It's just a few days later, when our wonderfully uneventful tenure at the human adventurer guild is suddenly thrown into chaos.
A group of a few adventurers enters, breaking through the crowd. Behind them... a dozen altraska, bound in shackles. I don't see any slave collars though. Does that mean...
They reach the counter, their apparent leader moving forward to speak to one of the receptionists. I don't recognize any of these adventurers, are they from out of town?
No one speaks up, just eyeing me slightly as I shift down the counter to a closer position so I can listen. The particular receptionist he approaches is named Jaki, with blonde hair she always keeps up in a neat bun, despite her young age and normally outgoing personality.
It's only at times like this, that she tends to clam up. The man slides a handful of gold across the counter and says, “Twelve slave crests,” like it's nothing.
“U-uhh...” Jaki hesitates, her eyes flying to the captured altraska, and over to Liina for just a moment.
“What?” the man asks. He... he just looks like an ordinary adventurer. Not some nasty, stereotypical bandit or scumbag. Just a guy wearing some ordinary leather armor, with average, if somewhat dirty brown hair. But he's just casually trying to enslave all these people. Some of whom do not look like adventurers.
“I-I'm sorry sir, but I feel I should ask, how did you capture those... those people?” Jaki asks hesitantly. Just hearing her says it makes my heart skip a beat. We've made enough of a change already that at least one of the other receptionists doesn't see them as a bunch of animals, rounded up and captured to be brought to heel and tamed, but as actual people who have been stolen away from... wherever they came from.
“Huh?” The man blinks confusedly. “Where'd they come from?” He scratches his head, but then he looks like he gets it. “Beast town about four days south. About... a few hundred more. We got some of the strong ones, so we'd probably be able to exterminate the rest if we gathered a decent group for a raid.”
His response makes half of the receptionists on the line wince, and even a few nearby adventurers throw worried glances his way. No set of eyes doesn't slide to Liina for a moment, who stands as stoic as ever, but with a visible set in her shoulders and fire in her eyes, staring holes in the man.
I don't know what to do. We've had a handful of people come in over the last month to buy slave crests for captured altraska, but those were adventurers. Losing in battle and having their freedom taken rather than their lives is something I can at least understand. Even if I still think it's wrong, I can at least try to justify it based on their values and the current state of their world.
But these are civilians. Kidnapped from their own town. It's just like what we did on our way here. It's absolutely unacceptable, and yet... that's how things have worked up until now. No one would question him or harass him for bringing in a dozen animals he wanted to tame.
But now that they recognize these as real, intelligent, worthwhile people, there's conflict written over all of their faces.
Do they do their jobs as they always have? Sell the adventurer what he came here to buy as he normally would? Or deny him on the basis of their newfound values?
Then I realize, this isn't a decision for them. They aren't in a position to decide on this. So I go and touch Jaki's arm. She jolts a little before turning to me. “Go get the guild master,” I tell her quietly. She nods stiffly before rushing into the back.
I turn my best politely fake smile on the man and say, “Please wait just a minute.” He looks confused again, but doesn't respond.
Rothol comes up front very soon after, eyes scanning over the situation. When he looks at me, I meet his eyes and nod. This is his first real test. He knows what he has to do, and I silently tell him that he can do it. When he looks at the other receptionists, their anxiety at the new and unfamiliar situation showing with different levels of clarity based on how good they each are individually at hiding it, it actually looks like it gives him a little more confidence.
“Hello, Sir,” Rothol greets the man. “I am Rothol, the guild master of the Thanifa adventurer guild.”
The man blinks. “Oh.” It takes a moment before he realizes the importance of the man who suddenly showed up for what I'm sure he expected to be a perfectly average transaction. “I-I'm Zinneta.”
Rothol takes a deep breath, one last look around, and the nearby adventurers actually start to look expectant, drawing even more attention from those who weren't even listening at first.
“We at the Thanifa guild have recently discovered that we may have been mistaken in our long-held belief in the inferiority of the altraska. For that reason, we will no longer offer services to enslave altraskan civilians.”
Zinneta's mouth falls open. He looks around for a few moments, with a look like he's asking if this is some sort of joke. Even the captured altraska behind him look surprised. But the dark expressions on everyone's faces, receptionists and a few nearby adventurers alike quickly assure him that this is no joke.
“W-what do you mean you won't? They're just a bunch of wild animals...” the man mutters, still looking across us, until he spots Liina down at the far end of the counter. With his eyes staying glued to her, he continues speaking. “What, are you all a bunch of beast-lovers or something?” he asks, more in disbelief than accusation.
“No, we are merely trying to act with honor and decency based on the new wisdom available to us,” Rothol assures him. “As I said, we understand that adventurers on both sides are combatants that willingly put their lives on the line, and thus we will sell you crests for them. But we cannot in good conscience aid in your enslavement of unarmed civilians. We would implore you to rethink your actions. If you still wish to go down such a path, we will not help you, you must find some other place to help you.”
