"Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical."

― Blaise Pascal

-To War by Jingo-

-New World, Same Sins: Chapter 4-

A cold breeze blew through the empty streets of the Melromarc capitol, the moon lighting the sky with a pale glow. The night was a calm one, peaceful as the residents slept and dreamed of better lives…

Or at least, that's what the night should have been.

Instead, William's boots clacked loudly against stone as he marched forward, flames and sounds of combat echoing around him.

"P-Please, sir Hero, I can explai-"

Will silenced the criminal's ramblings with the crunch of the butt of his musket meeting the man's skull.

It had taken him three days to finally track down the Slave trader operating in the city, three days since he had been tipped off to there being one in the city at all, by Naofumi buying one.

The crown wouldn't be happy with him if they found out about this, so they never would, no one ever would. There was official documentation that he had left the city yesterday afternoon, well before the time of the attack, so for all intents and purposes right now he and his party were on the carriage he had bought for transportation, heading south to the sea.

What wasn't on the official documentation, was the fact he and his party had hopped off the carriage, and reentered the city by the sewers.

Guards were almost certainly on their way right now, drawn by the commotion, and if not that then by the giant bonfire rising over the rooftops as his troops put the entire place to the torch. If they arrested him, or even if they just saw him he was screwed, so his party hit hard and fast.

It was hit and run tactics at their purest.

...But they hadn't been fast enough.

Beloukas, the bastard that ran this place was nowhere to be found, even after sweeping the entire place from top to bottom. The vaults that they had cracked open to see if he was hiding in them, had contained much less money than was expected, meaning the bastard had most likely hidden it somewhere before slipping away… he clearly hadn't counted on them burning the place to the ground.

Will couldn't stop the slave traders, as long as the demand for slaves existed, and the nobles were willing to pay, more of them would just keep popping up. But just because he couldn't make them stop, didn't mean he couldn't damn make them HURT.

"AWOOOOO!" The level 40 wolf kin that had been imprisoned, howled at the sky, celebrating its freedom, and all around the area, other's joined its call. They were far enough away from the civilian and merchant areas, so that they wouldn't hurt any civilians, but they would run and give hell to the Slaver's remaining mercenaries and the approaching royal guards.

Every cage had been torn open, every damn chain snapped, and every accursed lock shattered into pieces.

...it had been beautiful.

"Sir!"

William tore his eyes from the burning ruins of Beloukas' business, and turned to his Corporal.

"We've swept the entire perimeter, we've freed every slave, and the merchandise that we haven't been able to load onto the carts we commandeered, we've destroyed." Tanya grinned, her crossbow slung over her shoulder, the fact it was unholstered was evidence that she'd had to use it.

"Any complications?"

"Actually, that's what I wanted to talk about," Her grin sombered "There were a lot of kids in those cells, sir. And none of them are fit to move on their own…" she trailed off, not wanting to say what would happen when the guards caught them.

Will sighed, they couldn't afford to bring any of the slaves they'd freed along with them, escaping the city was already going to be hard enough as it was without a hoard of demi's with them. The free slaves were better off making their own attempts at freedom, which his group had supplied them for, giving them food, basic medicine, and cloaks they could use to hide their animal parts. Not to mention, it would raise eyebrows if his party suddenly turned up with slaves that had been reported stolen…

"Bring 'em long," He said "put 'em in th' rear of the wagons and give 'em whatever medicine we 'ave to spare... toss out any supplies to make 'em room if you 'ave to."

Maybe he was a weak person, putting his party and every other slave they could save in future raids in jeopardy, because he couldn't leave behind some children who were already going to die.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

All he knew was that he was summoned to this world to save people.

And as he walked away from Beloukas' burning tent, he made himself a promise: He'd save everyone in this world, even if he had to burn down the whole world to do it.

-To War by Jingo-

As the wagons thundered down the moonlit road and away from the city, the crew that manned the wagons was up from the original five, to eight. Will had registered and accepted four new mercenaries to his party- and they were mercenaries, not adventurers.

Adventurers were people who made their living solely through the guild, while mercenaries were less picky about where they made their money. Sometimes from guild quests, sometimes from personal quests issued by people who couldn't afford to pay the guild tax, and other times by good ol' fashion raiding- be it of bandit camps, or dungeons.

