Zalia chased after the group of freed slaves that her family was taking to safety. Following along behind, she used Natural Matter Alteration to make all signs of their passing vanish. The grass was healed, dirt was flattened back out, sticks and bushes were repaired. It might have been unnecessary but she wanted to give them the best chance at escaping possible. If that meant lagging behind to cover up their escape, so be it.
Once they were out of the mist, she wouldn’t do the same. In fact, at that point, they might actually want to be found. Hopefully, their tracks would be visible to other freed slaves they hadn’t found who would then be able to follow them. The Astar would see them from up in the sky anyway.
She eventually caught up to the slow-moving group despite her own reduced speed and continued cleaning up after them. Boreal and Breeze were there too, which meant everyone was together again. Now they just had to get back to Endaria. It was going to be a long, long journey.
They didn’t stop until many hours later when they arrived at the trailing edge of the unnatural mist. They waited here as Zalia finished up removing their tracks and made camp, if it could be called that. None of them had any bedrolls or tents, not even a backpack in sight.
It was here that Ember used Universal Wellbeing to create a table covered in steaming soup and bread. It wouldn’t be anything fancy but definitely a far sight better than what they had most likely been fed as slaves and infinitely better than the nothing they would have had to eat without her.
While everyone ate, Zalia went from person to person, asking about their stories. If she got answers at all, they were usually brief. From her understanding, many of these people had been slaves for years, decades. Many even named the king of Endaria as being neither King Alistair or King Horum, which meant they were from a time before them. They might have been there for hundreds of years.
The other thing she asked about, the more important matter at hand, was what each person was capable of. Three-quarters of the people were fighters of some kind, many being knights or powerful warriors though there weren’t a small number of fighters of the more magical kind as well. Thankfully, there were a few people more like Zalia amongst their number too, people who travelled alone and without contact with the wider world. These people Zalia made good use of, asking them to range a bit further from the group as scouts which they were more than happy to do. Strangely they were also the ones who held better control of their mental faculties. Did they have stronger minds or souls as a result of the way they lived their lives?
The other quarter of the people were less warriors and more merchant or craftsman types. The merchants were the travelling kind, capable of defending themselves but not excellent, while the craftsmen were people who had grown bored of city life and left for outer towns or a holiday from their usual day-to-day experiences. The memories those people had of being taken often lined up with their decisions to do this.
Talking to all these people answered a question that had been hanging over her mind for a while now. How was it that the people of Endaria hadn’t noticed that the most powerful members of their race had been disappearing?
For the warriors, they often spoke of being abducted during battles, taken amongst the chaos of a fight. The merchants spoke of trade routes along dangerous paths and craftsmen being taken while leaving to find relaxation or adventure in farther lands. In this way, the Astar had managed to avoid suspicion. People died in battle, sometimes having their bodies completely destroyed and merchants did sometimes die when travelling the more dangerous routes. It happened.
This was perhaps the reason that many Endarians thought that the North was so dangerous, not because it actually was that dangerous but because powerful people who went there often didn’t return.
And it was something that had been happening for hundreds of years.
She didn’t understand why the bodies of these ancient slaves hadn’t deteriorated, some magic perhaps. With so many questions answered by these people, she did begin to ponder new ones, however. Why exactly did the Astar do what they did?
There must have been a reason for it, even if she couldn’t yet see it. Was it just so that they had a constant source of cheap labour? She didn’t think so.
She had to shake herself from these thoughts as people began to get restless. It was time to move on.
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They packed up what meagre things they had, some craftsmen had begun making low-quality weapons made from stone and wood for the warriors amongst them, while the more wild types had begun searching the nearby area for anything of use amongst the plants and environment they were in.
It was approaching night time but none of the group complained as they set off again. All of them were tired, her own family amongst them, but they unanimously agreed that they needed to get further from the Astar than this.
The sun set as they walked, yet they didn’t stop until the light from the waning moon vanished over the horizon as well. At that point, it was agreed that they should rest and everyone collapsed with exhausted sighs. Everyone except Zalia and Boreal of course.