“That's... uhh... sure...” Zinneta answers haltingly. Still looking in shock.
“I'll check their crests now.” At his words, he moves out from behind the counter, and I find myself following him automatically.
He checks the altraska one by one, gently shifting aside any armor and clothing to get a look at their crests. Blue for adventurers, white for common crests. Even the altraska, despite their generally defiant looks, are confused and surprised by the treatment.
He finds that seven are adventurers, five are civilians. And among them, there's one altraska girl in the back, a fuzzy little mouse-altra, who looks no older than eight years old...
Since she's altraskan, what is that, like one or two years old? No one can help grimacing when she looks up at Rothol with big, pleading eyes.
After he finishes checking, Rothol says, “we will sell you seven slave crest crystals. Also... I'll offer you two gold for the young one.”
Still baffled, the man accepts. Money changes hands, then he's led off to another area with the adventurer altraska. The civilians are left standing by the counter, the other couple men in Zinneta's party still around them.
Then the little girl is handed over to him, and he picks her up, to set her lightly on the reception counter. He turns to the others and says, “I'm sorry I can't do more for you all. We're only in the early stages of changing ourselves, so imposing our changes on adventurers to free you would be overstepping our bounds. But I will not watch your children be sold off when I can stop it. I give you my word, we will see her home safe.”
With bare traces of relief on their otherwise despairing faces, Rothol turns back. “Yumi, Liina, get ready. We're heading out.”
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“So, what is the plan?” Liina asks.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“There isn't much of a plan,” Rothol answers with a small shrug. He has the girl, Kialemna, in his arms as he walks. We've been walking south for a few days already, with Rothol and Liina trading off on carrying her. Even so, I'm the one who's panting and exhausted as usual. “We bring her home, that's all.”
“Fair enough.”
And so we keep walking. It's mostly quiet, except for a few attempted attacks from wandering groups of monsters. But as expected of a ridiculously powerful mage, Rothol smites them all with a flick of his wrist or a snap of his fingers.
Besides just walking, Rothol uses the chance away from the guild to watch me cast my magic, a system so different from anything he's familiar with.
He nods appreciatively at my control and complex spell formations, but still notes that the Class has a glaring weakness when it comes to more intense combat. It's one I'm already aware of. If I can't focus on synergizing my spells properly, they all basically become useless. It's a class that requires me to stay in control while casting, no matter the situation.
That is... definitely a weak point of mine as well. I've already lost multiple fights, where I devolved into flinging as many useless, unsynergized spells as possible at my targets because I simply couldn't focus on forming the magic anymore.
He also balks at our descriptions of my long-cast magic, with its nonsensical area of effect. Apparently, extremely high level wizards like him have access to a few similarly over the top attacks, but even those don't match the sheer size of the spells I've been able to produce. Granted, mine take hours to cast. And they don't actually hurt that much, while his can vaporize entire blocks.
So... there is that.
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When we're about four days out, we slow down and start to search around. None of us are sure exactly where this town is. It must not be a larger town because the guild didn't have any information on it, so we have to search on our own.
And just south isn't terribly descriptive, so we end up swinging east to west, surveying large swaths of land trying to spot it.
After almost a day of searching, we don't find the town, but we do find something else. A party of altraska. They're coming from the south, so we must not have made it quite far enough.
All looking back and forth between each other, we aren't sure what to do, but we're in a pretty open stretch of plains, so our groups saw each other from a long way off, and they're coming toward us.
After a short discussion, we decide it's safest to have Liina talk to them, in order to avoid an unnecessary fight. So she walks out in front, standing and waiting for them to approach. While waiting, they approach slowly, and I feel a horrible crawling feeling as they all scan me. A shudder goes over the others as well, so they must have scanned all of us.
The response is immediate. Every eye turns to Rothol. They almost look like they're going to flee, but after a quick argument, they continue on toward us. When they finally draw near, Liina raises a hand and calls, “Hey!”
The group of five, with one woman dressed like a healer, approach warily, continuously shooting looks at us behind her, especially Rothol.
The leader, a cat-altra, steps forward. I can just barely hear him at this distance, asking, “Who are you people, and why are you here?”
“We rescued a young girl named Kialemna that was kidnapped from a town in this area. We are trying to return her home.” With her words, Liina rolls her head back toward the girl in Rothol's arms.
“O-oh, uhh, ok...” the man stammers uncertainly, before he recovers. “But what about you? Why are you traveling as a human's slave?”
“Ahh, that. It's kind of a long story.” She waves a hand and says, “Show Slave Contract.” After giving him a moment to see the information for himself, she goes on. “I owe that man a debt for unfairly bringing harm to his people. Me and my slave are working it off as employees at the adventurer's guild in his town.”
