It was deceptively dark beneath the thick branches of the trees but Rowan could see glimmers of sunlight through the gaps. It wasn’t a good time to escape, but escaping at all was good. More importantly, he didn’t know when they’d come to take them away. Unless the town looked deceptively small, it didn’t seem to be large—probably a town at the border.

Liz was finally awake and he breathed a sigh of relief. She didn’t seem injured. Liz didn’t enjoy the enhanced durability that he possessed and both of them fell into the same hole. If it knocked him out, it had to have been a long fall, most likely onto a hard surface underneath.

“We have to get out of this,” said Rowan to fill her in.

“It’s impossible. They can sense you,” said Grace and furrowed her brows, a scowl on her face, “You don’t remember something as simple as that?”

“Then I break you out of here and the both of you run away,” said Rowan after a few, slow nods.

“They’ll gut you instead of keeping you around if you do that,” growled Liz.

“Yeah, and I’d rather be gutted alone than take you both down with me,” he said.

“We should leave, Gallagher. The older one. That’s the most logical choice in this situation. For all the credit the principal gives you, you’re… surprisingly incompetent,” said Grace from the side.

“Take that logic and shove it up your other hole,” growled Liz with wide eyes and turned back to Rowan, hands clenched and nose scrunched up, “And you want to commit suicide instead of waiting for a chance to escape? You have time.”

“I have time. You don’t. So you leave, and I’ll escape if I can,” said Rowan.

“I’m not leaving-” hissed Liz through her teeth but she was interrupted by a hard knock on the cage. She turned her eyes to the source and they widened.

There stood a giant of a man, almost twice the size of Jason. His entire body was covered in brown fur and had tiny, round eyes. Almost instinctually, Liz placed her hand on her sword, or rather, where it should be but wasn’t.

It had been taken away.

Isaac stood next to the bear-man, arms crossed with a frown on his face. He had the hood of his cloak on this time, but his clothes made it easy to tell it was him.

“You won’t leave the territory alive if it was a lie. You understand that, human?” asked the bear-man with an obscenely deep voice that seemed unreal.

“I don’t lie,” growled Isaac, his tone far hoarser and harsher than his usual one, almost like he was pushing himself instead of making it a point to take it easy.

The bear-man grunted and the spider skittered away. The sound of its legs tapping on the ground made shivers run up Rowan’s spine. He was inevitably going to murder it but overgrown spiders were any man’s worst nightmare.

With the spider gone, the bear-man’s hands lit up with brown light and he used it to tear off the door of the cage, also kept in place with webs.

“Five of them,” said the bear-man.

“Six. Four men and two women. There’s another one we have to collect,” said Isaac and the bear-man grumpily nodded after parroting the number.

“No meal, only rations then,” said the bear-man, to which Isaac nodded. The bear-man turned on his heel and walked off.

“You’re free now. They’ll provide us rations for a few days and offer safe passage through their roads,” said Isaac loud enough for all of them to hear. He threw three oversized, wooden coins onto the ground. There were incomprehensible runes carved into them, glowing a gentle blue.

“What… did you just do?” asked Rowan, his eyes narrowed.

“I traded for your safe passage,” said Isaac matter-of-factly.

“Yeah, and you traded others for us. That’s no better than killing them,” growled Rowan.

“Four civilians for four officers. They should be glad to have served their country,” said Isaac and gestured them to follow.

Rowan grabbed the coin and tried to run after Isaac to continue his complaint, but Liz grabbed his forearm. He could’ve taken off easily after pulling away his hands, but he didn’t. The subconscious part of his brain overpowered the conscious side and he stopped.

“What?” he asked, irritated.

“You and Peter are his priorities. You must be delivered to the Capital. What happens to civilians doesn’t matter to him, as far as he’s concerned,” said Liz slowly as if she was trying to get it into his head by gradually easing it into it.

“Now you have your logic. How convenient?” grumbled Grace from the side.

“I’m supposing you don’t have any siblings. Oh, wait. You view your siblings as competitors. Caring for them might be an alien concept for you as much as it was for Charity,” responded Liz as she let go of Rowan’s hand.

“Don’t bring that bitch into this,” said Grace, showing her teeth in what was definitely not a smile.

“She’s your sister,” said Liz.

“Being a sister and a bitch aren’t mutually exclusive,” said Grace and clicked her tongue, her face almost touching Liz’s.

Often, Liz was delegated the duty of looking after Rowan, and being a typical teenager that wanted to hang out with her friends, she dragged him to Charity’s house —Grace’s house. They’d been best friends for a time before they spontaneously stopped hanging around. It was thanks to Liz that Rowan developed his crush for Grace in the first place.

Rather, it started off as a crush for Charity, her being the gentle older sister that contrasted Liz’s heavy-handed demeanor. That affection fell on Grace after their resemblance became uncanny and spending far more time together than unrelated boys and girls their age did.

Rowan knew better than to interfere with an argument. He’d seen his fair share of them in his youth and they often resulted in TV remotes and cups turning into deadly projectiles aimed at his father. It was a battlefield on the first floor. Even without things being thrown everywhere, it was a bad idea to put himself between two very angry people.

