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Jack had a sudden change of heart! The sudden changepletely left An and Shade shocked and threw them offpletely. This wasn''t something they expected to happen, but deep down they felt it was quite weed. Now the true question was… How could they use this to their benefit?
"Is there something I can do to help you? To redeem myself?" Asked Jack, supplicating the two heroes. "I''ve always… since I was young that I admired the heroes, both of you… You brought down the Demon King and started a new Era of Peace…"
"He seems to be saying the truth." Said An.
"…I see." Shade said in disbelief.
The two heroes looked at one another and quickly ran away from Jack, beginning to speak with one another alone while ignoring the grieving Jack.
"So what do we do now?" Asked An.
"Our ns won''t change; we''ll rescue the ves and then we''ll delete their memories." Said Shade.
"But won''t they just enve again? What if we use Jack for our own benefit?" Asked An with a smile.
"An, no." Shade said, quickly rejecting An''s wonderful idea.
"What do you mean "no", bud? If we use him we could get connections with the other thugs and learn more about them so we can assault them better. We could even learn more things. Simply leaving them away would be wasteful, we have to use them instead. If it is to save those demon and beast-kin people, I don''t think it''s a bad idea at all…" An said while raising an eyebrow.
Shade remained in silence after hearing An speak, he couldn''t help but feel like An was right.
But there was something that was stopping him from taking such a decision.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om
"…I don''t feel it is alright to manipte them. Wouldn''t that be evil as well?" Sighed Shade.
"If by doing that we can save more lives, then it is not that bad. Don''t look at everything with ck and white… Sigh, this is the primary reason why you did the things you did as well, we were unable to see that everything was actually gray. There is never everything evil and bad, it always varies, changes, and everyone has their own views of morality…" Sighed An.
"…Fine." Shade was quickly convinced by An, being reminded of his past hit him strongly emotionally, so he ended giving up to his friend''s idea when he considered the good things.
"But to reassure ourselves that they won''t betray us…" Said An.
"Yeah… Come." Shade said, suddenly summoning Phantasmal Spirit as the zombie-like phantom emerged behind him, groaning lugubriously.
An quickly brought all the subordinates hiding, intimidating them with his presence alone, as everyone lined up in front of the two heroes.
"I ept your help, we''ll use your assistance to learn more about this town, the other organizations that might be trafficking ves, and more… However, we cannot easily trust you, therefore, we''ll use a method that can ensure your cooperation to an extent, but also assure us that you won''t go telling everybody about us." Shade said coldly, touching Jack''s forehead as shadow chains emerged from his Phantasmal Spirit, flowing inside of Jack''s entire body and chaining down his soul. The chains quickly spread out, chaining the souls of everybody else within this underground facility. An put the work to bring even those unconscious guys left outside.
"W-What are these chains?!"
"What did you do to us?!2
"M-My soul feels heavier… Wait! I can feel my soul now?!"
"This must be some sort of curse…!"
"That''s right, it is something like a Curse. It is called Soul Chains, and you can call it a forced contract. With this, you''ll be incapable of speaking the truth about us and many other things, to keep everything a secret. And also, it might ensure your loyalty over time, as you realize that going against us will only bring you more pain than anything else." Sighed Shade. He disliked using this, but he had used it many times in the past to apprehend and capture alive various foes.
"With this, you can trust us?" Wondered Jack.
"Mildly so, it doesn''t stop you from thinking whatever you want, but lying to me will be difficult if you feel pain in the soul." Said Shade, his eyes slowly turned red out of nowhere, frightening the men in front of him.
"Now that we are done with this, all of youe to help us free the ves. I also want you all to apologize to them." Said An. "I know it is rather childish, but it''s the least you could do. Many of these people hate you to death, by freeing them, we are risking them attacking you or killing you, which we''ll protect you from. The least you could do is apologize to them for the shit you''ve brought to their lives. Most if not all of these people had nothing to do with your personal problems but you med them for it, you have to know how much of a scum you are and repent." An ruthless said as the thugs in front of him looked at him hatefully, although a few of them began to realize that perhaps things were not so simple and that demons weren''t simple evil just because they were demons.
However, it didn''t matter what they felt within their hearts anymore as they were now chained with Soul Chains. After An and Shade gave them the orders, the thugs, led by Jack, quickly began to free all ves with An and Shade''s supervision. The two stopped various ves from attacking the thugs with anything they foundying around, and had to exin to them that they were being freed now, at longst.
"Freedom… I am not going to be sold as a ve…?"
"Hahh… Thank you… Thank you so much…"
"But where do I go now? My entire tribe was burned down… I have nothing…"
"My mama… Sir Hero, can you find my mama?"
Most if not all the people here had nowhere to go now, those that lived in tribes had their homes burned down, and those kidnaped feared suddenly going back to society, only to be kidnaped again anyways…
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