Chapter 21: Chapter 21 — Poor Children
We spent the following two days floating in our own little bubble. We wandered through every corner of Prusna, taking in the picturesque culture of the locals, devouring delicious food at the street stalls, and basically enjoying our newly official relationship to the fullest.
Samira looked more radiant than ever, and I couldn’t stop holding her hand, feeling like the luckiest guy in this entire new world.
However, peace never lasts long in an isekai.
On the third day, as we walked calmly down a somewhat more secluded alleyway, chatting and laughing about silly nonsense, someone crashed abruptly into my side.
"I-I’m so sorry!" exclaimed a small, trembling voice.
I spun around quickly and saw a little girl sprawled on the ground. Her appearance was heart-wrenching: she wore tattered rags, was dangerously thin, and—what churned my stomach the most—her face was covered in bruises and poorly healed wounds. Her eyes reflected absolute terror.
"Hey, easy now. Are you alright, little one?" I asked her gently, crouching down immediately to help her to her feet.
"Yes, sir... I’m really sorry. It wasn’t my intention, please don’t hit me!" she apologized at once, bowing her head completely and hunching her shoulders as if expecting an imminent blow.
Samira knelt beside me, her eyes fixed on the child’s marks of abuse. The tone of her voice shifted instantly to one of deep maternal concern:
"Little one... where are your parents? Who did this to you?" she asked, trying to stroke her cheek to instill some trust.
The girl flinched away from the contact, darting her gaze around in panic. Her eyes jumped from side to side, searching for an escape route.
"Child, if you need help, we can—" I began to say, reaching out my hand.
But the little girl didn’t even stay to hear me out. She pushed herself backward with startling agility and bolted at full speed, vanishing among the alleyways.
"Hal..." Samira called to me in a serious tone, pointing at my waist.
I checked instinctively, and a chill ran down my spine. The heavy pouch of gold Kalikas that Pain had handed me courtesy of the Saintess... was gone.
"Damn it, she robbed me. She did it right when we bumped into each other," I muttered, half impressed by her thieving skill and half worried. "You know what this means, don’t you?"
"I know," Samira nodded, and a dangerous spark flickered through her violet eyes.
I let out a deep sigh. I wanted to keep enjoying my date and the peaceful atmosphere of the village, but I’m not some heartless jerk who would just stand by with folded arms. A malnourished, brutally beaten little girl doesn’t steal a fortune in gold to buy candy. Someone was forcing her.
---
We followed the girl’s trail immediately, using my ether-enhanced senses. The path led us quickly toward the outskirts of Prusna, plunging into a dense mountainous forest that bordered the frontier.
It wasn’t the same woods where I usually trained with Domack and Dorko; this one felt far darker, damper, and heavier.
A few hundred meters in, we spotted a pair of black, closed-off carts parked in a clearing. Concealing our presence, Samira and I crouched behind an enormous, thick-trunked tree.
That was when we heard a rough, fat, disgusting voice that made my blood boil.
"Useless little brat!" roared a massive man, porcine in appearance with a prominent gut. "Is this all you could get today?! I gave you clear orders!"
"I-I’m sorry..." the girl sobbed, kneeling in the dirt with her head bowed. "The village was heavily guarded... I couldn’t do more..."
The man was holding a pouch between his pudgy fingers. I recognized it instantly: it was my pouch of gold Kalikas. The bastard was so ignorant or so greedy that, despite holding a damn fortune in his hands, he was still taking out his frustration on her.
"It’s not enough! I don’t care about your excuses!" the fat man bellowed. "A slave that doesn’t produce is nothing but dead weight! You damn bitch, I’ll teach you what happens when you bring me scraps!"
With inhuman cruelty, the man raised a heavy leather whip reinforced with metal and brought it down with brutal force across the little girl’s back.
CRACK!
A heart-rending scream tore from the child’s lips as the skin on her back split open and blood gushed instantly, dyeing her tattered clothes crimson.
I clenched my teeth so hard I thought they would shatter. I was about to draw my blade and tell Samira we were moving in, but when I turned to look at her, I froze.
Samira’s brow was deeply furrowed. The veins on her forehead and neck were so swollen they looked about to burst, and her beautiful eyes had transformed into the vertical pupils of a bloodthirsty beast. Her magical aura vibrated with a pressure so suffocating the air around us turned icy.
She was truly furious; the killer instinct of a protective mother had awakened within her.
Before I could utter a single word, she shot forward like a meteor toward the swine of a slaver.
"How dare you lay a hand on a child, you wretched waste of flesh?!" Samira’s voice boomed, laden with pure hatred.
The fat man barely had time to blink before my woman’s fist—imbued with dense violet ether—slammed squarely into his jaw. The delicious sound of his bones shattering was music to my ears.
CRUNCH!
The impact sent him flying through the air, crashing brutally against a tree trunk.
THUD!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Samira gave him not the slightest respite. She moved at blinding speed, connecting a series of precise, brutal, merciless blows directly to his stomach, face, and ribs. She was returning to him, multiplied by a hundred, every ounce of pain he had inflicted on that little girl.
