Path to Transcendence

Chapter 728: Are We Sure He's the Good Guy?

Apparently, they were all from various parts of the region. These men had kidnapped them from villages and towns. They had used the women in their party to lure the girls before snatching them. They’d been told that they would be sold to various parties.

When he heard this, he took a dark look at the two women. He could understand the men doing something like this. They seemed like scumbags, but women helping other men do this to other young girls was another kind of despicable.

It must have finally hit them that they were safe, and he watched with an uncomfortable expression while they broke down in tears. He gave them time alone and even took out some food for them to eat. They didn’t seem like they’d gotten much to eat during these past several days.

He was worried about the little boy, but the girls took care of that. They immediately started to dote on him, feeding him food while tears dripped from his eyes.

The only ones who weren’t crying were the beastkin girl and the elf. Or half-elf. Julius still didn’t know yet and thought it might be rude to ask. He also had no idea how old she was. She appeared in her teens, but if she had elven heritage, she could be several decades old. She was also the only person amongst them who was at Tier 4. Which might have been a big hint.

Though he noticed that she must have only recently advanced. Her Authority was quite weak. Not weak in the sense of being substandard, but as if she had only just gotten it and hadn’t done much with it yet.

“What are you looking for?” he asked the elvish girl when he saw her searching the bodies of the unconscious men.

“The storage ring they took from me,” she said after a brief moment of hesitation. Her voice was quite bewitching; it had a very soft and melodic tone to it.

He nodded. As a Tier 4, it would make sense that she would have a storage ring of her own.

“What’s your name?” he asked curiously.

She furrowed her brows before looking at him with her bright green eyes that were peeking from underneath her long blonde hair. “It’s Elaria,” she finally said.

He nodded. “Nice to meet you, Elaria. I take it that there are people looking for you?”

She froze, and her eyes took on a steely quality. “Why do you say that?”

“Just a guess. I overheard them talking about people looking for you guys and assumed they were talking about you more than the others.”

“Why’s that?”

“You’re an elf, aren’t you? And you’re the only Tier 4 here, so I assume that matters,” he said with a shrug.

“I’m only a half-elf. There are very few blood elves outside of Alelion,” she said this last part with a frown for some reason.

“So who’s looking for you then? Your family?”

She narrowed her eyes and stared at him. “You know, it’s hard to trust someone who covers his face.”

“True, but I also saved you all,” he pointed out.

“Maybe, or maybe you are here for a different reason.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

“Coincidence.”

She laughed softly. “Coincidence?”

He nodded. “I was just camping out by the creek when I sensed them,” he said with a point at the unconscious pile of bodies.

Elaria was interrupted by whatever they were about to say when the beastkin girl walked up to them with deeply creased lines in her forehead. “What are we going to do now, Elaria? Where are we going to go? We have no idea where we are.”

“Calm down, Teresia. Maybe he could help us with that,” Elaria said with a glance at Julius.

He shrugged. “I can help you all get to Goldmere if that’s what you want. But what about your people who are looking for you? Wouldn’t it be easier if we found them?”

Elaria chewed on her bottom lip. “Maybe, that is, if we can find them. I have no idea where they might be.”

“Who are they? Is there a way to contact them?”

“Perhaps, but I’ll need to find my ring to do that,” she replied.

He nodded once and began to help her with the search for the ring. And fortunately, it didn’t take long for them to find it. One of the women had it inside their robes, tucked away. When she got her hands on it, Elaria took out what looked like a communicator. It took a little bit of time, but it seemed like she finally managed to make contact with another person.

Julius wasn’t able to hear what she was discussing with them, but from the looks of it, she looked relieved.

“They are looking around for us, but since we don’t know where we are in relation to Goldmere, it's hard for them to find us. We are going to meet them at the edge of the city.”

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“Who are they?” Julius asked again.

Elaria looked at him. “They’re friends,” she said simply.

Julius didn’t know what to think about that, but since it didn’t seem like any of them had been lying to him about what was happening so far, he decided to trust her, albeit cautiously. He did end up going over to one of the men who was stirring awake.

He dragged him away from the others and propped him against a tree.

“What were you doing with those girls?” Julius asked calmly.

The man was a bit woozy, but that didn’t stop him from spitting directly at Julius. A bit of kinetic energy and aura stopped the spit from actually hitting him, and instead, it was flung back straight into the man’s eye.

“Don’t do that again,” Julius warned. “I didn’t kill you or your friends, but if you don’t want me to change my mind, you'd better start explaining what you were doing with all of those girls.”

“Screw you,” the man said with an angry grunt.

Julius nodded as if this was expected and slapped the man in the head, knocking him out once again. He walked back out of the woods, grabbed another man who seemed close to waking up, and took him back behind the trees. The girls and lone boy were staring at him with complicated expressions. They had seen him drag the man with him before, and now saw him taking another one with him.

He met their gazes and shrugged before dragging the man by the leg to where his comrade was.

