The Developer Reborn As Archmage

“Where did you take the girl!” Darya asked the man for the sixth time. She stomped on his stomach, making him spurt sea water.

“D-don’t kill me! don’t kill me!” he yelled as soon as he caught his breath again. His third attempt to get up and run away failed like the other two. He flailed his arms around like an octopus, unable to get his legs to move at all. The blow across the spine had paralyzed him, which worked well enough for her purposes.

“You took a girl from this island, where did you take her? Answer me!” Darya asked again, grabbing his braids. She wasn’t practiced in the profession of CIA interrogator, but she figured yelling in his face enough could yield some answers.

“I din take anyone!” the man howled. “I was collecting money is all!”

“What money?”

“F-fish! The fish! The villagers, they pay for Golan protection, see!” he panted, eyeing Lurim who was aiming the slingshot at his face from a few feet away.

“Look at me, not him!”

“Th-the fish! When they sell, they pay us—not me, the cap’n a cut. Please! I dindo anything!”

“How much is this cut?”

“T-thirty percent! We collect for cap’n, see, or he cut our hands clean off!”

“Thirty!” Darya yelled. “How are they going to pay anything? It’s the off-season, right? I don’t see any of them fishing. How are they paying you anything?”

“Th-they din pay. T-that’s why cap’n came and took people. Th-they can buy ‘em back! cap’n din kill ‘em!”

Taking people? Buying them back? What is this slave business he's talking about?

“Your captain took people? more than one?” Darya frowned. The idiot was digging his own hole with everything he said so far. “What people? Men or women?”

“Both! Men go work colonies where work is. Women, they go—” the man swallowed. “…you know.”

“I don’t know. Tell me. Where do women go?” Darya asked, angrily shaking his head.

“They go where their work is,” the man said, shrinking lower.

“And where is that?”

“Mainland. They go Galtea.”

“Women have work in Galtea? I see, and girls, where do they go if they aren't old enough to work?”

“S-same place. Cap’n sell them.”

“You told me the villagers can buy their people back when they start fishing again. How do they get back a girl who’s already been sold in Galtea?”

The man swallowed. “Villagers, they only buy back men. Women sometimes. But girls are gone.”

The man seemed to sense the danger he put himself in just by saying those words. He cowered lower and started begging immediately. “Is not me, lady! Don't kill me! I feel no legs! my legs! help!”

Darya let go of his head and let him slide back down. She didn’t know his part in the operation, or the divine or mortal punishment for it. She had gotten what she needed from him. The girl had been taken to Galtea, and the seer who went looking after her would’ve gone there already.

The man was wheezing now, and he was blinking slower and slower with a dazed look on his face. She didn’t have much time to ask more questions.

“Where do they sell girls in Galtea?” Darya asked, poking him with her heel.

“I donknow! not one place. Cap’n sell to highest price. We donknow where after they take them in carriages out of harbor,” The man panted. “Help me!”

Darya ignored him. “You knew this boy from the cave. There used to be a girl in that cave.”

“That, girl,” the man coughed. “She cost more. That one rare, see.”

A rare and expensive girl? Maybe because she can also breathe underwater? Now, where in Galtea would such a girl be sold?

“Is there any place that you know of? Or heard rumors about?”

“They say auction in the colosseum, after the fights at night. People seen carriages go there. Cap’n know warlord Dakva.”

“Warlord Dakva? What does he have to do with the colosseum auction?” Darya asked. The man was already slurring his words and making less sense.

“His colosseum. His fighters, Dakva, scary orc,” the man coughed again. “H-help me, lady. I beg!”

A scary orc named Dakva owns a colosseum and fighters. He runs auctions at night. Good. I’ll go there next.

“The money you collected, is it here?” Darya asked, ignoring the man’s plea.

“M-money not here, I swear!”

“Really? If I check in there,” Darya pointed at the wooden hut. “I won’t find any money?”

“Th-they din pay this month, see.”

That was true. They had already punished the villagers by kidnapping people because of it.

Darya looked at her right hand. She had bled a small patch of blood on the sand already.

“H-help me, lady. I dindo nothing!”

Lurim was still aiming his slingshot at the man with a fierce frown on his face. Clearly, this man had done something to him at some point.

“Is that true? Lurim?” She asked the boy. “He says he didn’t do anything.”

Lurim let go of his slingshot and stared at her as if she had said something illegal. He started performing a bunch of signs in rapid succession. He ended it by drawing a line across his cheek several times and pointing at the man.

It clicked in Darya’s head when he kept showing her his cheek while drawing a vertical line on it.

