The older boy in front of me stared at us both intimidatingly and awkwardly - he didn’t make any sound. It felt weird having someone just stare at you without any acknowledgment from the other party. He seemed to be around five or six years older than me but seemed rather feeble for his age. I could almost see bones outline his skin as if he were a skeletal body - even I had been doing better than that in the woods, although I had gotten a lot of help from Nephthys. I figured he was from a similar ancestry to Nor and Rosa because he had the look of a werewolf that was described in the legends… excluding the strength and muscles he should have had. He didn’t stare at me for long, but was rather fixated on Nephthys for some reason - he seemed to have his guard up against her like prey would do when it was alerted of a predator. 

“I came only for a boy named Sol… Who… What are you?”

For a moment, I was surprised that he had known my name and who I was, but I was also concerned about how tense he was about the presence of Nephthys. 

“She’s my companion. Is there a problem?”

He looked at me and slowly shook his head before lowering his guard for the time being. During this entire exchange, Nephthys did not falter one bit, even though he was much older than her. The beastman looked back towards me and opened his mouth. 

“Someone wants to meet you. Follow me”

“...What?...”

I was confused at what he had said. There were very few people who knew me outside of Nephthys, Nor, and Rosa - all of them had to have originated from the mines. Only after hearing this, Nephthys slightly raised her guard while silently glaring at the beastman. The beastman seemed to raise his guard once again, seeming almost smaller in Nephthys’s presence. I didn't know what was going on between these two, but I paid it no attention - I was sure Nephthys could deal with her own problems. 

“How do we even know that you won’t harm us if we follow you?”

“Rosa and Nor”

“Wha!?...”

Standing there like a frozen statue, I began to speculate on what possibly could have occurred. I doubted that they were in a good situation considering they hadn’t come themselves - also the fact that he hadn’t mentioned them from the start was incredibly suspicious. Unfortunately for me, I could only blindly follow them because I doubted anyone outside the mines knew of my connections with Nor and Rosa - even if they did, what motivation could they possibly have in taking either of them hostage. Turning my head to look at Nephthys, I whispered to her that we would be following the beastman because they had some kind of information on Nor and Rosa - Nephthys did not argue and silently nodded her head.

“... We’ll follow you… but if you make any suspicious move, we’ll kill you then and there”

Although two children saying such threatening lines was not frightening - considering one had an incapacitated arm - Nephthys seemed to scare the hell out of the beastman for no apparent reason. He led the way in front of us, while we followed from behind - it seemed to me that he constantly checked behind himself to keep a distance from Nephthys. Nephthys only continued to give a silent, threatening look with those crimson eyes of hers - something I wouldn’t want to face.

* * *

Sometime later, after the sun had reached its peak, we reached what looked like an abandoned building on a desolate street. The road we had been walking on had been rather unnerving - it was a large road, not a narrow one, with fewer people than would be in an alley. As we stepped up towards the door of the abandoned building, the beast boy - as he was not exactly an adult - knocked on the door in what seemed like a random series of noises. The door was slowly creaked open by a small person in a cloak and closed immediately after we had been let through. What we saw around us was a decaying building made of stone and wood. Much of the surroundings were moldy with the smell of rotting food and I found it hard to imagine that someone had chosen to live here, however, we did not stay there for long and the beast boy eventually led us away, towards a trapdoor which was pulled up. He let us through first and followed us from behind after closing the trapdoor was a loud, dusty thud. 

As we were led deeper down the creaking stairs, the surroundings changed from wooden-made to completely stone-made. It didn’t take long until we reached the bottom of the flight of stairs and realized that the smell had gotten significantly better… as if someone wanted to live down here more than they did in their actual home. We were stopped before a wooden door and the beast boy once again knocked on it weirdly. The voice of a man responded from inside the room and it sounded oddly familiar. The voice boomed in an oddly familiar way, but the person sounded like they had somehow aged significantly within the span of a few months, however, I still could not put my finger on who exactly had spoken from inside the room.

I entered the room first, followed by Nephthys and finally the beast boy who closed the door behind us almost unknowingly. The man in front of me looked up to stare directly into my eyes and put on a crooked smile unbecoming of an old geezer.

“Long time no see… Sol”

“... What are you doing here… Ivan?

