The slaves who Licht had freed had seemingly decided to ignore his gestures, and made a direct route for the camp. Licht panicked.

“I don’t have any way to help you guys in a direct confrontation! No! Stop!”

Although Licht was desperately, vehemently, trying to turn them around he was paid no mind by the freed slaves. They walked in a bunched up group. Like there were strings tugging at the corner of their lips, smiles started to grow on the elven men and women.

“No, don’t tell me…they’re going to get revenge?”

Yes, it should have been obvious, but many a captive would seek revenge on their captor once they found them to be in a vulnerable situation. Licht hadn’t accounted for such a development in his plan, nor had he the means to assist them or prevent the guards from retaliating. He had totally expected them to just start running for the trees once they were free.

Where had this burst of energy come from all of a sudden?

Licht’s mind fell from a heavy overbearance of stress, caused by the self-imposed duty to make sure the slaves were freed unharmed, to one of guilt. He looked on from all angles coldly, knowing there was nothing he could do.

“AH!”

Several of Licht’s roots spasmed, turning up the ground around them and nearly destroying their own trees.

“This fucking sucks! If only I could do something, or had more mobility…”

Licht almost wished he wasn’t confined to the body of trees. For as much as he was able to do with his current abilities, there were also a great many things to which he simply could not. It made many conventional plans of action useless. Although, could he actually do something after all?

Licht watched closely as the freed elven men and women raced into the camp. He noticed that neither the person with the fungus-appearance nor the elf children were among them, they had stayed back by the wagons. As the freed slaves ran through the camp, they set their sights on the throbbing and anguished caravan guards. Nearly all of them had been given a strong dose of the lethally psychedelic flower. Those that had made and smoked cigars of their own were the most affected, bearing reddened skin and exuding fashionable wales of agony. Even those who did not, however, were not much better off.

The decision to roast a bunch of the flowers over a campfire spit had been a poor one, as it turned out, for the infused smoke had spread around camp, subtly working its way into the bodies of men who were sleeping or otherwise not involved. By the time the elves made their way over to the scene, nearly everyone was either on their knees or were struggling for their lives. The blisters appearing on the slavers’ bodies were truly hard to overcome, as it appeared to the elves.

Luckily, the bunch of flowers over the fire had long turned to cinders, and the elves were able to work unimpeded.

They stripped the men of their equipment and gear. Mostly focusing on weapons, as it appeared to Licht. For the purpose of immediately turning those short copper blades into the throated and exposed bellies of their aching captors. It was a bloodbath. Those guardsmen that were still lucid found their ability to resist crippled by their blistering bodies. Those that had been sleeping, or were otherwise too far incapacitated by the effects of the flowers found themselves taken seamlessly and without much effort. A small mercy, perhaps?

No, Licht could not call it that. The elves seemed nearly disappointed that they could not inflict the maximum suffering on their opponents. If it were not for his body stretching miles and being composed of wood, he would have shuddered at the thought. He could not decipher the things they were hollering and shouting to each other as they worked their way through the tents, but he could tell that they were enjoying this.

“Can I blame them though? They were possibly tortured as slaves for a long time before this. Longer than I can imagine, maybe.”

Although the men and women looked young to Licht, they also looked like elves. Maybe he was making too many assumptions with the basis of popular media and webnovels from his past life, but elves usually lived long lives while appearing young at the same time. If that was the case for these people, they could have been slaves for longer than Licht lived in both of his lives combined!

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He hoped that wasn’t the case though, obviously.

At the same time he was thinking this, there was a ruffling through the bushes. Licht’s senses jumped over.

“Goddammit!”

It was the caravan guards! They moved through the overgrowth surrounding the clearing, brandishing their bronze blades that gleamed under the moonlight. There were four of them, in the front a man wore equipment over his body that vaguely resembled the same style as two of the men from the trio had worn. He must be of a similar station to the men from before, Licht thought.

Unfortunately it looked as though they had been unaffected by the flower smoke, as they moved dutifully toward the gathering of tents, watching the razing of their comrades by the freed elves with hate in their eyes. Licht cursed, this is what he was worried about, and why he was regretful to see the elves venture toward the caravan. He was only able to poison a fraction of them, and even then he couldn’t guarantee those poisoned would die or even be incapacitated.

With his limited ability to deal with the guards, he hadn’t wanted any more confrontation than what was necessary. But now, the two groups would clash.

…

“Kushal! Four men from the trees! Guards!”

From the few elven men present, a total of three to be exact, a strong bond between them had already formed. It allowed them to be comfortable quickly and informally communicating between each other, something counter to their race’s culture, and know the specialities and weaknesses of each other. Kushal, the tallest and strongest man of the three, was who they looked to first as a sort of leader. Among the entire group this was true in fact, for elves didn’t have the same limitations as humans. Their women could grow just as strong, and in many cases stronger than the males. Although in a race dominated by a female majority this was more of a statistically-rooted fact than it was indicative of the race’s qualities.

Regardless, Kushal was the first to be informed. As the one who had suggested that they fight back against their captors instead of blindly following the strange root-creature into the forest, he felt he was responsible for the success of their operation. He gripped the bronze sword in his hand tightly. Something he had looted from the first sleeping guard he came across.

“Kabir, Ishaan! With me! Delia and Emera follow from behind!”

Kushal was quick to shout back in response. Bringing the two men alongside him seemed a no-brainer in his mind, and he quickly selected the two least-tired looking elven women from behind to follow as reinforcements. He could have had everyone follow and attack the approaching men, but it was too risky for the current situation.

They knew not what effects the men were under, some kind of hallucinogenic plant in all likelihood, but if they could wake up at any time they needed to focus on taking out the maximum number before they could do anything else.

Kushal and the four others ran forward, planning to attack the men from straight-on. None of them had any experience in battle strategy, and their time as slaves had long washed away any memories they had of hunting. So a frontal assault was the only thing they could respond with immediately.

Once the guards laid eyes on the approaching elves, the one at the front grinned, his facial expression hardening. The elves recognized his equipment and uniform as that of a scout, and quickly disseminated the information between them.

“Careful of the scout! He’s fast and has daggers!”

…

Once the scout had heard the fighting start, he had immediately left the patch of dark flowers behind and started to move throughout the outer tents. There would be guards on the fringes, sleeping or otherwise fucking around, there always were. He hoped that at least some of them would have remained untouched and unaffected by the flower’s smoke.

After having gathered a small group of men, he led them toward the fighting. With only three others he found to be unaffected by the smoke, the scout’s hope for a number advantage had been dashed, but he was still itching to put down the slaves and decided not to dwell on it.

It was true that they were far more skillful with their blades than any of these domestic slaves would be, and they were eager to teach that to them. All of the men had at least some level of a superiority complex regarding the slaves, even for someone who had joined the caravan not even a week ago it would be impossible not to. They were just those kinds of men. For that reason, once the four men heard the shouting of the elves, now having reverted to their native tongue now that they were unfettered, they made ugly expressions. The scout spat in disgust.

“You hear the yelps of those dogs ahead? It seems like they’ve forgotten their masters. Let us grant them the feel of their collars once again!”

The guards behind him laughed and hollered with malicious expressions. They were all too ready to thin down the herd that had grown too confident…