They wouldn’t need sleep nor rest for weeks yet, their bodies entirely maintained by Zalia’s passive.
While Zalia was a quarter of the way to Gold rank, Boreal had advanced to almost halfway there from this fight. She wouldn’t be surprised if some of her quicker advancing abilities began to advance to Gold rank soon, with her average progress as seen by Aura Observation being held down by the slower ones.
At final count, there were one hundred and fifty-seven people in their group, not including Zalia’s family. They hadn’t found any more Gold rankers amongst the people brought back in that final hour so they still only had the two. Those were recovering from their experience much quicker than the rest, both of them being tank types. Thinking about it, Zalia wasn’t surprised that it was tank types that often made it to higher ranks than anyone else. Hildebrandt was one of those too. They might not be the strongest in how much damage they could put out but they sure were damn hard to kill.
While everyone else settled down to sleep, Zalia found a tree to climb that she could use as a good vantage point. She wanted to keep an eye out on the entire group, not just the sky and surrounding lands for Astar. While they had saved these people, some of them might be the type that would kill or steal for a better chance at survival. Some might even be broken of mind or have spent so long in servitude to the Astar that they didn’t know any other life. She wouldn’t have someone sneaking off in the night to tell the Astar where they were.
Fortunately, the night passed without issue and as the next day came, the group rose with the sun.
They continued their journey and as the day progressed, things started to look a bit better. After a good night’s sleep, some of the people were looking a lot better than they had the day before. Their eyes were clearer and their steps more confident. The constant emotional healing from Ember was doing wonders and not too long into the day, Aylie was able to activate her soul healing too. The effect was stunning, the zombie-like blankness of the last remaining members disappearing, though not entirely. There was still a shadow in the eyes of some, a trauma and experience that wouldn’t ever fully disappear.
The craftsmen amongst the group found a source of iron halfway through this second day and Zalia watched in awe as they crafted armour and weapons without the use of a forge. At Silver rank, they apparently needed nothing other than their bare hands to create some good quality gear.
The hunters and wilder people amongst the group were outfitted with bows and arrows and they began to bring back small game from the area. With the leather from those kills, the craftsmen began to make boots, waterskins and some leather armour for the more agile people. Processes that would normally take weeks if not months were done in an instant with the powers of these high ranked people.
The fears that she and Ember had at the beginning were proven unfounded as the group of people were more self-sustaining than they realised.
By the end of that first day, they had even begun making tents and an enchanter amongst the group was enchanting the cloth so that the inside of the tents were significantly larger than the outside.
As they rested for that night, it was to Zalia’s astonishment that she kept watch over a proper campsite instead of the group of people sleeping in the dirt that she had seen the night before.
There were fifteen tents, each enchanted to be large enough on the inside that they could hold more than ten people each. They were arrayed in a wide circle around a large campfire tended by a wildman who had a few abilities around cooking. He had prepared the kills that the others had made during the day and with the meat from those kills, Ember had been able to use Universal Wellbeing to create some better quality foodstuffs such as salt and spices.
Spirits amongst the group were much higher and increased further as a merchant who was also a brewer turned some water from a nearby stream into various alcoholic drinks for the group with Zalia crafting a few hundred wooden mugs using a mixture of Healing Presence and Natural Matter Alteration.
Be as that may, spirits weren’t high enough and people were not familiar enough with each other for loud conversation. There was an occasional chuckle here and there as people spoke quietly, but for the most part, people were silent. A few of the more talkative members of the group had begun talking to each other about their experiences as slaves, building bonds over shared adversity.
Zalia was… surprised.
She often forgot that while humans as a race fought amongst themselves often and rarely were in agreement, when there was something for them to fight together against they could often throw away those differences and overcome great difficulty. It brought her hope.
That was a strange feeling to her, hope. Even after defeating the demons invading Endaria, her thoughts had turned to the Astar and even further a possible attempt at taking back Cormaine. Both were going to be horrible, hard experiences but if all of humanity could come together and work towards these common goals then maybe, just maybe, things would be alright.