guard immediately.
Avan, not intending any of this, squeezed harder and before the other guard had come within reach with his spear, an audible crack resounded through the air and the neck of his victim in his grip snapped like a dry twig.
With a devilish grin on his face, Avan looked the rushing guard in the eye as he thrust his spear forward, probably with the help of an ability, and Avan felt a sharp pain in his left side.
Groaning, but still grinning, Avan dropped backward into the center of the wagon and held the slight puncture wound in his side with the palm of his left hand while the guard ran up to his dead buddy and wreaked havoc.
Some shaking and cursing later, the man grabbed his spear again and was about to go after the grinning and waiting Avan again, when a big hand grabbed him from behind by the neck and stopped him with a dangerous rumbling voice. "And that's what happens when you get too close to a DANGEROUS slave, you good-for-nothings!" Hissed the big man, who was considered one of blights hands, and threw the frightened man aside on the floor next to his dead comrade. "And if I see you tampering with the goods again, or handing over your weapons to the prisoners as willingly as you were about to do, I'll tear you to pieces myself. IS THAT CLEAR?" He yelled at the shocked man on the ground, just as it dawned on him how close he had come to giving Avan his weapon.
The giant turned his head and glared dangerously at Avan. "And if you kill one more of my guards, you will become more and more worthless to me, and no longer worth the trouble. I hope you understand me." He grumbled, and angrily moved away from the interruption between the tents.
The guard on the ground shook himself, and before he too gave up his life, he quickly set out to push the woman, who had been frightened further away on the ground, back to her man, and locked the door behind her again.
As he grabbed his dead guard buddy and began dragging him away, he looked at Avan once more. "Just you wait. I'll pay you back when you least expect it." And with these words, dragging the dead guard behind him, the man also disappeared among the tents, from which soon came astonished and enraged shouts as the other guards of the caravan probably discovered the body.
Avan, simply shrugging his shoulders, which caused a teeth-grinding pain to run through the lower half of his body, sat down next to Anna on the right side of the wagon and sighed deeply once.
"Well done, Avan..." She whispered to him, almost as if she didn't want to draw attention to herself.
Avan just nodded thoughtfully, and let the far too small beam of celestial mana point directly at his wound to speed up the healing of the wound, even if it had only minimal effects.
A small rustle from the back of the wagon caught Avan's attention a short time later, and after a brief whisper, someone whistled over to him.
Avan turned his head, still leaning against the prison bars, and saw the woman's husband looking at him gratefully. Hardly comprehensible, but the meaning more than clear, he knew what the man whispered to him before he turned back to his family.
"Thank you... I owe you one!"
Satisfied with himself, and happy that he could at least help with this, Avan closed his eyes.
The next few days flew by, and three weeks into his journey as a slave, the caravan came rolling over a hill, and behind it was a gigantic, sprawling city, with several walls and different parts of town, which Avan estimated must house several hundred thousand people.
They had arrived in Haipu, the capital and seat of the royal house of Haipu.
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