Depthless Hunger

"Son, if you know what's good for you, you'll turn around and forget you saw anything." One of the larger smugglers lifted a sword in his direction, in case there was any confusion. "This has got nothing to do with you. And we're not selling, if that's what you're thinking."

Kai kept a smile on his face and he faced the group. All of the smugglers were in the same general range except the leader, who had a Total Power of just over 20. He double-checked that there was no one else lying in wait, but it looked like he was only facing the half-dozen smugglers. It should be possible to neutralize them for interrogation without too much risk.

"Would you really just let me go?" Kai asked. He raised his hands to keep them away from his weapons, acting nervous in case they weren't using their own spiritual sight on him.

"This is none of your business. Get lost."

"I'm just wondering how you can kidnap people this close to Monskon City. Surely the Hunters Guild doesn't allow that."

One of the other smugglers laughed. "Nah, this is some foreign bitch. Not like Krysal or somewhere. Really foreign. Her mana is all fucked up, so w-"

The leader cuffed him alongside the head and glowered at Kai. "You from one of the other gangs? Listen, this is our personal business. Just making a little profit."

"I'm going to have to ask you to let her go." Kai smiled blandly and drew an arrow. The smugglers should have noticed that it was made of solid steel, but they just laughed.

"Farmboy playing hero? Really? You might think you're hot, getting a Class, but let me tell you: your Class is shit. And anyway, you don't want this bitch, trust me."

That, more than any of the threats, threw Kai off. He slowly realized the reason all the smugglers were so confident: their spiritual sight was a weakened form and they could only get a general sense for his Class. For the first time, being a simple Laborer was to his advantage. As the chuckles died down, a few of them began to look a bit nervous.

"Wait a minute, boss... we had guards, didn't we? How did he get-"

Because that smuggler was the first to figure it out, Kai shot him first. He sent the arrow into the man's hips, aiming for a wound that would be disabling but not lethal. The group roared and began charging him, thinking that they could rush him before he could shoot too many of them.

And they were right, he could only loose two more arrows before they arrived. But that was when things turned really bad for them.

Dropping the bow, Kai took them on with his bare fists. They had knives, but they were so much slower and weaker than him that it was no contest. All their experience was knifing rivals in dark alleys, not fighting stronger opponents, much less monsters. Compared to all of the enormous beasts that had been battering him lately, taking down a few thugs was a stroll through the park.

Once they were all down, Kai moved to make sure those on the ground were knocked out. They all had a few Physique Levels, so he'd known they could take a beating, but one had died after hitting his head at the wrong angle. While investigating, he noticed that there was a shallow but long cut along his shoulder. In the fighting, he hadn't even noticed.

As soon as he started paying attention to it, of course the wound began smarting painfully. Kai glowered as he rubbed the flesh around the cut. Even the weak Classes of these smugglers were strong enough that they could be lethal to him, had they been more skilled or more organized. He really needed to get back to the city and reach the next major Physique rank, but first he had higher priorities.

When there was only one smuggler left conscious, Kai jerked him into the air and gave him a smile. "Alright, let's try this again. Just what are you doing here?"

"Honest, we just ran into her." The smuggler spat some blood onto the floor and grimaced. "Seemed like she was running from someone. She's a tough bitch, but something's wrong with her. Half-dead most of the time."

"Then why hold her? For your cruel games?"

"S-s-she was that way when we found her! Honest! She's always bleeding all over the place for no reason."

Kai briefly glanced over at the young woman, who gave no sign of paying any attention to anything that was happening. The skin he could see was utterly covered in scars and twisted flesh, and the bottom of her cage was stained almost black. It did strain credulity that even these smugglers would torture her for no reason, but that raised the same question.

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"You didn't answer me." Kai shook the smuggler a few times. "Why are you holding her?"

"Something's wrong with her mana. Really wrong, nothing like anything I've seen. That's all I know, honest! The boss was finding a way to extract it from her, sell in the black market."

"Black market?"

"You know, in Monskon City. I d-don't know anything about that. P-please, you gotta believe me. I just grew up here, I didn't want to-"

Kai struck the smuggler in the back of the head and dropped his body. He would need to investigate that later, but he doubted that these smugglers really knew all that much about it. They might be a local power, but they were no one in the overall scheme of things. Their captive mattered more.

"Are you alright?" Kai tried to speak gently as he approached the cage. The young woman didn't answer him, but she did stare at him with dark eyes.

