237 Iron-Forged Traumas
Kaizer was impressed by that half-beast in front of his cage, but he chose to remain quiet. He didn’t know Luke, and he wasn’t going to start trusting him just for saying a few nice words.
Nevertheless, the eyes of the old man in front of the half-wolf sparkled at Luke’s words. Before he started counting, Luke opened the <Normal Inventory> and pulled out a bag of food, which he distributed to each of the nine caged people. Deep down, Luke feared that they were strong because of the experiments Vinigo had done on them and might try to attack him.
After they began to eat, they all became less risky with the half-wolf, so the old man began to explain in detail what occurred for them to get to Vinigo’s claws.
“We were all on a gigantic boat that was organized by the Flark Kingdom to send refugees to a town called Forge Hill because of the war. Altogether on the ship there were over two hundred people and no one knew whether or not the ship would make it across the sea to get here, the Skoll Kingdom.”
“Did you guys lose your way? Didn’t you have a compass?” Luke asked.
“If we had just docked the ship in the wrong place, we wouldn’t have ended up here. In the middle of the sea, our refugee ship was attacked by pirate ships…”
“Pirates?”
“Exactly, the worst nightmare for anyone who travels by sea. Damned men who have no mercy even for children, women or old people, and that was no different with us. I can’t tell you how many ships there were, but it was more than enough for them to trade us into the coastal towns of some cities on the Hati Continent, which were probably crazy for workers to supply the demand of the Great War.”
“But the Hati Continent is many months away from travel, how long ago did this happen to you?”
A thin woman in a cage parallel to Kaizer’s was the one who answered this time. “The attack on the refugee ship? Well, that happened a year or two ago. It’s hard to have a sense of time when all we’ve done is beg every day that the next one someone will show up to help us. Who knows, maybe you are that person, but if you’re going to take us as slaves, I’ll pray that I’m a work slave this time.”
Upon hearing these words from the woman, Luke took just a single step to the side and faced her with a serious countenance. He then raised his right hand and made it as sharp as a dagger.
When the woman saw Luke’s arm rise, she regretted opening her mouth. The stern expression of the half-wolf made her think that she would be punished at that moment, after all this is what Vinigo always did, when one of them uses slightly more affronting words or tones, he would punish them with increasingly stronger slaps to the face.
He told the slaves that he only didn’t punch them so as not to hurt their fists to preserve his image as a calm teacher.
In reality, this movement of the right hand rising was like a trauma for all those caged people, so that when Luke made this gesture, everyone cringed and changed expression. Even the old man who was talking to Luke believed that he would hit the woman, but he kept quiet, because he learned from Vinigo that he should never interfere in a punishment, because whoever interfered was taken out of the cage and never came back.
However, Luke’s intention was as normal as possible, which anyone would do in that situation. He raised his hand and cut through the bars of the woman’s cage. Tinncc~
Watching the iron bars of her cage fall to the ground, the very thin woman almost couldn’t believe her eyes.
“There, now you are free. I won’t make any of you my slave or anything like that, I’m sorry if I made it sound like that. I just have important people to protect, and the people who did this to you may be connected to people who want to hurt the ones I love, so I wanted to know, but I guess maybe you guys can’t help me as much as I thought.” Luke said and then began to cut the big ones off from all the slaves.
The truth was that the woman’s words made Luke think better about his first decision to keep them locked up until he warned Vinigo and the other guards.
‘Perhaps there is no reason to fear them. If they were strong like Vinigo, they certainly wouldn’t be trapped here yet. Besides, how can the Smakusa be connected with slaves? These people were probably sold with blindfolds on their eyes and gags in their mouths.’ The half-wolf considered.
“Thank you, thank you very much!” Everyone gave thanks as they gathered around Luke.
Luke was already out of hope of getting information from them, so he just guided them to the top of Vinigo’s office.
The vice-principal’s eyes widened when he saw the slaves, and he quickly ordered the guards to stop searching the office and begin to hold them. When all the slaves had left the premises accompanied by the guards and thanking Luke, he bid them farewell with a sad smile. He couldn’t even imagine what horrible things those people had been through and still managed to smile.
Once everyone was gone, Luke closed his face again.
“Luke, I swear to you there is no way those slaves could have been brought in by the main staircase and there are no parallel staircases.” Namor tried to explain himself.
“Calm down, vice principal. I know very well that it’s impossible because about a hundred guards take rounds in shifts during the night, including many of them are in these underground stairwells… From what I’ve studied about that land, there used to be an old sewer system that was sealed off when the new one was built right?” Luke questioned.
At that moment, Namor felt like he was the dumbest man in the world, because he had totally forgotten about it, after all it had been over a hundred years since the renovation.
Then, the vice principal put his right hand on his chin and poked Luke’s belly with his left arm, “Ohhh! You never forget to show me that you’re really a badass~. I’ll send a group of guards out early tomorrow morning to prepare to search for some entrance at the bottom.”
“All right. I haven’t looked, but it shouldn’t be easy, there’s a rotten smell permeating the whole place. By the way, have you found anything relevant?”
At that moment, the bastard smile came off Namor’s face. “Actually, I found something pretty bad, a slave purchase contract that was hidden in a fake book…” Then Namor pulled the yellowed sheet of parchment from inside his overcoat and passed it to Luke. “I don’t know why he kept it, but surely the signature contained in that sheet will generate a scandal throughout Oukiwa should the information leak out.”