"And then, after we sell these humans, I'm going to go back home and finally confess. The army just isn't for me." A tall and handsome man with long ears and a slim build lamented. His companions laughed heartily as they joked around.

"Really? But you're such a good bowman! Man, we'll miss you for sure." Another elf said with a wink. The other man shivered slightly and put on an awkward face.

"That... was a one-time thing..." He said lamely. The group of 20 elves around him laughed.

Behind them, several hundred humans were chained together and were being dragged forward like dogs. Elves flanked them from all sides, blocking any escape they could possibly have.

When a pregnant woman started falling behind, one of the elves harshly whipped her. She cried out in pain as the elf jeered. "Speed up, cow, or you'll be fed to the wolves."

With tears streaming down her face, the woman forced herself forward. She wasn't the only one amongst the humans who were being abused, like the elderly, the young, and even the disabled were harassed. Even the healthy ones weren't safe from occasional and completely random bursts of anger from the elves.

The elf from before, the one who wished to retire, looked at the humans with not-so-thinly veiled contempt. "What a pathetic bunch. Just looking at them makes me want to cringe."

A female elf, one wearing much fancier armor than the others, added, "You know, you weren't cringing quite as much yesterday when you were enjoying one of their women."

The male elf just rolled his eyes and didn't bother retorting. He knew she was displeased with him. Not because of any empathy with the humans, no, rather, she thought of his actions akin to that of having sex with a rat.

Suddenly, a voice rang out. "No! Please, let my baby go!" A woman wailed as she tried to take back her daughter, who had been roughly yanked away by a male elf.

He laughed and spat at her face before pushing her down with one hand, and even kicked her a couple of times in the belly for good measure. "Shut up, human slut. I just want to get off real quick, no need to make such a big deal of it."

The woman cried the name of her daughter and begged, but to no avail. The enslaved humans could only stare at the ground as the woman was beaten bloody. They had learned the hard way what would happen should they so much as look at their captors.

Hundreds of years ago, humans stood at the same power as the elves. However, after a disastrous incident, the elves, beastmen, and demons formed a huge alliance and thoroughly trampled the humans to the ground. Since then, humanity had been living under the boot of the other races, with only a few small territories able to survive here and there, but even those were ultimately just commodities for the other races to use as breeding grounds for easy slaves and practice."

Even as she was being beaten, the woman tried to cry out again. "Please! Take me instead, just leave my daughter!"

Said daughter, who was being dragged away by the hair, screamed too. "Mommy!"

"Enough."

A single word echoed from above, but that single word was enough to send the entire forest into a deadly silence.

The elves were frozen stiff by a strange power, and the humans too were frozen. With great effort, everyone turned their eyes upward.

The single most beautiful being that every human and elf in the caravan lightly hovered in the air, her majestic and imposing wings spread out. Her gaze was neutral, but there was a hint of edge within it.

As she stared down the group of elves and humans, the fancy-dressed female elf suddenly broke out of her strange trance and yelled. "Men! Get yourselves together!"

This seemed to break everyone out of their trance as they pulled their bows out and aimed them at the winged woman, but they didn't change position yet, as they still needed to keep watch on the humans. Obviously, the elves were very well trained.

The angel in the skies glanced at the female elf with an almost lazy look that was enough to freeze the elf to the ground. "Ants like you should stay silent."

This seemed to enrage one of the male elves, who released his arrow. Soon, hundreds of arrows were quickly unleashed upon the angel. And yet, when they got close to her, they dissolved into motes of light.

"What!?" "How!? Those are magical arrows!?" The elves screamed, frightened at the display.

The angel raised an eyebrow at the beings below her. She'd been observing the world for a little over six months now and had long since determined the pathetic state the humans were in.

The strangest thing, however, was that this somehow... displeased her. Not like she particularly cared or anything, but seeing her previous race fall to such lows gave rise to particular feelings.

Upon happening upon this caravan by chance and seeing the impending rape, she finally decided to reveal herself.

Of course, this wasn't a spur of the moment thing. She'd been thinking a lot about it, and had decided that perhaps, having a few mortal followers might be useful. Furthermore, in order to appear as non-threatening to the humans as possible, she had even given her body a few more female characteristics and even adopted the female pronoun for herself.

Well, she was asexual by nature, so really, it was more of an aesthetic thing rather than anything else. She could be as masculine or feminine as she wanted, and her soul and body would easily accept it.

"Hm... Disappointing." She murmured. With a lazy wave of her hand, small, needle-like lights shot out of her body and entered the body of the elves before any of them would so much as twitch.

Following that, the elves began to disperse as their bodies turned into light. Screams resonated within the forests as the elves watched, helplessly, as their bodies dissolved.

When all the elves were gone, the angel secretly captured the souls of the elves and stored them within her body for later use. The soul had always intrigued her, but she didn't dare experiment on herself. However... These elves were a different story.

As the last of the elves disappeared into nothingness, she turned her gaze towards the humans while contemplating inside. To take as followers, or to take their souls?

Souls... Or servants... Or souls...

Suddenly, one of the older men in the group slowly got onto the ground and pressed his head to the ground while murmuring in a low but clear voice. "Goddess... Thank you."

This seemed to create a chain reaction as everyone threw themselves onto the ground with varying levels of intensity. The girl who had been so painfully close to rape seemed to be tearing up, as the once seemingly invincible elves had vanished with just a wave of the woman's hand.

The angel's eyebrows suddenly widened a fraction of an inch, but even that was enough to convey the absolute shock she was feeling. And it was not because of the human's actions.

No. It was because of the strange energy that emanated from the humans and delivered itself to her. It was incredibly faint, but it's purity was undeniable, and her soul hungered for it so much that it hurt.

She quickly absorbed this energy into herself, and suddenly, her head felt clearer, and her body and soul just a tiny bit stronger, and the Laws just that much easier to comprehend.

Every single plan she had formed before was scrapped at that moment, and all of her mental faculties honed onto a single word.

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