That one leaves the man even more flabbergasted than her last response. “Wha... But... No, none of that makes any sense. How could you harm his people unfairly? They're all horrible and deserve to die, he says flatly, dead serious.
Liina shrugs. “Like I said, it's a long story. It had to do with a couple otherworlders who opened all of our eyes. So now we're trying to overcome the hate between us by learning to understand each other. It turns out that some of the humans aren't that bad once you get to know them.”
“Not that bad?” the man scoffs.
In response, Liina chuckles and waves for us to come forward. Following along, we slowly move to stand beside her. The cat-man takes a half step back, his party pressing in closer, hands on their weapons, but they keep eyeing Rothol and the child his arms, not attacking yet.
Liina gestures for Rothol to speak, so he bows. “Hello, I am Rothol, the guild master of the Thanifa adventurer's guild.”
“G-guild master?!” With the man's exclamation, they all take a terrified step back. I guess all guild masters are ridiculously strong? Even more than their level indicates?
“Yes, after a very enlightening discussion with a pair of otherworlders, I realized that I thought ill of the altraska without having learned about them properly, so I've done my best to right that mistake. I understand now that your people are nothing like my prejudices led me to believe.”
The altraska all look at each other, like they have no idea what to think, or if they should even believe him at all. They can't come up with any sort of response before he goes on.
“A few days ago, men came into my guild, attempting to purchase slave crests to enslave a number of your people, kidnapped from the town nearby.” This time, his words are met with a round of hisses and angry growls, but he presses on nonetheless. “I apologize, but I did not turn them away outright. Our people are unfortunately still at war, so I allowed them to enslave the adventurer's since they are combatants in these battles, and knowingly risking their lives and freedom.”
Amid their glowers, Rothol pointedly claims, “I did not however, allow them to enslave the civilians. They are non-combatants and should not be harmed, much less kidnapped from their own homes and forced into slavery. I couldn't do much for all of them besides refuse to be involved in the men's wrongdoing, but I could not watch them mistreat a child. I payed them for her, so we could return her home.”
The altraska stare for a while, before turning to discuss among themselves in a low murmur for a while longer still. When they finally address us again, their leader says, “We cannot simply take your explanation for granted. You could be lying through your teeth, and we have no way to tell what your true intentions are. Leave.”
Rothol dips his head slightly. “That is understandable.” Then he sets Kialemna and pushes her over toward the altraska. “Go on now,” he urges her lightly, then looks up, addressing them. “I trust you can get her back home?”
“Of course,” the man answers immediately, eyes narrowed.
“Good. Then we'll be going now.” After a small moment of hesitation, just starting to turn away, Rothol looks back. “I hope if you ever find yourselves in Thanifa, that you will be welcome in my guild, and we can speak under more friendly circumstances.”
With those last words, we turn back north. The altraska watch us until we we walk so far, they disappear into the distance behind us.
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“Well, not exactly what I expected, but it worked out alright in the end.” Rothol smiles a little as we walk, looking up at the sky with its myriad of colorful moons, even in the middle of the day. Light period, whatever.
“I'm just glad she'll be alright,” Liina agrees. “I think Yumi was onto something.”
“Huh?” I have no idea how she suddenly switched to that topic, or what I was right about.
“You told me that your people compulsively spread information to anyone they could. Building better relations between our people requires exactly that, spreading knowledge of each other to both sides, teaching everyone who will listen. You've seen it too, haven't you? Most people are only racist because they don't know any better. We've never talked enough to learn about each other, so we've only had the hate left by the last generation to go on. If we can just spread more information, we'll be able to teach more people and change more minds.”
I smile a little. “Yeah, that sounds good.”
“Yes, it does,” Rothol agrees too.
We all walk on contentedly, all the way back to Thanifa.
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On arrival, we return to the guild, so Rothol can get up to speed on any changes while we were gone. The trip took us a full nine days, almost half a month, so we only have a handful of days left before our contract is up.
As it turns out, even in Rothol's absence, the sight of those captured altraska and the realization of the true harm their people were doing, seeing it with their own eyes, the adventurer's guild took an even harder stance against the enslavement of the altraska.
While they didn't outright refuse the enslavement of adventurers for the same reasons Rothol gave, they clearly posted that attempted enslavement of civilians would lead to the confiscation of the prospective slaves. After getting back and hearing more details, it sounds like after taking away the kidnapped altraska, the plan is to put up quests for adventurers to deliver them back home.
I... I don't know, something about all of this is incredible. I never really believed that we could make any real, lasting impact all on our own, but it looks like we're actually doing it. It's just one town, but we changed a lot of minds, of a lot of adventurers. They can travel and spread that thinking to other places, other people.
It may just be a little bit at a time, but it's a real, positive change in this world and the shit situation between the people living here.
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Just like that, the last few days of our punishment expire, and we're freed. Everyone at the guild waves goodbye as we head out.