Kaden woke up. There was not as much pain as he expected. In fact, he felt like he had been healed slightly. His lost teeth seemed to be regrowing too, but at least normal healing spells can’t do that. He wasn’t sure, if someone had used a more powerful healing spell on him or if he naturally could regrow teeth. He felt it was the latter.

With some effort Kaden got up to his knees. There wasn’t really room to stand up entirely. It seemed he had been put in some cage. Looking around, he was not even in the forest anymore, but on a road somewhere. A carriage again.

“This shit is happening again...”, Kaden sighed in his mind. Once again he was being dragged somewhere against his will. He still was too weak! Still, Kaden was aware he had grown much stronger. Eventually he would be strong enough to avoid all this!

Luckily he also still had his pouch. He had attached it just inside his wolf skin boot after he had grown worried carrying it on a belt since his fighting style and opponents could easily strike on it. Feet were far more safer area. Before that he had tried attaching the pouch on himself, but that was a painful mistake. At any rate, it had either not been noticed or they didn’t care. He doubted the latter.

Kaden had only lost some incomplete formation attempts in his home. Most important things were still with him so there was not much to worry about regarding that.

He inspected the cage and it was made from very good quality metals and had formations embedded into it. The cage was tough. For a moment Kaden planned on trying to tamper with the formations, but there was that attacker. It had to be someone at Formation stage at least. There would be no chance to run with that guy around so he decided to not do anything dumb.

There was time for escape later. As Kaden looked around, he noticed there were several beasts in other cages next to him. The beast were alive too, but in much worse shape than him. These people must indeed have healed him since he appeared to be human. That was a good sign! Maybe he could still deceive his way out of this newest problem.

There was no need trying to remain unnoticed so Kaden decided to try the durability of his cage. He kicked and clawed at it, but there was little to no damage. Whatever damage he managed to cause was somehow being repaired by the formations. In fact, after Kaden observed the formations and their effect, he realized he had never even reached the metal, but only damaged the external layer created by the formations. The cages were strong enough to hold dire beasts at very least.

“That kid is awake”, said a voice outside of the carriage.

Then came sudden running sound. Kaden finally saw the woman, Caili, appear to look inside the carriage past its coverings. She was enraged.

“I don’t care what Sidon says, but I’m going to beat you up!” She said to Kaden. “I wanted you to be awake to feel it all.”

Kaden prepared to defend as Caili took out a spiked rod. It sparkled with electricity.

There was no way Kaden was going to take a beating without a fight. He took a few beats through the bars, but the shocks he received along were the thing that actually hurt the most. To counter this Kaden backed into corner and made Caili come closer. As soon as another hit was coming, Kaden grabbed the rod and despite the continuing stream of electricity he pulled hard. Caili was dragged along closer to the cage.

Immediately afterwards, Kaden grabbed the woman’s hand with his own along with the Devour spell

“AAAAAAAAAAAAH!” Caili screamed as blood spewed from the wrist being devoured. It was rather messy.

Kaden wanted to heal himself and also wound the woman he considered to be an idiot. Still, in the end he received more damage than he did heal with the grisly spell in that short moment. A force sent him back againt the cage interrupting the connection.

Caili fell on her knees while as she held her bleeding arm. It looked like something had chomped a piece of it. There was another person who immediately started to heal the wound afterwards. That man had to be the healer.

“I told you to leave the kid alone, Caili”, said the familiar voice belonging to the person who had beaten Kaden. It was not the healer and was still out of his sight. “Sure he can talk, but his actions lean towards beasts. You don’t stick your hand into cage with a dire beast, do you?”

“He almost killed me, Sidon!” Caili replied angrily as the wound was being healed.

“Almost”, Sidon replied nonchalantly. “Its a good lesson to not trust everything. Huh, what an interesting spell.”

This time Kaden finally saw the blond long haired man with similarly colored beard. The man, Sidon, was looking at the effects of Devour as it was being healed.

“Kid, where did you learn this spell?” Sidon asked. “Looks like its necromancy.”

Kaden spat at Sidon. Somehow the ball of phlegm never reached the man as its path was diverted past him. Sidon only grinned and Kaden slammed against the cage once again.

“How many times do you want me to beat you?” Sidon asked.

“I’m going to kill you”, Kaden said to him calmly. “I’m going to get stronger than you and then I’m going to come and find you. I’ll drag out your innar...”

Kaden slammed once again against the cage, but this time he felt like his arms were being bent painfully. Eventually Kaden decided it wouldn’t matter and getting more hurt was counterproductive.

“Stop! I’ll tell you!” Kaden said and then continued lying with condescending voice. “In case you weren’t aware, lots of people get eaten by beasts. They eat the flesh, but they don’t care about the human things they can’t use. I found it that way.”

Sidon nodded. Kaden was not sure, if he believed the story, but he was not going to connect himself to Trohin, if he could avoid it. There was no telling who could tell Devour was Trohin’s work.

“Speaking of beasts, how did you end up in the forest?” Sidon asked. “I already looked that you got weird mana channels. A normal mana channel for Channel Opening, but also a ball of them. I guess it works as some kind of core imitation.”

Kaden frowned a bit. It was not surprising that he had been inspected. He was indeed rather unusual. Good thing was that inspecting someone else was always much harder than doing it to oneself. Doing so would be like acting against someone else’s mana while trying to see its details. Someone at Formation stage with relevant inspection skill could not see his actual core within the ball of mana channels. This was a good thing. If they had seen his core, it would be a catastrophe for Kaden.

