I Became a Forest Witch Who Raises Dragons

I’ve Come to Save You

“Ugh….fuck…..”
You still have the energy to curse. How impressive.
Cain’s current state was literally in tatters. The result of a sticky conversation that lasted over 30 minutes.

“Have you come to your senses now?”
“Ye…yes!!! Witch…no, Angel!!! Great Magician!!!!”
…Isn’t angel going too far? Great Magician is correct though.
Indeed, the saying that a mad dog needs a stick is not wrong.
Look how obedient this son of a bitch has become.

“Hmm. First, let me ask this. What were you planning to do with the children you took?”
“To buy them ice cre…Aaaaargh!!!!!!!”
It seems you still have the energy to lie. We need to have another sticky conversation.
“One.”
“Hiiieek!!!!!!! I’ll talk!!! I’ll talk!!!!!”

Cain panics as I pretend to start counting again.

If you were going to be this cooperative, why did you resist?

“Y-you may or may not have heard… but I’m not originally from Heren Village. I’m originally from Lonzville…”
“I’m not interested in that, tell me what you were planning to do with the children.”
“…I was going to sell them.”
Sell them? The children?

“Aaaaargh!!!!”

Snap. I broke another of Cain’s fingers.
You’re even more trash than I imagined. This bastard.
“Sell them. To whom?”
“Ugh…. I-I don’t know well… I only deliver…”

“…Deliver? Are people goods?”
People who don’t see others as human beings.
They’re just like the trash from the magic tower. How can they be so detestable?
Snap─! Crack─!
“Aaaagh!!!!! Hack!!!!!”
Only after breaking all of Cain’s fingers did I feel a little better.
Cain writhing in pain, curled up.

“Stop exaggerating and get up.”
“Ugh….”
“…One.”
The bastard only starts getting up after I count. His face was a mess of blood and tears, too awful to look at.
“Guide me to those guys. The ones you delivered…no, sold the children to.”
“If… if they find out I betrayed them, they won’t let me off…”

Cain showed hesitation at my words, seemingly valuing his own life.
“Two.”
“I… I understand!!! I’ll guide you!!! Please…”
…I’m sorry, Saya. I might be a little late.

“You’re from Heren Village? You’ve come quite a long way. Go on in.”
The guard let us in after a simple inspection.
I had disguised myself simply in case someone might recognize me, and it seems the guard liked my appearance.
…He didn’t even glance at Cain, who was grimacing in pain.

We had planned to make up some excuse, but we passed the inspection more easily than expected.
After lightly ignoring the guard who was flirting with me, I put Cain in the lead.
“Guide me quickly.”
“Ugh… Yes…”
He started guiding me into a deep alley.

It might be a trap, but I didn’t care. I could just have another sticky conversation if needed.
After walking for a while, a surprisingly decent-looking shop appeared deep in the alley.
‘Is it a bar?’

Eventually, Cain entered the shop.
…I decided to follow him into the shop for now.
“Hey Cain. You’re early. The delivery deadline is until evening, right? Where are the goods? And who’s this beauty? Could she be your sister-in-law? You thoughtful guy.”

As we entered the shop, a bald man with a kind-looking face approached Cain, acting familiar.
‘Wait. Delivery?’
That means….

“Boss!!! This bitch….. She’s an intruder!!!”
At that moment, Cain suddenly started yelling at the top of his lungs.
By intruder, does he mean me?
“…Cain. An intruder, you say?”
The bald man’s face hardened coldly upon hearing those words.

“Th-that’s right! This bitch intercepted the kids I was trying to deliver!!!”
They say people don’t change, but it seems he hasn’t come to his senses and has sided with them.
It’s probably a rotten lifeline.

“Cain. Do you remember what I told you to do if an intruder appears?”
“B-boss?”
A cold, low voice contrasting with the friendly tone he used with Cain earlier.
Cain seemed to realize something was wrong and tried to move away from the man he called boss, but… the middle-aged man’s fist reached Cain first.

Bang─! Cain flew to the shop wall with a loud noise.
“I told you to handle it yourself, or if you can’t, to kill yourself.”
The man spoke with a hardened expression, his earlier kind look completely gone.

‘Cain is… dead.’
Judging by his limp form without any movement, it seems he died instantly from that single blow.
“Boys. We have an intruder.”
At the bald man’s words, customers started rising from their tables one by one.

At least more than ten in number. They were clearly used to violence, no matter how you looked at them.
‘Although his intentions were malicious, it seems Cain did guide me correctly.’
“Boss. Can we have a taste of this bitch before we kill her?!”
“Who said anything about killing? She looks like she’d sell well… Just half-kill her. We can educate her later.”

“That’s what he says. Sis. Let’s have some fun together.”
…To be called ‘sis’ by a big man. I can’t stand how disgusting it feels.
Soon, they slowly approach me.
The one who reached me first spoke to me in a sly voice.

“Heheh. Is this bitch really an intruder? She just looks like a regular woman to me. Hey. I’ll let you live if you do it with me once. I’m serious.”
Swish. As he said this, the man reached out his hand towards me.
Is this guy’s mouth an excretory organ?

