Chapter 46 | The Unaccounted 6

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Alisha was standing above the traffickers’ hideout. It was the husk of an abandoned dungeon. The previous Dungeon Master was long dead and its dungeon had been forgotten to time. It made sense for the traffickers to occupy the dungeon as they would be able to use the vast number of rooms to imprison their slaves without being discovered by authorities. The mana thread from the dungeon’s bricks blocked almost all sensory information to prevent detection, just like her own dungeon.

However, they knew the risk of being discovered. Which was why they planted bombs in strategic points to collapse the whole dungeon in case that happened. But disabling them shouldn’t be a problem since she was a Dungeon Master. A dungeon without its master to command it was up for the taking for any Dungeon Master to make a new connection with the dungeon.

As if the dungeon itself was an extension of her will, it was as if the mana wiring was the veins in her new body. All of this sensation was from touching the entrance of the dungeon beneath her feet. She made the connection unconsciously and was now the new owner of the dungeon. It was calling for her…

When she took Guide’s dungeon for yourself, she had to use her Dungeon Field ability to override the existing mana thread in the dungeon to take the territory by force. She didn’t need to use too much mana because the field already existed and unpowered.

Jeromy was shocked by this development. He had never considered that the trafficking ring was so large and organized before. As the extent of this criminal enterprise became apparent, the situation had become very grim. This was the result Commander Dustin wanted and no matter the outcome of this mission, he would surely use this to his advantage. He had to prepare for the inevitability now. The Association’s hold on Riverside was now at risk.

Jeromy pulled Selina aside and whispered something in her ear that only she could hear. Selina was wide-eyed at his command but nodded and proceeded with the telepathy call back to Riverside.

“Alisha,” Alan called out to her. “Are you listening?” Oh, she was in a trance for a second.

“I’m sorry. I was distracted…” She said, trying to appear unfazed by the mind-trip she just experienced. Everyone looked very concerned for her. She was still very weak from her fight with Alan and Lycus so it must have shown on her face. “What were you talking about?”

Lycus said, “We’re wondering how we’re going to do this. Should we breach now or go back for reinforcements?”

“I just called for reinforcements from my unit. They could be here in a couple of hours,” Jeromy explained. “But we don’t have the time. The traffickers could do a lot in that amount of time and I don’t want the victims to suffer more than they have already.”

“I believe I can help you raid this dungeon,” Alisha said.

“I see. You’re a Dungeon Master so you should be able to control the dungeon.”

“This is a dungeon? Then why didn’t we know about a dungeon this close to Riverside?” Lycus asked.

“It must be very old,” Selina responded. With the passage of time, everything would be forgotten. They must’ve not cared enough to remember where the dungeon was after they took down the Dungeon Master. “Alisha, can you tell us what and who is in the dungeon?”

“Yes, I can. Just a moment, please.” She closed her eyes and searched through the expansive stretch of the labyrinth underground. Her Monster Sight was brought beyond her range limit to view everything in the dungeon. “There are eighteen traffickers in the dungeon with… a one-hundred and thirty in the cells. One-hundred sixteen females, fourteen males. All are humans.”

What they heard made them sick and disgusted. Jeromy and Selina seemed this expected this but were still caught off guard by the scale. As for Alan and Lycus, they were visibly upset like they could travel the ends of Theia to kill the criminals. It was a bit frightening.

For these four people to have this high sense of justice concerned Alisha. There were things that she had done that they might consider extremely unethical. She didn’t care much for justice, what mattered was the justice she made for herself. She had proven that when she was attacked by the Imperials and Inquisitors.

“Evil demons… As heroes, we will purify the world of the darkness in the name of justice!” Alan was about to smash down his sword and bring the dungeon’s roof down.

“Calm down, Alan! We’re all upset but we need to think this through,” Jeromy yelled at Alan to stop and put down his sword.

“They have bombs! If they hear us, they’re all dead! I can control the dungeon from the outside, here. If you give me time, I can disarm the bombs.”

They agreed and calmed down to a whisper. To disarm the bombs, Alisha had to dig through the dungeon’s walls with her slime and get to each bomb.

There were several access points for which she could connect to the dungeon from the surface so they decided to hide in the brush for the time being. She saw that the dungeon had another entry point. It was connected from the boss room to the surface where a small ranch was built.

