"This must be it..." Willem looked around the corner while remaining hidden from the dark elves hastily running back and forth from the farms to the inner walls.

An unmistakable stench of piss and feces permeated the area, much worse then the slums that Willem had originally walked through. The closer one got to the building marked with a signboard of a woman's legs spread, the worse the smell became, until it was almost unbearable.

Willem used a subtle hint of magic to expel the smell from his nostrils and snuck inside the building through the back entrance. When he first laid eyes upon the room, he understood why it was called the breeding house.

Instead of a typical brothel with separate rooms, communal showers or even attendants, this was much more akin to a barn where rows upon rows of human females had been shackled to wooden walls, their legs spread apart and a wooden beam across their stomach to keep them from falling down.

Most of the women in the brothel ranged from twelve years old to late twenties, but there was no sign of women older than that. Many of the women had bruised faces, lashes on their hands and feet and festering wounds all over their bodies. There was almost no sign of life, their eyes were glazed over and a few of them mumbled, begging to be killed.

A couple of the women seemed to be pregnant, their shackles had been loosened so they could lay down in the hay prepared by a farmer.

Four of the dark elf guards stood at the entrance of the building, weapons at the ready. One peered through a slit in the door, scouting for the enemy the bell tolled for.

"Why are we even here protecting these dumb breeding sows?" The youngest of the dark elf guards asked his companion.

"Apparently it's only one human, he already freed the males, and 'she' saw him coming this way." The elf beside him answered before flexing his wrist a bit.

"So he most likely came to free the females." The young elf guard nodded his head, before resuming his defensive posture. "Huh?"

Before the dark elf had time to react, blood ran down from his forehead and leaked into his eyes, blinding him. He then dropped to his knees, unable to control his own body.

The other three guards looked at the sudden disturbance only to see the youngest of the guards had his scalp completely torn off, his brains viewable by everyone.

Despite being ready, the guards were too flustered to properly mount a defense against Willem who was already slicing down the second and third guard.

Willem grasped the dagger in his left hand deftly as he stabbed forward. The second guard took a knife to the stomach, which was then forced up into his sternum before he was kicked back to block the swing of the fourth guard.

The third guard ate an elbow to the jaw, which by all standards should not have incapacitated him. However the strike was infused with Willem's magic and was therefore several times more powerful than anything the dark elves could manage to block. Despite the strike, the attack itself was not life threatening, until Willem tossed the dagger from his left hand to his right and sunk it into the third guard's neck in one fluid motion.

The fourth guard threw the body of his deceased ally to the side and grabbed for his own dagger in order to defend himself.

"What kind of monster are you?" The dark elf attempted to buy time knowing how much noise the fight had already made, hoping to draw more guards over.

Willem remained silent as he used his darkness magic to bind the guard, stopping his movements completely. Though he had a method to extract information from a dead person, it was a bit convoluted and there was no one to protect him while he searched through the memories.

"How did you know I was coming this way, I used magic you should not be able to see through." Willem used mind magic to compel the fourth guard to talk.

"No- Stop... Please... W- We have a seer, she is blind but she can see so much more than any one man." The fourth guard tried to hold back from telling the truth, which only made the pain worse until he could no longer resist.

"Where do I find this seer?" Willem looked into the guard's eyes.

The guard shuddered as he begged. "Please, I... I do not know for sure. Augh- ... Ugh- They say she resides in the main palace. I am just a lowly guard." The elf was crying from the pain of the compulsion magic.

Willem took his hand and placed it on the guard's head, crushing his skull completely just by squeezing.

As he turned around, a few of the women had seen what Willem did and raised their heads. The rest kept their head down instinctively out of fear.

"Please, Ello, God of the Plants and Harvest, I have worshiped you all my life, please grant my wish. Let this man strike me down so that I may join you." A weak, fifteen year old girl covered in deep scars with trembling hands prayed to her god.

"I can cut you down here and now, and send you to meet your God. Or you can live, and maybe get revenge for what they have done to you." Willem pressed his index finger against the young girl's head.

"You can guarantee I will get my revenge?" The young girl held her hands together still in prayer.

"It will not be an easy journey for you, but yes. You will." Willem nodded his head.

The young girl cried in relief as her hands dropped down to her tiny waist, as if all the strength had left her body.

Willem produced an undiluted pain suppression elixir and gently made her drink a small amount, careful that she did not overdose. As she drank, she found the pain from the wounds she suffered, the hunger she felt and the reminder of the women she could not help all drifted away quietly.

"Focus girl. Focus on the people you want to kill." Willem saw that the girl was drifting between conscious and unconscious and slapped her gently.