Lord Ivan IV’s POV

I had barely escaped death in that wretched cave. After having been severely injured by that goddamned beastman, I had been taken out of the cave and into a nearby town where I would be able to rehabilitate. My injuries were not as nasty as the ones I had been able to inflict on the beastman, but they were still nearly mortal wounds. I could not die yet, I still had plans that needed to be set into motion. Luckily for me, on the way out of the cave and towards the nearby town, I had found and captured numerous beastman and humans who had tried to escape amid the chaos - among them was the beastman that had nearly killed me. I had taken control of the backup guards, so it was not a hard task to find, and eliminate if needed, any slaves that tried to fight back or run away. 

Not holding any resentment, but wanting to know more about the mechanisms behind a beastman, I did not kill them but instead decided to cage them in a temporary building that I would live in while healing - it would take a few weeks at least to get back to my former condition, so I considered my injury rather lucky. Naturally, I had a hard time moving about, but that was solved by the slaves I had bought recently and would likely arrive within a few days. They would serve two purposes, one was to help me through daily tasks, but the other was to experiment on how much I could make use of those powers they held. Either because it was rare or because it was forbidden to be used, I had never once seen beastmen unleash so much unreasonable power at once - if that were to rampage in the human countries, entire human civilizations would collapse in a matter of weeks or even days. 

Several days after I was moved into an abandoned building to rehabilitate, I had the captured slaves put in a cave in a basement - the other slaves I had bought arrived rather quickly and I put them to use. The problem I had not expected from the slaves that were bought was that they were lifeless as if their souls had been removed from their bodies. Their ages ranged from child to adulthood which I found satisfactory for my studies and experiments. However, there was something out of place about one of them. She was a younger beastman who had scars all over her body, but that was not what was off about her - all the slaves had been beaten after all. What was off about her was that some of her wounds had been treated when none of the others had any sign of treatment. 

There was no way a slave trader had used capital to treat their own slaves who they considered property, so I felt obligated to force her to tell me what the hell was going on. At first, she showed no signs of talking or even understanding what I was saying, but when I bribed her with food that would satisfy her hunger, she spilled out everything she knew - people were simple to manipulate when hungry. What I heard from her was both fascinating and unnerving. She described what seemed to be two young children in worn clothes and so skinny that they seemed to be on the brink of death from starvation. There was a boy who had reddish hair and a girl who had dark blue hair who had helped her after she had been beaten by a magic tool. Magic tools had been allowed within human kingdoms in the general public because they held no potential like humans themselves. 

Regardless of what the slave trader had done, those two children were the spitting image of the two that I had met within the caves early on - they wielded the devil’s power even though they belonged to the human race that would execute anyone holding any amount of magical properties. I attached a collar and sent one of the older beastman to go after them and bring them back - if they tried to resist, I told the boy just to say “Rosa and Nor.” Meanwhile, I laughed at myself internally because of how far they exceeded my expectations. Plenty of other slaves was captured and either put back into the mines or killed immediately, but two children had managed to evade capture and death on their own. Although I had wished them luck surviving after teaching them the basics of magic in the caves, I had not anticipated such a lengthy period of survival. 

Although I wasn’t positive, I was sure that the two I had captured early in my escape had some connection with that human boy - Sol was what I believed his name was. My duty currently was to find out every slave that had been recaptured or killed in order to account for the number of slaves we would need to keep the mines running - during that procedure, I had learned about Rosa and Nor, as well as their relationship with that boy Sol. Nor couldn’t fight with an entire leg gone and his partner, Rosa, had no chance against a group of guards - they were put in shackles and questioned for some time. I had threatened to kill some children if they didn’t answer - of course, I didn’t mean it, but they didn’t know any better. They described a boy named Sol and they even went as far as to beg me, a human, to not kill him if they were to find him - I found it hard to believe that they would beg a human to save another human, but it had occurred in front of me… I told them I would consider it and proceeded to cage them in the basement. 

Some hours went by and the sun had passed its peak height in the day. I was down in the basement waiting for that beastman to show up with the two children. At last, there was a knock at my door and I eagerly told them to enter. Immediately I knew, in front of me was without question the two children I had taught magic to - they were slaves of the caves. 

Author's Note - And the tension continues to build! I hope you've enjoyed this chapter and are enjoying your time off if you have it. It's getting quite cold up in the north so I hope that everyone stays safe out there and enjoys their time with family as well as delicious, warm food!