“I don’t know”, Kaden replied. He wanted to pretend as if he had amnesia or something, but luckily Sidon did not press the matter.

“Sure, sure”, Sidon muttered. “Perhaps you are someones science project. Its not like experiments with humans and cores are rare. You also have interesting signs of mana mutations already at Channel Opening. Someone must have experimented on you. Stuff like mutations usually starts to pop up at Condensation stage or higher.” Sidon was pointing at Kaden’s hair plume.

Sidon was silent for a moment. “Ah, well, you did try to mess up my workers so I’ll be taking you. If you take notice to your neighbors, you might have wondered what we do with live beasts. Some of them we will sell for highest bidder and some of them we put into my almost illegal arena. As for you, I’ll have you fight there. Either beasts or human opponents.”

“I’ll tear them apart and grow stronger”, Kaden replied. He didn’t really care what Sidon was going to use him for. “Then I’ll pull out your limbs and beat y...”

Kaden was slammed against the cage again.

“Yeah, yeah”, Sidon said and waved his hand dismissively. “But don’t worry, kid. You are quite unique. You are about as tough as dire beast so unless you are unlucky and someone actually manages to bash your head in or separate it from your shoulders, you should live. I like to reuse my own fighers and there will be more people who come to fight, if fights are not intended to end with death. So, trust me, killing you instantly seems to be difficult. I didn’t manage to do it. Then again I didn’t hit at full force, but for your opponents it should be hard. In fact, I expect to get lots of money for having a … hmmm … ‘feral child’ on the arena. Ah, the name needs some work. Whats your name anyway?”

Greedy bastard. This Sidon had seemed nicer, but it was clear that everyone had these faults! Greed, deception, cruelty!

“If you don’t give me a name, I’ll start calling you something ridiculous”, Sidon added while Kaden was still imagining words to define him.

“Kaden”, he finally said. There was no point hiding his name. No one would connect it to anything.

“Oh, looks like you didn’t grow up in someones lab”, Sidon said. “Otherwise you might only know a number or simply not have a name at all. In that case, where did you live?”

This Sidon was too curious. Kaden started thinking he would need to think a proper back story that didn’t conflict with anything he had said so far. He did not want to be tied to be from Sacronan’s side. Despite being originally a civilian, he expected it to be bad thing if saints knew of it.

“A village”, Kaden decided to say. He did not know anything about city life so he was not able to create good lies about it. “Not really sure where it is… or was. I only knew the local area. Some beasts came and killed everyone.”

Sidon frowned, but then shrugged. If he had questioned further, Kaden would have given Dashire’s name. Dashire was a backwater village that probably no one even in its vicinity really remembered. Someone from Saint Empire would not know about it. Still, he lied as much as he could. The less people knew of him, the safer he would be.

“So, Kaden, do you have any ideas how I can convince you not to try killing anyone?” Sidon said after some time. “You know, not act like a beast. I understand you have lived with beasts at least for some time and so you know that you must kill first or be killed, but that works only in the forest. I can always leave you there in the cage and, once we get back to Corand, the imperial capital, I’ll just fit you with a shock collar like rest of the beasts and keep you in check that way.”

Kaden stared at Sidon angrily.

“Or! Perhaps there is a way that, you will work for me and don’t force me to slam you against objects every few minutes”, Sidon continued and then was silent for a moment. “So its either collar or you agree to work with me. In other words, do you want to be a beast or a human?”

Since he was on his way to imperial capital of the Saint Empire, maybe it was not a bad idea to play nice with Sidon for a while!

“Perhaps I can mooch off some useful things, if I work for him”, Kaden thought. “I would have stayed in the forest for quite a bit longer. I wanted to reach high beast level first, but with this I can get inside the heart of Saint Empire without anyone really noticing! There are far more resources available and more saints kill. I just need to find a way to do so!”

Kaden thought it for a while.

“I’ll promise not to kill your people”, Kaden finally said with a toothy grin. “I’ll work for you… at least for the time being.”

“Shit, kid, what are you planning?” Sidon replied as he noticed Kaden’s sudden change of behavior. Sidon wasn’t dumb. He knew Kaden was not to be trusted, but he also figured that Kaden was an oportunist. As long as Kaden knew he would not be able to escape from consequences, he would obey orders. More so, if he could benefit from it.

“Nothing. Just keep that stupid woman away from me”, Kaden replied and pointed at Caili.

“You are tougher than my people at Channel Opening”, Sidon pointed out. “They can’t deal with you alone, but in groups they can and they won’t be surprised by you anymore. If you play nice, they will tolerate you. Remember that. Play nice. I’ll give you only one chance and if you waste it, you will sleep in the beast pens with a shock collar.”

“I can do that, but I will also not be bullied”, Kaden said. “If they do something to me, I might not kill them, but that is only thing I promise.”

“We will see then”, Sidon said and unlocked the cage.

Then he informed rest of the team what he was doing. Everyone seemed doubtful or even some anger, like Caili. Still, Sidon just told them it should be ok. It seemed he had gotten interested in Kaden and his unusual abilities. Greed! Kaden was certain of it. Sidon expected to profit. Why else would he act like this?

This was something he could take advantage of!