Chapter 350 Freeing The Slaves
"Is there something I can do to help you? To redeem myself?" Asked Jack, supplicating the two heroes. "I\'ve always… since I was young that I admired the heroes, both of you… You brought down the Demon King and started a new Era of Peace…"
"He seems to be saying the truth." Said Allan.
"…I see." Shade said in disbelief.
The two heroes looked at one another and quickly ran away from Jack, beginning to speak with one another alone while ignoring the grieving Jack.
"So what do we do now?" Asked Allan.
"Our plans won\'t change; we\'ll rescue the slaves and then we\'ll delete their memories." Said Shade.
"But won\'t they just enslave again? What if we use Jack for our own benefit?" Asked Allan with a smile.
"Allan, no." Shade said, quickly rejecting Allan\'s wonderful idea.
"What do you mean "no", bud? If we use him we could get connections with the other thugs and learn more about them so we can assault them better. We could even learn more things. Simply leaving them away would be wasteful, we have to use them instead. If it is to save those demon and beast-kin people, I don\'t think it\'s a bad idea at all…" Allan said while raising an eyebrow.
Shade remained in silence after hearing Allan speak, he couldn\'t help but feel like Allan was right.
But there was something that was stopping him from taking such a decision.
"…I don\'t feel it is alright to manipulate them. Wouldn\'t that be evil as well?" Sighed Shade.
"If by doing that we can save more lives, then it is not that bad. Don\'t look at everything with black and white… Sigh, this is the primary reason why you did the things you did as well, we were unable to see that everything was actually gray. There is never everything evil and bad, it always varies, changes, and everyone has their own views of morality…" Sighed Allan.
"…Fine." Shade was quickly convinced by Allan, being reminded of his past hit him strongly emotionally, so he ended giving up to his friend\'s idea when he considered the good things.
"But to reassure ourselves that they won\'t betray us…" Said Allan.
"Yeah… Come." Shade said, suddenly summoning Phantasmal Spirit as the zombie-like phantom emerged behind him, groaning lugubriously.
Allan quickly brought all the subordinates hiding, intimidating them with his presence alone, as everyone lined up in front of the two heroes.
"I accept your help, we\'ll use your assistance to learn more about this town, the other organizations that might be trafficking slaves, and more… However, we cannot easily trust you, therefore, we\'ll use a method that can ensure your cooperation to an extent, but also assure us that you won\'t go telling everybody about us." Shade said coldly, touching Jack\'s forehead as shadow chains emerged from his Phantasmal Spirit, flowing inside of Jack\'s entire body and chaining down his soul. The chains quickly spread out, chaining the souls of everybody else within this underground facility. Allan put the work to bring even those unconscious guys left outside.
"W-What are these chains?!"
"What did you do to us?!2
"M-My soul feels heavier… Wait! I can feel my soul now?!"
"This must be some sort of curse…!"
"That\'s right, it is something like a Curse. It is called Soul Chains, and you can call it a forced contract. With this, you\'ll be incapable of speaking the truth about us and many other things, to keep everything a secret. And also, it might ensure your loyalty over time, as you realize that going against us will only bring you more pain than anything else." Sighed Shade. He disliked using this, but he had used it many times in the past to apprehend and capture alive various foes.
"With this, you can trust us?" Wondered Jack.
"Mildly so, it doesn\'t stop you from thinking whatever you want, but lying to me will become difficult if you feel pain in the soul." Said Shade, his eyes slowly turned red out of nowhere, frightening the men in front of him.
"Now that we are done with this, all of you come to help us free the slaves. I also want you all to apologize to them." Said Allan. "I know it is rather childish, but it\'s the least you could do. Many of these people hate you to death, by freeing them, we are risking them attacking you or killing you, which we\'ll protect you from. The least you could do is apologize to them for the shit you\'ve brought to their lives. Most if not all of these people had nothing to do with your personal problems but you blamed them for it, you have to know how much of a scum you are and repent." Allan ruthless said as the thugs in front of him looked at him hatefully, although a few of them began to realize that perhaps things were not so simple and that demons weren\'t simple evil just because they were demons.
However, it didn\'t matter what they felt within their hearts anymore as they were now chained with Soul Chains. After Allan and Shade gave them the orders, the thugs, led by Jack, quickly began to free all slaves with Allan and Shade\'s supervision. The two stopped various slaves from attacking the thugs with anything they found laying around, and had to explain to them that they were being freed now, at long last.
"Freedom… I am not going to be sold as a slave…?"
"Hahh… Thank you… Thank you so much…"
"But where do I go now? My entire tribe was burned down… I have nothing…"
"My mama… Sir Hero, can you find my mama?"
Most if not all the people here had nowhere to go now, those that lived in tribes had their homes burned down, and those kidnaped feared suddenly going back to society, only to be kidnaped again anyways…