The inspection and selection process carried out by the kidnappers, now directly assisted by the soldiers, continued under the moonlight.
The atmosphere in the backyard of the luxurious mansion felt silent yet tense.
Some of the kidnapped people began to be separated; they would likely be sold as servant slaves, personal bodyguards, or sex slaves at the Wollen City auction market.
Calian, who was observing all of this, felt furious to the core seeing innocent people treated like livestock being assessed for their worth before being slaughtered.
After a while, it was Calian and Wolvin's turn to be inspected.
Two fully armed soldiers immediately scanned the bodies of the two youths meticulously. The inspection was conducted in a very thorough, rough, and degrading manner. However, while checking their arms, the gazes of the two soldiers suddenly halted and focused on a small object reflecting light from the ring fingers of Calian and Wolvin's left hands.
"A gold ring?" muttered one of the soldiers, realizing that the captives' belongings had not been completely stripped in the underground prison earlier.
The soldier immediately turned his head toward the ruler of Gias City, who was standing not far from them.
"My Lord, what about the gold rings worn by these two?" reported the soldier.
Hearing the word 'gold', Thomas immediately turned his head. His greed-filled eyes instantly locked onto the fingers of the two shackled youths.
"Of course you must confiscate them! Take their rings and hand them to me!" ordered Thomas without hesitation, unwilling to let even the smallest treasure slip from his grasp.
"Yes, My Lord!"
The two soldiers acted immediately. One of them pulled the Night Wolf youth's left hand roughly and tried to slip the gold ring off his ring finger.
However, a strange thing happened. When the soldier tried to pull and remove it with all his might, the ring would not come off at all. The object seemed to possess an absolute binding magic that made it fuse with the Night Wolf youth's finger, refusing to be owned by anyone else.
The soldier tried to pull it again, but the result remained the same. The ring could not be removed.
"My Lord, I cannot remove the ring!" reported the soldier in a frustrated tone, turning back toward Thomas. "This ring is very strange, it is as if it has fused with his finger and cannot be pulled off at all!"
"If that object cannot be removed in a normal way, then just cut off both of their hands!" Thomas ordered sternly without the slightest pity. "Besides, they will only be used as mining slaves. Losing one hand will not kill them."
"Yes, My Lord!" answered the two soldiers in unison, immediately drawing their longswords from their sheaths.
Thomas then turned toward the group of kidnappers standing nearby. "You! Two of you, quickly help them hold down the bodies of those two captives so they don't rebel!"
"Yes, Sir!"
Two of the eight kidnappers immediately ran over to help the soldiers. The two of them directly grabbed and forcefully stretched Calian and Wolvin's left hands forward, holding them tightly so the soldier could chop off their wrists with one precise slash from the side.
Seeing the cruelty that had truly gone beyond the bounds of reason, Wolvin's golden eyes flashed sharply.
"You are truly bastards!" he hissed furiously, glaring sharply at the kidnappers and soldiers holding his hand.
Slap!
A hard slap instantly struck Wolvin's left cheek. The very loud slapping sound echoed amidst the silence of the night, causing some of the other captives to let out stifled shrieks.
"Shut your mouth!" barked one of the kidnappers who had just slapped him, looking at Wolvin with a degrading gaze. "How dare a lowly beastfolk like you speak like that to us!"
Seeing his spouse being slapped hard, Calian's anger that he had been holding back all this time truly reached its absolute limit. He glared sharply at the man who had slapped the person he loved the most. The look in his eyes promised an absolute death for them.
Realizing that he was being stared at with such an intense murderous gaze, the man glared back at Calian. Even though he shuddered for a moment, his ego and his position of feeling on top made him act arrogant again.
"What are you looking at?! Your gaze disgusts me!" the man barked as he spat on the ground. "If only you were not a valuable slave to be sold, I would have killed you right here!"
That peaking anger made Calian no longer care about the threat he heard.
"Forgive me, Wolvin. It seems I cannot keep my promise to you to hold myself back." Calian whispered in a voice that sounded incredibly cold, his eyes never leaving the man who had dared to slap his spouse. "I cannot just stand by and do nothing when you are treated like that right in front of my eyes."
Wolvin turned his head and looked at his husband's face. He understood perfectly what the purple-haired man meant by those words.
And then, a sincere, understanding smile was displayed by the Night Wolf youth.
"What are you talking about, Darling?" Wolvin replied softly, completely ignoring the soldier next to him who had already raised his sword and was preparing to cut off his left hand. "Our previous promise did not include our current situation. If you truly want to take action, then let me start it for you first!"
Right after those words were spoken, the look in Wolvin's eyes became as sharp as a knife. In a very swift motion, Wolvin swung his right hand, which happened to not be held by anyone, downward with massive physical strength.
Clack!
The thick iron chain connecting the cuffs, which had previously been made brittle by Calian's time manipulation magic, snapped due to the hard jerk.
Thomas, his wife and two children, the soldiers, the kidnapper group, down to the people who had been kidnapped instantly widened their eyes. All of them became extremely shocked and stood frozen upon seeing the cuff chain binding the two hands of the Night Wolf youth snap just like that, as if it were made of clay.
To them, that was something completely impossible to be done by someone whose mana flow was being completely drained.
"W-What?!" Thomas exclaimed in shock, his eyes bulging in disbelief at the sight before him. "How is it possible that the chain of the anti-magic and mana cuffs could be snapped just like that while that beastfolk is shackled?!"
Ignoring everyone's shock and confusion, Wolvin's movements did not stop there. With his right hand now free to maneuver, he immediately took out his favorite black dagger from his dimensional storage necklace.
The weapon instantly appeared in his grasp.
Slash!
In one extremely fast and precise horizontal slash, he thrust the black dagger right at the neck of the kidnapper who had been holding his left hand earlier.
The man's eyes widened. He spontaneously let go of Wolvin's hand, stumbling backward while clutching his neck, which was now gaping wide and spurting fresh blood due to the swift slash Wolvin delivered.
The man did not even have the chance to make a sound. He immediately fell to the grassy ground, writhing and choking on his own blood while clutching his fatally wounded neck, before finally dying in a very gruesome condition.
Seeing that man die in the blink of an eye, the soldier who was previously preparing to cut off Wolvin's hand gasped in shock and was instantly engulfed in anger.
"You insolent lowly beastfolk! Die!" shouted the soldier.
Clang!
The sword swung with all his might by the soldier was easily parried by Wolvin using the blade of his dagger. The sound of clashing metal clinked loudly, sparking a few embers in the air.
Slash!
With a very agile and fast movement, Wolvin slashed the soldier's neck. The slash caused a very severe gaping wound in the gap of the neck armor, severing his airway and main blood vessels. The soldier died instantly.
The incident that took place in merely a matter of seconds turned the atmosphere tense and chaotic.
"Don't move!"
An extremely loud threatening shout suddenly rang out from the side. One of the kidnappers, realizing how dangerous Wolvin was, immediately took action. He pointed his sword right at the purple-haired youth's neck.
"Drop your weapon! If you dare to move even one step further, I swear I will kill him right now!" threatened the kidnapper with trembling hands, feeling certain that he had taken the Night Wolf youth's weakness hostage.
Hearing the threatening shout, Wolvin only let out a long sigh. He then looked at the man holding his husband hostage with a gaze full of pity.
"If I were you, I would never dare to do such a foolish thing to him."