The biggest difference between the two was that since the guild often only gave quests in its rough area, adventurers tended to stay in the same city for most of their time, only moving far occasionally when a big quest came up, but almost always staying in the same country. Mercenaries on the other hand were wanderers, traveling all over the place in search of profit, often over country borders.

The four he had hired were just that, mercenaries that had crossed over from Zeltoble, a country to the east that was famous for its merchants and mercenaries, actually being run by an oligarchy of the richest merchants.

And since they weren't from Melromarc, they didn't have the nasty racist tendencies that people here tended to have at times, tendencies he had to fire one of his original men for. When he had offhandedly brought up the issue of slavery to his four original companions, to judge how they would react to his plan to raid Beloukas' business, Tanya, Weiss, and Rushia had acted as he had expected: not really caring about it, they were concerned first and foremost with strength (or knowledge in Weiss' case), but one of his men had been revealed to be very much in support of it, and further investigation found out that the guy was far more chummy with the royals than Will was comfortable with.

So he had set up a situation, and framed the guy for attempting to rob the storage of all the loot from the goblin nest for himself. The others were livid, and had loudly called for him to be expelled, which Will had readily agreed to. (But not before stripping the guy of all the loot, materials, and money he had been given previously for his work in the party.)

So 4 adventurers, minus one, plus 4 mercenaries, plus one Hero = 8.

Well, that wasn't entirely true, counting noncombatants, there were 25 people in the carts.

8 fighters.

17 rescued Demi human slaves, all children, and all in bad condition. There was a pattern to the slaves that they had rescued from Beloukas, with the vast majority (14) of them being female, and the few boys being ones that had feminine looks. The obvious reason for the gender disparity of the slaves Beloukas intended to sell, just served to spike Will's anger that they hadn't managed to kill the bastard.

But they didn't have time to go back, they had to hurry if they were going to meet up with their original carriage, in time to arrive as a group at the port city of Maria.

"Heyah!" The drivers cracked their reigns, pushing the Filolial on the carts to run faster. Even if the rest of the trip was taken at a more reasonable pace, they needed to get away from the city as fast as possible, so none of the search parties sent out, and they would be sent out, would run into them.

This was the mindset that Will was in, one of escape and avoidance, when he saw humanoid movement in the tree line. He didn't stop to look, he didn't stop to think what it may be, he didn't have time to stop, so in a split second decision, he threw up his musket, and fired a shot.

He didn't even check to see if he hit, just calling for the drivers to go faster.

And so that was what they did, thundering down the road, southbound.

-To War by Jingo-

The shadow panted as she reevaluated her situation. Having been trained since a child to be a deadly assassin for the Queen, she was quite good at her job. Unfortunately it turned out the Church's shadows were also good at their jobs.

She had been monitoring the movement of the Shield Hero, when two shadows bearing the emblem of the church stumbled upon her by complete accident.

The two had been following the Bow Hero, and had witnessed his attack against the slave trader. They were planning on breaking his cart's wheels, so the search parties could corner him and demand to know why he had done such a thing. Once they had determined his motive, they could submit a formal report. But as they were following the cart, they had run into one of the Queen's dogs.

The fight had been as vicious as it was fast, with the royal shadow in a fighting retreat along the road, she had committed a bold attack to slay one of the shadows and even the odds, but while it had worked, it had cost her the tendons in her left arm.

She thought she was dead.

Until a white hot streak of mana blew through the second shadow's shoulder, stunning him long enough for her to sink a knife into his throat. Apparently their rabid fighting hadn't been as stealthy as they thought.

And so she stood over the dead bodies of the other shadows, breathing heavily as she watched the Bow Hero's group ride off.

The Queen had to be informed.

-End Chapter-

-Arc: New World, Same Sins: End-

I know, I know, this is short, but it's also out early. The main chapter is still coming out when it's supposed to, but I had this scene in my head really clearly, and I knew if I didn't jot it down, I wouldn't be able to get it down right in the future.

*Sips Hot Chocolate*

Beloukas still has to give Naofumi Filo, so he has plot armor... for now.

Also, keep it up with those reviews, I crave them. *Mad cackling*

-Next chapter: September 7th (ish)-