The West Wind's Destination - Chapter 3
“We love you.”
Those were the last words Bea could remember from her family.
Born in the barren lands of the western continent, where even a blade of grass struggled to grow, Bea came into this world. As a decade-long famine persisted, her family, unable to sustain themselves, could do nothing but first relinquish the young Bea.
“Just wait here, we will come back for you soon.”
Bea believed those words with all her heart. And so, she waited.
Being frail and young, she was considered a burden who would only waste precious food. Contrary to her family’s expectations that she would perish quickly if left alone, Bea tenaciously survived each and every day.
She usually scavenged through trash bins for sustenance. On good days, she might succeed in begging and find a hard piece of bread to eat.
Usually, she would gather weeds or whatever edible thing she could find. When even those were scarce, she resorted to gnawing on tree bark or digging up dried roots.
—We love you.
As she teetered several times on the brink of death from eating something wrong, Bea clung to those words.
The west was known for its temperatures plummeting rapidly at night. Bea managed to survive each time anyway, wrapping herself in rags in the corner of a dilapidated building. Fortunately, she had stumbled into a region where rainfall was scarce.
Then came one day.
After nearly dying, she regained consciousness only to find herself being transported in a cage-laden carriage. That day, Bea was sold to an unnamed trading company.
Once they discovered that Bea was a girl, they stripped her to appraise her value as merchandise, preparing to sell her elsewhere. Once she got cleaned up, they found that she had a fairly pretty face, and so they judged that she could be sold at a high price.
While the bed there was better than the streets and the food superior to garbage, the situation was far from optimistic.
“It’s hard to come by such a thing these days.”
One of the slave traders commented as he looked at Bea.
“It’s all because those alchemists snatch up anyone they can.”
The world was in chaos due to a war over rights between mages and alchemists. Compared to the battlegrounds within the empire, rife with all sorts of magic spells, the west was safer. Ironically, the reason the west had suffered less damage was that it was considered land of little value.
However, that changed once people became a valuable resource. Using human bodies as experimental subjects, alchemists made the market of disposable slaves thrive, and with it, the slave traders roamed more freely.
“You should consider yourself lucky. We won’t sell a young girl to those alchemist dogs.”
Some handler said this to Bea.
According to them, alchemists were madmen who bought slaves for live experiments. The slavers told her to be thankful she wasn’t going to be sold off to an alchemist for her safety.
Even though it was obvious what kind of men would buy young girls as slaves, Bea numbly accepted her fate. She thought anything would be better than scavenging unknown roots and nearly dying so many times.
Then, one day, as she waited for her new owner.
Boom! Crash!
With a loud noise, bombs fell from the sky, precisely targeting the location where the slave trading company was stationed.
“Alchemists!”
“They’re hunting for specimens!”
“Run for it!”
Bea watched blankly as everyone screamed and ran. All the slaves were trapped in cages, unable to move.
The chaotic cacophony continued, and some of the screams faded. The random bombardment was also heading towards the cage Bea was in.
BOOM!
“Argh!”
One slave was hit directly by a bomb, crushed and killed instantly. Luckily, Bea survived, albeit in a cage that was now half destroyed.
Stepping out over the sticky blood with her bare feet, Bea, instead of running away, first looked up at the sky.
Something there caught her eye.
Floating in the sky was a gigantic transmutation circles. From a somewhat shabby device, bombs continued to pour down.
Mages are those who are born with innate magical power and can instinctively use magic. They control magic with their bodies, not requiring tools to cast it.
Those who use such devices are known as alchemists.
These alchemists were the ones unleashing bombs on the entire slave trading company just to secure a few slaves for their experiments.
While the terrified slaves were too overwhelmed by fear to do anything but flee, Bea coolly scavenged through the debris.
If she were to die from a bomb, then so be it.
If she survived by chance, she’d likely end up begging on the streets only to be captured as a slave again.
So, if she was leaving her fate to luck, she might as well grab whatever she could before fleeing.
But she couldn’t find anything worthwhile. The obviously valuable items like gold and jewels were already gone.
During another round of bombardment, Bea found a rod with strange characters written on it inside a destroyed cargo box. She didn’t know why she picked it up, if she were to be honest. Maybe because it bore a pattern similar to the transmutation circle in the sky.
Deciding it was the best she could find, Bea hurriedly ran in the direction where the bombs weren’t falling.
