"How old are you?" Anser asked with a smile.
The little girl held out a hand smeared with dregs. She spread all five fingers, thought for a moment, then curled her thumb slightly: "Claira is four years old."
She leaned against Anser's chest, not afraid of strangers at all.
Elves are a long-lived race, with lifespans reaching 700 years, so four years old really was extremely, extremely young.
Anser looked into her eyes, very curious.
Claira had black hair, heterochromia, and pale skin. Her physical traits did not fully match those of mainstream sun elves, moon elves, or wood elves; she was probably of mixed elven blood.
"You'll stay at Moonshadow Quelin first. Don't think about leaving for now. Your mentor is in the Rivington district—maybe they'll come looking for you." Anser did not plan to get involved too much; today could be considered repaying a favor.
He wanted to look around the world. Adventuring and fighting would definitely be unavoidable, and bringing a child along was too outrageous.
"Mm." Kafka wasn't stupid; he could tell what Anser was implying.
He had heard his mentor mention Moonshadow Quelin. It was said that at the beginning it only hosted elves, half-elves, and halflings, and only later opened to outsiders. It had been open for decades, and its reputation was good.
The atmosphere fell silent, with only the sound of several people's footsteps.
Before long, the group entered the north of the town, and the flow of people immediately thinned out.
"Keey—" A hawk's cry came from above.
Finn's body paused, and then he turned his head to look at Anser: "Someone is blocking us off!"
Just now there were too many people, and Gray Eagle couldn't make them out. Once they came to a secluded spot, those people naturally had nowhere to hide.
"Those slave traders? How many?" Anser hadn't expected them to be so brazen, completely unrestrained.
"It's them—sixteen or seventeen. Split into four groups. They've got firearms…" Finn's tone was urgent.
Anser's brows knitted tightly. Slave traders were all very pragmatic. If he hadn't exposed them, it was unlikely they would mobilize in force just to take revenge.
If revenge failed, then their "business" would inevitably become impossible to keep doing.
That left only one possibility: little Claira was more valuable than they had imagined!
"Send me the position at any time."
As he spoke, he pressed the holy symbol on his chest through his cloak and immediately initiated an otherworldly summoning.
A few seconds felt unbearably long.
Suddenly, the air ahead turned hazy. A black steed leapt out of thin air and trotted over with a jaunty gait.
'No saddle.'
Anser cursed his miscalculation inwardly. Before leaving, Nornoth had taken off the saddle, but there was no time to think about that now—they had to rush out before the other side completed the encirclement.
If they fought head-on, there would definitely be casualties; they could only kite and drag it out!
He pushed away Nornoth's big head that was nudging close and placed Claira onto the horse's back.
"Everyone, get over here—put your hands on me!"
They didn't understand why, but they didn't hesitate either.
Anser focused his mind. Strands of magical power spiraled around him, and the sea wind around them abruptly grew stronger.
"मोटाचाल"
Metamagic: Twinned Spell + Longstrider!
Time was tight, and he didn't hold back—casting Metamagic twice in succession.
A layer of magical radiance surfaced one after another on the horse and the three people. They immediately felt their bodies grow a bit lighter.
"Which way?" Anser asked urgently.
"East!" Finn understood instantly.
"Run."
They burst into a full sprint. After advancing a dozen or so meters, they all turned right at the same time, moving far faster than usual.
The other side was chasing from the southwestern dock area. Although they had split into four groups to set up an early encirclement, the group on the eastern side hadn't taken position in time.
"They changed direction—one hundred fifty meters behind us."
Anser turned his head to look. Four figures in leather armor appeared at the street junction behind them, firearms in hand. At the lead was that bearded first mate from the Conch.
The bearded man's face was full of irritation. He had been about to block the prey, only to be discovered in advance. The other side precisely found the gap in the encirclement, ran unbelievably fast, and somehow even got their hands on a black horse.
What should have been a sure thing suddenly went sideways—utterly maddening.
