When we left The Pit for a second time to look for more survivors in the nearby settlements, we got to a small town that the warriors hadn’t been able to save from the soldiers before.
Rio, who was in my group, told me that they had over fifty brainwashed soldiers protecting the town, and the last time they scouted it, they spotted an Accursed Beast accompanying them.
For that reason, the warriors never had a chance to save any of the enslaved villagers that they kept inside the town.
Now that I was here, they thought that we had a better shot at it. Nevertheless, when we arrived at the town after hours of walking, there weren’t as many soldiers as they said.
There were at least twenty soldiers and no Accursed Beast in sight. Even when I used my "search" spell, I couldn’t sense anything remotely close to our location.
"Are you sure this is the same town?" I asked Rio, who was surprised to see their defenses had gone down.
"Definitely. This is the place..." he replied.
It was clear that Baelzor was redirecting his forces somewhere else, but we didn’t know where they were being taken or why.
If Drakzen had told Baelzor of our presence in the north, then it would have made more sense for him to buff up their security. Instead, it seemed like he was retreating—almost as if he was purposefully giving us the town’s people.
Even with our suspicions, we couldn’t just leave all those people there. I could easily tell now when someone was brainwashed just by looking at their eyes, and I noticed that more than half of the enslaved villagers were not under the effect.
Yoru and I went in first, taking out a couple of the brainwashed soldiers that looked the strongest while the rest of the group started freeing the enslaved villagers who were not mind-controlled.
From what Rio told me, freeing a villager who was brainwashed would make them go violent sometimes, so it was better to keep them wearing the chains until we removed the spell from them.
Once we captured all of the brainwashed people, we returned to The Pit, which took us a few more hours to get there since some of the soldiers were extremely uncooperative.
Luckily, we got there before nighttime, making me feel like we were using our time quite efficiently.
As soon as we returned, Helena went to meet with her daughter, who had been patiently waiting for our return, while I went to the tenth ring with all of the brainwashed people.
I was still thinking about the fact that Baelzor was moving his forces, and it bothered me so much that I ended up sending a voice message to Lyssandra, the Empress of Droman.
The Droman Empire was one of the largest countries in the world in terms of landmass. However, Lyssandra once told me that they didn’t have enough people to populate all the livable areas in their borders.
During one of our meetings, before I left Droman, she told me that her country was open to anyone who wanted a new life.
She knew that the devils would ravage other countries, so she offered the confines of her nation to anyone who wanted to immigrate there—in fact, most of the people who escaped Guanghua during our siege there went to the Droman Empire.
There were at least 2,000 Guanghua citizens who migrated to Droman at that time, so I believed that she wouldn’t have a problem receiving a couple dozen more.
My plan was to evacuate all of the people inside The Pit who weren’t warriors, as I couldn’t get the bad feeling out of my head.
Right after I sent the message, I received one from Reinar and Jen, saying that they had made progress on the cure and needed to test it out again.
’Jeez, these guys are working fast. Are they even sleeping?’ I pondered as I walked to the magic quartz to pick them up from End Forest.
When I got there, the two alchemists were carrying all of their tools, ready to leave at that same instant. Without wasting any time, I teleported us back to The Pit.
"Check this out. We perfected the mix, so now it’s not as thick as before..." said Reinar, pulling out a vial from his bag.
The potion had the same cream color as before, but the consistency was much more liquid, so it would be easier to feed them to the brainwashed people.