That’s why he caught up to Isaac, using the argument as an opportunity to escape Liz’s watchful eye.

“Don’t you feel guilty?” asked Rowan.

“Guilt solves nothing. Leave it behind,” said Isaac as he took big steps toward a nearby small house with smoke billowing out of its chimney.

That’s when the realization hit him: this wasn’t the peaceful world he was used to. Schools allowed potentially deadly fights and even encouraged it. They were caught in a trap and were almost turned into slaves. Empires were running amok and Sects that forced them to take drastic measures such as trekking through a deadly forest so that they could foster their military.

His moral compass didn’t apply in this world.

Even then, selling off others for their own gain seemed rotten and disgusting —it made him nauseous.

Isaac walked into the building and Rowan followed. Various Demons filled the room and there were a few of those giant spiders. One of the Demons pet a spider and threw a mouse into its mouth, forcing Rowan to almost gag as the rodent was torn to bits before being swallowed.

Despite its unsavory visitors, the building looked like a tavern. People were sitting behind long, wooden tables and there was a counter.

“Supplies for six,” demanded Isaac after he walked up to the counter and flashed the wooden coin. He leaned in and whispered into the ears of the Demon that stood behind the counter. It was a large woman with white hair that flowed down to her lower back and two mighty horns reminiscent of a buffalo sticking out of her head, “And something more… expensive.”

Isaac placed a sapphire on the table and slowly pushed it up to the oxen-woman after she placed six large pouches on the table.

“Careful there, pal. I mightn’t have what you’re about to ask,” she said with an alluringly deep voice and leaned in close, a vulpine grin on her face.

“Sect dogs. Where are they at?” asked Isaac, his voice the same strained one he heard him talking to the bear-man with.

“What can I say? Everywhere on your side. That’s cheap,” said the woman.

“Along the road,” whispered Isaac after leaning in further as if to kiss.

“More like it,” said the woman and nodded a few times. She placed her hand over Isaac’s and pulled the sapphire from underneath his, “Don’t visit the second town you’ll reach from here along the path. There were twelve experts around your level there. Maybe four are left now. Who knows? Humans will be humans.”

The oxen-woman pulled out a parchment rolled up into a scroll out from underneath the table and handed it over to Isaac. He put it inside his cloak, nodded, and turned around.

“Not staying for a meal? The core more than makes up for it. Maybe a night to wait them out,” she said and gave him a wink that was left unanswered.

Rowan followed Isaac out of the building.

“Why didn’t you do it from the start? If you were going to sacrifice civilians, I mean,” asked Rowan, finally somewhere relatively quiet.

“Because going down a road is a bad idea and officially entering Demon territory would’ve alerted the Sect dogs. That’s why we could only become official by you four getting caught and then earning back your freedom,” said Isaac and tapped on his chest where he’d hidden the parchment from before, “That’s a map that avoids all their hunting grounds. No more running into traps and we’ll evade the Sect dogs on every level possible.”

Rowan grit his teeth. There was no use in complaining about sacrificing the lives of others. He understood full well that others wouldn’t conform to his morality, especially after seeing the state of this world. The medieval era wasn’t exactly known for its peace.

More importantly, this Cultivation aspect only made the situation worse. If there was a class of people that had an absurd advantage like Isaac and could create projectiles as terrifying as bullets without half the technological advancements as Earth, it would be absurd.

He’d read his fair share of stories on the internet when he was still a full-time nerd and his impression of Cultivators wasn’t the best.

The fact that they had this much common sense was a miracle.

At this point, Rowan was wondering if joining a Sect was the easier option. Rather than traveling for two months through a deadly forest, being sought after and then recruited into the equivalent of a badass research institution was far too alluring. Especially if it meant traveling by foot, even if he didn’t get exhausted from it.

“That’s yours. It’s Demonic Beast meat. A bite or two will be enough for a meal or your insides will be ruptured,” said Isaac and threw one of the bags he got at Rowan. Inside, there were a few straps of oversized jerky.

He hoped that Isaac was dodging but wasn’t very hopeful, so he gulped.

The bear-man came with Peter spread over his shoulder, unconscious. Rowan held back the urge to vomit after he noticed his lack of a hand and the webbing that covered it.

That had to be unsanitary!

It wasn’t a fate that he’d wish upon his worst enemy, and that became apparent —Peter was his worst enemy and he didn’t like seeing him like that. Having a few broken bones, sure, Rowan would revel in the fact but amputation wasn’t what he had in mind when he thought revenge.

“His injury’s been treated. As long as he doesn’t get into another fight, it should heal,” said the bear-man and pulled down his hood. His eyes locked with that of the bear-man’s and it looked ridiculous on too many levels.

“This was not our deal,” said Isaac.

“He fought back so he lost his hand. You should be glad he didn’t lose his sanity as well,” said the bear-man and tossed Peter onto the ground but Isaac intercepted it. He grabbed Peter and neatly placed him over Rowan’s shoulder before turning back to the bear-man.

Isaac clenched his fists and closed his eyes, opened his mouth as if to say something but inevitably closed it before a sound could leave his lips. He turned around and walked off in the direction Liz and Grace were in.