“Oh? He’s the one who gave you the cut?!” Darya asked.

The boy nodded aggressively.

Darya kicked the man in the face without even looking at him. He howled in pain as he splashed into the wet sand, grabbing his face.

“God! help! Don kill me!” He tried to roll away, but failed without any control of his legs. “A white nun killin’ me!”

“What’s wrong? A nun can’t kick you, but you can slash a little boy’s face?” Darya scoffed, glaring at the man cowering helplessly. “I’ll leave the rest up to God. Good luck to you.”

“Please! help!” The man covered his head. “You not a nun!”

“Damn right I’m not a nun. Your captain, it’ll be his turn to cry on the ground like a worm if he meets me.”

“You crazy!” the man howled. “Wh-wh-who are you!”

“Why should I tell you that?”

Lurim ran up to her with her two gloves and offered them to her. She quickly checked if the soulstone ring was still inside. Luckily, it had been too big to dislodge from the glove on its own.

“Good boy, Lurim,” she patted his head with his good hand and tucked the wet gloves into her belt.

They left the pier and started climbing back up, leaving the paralyzed pirate behind. His desperate yells trailed off into the winds of the coming storm as they reached the top of the cliff.

She picked Lurim up with his good arm and followed the same path back into the forest. The boy clung to her, occasionally looking at her bleeding hand and back at her face with a worried look. She was doing her best to ignore the pain, but every gust of wind stung her wounds like bees.

They were halfway down the ruins when Seris and Fominel came running up the slope.

“Princess!” Fominel yelled, running straight to her.

“By the light! What happened to you!” Seris cried, noticing Darya’s arm immediately.

Darya placed the boy down with a grunt as they rushed to her.

“Your hand! Princess!” Fominel looked horrified. “Who did this?!” he asked angrily, hand already on the hilt of his Manacers.

“Calm down, Fom!” Darya said. “This was all me.”

Lurim tugged Seris’s dress to get her attention and performed panicked signs, pointing at Darya’s hand and then grabbing his head.

“Why did you come looking for me?” Darya asked.

“Two pirates raided our ship!” Fom said in a low voice, panting. “I don’t know who they were, but they wanted a fight.”

There were more pirates here?! Maybe the same group.

“What happened? I hope my ship’s alright?” Darya asked shakily. “Where is Enta?!”

“E-everything’s fine, princess!” Fominel said, leaning in. “They didn’t get far. I killed them and tucked them under the boat; no one saw anything yet.”

“Weren’t there fishermen on the pier? How did no one see anything?”

“They snuck in on a boat and climbed up the side. I was watching them the whole time. I tried to scare them off, but they started talking about a big crew and a captain. Started swinging their swords and guns everywhere. I cut them down right away.”

He really doesn’t let anyone fuck with the ship!

“Great work, Fom!” Darya said, patting his shoulder.

“What happened to your hand, princess?. I’d much rather have come with you. I’m supposed to protect you, not the ship,” He said regretfully.

Seris took her cape off in a hurry, readying it to wrap around Darya’s arm. “How exactly did you break your hand this badly?” she asked.

“I beat two pirates myself. One of them died,” Darya said, keeping her voice low.

“You beat two of them with your fist?!” Fominel looked at her in disbelief. Seris gasped.

“We can talk about this later. We should leave this island before the storm.”

“Wait, you said only one died?” Fominel asked, looking at the distant treeline. “What happened to the other one?”

“He can’t walk anymore. I left him there after asking him questions.”

“That won’t do,” Fominel said, pulling out his blue manablade.

“You want to kill him?” Darya asked.

Seris looked up. “I can’t explain why right now, but they need to disappear. The villagers will be in big trouble otherwise,” Seris said, carefully wrapping Darya’s bleeding hand with her cape.

Actually, that’s right. I should’ve killed him. I didn’t have a way to hide bodies, though.

"Tell me where they are,” Fominel said urgently.

“There’s a cliff on the other side of the forest. A pier at the beach, you can’t miss it,” Darya said, wincing when Seris tightened a knot.

“There’s a pier?!” Fominel relaxed his posture. “That’s good. We can come around and take the bodies with us. I’ll go finish him off. You two go back to the ship.”

Seris patted Darya’s arm. “I’ll heal you when we’re back on the ship,” she said, grabbing Lurim’s hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Wait, you’re taking this boy with us?” Darya asked Seris as Fominel disappeared into the trees.

“No. He’s too young for that. We’ll hand him over to the elder,” Seris whispered, hurrying down the path.