The traffickers were clever to build a ranch to mask their trafficking but weren’t smart enough to protect it from monsters it seemed. The ranch was in disrepair and was serving as a rest stop of some kind. With the increased monster activity, it probably wouldn’t last much longer.

“Now what?” She asked Jeromy. Everyone looked at him for a solution.

“We’ll have to raid the dungeon and make sure none of the other criminals see us as we take them out. If they discover us too soon, they could call for reinforcements and hold others as hostages. Alisha can be our eyes and ears in the dungeon. We need to prevent any more suffering,” Jeromy explained this plan which was well-received despite the difficulty.

“This plan sounds agreeable,” Lycus spoke, showing off his confidence without appearing arrogant.

“I also agree. Those evil-doers won’t know what hit them!” Alan made his usual declaration.

“Selina, you can stay out here and keep watch with Alisha,” Jeromy said. Selina nodded in agreement.

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It was decided that the girls wait outside while the boys went inside and take care of the traffickers. To make sure no one escaped without them knowing, the girls repositioned themselves near the rest stop where Alisha found the other access point to the dungeon.

It’d be to their advantage if no one in the inn noticed them because they didn’t know who was friend or foe. This secondary entrance was based in a horse stable. This was probably built to disguise a stagecoach carrying slaves as those a wagon from the rest stop.

The horses in the stable noticed their presence but were keeping their mouths shut. From the stable’s doors, they could see the large rest stop house with some activity within it.

Jeromy, Alan, and Lycus were about to breach the dungeon. For this operation to go smoothly, they would have to rely on Alisha to provide them with the traffickers’ locations and help with obstacles and distractions to prevent their discovery.

Until the traffickers were all killed, they couldn’t afford to waste time trying to help the slaves. Jeromy wanted to emphasize this point to Alan. Even if the slaves were bleeding or dying, they had to move forward. Alan nodded in agreement with a serious face.

“Okay, I’m opening the entrance,” Alisha said. The three ran in with their weapons ready. The plate on the forest floor opened up like a mouth trying to swallow them. Once they made their way to the bottom, they saw a hallway that was lite bright with mana torches but kept the cells in the dark.

There were additions to the rooms of the original inhabitants and added a large metal cell door with only a small window to peep in. Those in the cells were quiet as they heard the three ran past their cells. There were many boxes hoarded and stacked against the walls and within other rooms used for storage.

The cold from the ambient temperature kept the contents cold. Alisha could see through these containers and they contained unspeakable evil.

“The first one is on the next left.”

Jeromy, light on his feet, turned the corner and confronted a man-eating a sandwich while sitting at a make-shift table. The surprised man didn’t have time to react or to grab his rifle before Jeromy shot him in the forehead. The sound was suppressed by his magic. One by one the traffickers fell. It was too easy. Before they knew what was coming, they were either shot with arrows by Lycus, sliced in half by Alan, or shot by Jeromy. All of this, they did without hesitation.

Near the top level, there was a room for processing blood and flesh. There, a slave’s blood would be drained and stored for future consumption. And some would not last long under the conditions of the dungeon and die. They would be taken there to be butchered. Alisha knew this because this was happening right now.

A couple of weak-looking slaves were being held in the room’s holding cell, an elderly-looking man and a young woman. They both looked skinny. The man was missing a leg, likely amputated.

A trafficker was currently holding onto a sickly and skinny young boy forcefully while strapping the boy down. As soon as the restraints were in place, the boy froze and seemed to have given up struggling.

The criminal was about the insert the needle into the boy’s arm when the woman cried out, “Please! Don’t take from him! He’ll die!”

The scum replied, “And who’s going to make me reconsider?”

Times like these reminded Alisha of how perverted some males were. She was lucky to never had the chance to meet one for herself. Alisha had to do things discreetly, provided she would be able to do anything. There were no trap triggers in the dungeon for that room. It was poor craftsmanship by the previous owner. Every room in her own dungeon had at least two traps.

Alisha needed access to that room so she used her slime that she burrowed into the dungeon beforehand to remove the bombs. Just having a slime tendril attack the criminals was too unusual for the victims not to be frightened so she had to make it seem like she was part of the rescue team. Luckily, she had some freelancer and mercenary meatsuits.