"The guards must die, the nobles must die, the Butcher must die." The girl incoherently spoke.

"Who is the Butcher, and what of the common folk?" Willem looked into her hazy eyes.

"The Butcher is the one that took those who were to old and chopped them up, then made us eat them." The girl seemed to focus better. "And the commoners snuck in to give us food and water, they are good people."

The woman wrapped her arms around Willem's neck while he hoisted her to her feet.

"One must die, many will live." Willem nodded his head.

For the first time since she before she was captured, she let out a small smile. The other girls clamored to get a small taste of the elixir, knowing Willem to now at least be a merciful existence.

Willem quickly shared the drink before breaking the shackles holding the captured women.

"Is everyone here ready to leave?" Willem confirmed that everyone had been helped.

The young girl who had wished for death was the first to lead the other girls by hand out the back door into a small courtyard.

"Join hands with each other, I will cast magic so we do not get caught." Willem softly spoke.

The girls joined hands, and as Willem held out his hand to be grabbed, the young girl winced before taking it. Willem chose to say nothing as he slipped into the Void, guiding the women to the farm.

Since he was inside the Stinging Blood Tortoise, the Void creatures were nowhere to be found. However the veins of blood within the Great Tortoise were much easier to see while within the Void.

Once the group had reached the farm, Willem guided them into the stealth magic he had originally laid down for the men.

When Willem appeared, cries of joy and sorrow both rang out for the men and women. Some men joined hands with their missing lovers, some with their families, while the rest desperately searched for people whom were no longer alive.

The women were given clothes to use from the farmers and Willem looked around for an appropriate place to bring them while he finished off Pacharus and the Butcher.

"Do any of you have a hiding place with enough room for everyone here?" Willem asked the group.

"There are some civilians who will take us in." The men and women nodded their heads.

With Willem reconstructing the stealth magic to cover the group, they moved through the streets of the slums until they arrived at a place Willem was familiar with.

The broken down house with the young man Willem spoke to earlier was now speaking with one of the farmer's before assenting and opening the door behind him.

The men and women funnel into the partially broken house and Willem fixes the magic back in place, to the point that even the Dark Elf did not want to re-enter his own home. Since he knew there was mind magic placed in the area, he could somewhat resist, but it was still very powerful magic that made him sweat for no apparent reason.

"I will return." Willem nodded his head to the group and left the broken down house.

"Wait, what is your name?" The young girl who held Willem's hand called out after him.

"Grandia." Willem whispered, nodded his head again and slipped through the side streets with ease while passing guards and civilians alike.

The young girl repeated his name in her head hundreds of times so that she would never forget.

Willem still had a line on Pacharus, who was now forcefully taking whippings without infusing his body with magic from the guards to look more like the other humans in the farms, unaware that they had already escaped.

The disarray of the elven inner guards showed more than anything that they had never felt a real crisis in a very long time and gotten complacent.

After infusing magic into his nose, Willem tracked down the heavy stench of blood that he had been sensing for a while.

Finding the Butcher was easy, and the description given from the women matched the behemoth of an elf that was currently sitting on a chair made partially of human bones.

The massive, muscular elf drank wine from a cracked skull while eating raw flesh, presumably from one of his many kills.

"Who gives a rat fuck about this stupid human, I will give him the privilege of being my new wine cup. Hahahaha!" The monstrous Butcher spoke with a deep raspy voice while spitting out small chunks of flesh.

Willem wanted to torture the Butcher, but without knowing his strength, going easy on him would be a mistake.

(Quick and painful, quick and painful...) Willem thought to himself what the best course of action would be.

"Of course..." Willem could not help but whisper out loud as he took a small vial from his spacial spell.

Using the stealth magic, Willem slipped a small dosage of highly neurotoxic magical venom harvested from the green mamba snake within the forest into the cup of the Butcher.

Without skipping a beat, the Butcher took a swig of the drink and gagged on the horrible taste. Before being able to spit out the venom, Willem locked the Butcher's jaw, forcing him to swallow the wine.

"For the breeding house." Willem whisper into the Butcher's ear as he stepped back.

The Butcher's eyes went wide as the neurotoxic venom took hold of his respiratory system and paralyzed his body completely.

If this was any other elf, perhaps the effects would not have been so dire or quick-acting, however his massive frame made it much faster and more lethal.

Willem watched as the Butcher began seizing, the guards rushing to try and help him, unsure of what actually ailed him.

In the end they did more harm than good, and the Butcher died in the arms of the guards sent to protect him.