Returning from the auction house, we made it back to the Espinoza's and had a great dinner of enchiladas with mole sauce, which was apparently a sauce made with chocolate. It was as delicious as the concept of chocolate with enchiladas was weird. Along with the main course, we were served roasted corn with paprika, mayonnaise, feta cheese, lime, and cilantro.

All of the dishes were excellent and filled us with delicious homemade food, even better was the company of the Espinoza's and their 3 children. Julio was the oldest at 8 and kept asking to play with my summons. He had a look of awe when I let Ainz sit on his shoulder and even more so when Brutus let him ride on his back around the house, much to Esmerelda's exasperation. I could tell she wasn't actually upset over it judging by her mouth twitching in an almost smile that she must have been trying hard to keep down.

Jesus was the middle child at 6 and was mostly interested in drawing, which I often found him doing on the floor or the kitchen table with some crayons. He was about as good as you could expect from a 6-year-old, but Marco seemed proud of them all and placed the lot of them all over their fridge. He was a sweet little kid who seemed to be shy aside from presenting his drawings.

Lastly, was little Maria who was 5 years old and loved to be with her mother in the kitchen. She tried to help her cook food, but couldn't do much at her age. She seemed perfectly happy to be given some food to play with while her mother worked, and was as sweet as could be.

All of the kids liked to go outside and play in the neighborhood, and join their friends or play in the little garden that was off to one side of the street. All in all the family was friendly and welcoming as if we were one of their own.

We did our best to repay them by cleaning up, picking up groceries, playing with/watching the kids, etc... They were gracious hosts and it was only fair to help them out even if it was just little things.

....

It had been 3 days since getting back and we didn't much feel like going out to hunt monsters since we had plenty of money coming in from our ransacking of the tomb we stumbled upon. Not to mention the few valuable items we still held, a nice gold and sapphire necklace along with a plain silver ring with a small ruby studded within going to Esmerelda upon coming back to them.

She had been ecstatic, and Marco was happy that Esmerelda was happy. Things had gone on as usual with the Espinoza's until we received an alert on our watches calling for any and all summoners to locate and kill a group of kidnappers within the South American city. Alex and I were already gearing up to go out in search of the missing children and their kidnappers when Marco came frantically barging in.

We had to have him slow down and explain what had gotten him so worked up until he was finally able to tell us that the children had been taken while playing out in the neighborhood. This was communicated in between sobs and fists being slammed on tables in anger. We were equally outraged that not only did some men have the audacity to steal children, but that they stole the children we had grown so close to.

We at least had a direction to look for as Marco had seen men in dark cloaks leaving southwards from where his children had been playing, he had gone to fetch them for dinner when they were taken. Marco was the one that had sent out the alert and as the god had said, the men were immediately given a kill on sight order.

The problem was that we had no idea what they looked like, but we didn't need to know that if we could find the children they had with them. There were more than just Marco's children taken and they would have to be manually carried since living beings can't be stored in the watch's storage.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Speaking of, I still had the bandit's watches we had taken on our way to the city to loot through, but now was definitely not the time, I stored that little tidbit in the back of my mind for later.

With no more time to waste, we summoned mounts, with Marco and Alex on Violet and myself on Jotun, we stormed towards the southern gate. The planar gate to the monster plane would be blocked off by the summoner's guild since they always monitored who went in and out of the gate.

The kidnappers wouldn't want to go into that plane anyways since it was dangerous and none of their clientele would be within that plane. Humans always manage to disgust me, but there are just as many good people, but this was especially heinous.

Having had a terrible childhood myself, I didn't tolerate any harm or abuse to children, but these aren't any children, this time it was personal. When I caught up to those men, they would suffer for what the tried to do, I thought with a cold gleam in my eye that Alex seemed to match in equal fervor.

"Before we catch up to the men and start fighting, we should share what summons we have and what we can do so we don't get in each other's ways. I'll start since I asked, I have a poison drake which is who we're riding on, a death scythe mantis, an empress scorpion, and a harpy. The harpy is mostly for scouting, but the others are perfect for just about any fight" -Alexis

Marco decides to go next and tells us loudly through the wind passing by us, "I'm not much of a summoner since I only hunt enough to pay the bills, but I have a ballistic saguaro and a desert worm. My saguaro Barrote is the only real fighter, but the desert worm is good for scouting and distraction."

Deciding to speak up myself, I yell to them, "I've got an ice wyrm, a four-armed titanium ogre, Emperor scorpion, and a grim. They're great for fighting, but the grim can track. Once we get past the gate, bring out your kid's clothes that I asked you to bring so he can track them." I hoped my voice carried through, it should, considering that I was shouting and riding right alongside them. I would have to go a bit more in detail when we stopped at the gate, but for now, I think we got all of our basic info across.

5 minutes of fast riding got us to the gate where we would start our search, Marco brought out some of his kid's dirty clothes for Brutus to sniff while Alexis sent out Holly to search ahead from the sky. Our luck was good as the kidnappers were heading towards grasslands, where they would easily be seen if we properly tracked them.

If we didn't already know where they were going thanks to Marco spotting them, they might have gotten away scot-free. The god only declared that crimes against children punishable by death, but he wouldn't be the one to find them or enact justice, so now it was up to us to find the kids and their captors. I was holding in my rage for when we found the kidnappers, but once we had secured the kids, they wouldn't get off easy before dying.

Dying would be too easy for what they were probably going to use the kids for. I could only imagine that they had done something like this before but never got caught, which made me that much more determined to end their puny existence. Mira and I know well enough what kind of animals exist out there in the guise of humanity, but there would be no mercy for those that would harm children of all things.

After a few solid sniffs, Brutus was off veering SouthEast of the gate and keeping that trajectory. Seeing that he had obviously caught the scent, We hopped back on our respective mounts, with Marco still on Violet since the drake was bigger than my wyrm Jotun. We set off at a steady pace knowing that we would be able to catch up to them soon, but we needed our summons to be in the best shape possible since it was likely that we would be fighting many enemies who were summoners.

Our priority would be saving the children, so launching our surprise attack would be our best bet. Unfortunately, we were going to be entering a mostly flat area, so speed would be our only hope to surprise them and secure the kids safely.

We planned on summoning the less mobile summons right before engaging in combat. We'd assign one or two to protect the children while the rest fought off the kidnappers.

Speaking of summoning, I could hear some sounds behind us not too far away and saw a group of 6 adults riding their own summons towards us, and asked, "Do either of you know who these people are?"

Marco looked a little proud of himself and said, "I called in some of my friends after coming to get you since I thought we might need some backup. Why don't we wait up for them and strategize while we catch up to the children."

"That was good thinking Marco, more of us means the kids are safer, plus we don't know how many enemies we have to fight when we catch up to them. We'll stay here 'till they catch up."- Thomas