Thalion had spent the entire night in his human form, training his abilities. Since this was the body bonded with the sanguine thorn, he didn’t require any sleep. He only paused occasionally to allow his mana pool to recover or when he sensed survivors nearby; however, that only happened twice, and he wasn’t interested in ambushing them. His mind was too focused on his task.

He concentrated on two particular spells. The first was his Mana Barrier, which he could now shape more effectively and strengthen by channeling more mana into it. Additionally, he had achieved a new feat: he could project the barrier forward, almost like throwing it. The second spell he practiced was his movement skill, Telekinetic Dash. He managed to increase both the distance and speed of his dashes, which worked out perfectly. He also experimented with hovering by dashing upward slowly, but the mana cost was too high to be practical.

By midday, Thalion decided to take a short break and check out one of the locations marked on his map. He transformed into his shadowstalker form and began his journey.

The advantage of being in shadowstalker form was that he didn’t use any mana, except when activating his Savage Bite skill, which he rarely needed because he could bite through most things anyway. After traveling for about an hour, he arrived at the marked location and, to his surprise, found another field of midnight sunroses. This wasn’t just a small clearing like last time. It was an entire field, with at least ten people gathering the flowers. They all had shackles around their necks, except for one man who stood in the center, gleefully shouting at the others to work faster.

It looked like Thalion had found his first slaver, which meant the men and women gathering flowers were most likely from Earth. It was time to free some fellow earthlings, he thought. He waited for half an hour, hiding behind some ivy growing up one of the large trees near the field.

The problem was that the slaver stood in the middle of the field, making it impossible to ambush him from a branch. Thalion would have to wait until the man was distracted by one of the slaves on the far side of the field, then strike quickly enough that the slaver wouldn’t have time to react.

He couldn’t identify the man without revealing his position, but he looked strong and confident, likely around level 25. As the slaver began berating one of the slaves with screams and a water whip that left bloody welts on her back, Thalion decided it was time.

He sprinted out of the undergrowth and, with a giant leap, landed on the slaver. The man managed to turn around and summon some sort of water barrier, but Thalion smashed through it and, with one bite, ended the struggle.

The slaves looked at him in absolute horror. "Ah, damn," he thought. "All that planning on how to kill the guy, and I completely forgot I’d have to expose my abilities."

"Everyone, get over here!" he shouted at the slaves, still in his shadowstalker form.

The slaves were frozen in shock but now appeared confused, mixed with a lot of fear.

"Come on, I don’t have all day. Don’t you want to be free?" he urged.

He tapped the slaver’s spatial ring with one of his claws, trying to transfer it to his own spatial ring, and to his surprise, it worked. He then put it away again, though the slaves didn’t seem to notice anything.

They slowly moved towards him, and one of the older men, with fear in his eyes, spoke up. "If you’re going to kill us, just get it over with."

"As I said, I’m not here to kill you," Thalion replied, now a bit annoyed. "From the shackles, I thought you were slaves. Can’t you use something that guy owned to free yourselves?"

"No, we can’t," a younger man answered, his voice full of sorrow. "That man was just one of their stronger guards. He doesn’t have the keys."

"Did you try to break the shackles open?" Thalion asked, feeling the situation worsening.

"Yes, but it takes a long time, and an alarm will be sent to the owner when the shackles are damaged," the man explained.

"How long do you need to break them open?" Thalion asked. After all, the city was pretty far away, nearly an hour’s travel time.

"Close to an hour, but we can’t use skills on the shackles. They’ll just absorb the mana and get even stronger," one of the women added, her tone hopeless.

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"So, if you start now, you’ll be free in roughly two hours?" Thalion clarified.

"Yes, but they’ll send people to catch us, and then they’ll drown us slowly in front of all the other slaves to make an example," the man said, his voice trembling with fear.

"How many guards did they send last time someone tried to escape?" Thalion asked, hoping it wasn’t too many.

"The last time, they sent three guards," the woman from before replied.

"Well, this could be tricky," Thalion muttered. "But if it’s found out that your guard has died, you’ll be punished either way, right?"

"They’ll probably use us to catch one of those big fish," one of the younger women began crying. She was probably just around 18 years old.

"Then you’d better start now, but only one at the beginning," Thalion advised. "If they’re checking the signals, maybe they’ll send three guards at first and later another batch. That’ll give me time to recover between kills. By the way, who is your owner?" he asked, now in a much better mood.