Although my gamer instinct told me I should jump into the fight to gain some experience, I contented myself with staying back, savoring the majestic and terrifying beating she was dishing out to that bastard.
While the pig lay unconscious, disfigured, and bathed in his own blood on the ground, I emerged from my hiding spot. I summoned a short sword directly from my gacha system storage just in case, and ran toward the little girl.
Reaching her side, my heart clenched. The child was in a deplorable state, losing consciousness from shock.
"Easy, little one... Everything’s going to be alright. You’re safe now," I said in the softest voice I could muster, scooping her up delicately in my arms.
As I lifted her, I realized just how critical the situation was. The whiplash had completely torn through her skin, leaving raw, living flesh exposed atop old torture scars. Blood kept gushing out in spurts.
Shit, at this rate the little one would die within minutes.
"Sami, come quick!" I shouted in desperation.
Samira delivered one last rib-cracking stomp to the fat man before spinning toward me. Upon seeing the child’s state, her expression of fury transformed instantly into one of pure alarm. She ran over and fell to her knees beside me.
"Can you do something with one of your spirits?" I asked urgently. "She’s losing too much blood!"
Without answering in words, Samira extended her trembling—from adrenaline—hands over the girl’s body. A dense violet energy began to envelop her arms, which rapidly mutated into a brilliant, life-filled green.
The air pressure shifted, and an intense light flashed in the forest clearing. From the emerald glow emerged a spiritual creature of mystical and ethereal appearance.
"Hello, my dear Samira! For what have you called m—" the greenish spirit began to say in a rather jovial tone.
"I know it’s disrespectful of me to interrupt you like this, Master Delsey, but we have no time for cordial greetings," Samira cut her off, her voice brimming with gravity and anguish as she pointed at the agonizing body. "Please, help me with her."
Master Delsey’s playful demeanor shifted in an instant the moment her spiritual eyes analyzed the gravity of the situation.
"By the gods, what an atrocity! Place the child on this, quickly," Delsey ordered, snapping her translucent fingers. A mat of soft green moss sprouted from the ground immediately.
I set the little girl down with the utmost care, terrified of causing her more pain.
"Good, Samira, channel your dual ether with me. Keep the flow steady," Master Delsey instructed.
Both joined forces, and a dazzling current of healing light enveloped the small body completely. I watched in awe as this world’s magic worked miracles before my eyes: the bruises faded, the deep cuts closed cleanly, and the lacerated skin regained a healthy tone. The girl’s breathing returned to a deep, steady rhythm.
"She’ll be fine for now. The danger of death has passed, but she needs rest urgently," Delsey pronounced, exhaling a sigh of relief.
"Thank you, Master..." Samira murmured, wiping the sweat from her brow and wearing a much more relaxed expression.
---
I breathed out in relief, feeling an enormous weight lift from my shoulders. However, my analytical ex-office-worker mind couldn’t help but glance toward the black carts. Something was very wrong here; one man alone doesn’t set up an entire camp like this.
I approached the rear of the main cart and broke the lock with a precise slash from my short sword. As I swung the heavy wooden doors open, a gust of fetid, rancid air struck me full in the face, forcing me to reel back as I fought down nausea.
What I saw inside froze the blood in my veins and churned my stomach in a way no horror video game could ever replicate.
It was a cursed scene. There were bodies—stacked children, women, the elderly—crammed together as if they were nothing but defective merchandise. Some of them were already in an advanced state of decomposition, giving off an unbearable stench, while others barely blinked, clinging to life in a state of deplorable malnutrition and abandonment.
The horror of the illegal slave trade laid itself bare before me without filters.
My heart tight with rage and pity, we spent the following hours pulling bodies out with the help of my summons, whom I called in to assist. We grouped those who had already passed away in the center of the clearing.
I fully intended to dig graves and give them a dignified burial, but Samira stopped me, placing a hand on my shoulder. Her face reflected profound sadness mixed with a somber maturity.
"Don’t do it, Hal. Burying them here would be a terrible idea," she explained to me in a low voice. "They died suffering tremendous agony. All that despair has saturated their bodies with an immense amount of negative energy. If we leave them underground, the residual dark magic in this area will inevitably mutate them, transforming them into bloodthirsty undead. The most merciful thing we can do for their souls is to purify them with fire."
I nodded in silence, swallowed hard, and we lit a great funeral pyre. The flames consumed the withered remains, lifting smoke toward the grayish afternoon sky.
"Poor children..." I murmured to myself, feeling a deep bitterness in my chest as I watched Master Delsey and Samira hurry to use their healing magic on the few surviving children we’d managed to rescue alive from that cursed cart.
In that exact instant—staring at the fire and the terrified faces of the little ones—I knew my adventure in this world would stop being a simple gacha game and a bit of fun.
If the world wanted to be cruel, then I would have to become so goddamn strong that I could protect what mattered to me.
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