CH 358

Welling Emotions

Unlike the calm and cool west district, the main street was still very lively, but I passed through it and walked into the dangerous east district.

I hadn’t been here since I last came to heal Ralf’s injury, plus my own outlook on things had changed quite a lot since then so I felt a surprisingly refreshing feeling when I entered this place.

As like back then, at the entrance to the path to the black market, a bunch of thugs and hooligans were standing as guards, and unless you had some kind of connection, it was impossible to enter from the front.

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Last time, we had been able to enter smoothly under Esta’s guidance but, this time, I can’t even talk to those people either.

Leaving the black market aside for now, I could go around and check the other locations in the east district but…….when you think about gathering info, the black market is the place to go.

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While risky, I decided to go in regardless because in these 3 days I’ll probably have to take risk sooner or later anyway.

Searching for a place from where I could sneak in without getting seen, I waited for the guards to switch and used the opening to jump over the barricade and successfully trespass into the black market.

The barricade was covered in barbed wires so my hand had a lot of small piercing wounds, but I did succeed in entering the place.

I used [Pain Inhibition] and [Self Regen] together, and then ripped a piece of cloth from my robe to tie around it as a healing measure.

I need to gather as much info as I could, and then retreat before someone notices me.

I quickly mixed myself within the crowd with a nonchalant look and ventured deeper into the black market as I slowly observed this place once again after a long while.

The last time I was here, the place was busy in the afternoon but as you’d expect of a black market, the amount of people here at night was significantly more.

The thing that caught my eye the most was once again the sight of multiple beast type demihumans, being made to work as labour with collars around their necks.

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There was even a  store run by a beastman that dealt in selling these collared demi human slaves which hit me with a strange irritation inside my heart.

I had no yet forgotten the emotions that I had felt the last time I saw this scene ——-One day, I’ll definitely release all the slaves captured here.

I recalled the day I swore that oath to myself.

Blood was rushing to my head, and I had to suppress my urge to just go berserk right here and now as I calmed myself and walked past the demi human slaves.

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Right now, I was too busy with my own personal mess and had no time for others.

But once I had destroyed [Under Eye] and gotten my revenge against Klaus……..I will definitely do something about this black market as well.

I kept repeating that to myself as I tried to focus more on gathering info at the black market.

I passed by an area that was filled with tents like the Realzard back alleys, and reached an area with tall buildings built side by side.

If my intuition was correct, [Under Eye]’s base should be somewhere among these tall buildings as well.

While being extra cautious of my surroundings, and fully activating my detection skills to try and find strong presences………..I sensed strong presences from three of the buildings in front of me.

The building with the most number of strong presences came from the building to my front right, and the building with the single strongest presence came from the one on the left, a bit further inside.

I hadn’t been able to sense any presences until now so suddenly having multiple appear right in front of me left me a bit uncomfortable.

There was a high chance that one of these three buildings was the base of [Under Eye], and there was even chance that all three belonged to them.

Now then, the question is whether I actually try to enter one of these places or not.

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Since I wasn’t sure yet, I wanted to confirm the truth with my own eyes.

But of course, actually entering any of these building came with a lot of risk, and any capable fighter will probably quickly sense my trespassing.

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I could at least wait for Ralf and Esta to gather their share of info as well, so I think it’d be smarter to just turn back for now but………

After pondering over it for a while, I decided I was going to get closer and check them after all.

I raised my caution level to the maximum, and decided I’ll enter the left side building to the front, that didn’t have any strong presence unlike the other two and then scope out the buildings to the opposite of that one from there.

Also taking into consideration that someone might simply be suppressing their presence here, I carefully continued to climb through this building——and then looked towards the building behind this one from here, where I had sensed the singular strong presence coming from.

The presence I sensed were rough so I couldn’t tell for sure, but I slowly narrowed the signal down to pin down the exact location where the presence was coming from.

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Fully killing my own presence, I watched from the window patiently to see if I could get a glimpse of someone from here when suddenly, I caught sight of a woman with long white hair.

For a second I thought I had mistaken the presence but it became clear very quickly that the source of the strong presence I felt was most definitely coming from that woman.