Julius gave the man a little shock to wake him up. When he awoke, he responded very similarly to the other man. He even tried to spit at Julius, but just like he did with the last guy, he bundled up the saliva and shoved it straight back into his eyes.

“Why did you take these girls? Were you planning to sell them as slaves?” he asked calmly.

A bunch of obscenities that he would rather not repeat followed, and Julius was forced to abruptly stop their little discussion with a swift kick to the head.

Once again, he came out of the woods alone. He whistled a merry tune as he innocently walked by the girls. By this time, they had all collectively turned to stare at him. He ignored their slightly judgmental stares and, this time around, decided to drag one of the women out.

He heard the girls whispering while he did this.

“Are we sure he’s a good guy?”

“How do we know he’s not going to try and kidnap us?” another asked.

“Is this a good time to start running?” the little boy asked Elaria, already stepping backward towards the edge of the trees.

One of the girls brought him into a hug, whispering things in his ear.

Julius pouted and went over to the woman, jolting her awake. She seemed quite out of it and was required to give her the smallest bit of healing magic to fully recover. She wouldn’t know it since she was barely awake in the first place.

This time, he tried something a little different. He threw the cloak more over his head and let his aura spread out a few feet from his skin, unrestricted. He let the ruinous effect really seep into the woman’s skin, but not enough to hurt her. Just enough to pressure her spirit.

So when she awoke, unlike the man from before, she didn’t immediately scream at him. Rather, she looked petrified as he stared at her with glowing red eyes from his mask.

“Who are you?” she shouted and tried to scramble backward, but he was holding her still with kinetic energy.

He didn’t say a word. He simply stared at her emotionlessly and waited for her to quiet down all on her own. The entire area was sealed with a silencing barrier he threw up beforehand.

Funnily enough, he didn't have to ask any questions before she started to offer information of her own volition.

“I had nothing to do with any of those men. They forced me to help them and threatened to slit my throat if I didn’t,” she said quite convincingly.

He might have believed her, but her aura was fluctuating in a manner that had him believe she was lying. Not to mention that the girls said otherwise, and he had also heard her speaking to some of the men with familiarity. It certainly didn’t seem like someone being forced to help them would act.

He leaned forward so that his nose was almost pressed up against hers. He continued to stare deeply at her while his aura enveloped her from all sides.

“Who?” he finally asked softly.

She swallowed nervously, and he could hear her heart pounding in her chest. His aura was really pressuring her.

“I don’t know who. All I know is that it's for a rich person. They offered a lot of money for the girl.”

“The elf?”

She nodded fearfully. “They didn’t tell me why, though.”

This time, Julius was almost a hundred percent sure she was lying about this, but just as he was about to question her further, he felt a small blimp off in the distance. It wasn’t just small, either; it was moving fast.

He immediately went into action. He overloaded the woman with his aura, knocking her unconscious, then flooded his body with mana and kinetic energy.

He realized that it wasn’t heading towards him; it was heading towards the group of girls. He cursed and wove together a [Void Step], crossing over the boundaries of the void and reappearing in front of the elven girl. He was just in time, too. A person dressed in all black clothes had just managed to wrap their hands around Elaria’s waist and was about to snatch her away when he got there.

A razor-edged mana formed over the side of his hand, and he sliced downwards. The mysterious attacker reacted quite swiftly, and a hardened shell of mana appeared around their arms, protecting them from the sharpened mana.

However, that wasn’t the only thing to worry about. Julius put a lot of kinetic energy into the blow, and the force of it reverberated through their armored shell. He felt something in their arm crack, and they let out a soft grunt, letting go of Elaria.

Julius was forced to avoid the invisible blade of wind that tried to remove his head from behind. It may have been invisible to his normal sight, but his senses had undergone a change, and so he saw the telltale glimmer of mana.

He ducked underneath and closed the distance, throwing a compact uppercut straight into their ribcage. A hand tried to intercept, but once again, his strength was too much for them, and he blasted through it. He knocked them several feet backward, and they managed to stay on their feet, but he was already advancing, feinting the overhead right hand. They fell for it and took an off-balance step backward. Then, before they could realize their mistake, he tackled their left leg with both arms.

He wrapped both arms around their thighs and got a very tight hold of them. His aura was being deflected by their Authority, so he had to immobilize them the old-fashioned way. But this and their speed told him he was dealing with someone actually skilled, unlike the group he had recently immobilized.

He sensed a dagger appear in their hands, and it was driven down into his back. A shell of his own mana was quickly formed over his skin, and the blade bounced off.

He then lifted the person by the leg and attempted to slam them into the ground. But rather than doing that, he felt the mass in his arms vanish and turn into a wispy white smoke.

He didn’t sense any spatial energy, but rather he suspected it was an intangibility skill of some kind. Unfortunately, before he was able to get hold of them again, they had already backed up and were trying to escape.

He chuckled to himself, and he took off after them. He loved a good chase.