The man suddenly splattered on the wall as the bullet that entered him exploded and flew his remains towards the nearby wall. The other two men were already dead as the woman opened her eyes due to the unusual silence.

In front of her, standing tall was a freelancer man in his early thirties with short brown hair and hazel eyes. What was the name of the freelancer leader who saved Yuli in Talleum but died from the gargoyle attack? Elliot was his name, Elliot Claudel.

Alisha promised Yuli to hand over the bodies of the freelancers for a proper burial but that didn’t stop her from duplicating their bodies to make meatsuits. The meatsuit which saved the boy was like her slimes roaming Riverside, they all had a bit of her soul essence to connect to her through her channel in the Network. But they seemed a lot more sophisticated due to their neuronal activity.

They were extensions of her own will, an army she could call forth at any time. This was the first field test outside of her dungeon’s test room of her concept and she was quite pleased with the results. Elliot and two other meat drones then left the room without a word.

There were only two traffickers left and they were with a carriage underneath Selina’s and Alisha’s feet. As Alisha sensed them, she could feel their anxiety. The two were confused to see the switch on the wall not working. It was for the bombs. They were planning to blow the dungeon to bits as they made their escape.

Their doom arrived in the form of arrows piercing through their limbs. They screamed and couldn’t move their bodies. Lycus’ arrows destroyed their nerve connections to their muscles and so they were limp on the ground. As Jeromy and Lycus tended to those in the carriage Alan stood above the incapacitated traffickers with an intimidating glare.

“You two! Where were you going to take these women?! Where were you planning to go?!” Alan was no-nonsense as he shouted and pointed his giant sword towards them.

“Fuck you! You overgrown sack of—,” The man never finished his sentence as his head rolled off his body. Alan’s sword was covered in blood and was positioning himself to kill the other man.

“I will not ask twice!” Alan threatened the trafficker. Unlike the other one, he was younger and more frightened of Alan as he sat helplessly on the cold ground.

“Port Gilles! We were headed to Port Gilles to sell them!!” The man screamed and begged for his life. The man calmed down as he saw Alan retracted his sword. The man didn’t notice Jeromy until the last moment of his life with a barrel pressed against his skull. Out of habit, Jeromy pulled the lever on his rifle and loaded another shell in the chamber, the empty cartridge flew out and fell to the ground.

With the traffickers defeated, Alisha opened the sliding trap door hidden in the stable. The trap door was the entire wooden floor in the stable, minus the pens. Alisha and Selina began to receive the kidnapped victims. The first ones to come out were those people unconscious in the carriage. Four unconscious women who were in a horrible state. They seemed to be drugged and placed in barrels.

The Phoenix militiamen Jeromy dispatched arrived an hour later. Alisha unlocked all the cells in the dungeons and everyone began helping the victims from their dark tombs. After the raid, Jeromy and his soldiers went to the inn and arrested the workers. They claimed to not be associated with the traffickers but their excuses were nothing but wind. There was no way they couldn’t have known.

Within a few hours, the area was filled with people. Along with the militiamen, Jeromy also brought a number of medics to check their conditions, including Tasha. Alisha was most interested in what was in the dungeon when she was connected to it.

There were many disturbing places, especially the room that she could only describe was a slaughterhouse. The barrels and containers stacked throughout the corridors were filled with human and animal body parts. Some were drained of blood and some were salted for consumption. The blood barrels were filled to the brim with some of them congealed into a viscous paste. The humans kept at this facility were used as cattle to drain them or to be sold off as slaves.

The vampires across the southern sea were the likely patrons of these black-market goods. The continent Arcasdia and the Rodani Federation was where most of the vampires resided. They worship the Old Gods under the Red Moon, Rodan. They required the blood of other humanoid species to sustain themselves. That was the way for centuries and they fought many wars against the elves and humans for cattle.

Despite their need for humanoid blood and their past relationship, the Vultians were allied with Rodani. This was because of the invention of a blood substitute, Rose Milk. It was manufactured by using the white flower of the Torulian Tree within the Elven Forest. It was imported into Arcasdia and so relationships with humans began to improve.

However, this didn’t mean that the transition to a blood substitute was easy. When the civil war concluded and the Empire fell, many vampires who clung to traditional ideals turned to the black market. Humanoid trafficking was one symptom of a wider problem that encompassed the vampiric race.