Now that he got a better look at her, Kai had to swallow a wince. Her flesh was completely covered in long scars, many of them weeping blood that looked almost black. There were trails of it from her eyes, mouth, and ears as well, merging with the network of scars. One of the guards had spoken about her vomiting as well, so it seemed she was deeply sick. Someone must have hacked at the hair on her head, because there were only a few ragged tufts amid the scars.

"I'd like to help, but I guess I need to find the key." Kai wished that he had a fancy skill to cut through the cage, but he didn't have a good way to break the metal and that would probably just scare her. Fortunately, it didn't take him long to find a key ring on the leader. "Here we go, I'll have you out in a second. What's your name?"

She spoke quietly and he didn't understand a single word. Kai didn't think he'd even heard that language before and had no idea if she'd said her name or not. Despite her utterly wrecked appearance, she had a surprisingly feminine voice.

"I guess you don't speak the language. Do you understand me?"

In response she uttered another string of incomprehensible syllables. No sign of a nod or other gesture.

"Then I'm probably babbling at you, aren't I? Well, I hope it's a comforting babble instead of just nonsense. Opening up the cage seems impossible to misinterpret, right? Yeah, let's start there."

He unlocked her cage and briefly tensed, just in case she didn't understand. But the woman only slumped over onto her side and expelled dark bile from her mouth. She looked like she couldn't stand on her own, much less attack anyone.

When he gently touched her shoulder, she barely had the strength to flinch. She gripped his arm when he offered support, though, so he guided her out of the cage to one of the smugglers' chairs. Along the way, he realized that her arm felt like silk wrapped around bone. No one should be this thin and he wondered again how she had come to this state.

Along the way he also took the opportunity to examine her, and what he saw made him pause. His spiritual sight revealed only a haze of unstable symbols, perhaps due to her illness. But he could get a sense for her soul, and he immediately knew that the smugglers had been wrong. She held power inside her, but it definitely wasn't mana. Instead of a crackling flame, it was more like flowing water. Just how far from home was she?

"Alright, here we go." Kai eased her into the chair and then backed away, since she seemed to dislike his touch. "That stuff must taste awful, so I imagine you need a drink. I don't know if they have anything other than beer, but I can look..."

"No..." Her voice came faintly, finally a word he could understand. She raised a trembling hand toward the other side of the room, then slumped back in her chair.

Kai looked in that direction and frowned, trying to figure out what she meant. There were a number of boxes, some of them open to reveal ordinary supplies. Eventually he spotted something more unusual: a treasury cube bound in mana-enhanced steel. That was definitely where the smugglers might keep more valuable goods, and he had the keys in his hand.

Inside, Kai hoped to find a treasure trove and was disappointed to find only a few sundry items. A jeweled dagger that was probably worth a decent number of Eagles, but nothing else stood out. Only while taking it out did Kai notice a bundle of cloth. The material itself was finer than anything he'd seen before, a thin blue garment with a cloud-like pattern printed on it. Wrapped inside, he discovered a sack and a narrow box with ornate gilding he'd never seen before.

"These are your things, right?" Kai raised them for her to see and the woman vomited more black bile in response.

He didn't want to snoop through her things and lose more trust, but he examined them as he approached. The box contained a number of pills, larger and darker than the overdrive pill. Definitely not Krysali, but likely something similar. Probably the medicine she needed.

"Here you go, is this what you need?"

When he set the items down in front of her, she began struggling to open them. Unsure if she wanted help, Kai decided to back away. After he saw her successfully swallow one of the pills, he headed out to deal with the two guards he'd left outside.

Fortunately, they still lay where he'd left them. The whole affair hadn't taken very long, but he didn't want to risk other members of the gang noticing and interfering. He briefly considered that the absence of guards would be a problem and decided that there was nothing he could do about that, so he simply dragged the unconscious guards inside.

Where he saw the woman cutting the throats of the fallen smugglers.

"Whoa, whoa, wait!" Kai dropped the bodies and moved closer to stop her. "We don't just kill criminals here, we need to bring them to justice."

She stared at him as she drew her knife across the throat of the last smuggler.

"And now we can't interrogate the rest of them." Kai sighed and took a step back. "I don't know what they did to you, but I wanted them alive. Sorry, I know you don't understand me, but we need to-"

"I understand you just fine," the woman said in perfectly clear Goralian, "but I do not care about your laws, and I will not submit to you."

An instant later she was across the room and her hand was closed around his throat. Her power flared and she smashed Kai through one of the tables to the floor.