The bearded man's eyes spun. He pointed at the black horse and shouted loudly, "Guards, pursue the human traffickers! Stop them—bounty of one hundred!"
"Damn it!" Anser's anger flared instantly, his gaze turning frighteningly cold.
'I've got no ties and no burdens—why should I swallow this? Today, not a single one of them is getting out alive!'
However, the bearded man's ploy didn't work. There were few people here, and with how striking Nornoth looked, even someone with no sense could tell they weren't to be messed with.
"Alley to the right front!" Finn warned.
Anser lightly patted the horse's back, and Nornoth immediately accelerated past the others, reaching the alley mouth ahead.
More than a hundred meters away, four people were sprinting toward them. Seeing a mounted rider blocking the road, they instinctively raised the firearms in their hands.
Firearms in Faerûn had developed rather slowly for various reasons and were basically all muzzle-loading smoothbore guns.
The flintlock guns in the hands of the Conch slave traders were considered relatively advanced. Their maximum range exceeded 150 meters, but their accuracy was miserable. They were generally fired within 50 meters, because only at that distance was there any confidence of hitting a humanoid-sized target.
At over a hundred meters there was basically no threat, but just in case, Anser still had Nornoth deploy the neck armor to protect Claira.
"વાદળધુમ્મસ"
After a short utterance in the draconic tongue, a spherical mass of dense fog rapidly took shape several dozen meters ahead. In the blink of an eye, its diameter expanded to nearly twenty meters, as tall as five or six stories. The surrounding buildings were completely blocked from view, letting through no light at all.
This was a first-circle spell, Fog Cloud.
It had no killing power, but it frightened the other side into not daring to advance, for fear of a trap. The four slave traders hesitated for a moment and chose to detour around it.
But Bratt and the others had already seized the chance to run past, and the other side completely lost their opportunity to block them.
Sure enough, a few minutes later those four slave traders also converged onto this street, chasing after them from behind together with the bearded man.
100 meters, 110 meters, 120 meters… the distance kept growing.
Everyone knew that the slave traders' plan had failed. The reason they still hadn't given up was simply unwillingness to accept it.
A sudden idea struck Anser. With one hand he grabbed the neck armor to keep his balance, and with the other he pointed from afar toward the street behind them.
Without any warning at all, the wind rose!
Light breeze, swift wind, strong wind, gale, tempest… in just a few seconds, the wind force skyrocketed. A column of wind nearly thirty meters long and four to five meters in diameter formed in front of his palm, packing the street full.
In the next instant, he thrust forward hard. The violent wind swept down the street. Wherever it passed, wall plaster was torn apart, bricks and tiles were ripped free, and soil and stones were all dragged into it—the spectacle was terrifying.
Everyone was stunned. The slave traders fled in panic, only to discover there was nowhere to hide. Some turned and ran, others tried to climb walls, but all were too slow.
Aside from the bearded man crouching down to take it head-on, the other slave traders were successively blown away, clutching their heads as they tumbled in the raging wind for several meters, even more than ten.
[You cast Gust of Wind on the Conch first mate… The Conch first mate is hit and takes 3 points of bludgeoning damage. Current Hit Points: 31/34…]
[You cast Gust of Wind on a Conch sailor… The Conch sailor is hit and takes 4 points of bludgeoning damage. Current Hit Points: 2/6…]
A string of combat records flashed through Anser's mind. The effect looked spectacular, but no one died; all the damage came from debris in the wind striking them or from falls.
There was no helping it. Gust of Wind itself had very limited lethality, and it could not be released freely—after the gale was pushed out, its force would only continue to weaken.
Fortunately, this was his only spell-like ability. With high Charisma augmenting it, the wind force and control were strong enough for him to complete mounted casting and a release attack.
'This is exactly the effect I wanted!'
Anser handed Claira over to Bratt. "You take the two of them and go. Finn and I will go finish them."
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