“Brothers. I’ll go fir…huh?”
The man stops mid-sentence and stares at his wrist. But at the end of his gaze, there was nothing that should have been there.
“Aaaaargh!!!!!!! My hand…. My hand!!!!”
“Was she a magician?!”

The guys seemed to have just realized that I was a magician, but it was already too late.
My incantation had long since finished.
“[Wind Cutter]”
I cast Wind Cutter, my favorite magic.
Slash.

The wind blades that instantly appeared easily sliced through the guys rushing towards me─and soon, everyone except the bald leader fell to the ground.
“Im…impossible..”
This time, I didn’t hold back. Leaving such trash alive would be nothing short of committing a sin.

The reason I left the bald man who had struck Cain alive was simply to ask about the whereabouts of the kidnapped children.
“Hey. The young kids that Cain, who you just killed, brought. Where are they?”

I approached the frozen man and asked about the children’s whereabouts.
“I… I’ll guide you!!! Please follow me!!”
The trembling guy immediately guided me somewhere without any hesitation.
…He’s quite quick to change his stance.

“Hey. What’s your name?”
“Call me Louis!”
‘I didn’t know there was a passage here.’

When the bald man, no, Louis, went to the back of the shop and opened a locked door, a passage leading underground appeared.
It looked quite deep at a glance.
Louis, who seemed familiar with the place, grabbed a light-emitting magical tool nearby and started leading me underground.

What unfolded before my eyes was a place that looked like a prison.
Several iron bars were lined up, and looking inside these bars, I saw several people lying down with lifeless eyes.
People with chains on their ankles like livestock.
…At a glance, I could guess what this space was being used for.

“Explain to me what this place is. Don’t leave anything out.”
“Th-that’s…”
When Louis showed signs of hesitation, I immediately cast a pain-increasing spell on him.
Slap.
Then, I slapped Louis’s cheek hard.

“Aaaaargh!!!! It hurts!!! It hurts!!!!!!!”
Louis screaming in pain. His screams drew the attention of the people inside the iron bars.
“I’ll say it again. Explain to me what this place is.”
When I demanded an explanation about this place from Louis again, an answer came immediately.

“It’s… it’s a place to educate slaves before they’re shipped out!!”
Shipped out.
The act of sending goods to the market.
In other words, it means selling kidnapped people as slaves.

I knew that slaves were being traded secretly in this world… but seeing it with my own eyes is even more shocking.
‘Calm down… I can’t kill him yet.’
Trying hard to suppress the rising anger, I asked Louis.
“Are all the people here kidnapped?”

“N-no. Some were sold due to debt.”
Then that means everyone except for some were kidnapped.
“Aaaaargh!!!!!”
Slap. I slapped Louis’s cheek once again.
I might have hit too hard, as Louis’s teeth flew through the air, but I didn’t feel particularly sympathetic.

“Tell me everything truthfully. Everything you’ve done until now. And all about this place.”

.
.
.
Listening to Louis’s story, it was quite something.

First of all, Louis’s group was mainly composed of disgraced knight order members who caused unsavory incidents and adventurers who were expelled for poor quality. Besides the guys I dealt with upstairs, there were others like Cain infiltrating other villages.
It seems some people were sold due to unmanageable debts, but most were kidnapped, and they were mainly sold to wealthy merchants or nobles.

“Even young children have their own demand…. though it’s not a frequent occurrence.”
“What about the children kidnapped from Heren Village?”
“Most of the captured slaves receive education for up to a year, or as short as 6 months. If my memory is correct, none of the children should have been sold yet…. Please believe me!!!”

Education? He keeps using the word ‘education’, just like before…
“What do you mean by education?”
“It’s… it’s the process of slowly breaking down the self so that the sold slaves don’t cause problems… Ma-mainly using drugs…”

There’s no need to hear the rest.
It’s all I can do to resist tearing apart the Louis in front of me right now.
‘Not now….’

My breathing keeps getting faster. My heart is beating roughly. And then Louis’s face starts to overlap with the trash from the magic tower who injected me with drugs.
Only after recalling Saya’s face in my mind did I barely calm down.
Suddenly, I miss Saya.

“First, release all the people here.”
“A-all of them, you say?”

Slap. Instead of answering with words, I slapped Louis’s cheek again.
Louis, who was writhing in pain, hurriedly started releasing people with the keys when I made a gesture of raising my hand again.

“…These bastards. They even laid hands on elves?”
While I was checking the people in the iron bars myself in case Louis didn’t release someone, I discovered an elf in the deepest iron bar.
“….”

The elf’s characteristic long ears were both half-cut off, and her once-dazzling blonde hair had faded and become dry.
As I approached, she slowly raised her head to look at me.
Her blue eyes, which must have once held the sea, had lost their brilliant light and were filled only with despair.

Eyes that were literally dead, without any light of hope.
…I wonder if my eyes looked like that when I was an experimental subject in the magic tower.
I immediately cut through the iron bars separating me and her.

“Who… are… you…”
The elf barely asking who I am with a completely hoarse voice.
At first, I hesitated for a moment about what to say, but then I decided what to say.
The words I wanted to hear the most when I was trapped in the magic tower.

“…My name is Ariel. I’ve come to save you.”