The group just stood there with open mouths until the older man spoke up. "We’re all owned by Lady Nerissa Selwyn. Her family is one of the three that rule the city."

"Well, start breaking open the shackles. Oh, but before I forget, put all the flowers you’ve gathered into this spatial ring," Thalion said, pointing to the ring on the ground with one claw. "And while we’re at it, what stats do those flowers improve?"

For a few seconds, no one said anything. Then the old man spoke up again. "I don’t think it improves any stat. I overheard a conversation where someone said it would boost the darkness affinity, but I don’t know what that means."

"No worries, it's time to begin. Either you die today, or you live your life, doing whatever your heart desires," Thalion announced, attempting to give an inspiring speech. It seemed to work well enough, as they quickly started moving.

He placed the guard's spatial ring into his own. It felt a bit strange, but since it worked, there were no complaints. "One last thing," he added, "if we get separated, head that way," he said, motioning toward Kael's camp.

With that, he disappeared into the forest's undergrowth. He planned to meet the guards halfway, so even if he failed to kill them, it would at least slow them down, giving the slaves extra time to escape.

After finding a suitable spot for an ambush, about 15 meters up in a tree where he could oversee the area, Thalion jumped down and emptied his spatial ring of all the flowers he'd collected. It was a mountain of flowers, at least 3 meters high. "Damn, I’d better be quick," he thought as he activated verdant consumption.

It took him over 20 minutes to consume every single flower, and the effects were interesting. He wasn’t sure if it was his imagination, but his fur seemed darker—or maybe it was just the surroundings. Whatever it was, there didn’t seem to be any negative effects, so he jumped back up into the tree. It wouldn’t be long until the first guards arrived.

He lay down and waited for about 10 minutes before the first guards appeared. To his relief, they were just guards. They wore the typical blue robes with emblems, and none of them had drawn their weapons. Unfortunately, they were out of reach, and the branches here weren’t thick enough to allow him to move from tree to tree without being noticed.

He slowly descended to the ground when they were out of sight and began following them. Another problem was that, for some reason, they had sped up and were now sprinting towards the slaves. It would be hard to launch a surprise attack on them in broad daylight like this. "Screw it," he thought, moving at full speed to close the gap between them.

A few moments later, he leaped at the rightmost guard, but the man must have sensed him because he completely dodged the attack. This was bad; without the guard to stop his momentum, Thalion flew 5 meters further, and when he turned back, both guards had drawn their swords.

They charged at him, and Thalion circled slowly to the left, hoping they’d end up blocking each other while quickly identifying them.

Human Level 24

Human Level 25

They were strong. The one on the left even fired ice shards at him. It was time to step it up.

Pushing his body to the limit, Thalion turned and bit at one of the guards, but the man used a movement skill to dodge. Worse, the guard slashed his leg with a swipe of his sword. Now, the other guard was closing in. Thalion tried to leap at him as well, but the man used a water-based movement skill to glide aside and managed to wound him again, this time leaving an ice shard lodged in his side.

This was bad. shadowstalker was powerful in stealth attacks or quick overpowering, but this fight was turning into a tough one. He might need to change forms.

The good news was that his passive skill was slowly healing him. The guards pressed their advantage, trying to flank him from both sides. Thalion feigned an attack on the left guard, then suddenly spun around and charged at the other guard with full speed.

It worked perfectly. The guard was in the middle of conjuring another water spell and couldn’t react fast enough. Thalion used savage bite, his fangs surrounded by a black shroud as he bit through the man.

But the other guard didn’t hesitate. He slashed Thalion's hind legs with two serious cuts. Thalion was slower now, and it was impossible to get close, the moment he did, the guard dodged and struck back.

The remaining guard even started to charge stronger spells, but Thalion was still quick enough to dodge those. When the guard closed in again, Thalion shifted into his human form and activated tectonic slam. The guard was so surprised by the transformation that he failed to dodge in time and was thrown to the ground.

Thalion activated mana blade, sending a sharp blue slash from his sword that severed the guard's head. He quickly used blood harvest to drain the corpses of all their blood. The sanguine thorn savored it, even healing his wounds, which was definitely a new discovery for Thalion. He stored the corpses in his spatial ring and returned to his spot as shadowstalker, waiting for the next prey to arrive.